Another woman would be stronger. She knew that. Another woman would take his fucking teasing. His Jesus…gorgeous cock and tell him to fuck himself. But she’d been waiting for so so long. Since the minute he came into her room at Belhaven, she’d been waiting to fuck Jacob Dressel.

She sat up. Her hair a mess. Her dress hiked up to her waist.

Jacob was tall. Taller than he seemed which was part of his everyday camouflage, of being an ordinary man when he was anything but. He was Jacob and she’d never wanted a man more than she wanted him.

Never loved a man the way she loved him.

And yeah, this was undoubtedly going to end in more heartbreak. But she wasn’t about to say no.

“Let me make this clear, Jacob,” she said. “When this is over, you can go fuck yourself. Forever. But for the next twenty minutes…you’re mine.”

He stroked his cock. Thick. The head already slick with what he couldn’t control.

“Open your mouth, Zilla.”

Zilla knew how to present a picture. She knew how to porn it up. But she was past that. She reached for him, gripping him by the fine white shirt bunched and wrinkled at his waist and pressed her face to the warmth of his skin.

The sweet smell of his soap. Of his body. His cock brushed her face and she rubbed her cheek against him.

She felt his flinch.

He tried to control it, but he couldn’t.

Once, when he’d snuck into her room at Belhaven, where the nights were so long and so lonely and there was nothing to do but count her mistakes, she’d hugged him and he’d flinched so hard he knocked a water glass off her dresser.

And then vanished into the night.

He kissed her once. Kissed her so hard. So completely her knees buckled. So completely she thought, this is it. This is the beginning. She slipped her hand down his pants and he flinched. She ignored it that night and he finally pushed her away and left again. Another three days.

She couldn’t ignore it. That flinch.

“Jacob?” She looked up. Met his eyes. His eyes were brown. And green. A little blue. They looked bland, unless you were right here. Right where she was. Half in love, crazy with lust.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You flinched.”

“It’s nothing. Muscle memory.” Fight or flight. He’d explained that to her once. That her panic attacks were a fight-or-flight impulse. Being touched triggered his fight or flight.

She sat back, her heart a knot in her chest.

“All we do is hurt each other,” she whispered. “Even when we don’t want to.”

“Do I look hurt?” he asked, stroking his cock. Oh god, she ached looking at him.

“You know it doesn’t work like that,” she whispered.