“No, Jacob, you stayed away from me because you were a coward,” she argued fiercely, ignoring his surprised anger at her claim. “Too cowardly to admit that I mattered, and that you needed me as desperately as I needed you. I am growing tired of this, I want your love, as well as your cock. I do not want one without the other.”

“And you think you do not have my love?” he yelled out to her, striding to her and jerking her from the chair as he stared down at her, angrier than she had ever seen him. “Do you think I do not know now exactly what you are to me, damn you! I would die, Faith, literally put a bullet in my head were something to happen to you. Do you think for one moment you do not hold everything I am?”

He was yelling at her. Jacob, who never lost control enough to yell unless during the heat of battle, was yelling at her. His face was flushed, his eyes glowing as he snarled down at her.

“Do I have your love, Jacob?” She couldn’t stop the hope that filled her, the whisper of dreams that raced through her system.

“My love?” He shook her just slightly in exasperation. “Faith, you are my love. You are my heart. When I saw those bastards so intent on taking you, knowing if they killed me they could take you, I nearly lost my sanity.” His voice lowered to a whisper. “I did not even know how much a part of me you were, until I knew I could lose you. Forever, Faith. One careless move, one stray bullet, and I could lose you.”

He was trembling, but so was she, Faith realized. Shaking in reaction, and emotional overload. His hand moved to touch her cheek, as though he cherished the feel of her.

“When you were thirteen, your skin began to chafe. Do you remember?” he asked her.

Faith frowned, wondering what this had to do with anything.

“I remember.”

“Wolfe and I, we hoarded money that we stole on our missions, waiting for a time that we could escape and establish safety. From my stash, I bargained with a sympathetic guard for the lotion you now use. At the time, it was so expensive that Wolfe and I argued over it continually. But your skin was so soft, Faith. Even as a child, it glowed with satin and purity. I could not bear to see it irritated by our harsh conditions.”

Shock held her immobile. She had thought Aiden had provided the lotion. She had never known it had been Jacob.

“The apartment you cherish so dearly,” he continued. “I provided for you. The moment I would learn there was something you wanted, something you needed, I ensured you were able to purchase it, no matter the cost. Because I wanted to bring you joy. I wanted you comforted, even though I wasn’t there. I did this, Faith, not knowing, never realizing I did it because I loved you past reason. I did it merely for the thought of the joy it would bring you. I would dream of your surprise, your pleasure, when you acquired what you sought. That is all that has kept me going for years. For these things I have fought for.”

Faith licked her lips, pain tearing through her at the sacrifices she saw through his eyes. To others, it may seem little enough. But to Jacob and Wolfe, money was security, it was safety for the Pack, it was freedom. To know he had paid for the comforts she so cherished, showed her that Jacob had not forgotten about her as she had always feared. He had instead, been with her the only way he knew how.

“Those comforts brought me more joy than you know, Jacob,” she whispered tearfully. “But they do not replace you. I will not live without you again. Not for a moment. We are mates. We fight together, or we don’t fight at all. If I return to the compound, then you will return with me, or else we will never be together again.”

His lips thinned. As though he had expected his announcement to sway her decision.

“You are so damned stubborn,” he growled, throwing his hands up as he stalked away from her. “Why are you this way?”

“And you are trying to manipulate me with the love I feel for you, and your own emotions,” she accused him. “Why can’t you stop, Jacob? Why can’t you admit you can’t protect me as you wish? Do you think the job of Liaison is without danger? That I am not forced, on a regular basis, to protect myself?”

He stopped pacing. She watched his body still, the muscles of his back tighten in rejection of her claim.

“It is not the same,” he finally growled.

“The barrel of a gun at my head, and Council soldiers hunting me down is somehow safer than being with you?”

She watched the blood drain from his face as her words hit him. His hands came up to wipe at his face, then tunnel through his hair once again. When he faced her, resignation and a strange kind of relief seemed to fill his expression.

“I love you, Faith. But you terrify me,” he said deeply, his voice strained. “I will die of a heart seizure due to fear for you, before any Council soldier can get a chance to shoot me.”

Faith rose from her chair then and walked to him. He stood alone in the middle of the room, watching her intently, his face drawn and tight, his eyes bright with such a maelstrom of emotions that it made her want to weep.

“All I can think about is holding you. Being wrapped in your heat. And the hell my life would be without you.” He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight, warm against his bare chest. “What would I do now, Faith? Without you.”

She heard the dark loneliness, the years of pain and bitterness that he had suffered without her. The same dark years alone that she had suffered as well.

“What would I do without you, Jacob?” She held tightly to him, wanting nothing more than to melt into his skin, to be a part of him for all time, wherever he went, whatever he thought, to be a part of it.

His hands smoothed over her back, creating a heat, a longing unlike any that had come before it. His touch was firm, sure, his hands cherishing rather than possessive, though the dominance of his touch would never change, she knew. And he was dominant. He held her close, despite the lightness of his touch, as his arousal began to flame higher.

Faith tipped her head back to stare up at him, but found her lips caught in a kiss that mingled desperation, hunger and devotion instead. He licked at them, then plunged his tongue inside as she moaned in rising need.

She held onto him tightly, moving her body sensually against his, her nipples rasping against his bare chest, the friction of her cotton T-shirt creating a heat that made her desperate to remove it.

Jacob was ravenous in his demands for her kiss, as well as her touch. His hands gripped the neckline of her shirt, ripping it from her with one strong movement of his hands. Her cunt spasmed at the action, the sensuality of it ripping through her body with the strength of a hurricane.

Then his hands were on her bare back, pulling her forward, pressing her breasts firmly into his chest as he groaned with dark arousal.

“I hunger for you,” he whispered as he lifted his lips from hers, his hands working at the snaps of her jeans. “My entire body, Faith, hungers for you.”

Faith licked her lips and lowered her eyes.

“Then eat me,” she whispered, watching his eyes widen, then narrow.

His hands pushed her jeans down her legs as he lowered his body until he was kneeling before her.

“Red Riding Hood ran from her wolf,” he told her with an edge of amusement.

“Red Riding Hood didn’t know what the hell she was missing,” she groaned, her voice rough and filled with heated longing as his lips caressed her inner thigh, his hands lifting one leg to pull her jeans from it, then the other.

“Perhaps Red Riding Hood knew how dangerous the wolf was,” he suggested as his fingers feathered over the damp lips of her cunt.

“She was a scared little wuss,” Faith panted, her hands going to his hair as she shifted, opening her thighs wider. “For God’s sake, Jacob, touch me before I die.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Faith cried out as Jacob’s tongue speared into the heated slit of her pussy. She was wet, slick, primed and ready for him. An inferno of need blazed inside her, melting her, spilling its essence along her thighs to be caught by his greedy lips.

She felt him groan against her clit and nearly climaxed then. Had his hands not been holding her thighs, steadying her, then she knew she would have collapsed into a broken heap on the floor. Damn him, his tongue was like an instrument of pleasurable torture. Hot and firm, stroking her, licking over her then delving into the slick valley for more of her cream as his fingers stroked her buttocks, her thighs, soothing her even as he drove her higher.

She widened her legs, her hands in his hair, her groans pleading, urging him on. Her hips tilted as his hands gripped the flesh of her buttocks, his tongue stroking over her clit, then sucking it gently into the heat of his mouth. He was searing her. Burning her alive with her own desperate needs.

After one last, slow lick to her throbbing clit, he drew back, wafting a heated breath over the pulsing little bud.

“Lay down.” He eased her back until they reached the foot of the bed.

Faith sat down, her body trembling in reaction, in arousal, as she then lay back on the firm mattress, trembling in anticipation. Jacob followed her quickly, his head lowering between her thighs as his hands forced them further apart. His tongue plunged hard and deep into her clenching vagina as her cry shattered the dim interior of the room.

Waves of sensation washed over her. They beat at her nerve endings, rushed through her veins, threw her into a whirlwind of such unbelievable heat she feared she would never survive it.

His tongue fucked her with a wet velvet slide of heat and hunger, throwing her quick and hard into a climax that had her body arching tightly, her hands gripping the blanket of the bed in desperation. There was no slow love play, no soft, devoted caresses. He was hard and hungry, and Faith could feel her own control spiraling out of reach.

She could do nothing but cry out his name as he moved over her. No preliminaries, his lips came over hers, his tongue plunging into her mouth as his cock pushed deep and hard inside her empty vagina. Her hands clutched at his back as he set up a fast, driving rhythm that sent ripples of lightning arcing through her body. It was a pleasure that destroyed her, re-created her.

She held him to her, feeling the hard, thick length of his shaft separating her, driving her to a pinnacle of pleasure that threatened to destroy her. Hard, deep thrusts that touched her cervix and triggered a chain reaction of pleasure that wrapped around her entire body.

Faith could only whimper beneath him, his tongue tangled with hers, his hands holding her close as his hips powered harder, thrusting with a strength that carried her along on a wake of such ecstasy she didn’t know if she would survive it.

Finally, the need for oxygen had him tearing his lips from hers, his head lowering beside her, his hands gripping her hips as he cried out above her. She felt his cock throb, thicken as a hard jet of fluid prepared her for the coming knot. He groaned as she cried out, thrust deeper, harder, sending her shattering over a precipice of an orgasm that left her screaming breathlessly as his cock swelled thicker, harder, until he was locked deep and tight inside her.

“Faith. God help me, Faith. I love you.” The words were torn from him as he shuddered, his seed searing her cunt with yet another brutal climax.

She could only gasp his name. Whisper her love for him. Her body tightened repeatedly as it followed each hard ejaculation of sperm with another, smaller climax that ripped through her body. She was gasping for air. Panting with the unbelievable pleasure that never seemed to dull. Each time he touched her, each time he took her, it seemed only to build, to grow stronger in intensity.

Finally, sweat drenched, lungs heaving for breath, they eased down from the brilliant heights of their release only to collapse weakly on the bed. Jacob fell beside her, pulling her weakly into his arms as she snuggled drowsily against him.

“Pray that the Council does not attack for a while,” he whispered. “I would be little help in the battle, Faith. You have taken all my strength.”

“Hm, maybe you’re just getting old.” She smiled against his chest as she felt a hard, male leg move over hers.