“What do I get out of it?” she asked.
“Me,” he said. She looked dubious. He sighed, and then leaned forward with his hand on his knees. His frayed shirt fell open at the top, exposing his hairy chest underneath, and she tried not to think about digging her nails into that chest—not now. “There are perks to being the wife of a shifter,” he explained. “For one, I’m the Alpha of my clan. Which means people listen to you. They respect you. You get what you want, as long as the things you want are reasonable.”
Queen of the werebears? This was getting weirder and weirder. “And?” she asked.
“And…we mate for life,” he said.
“Like marriage,” she said.
He shook his head. “Marriages can end. You know that firsthand. If you’re my mate…I will never cheat on you. I will never leave you. It goes against every one of my instincts. You have me by your side, for better or worse, until the day you die. That’s not a vow or a promise. That’s a fact.”
Holly fell silent. Her eyes remained stuck on a spot on the ground. She toyed with the hem of her dress as though it held secret answers in its stiches. Then, finally, she said, “I understand feeling half-human. Sometimes, I think I turned into a stone.”
When she looked up, he was staring at her. No judgment. Listening. “Go on.”
“Sometimes…” She sighed. “Sometimes…I feel like the older I got, the more hardened I became. I closed up from the inside out. When I was with Chris, I felt like I eventually just became part of the room. Inanimate. Unfeeling. Useless. Like wallpaper, or furniture, or…or a stone.”
Jacob took her chin gently between his fingers and lifted it. “Break a stone, you get a diamond,” he said.
“I want to break,” she whispered. The words sounded strange, crazy in her ears, and any other time, any other day, they would be. But right now, she meant it. She stood and hooked her arms around her man-bear’s neck.
His expression darkened, lust brewing behind his deep eyes, but he hesitated.
Holly wet her lips, held his gaze, and begged breathlessly, “Break me, Jacob. Please.”
His eyes never left hers. She felt his strong hands grab her from behind and he hoisted her up. Her legs wrapped tightly around his hips, her arms around his shoulders. Before she knew it, her back hit the wall, hard, and his hands reached down to peel her dress up over her head. Normally, she’d feel insecure in her own body, but she felt like she was living in a dream, floating, and for the first time in a long time she didn’t mind the way her curves fell out of her dress. It was the furthest thing from her mind, in fact, when he dropped her dress and kissed her, hard.
She moaned into his mouth, her breath coming in short gasps, and her fingers ripped at his clothes, tugging his shirt open. His tattered shirt gave no resistance, exposing his broad, strong chest, peppered with dark hair, virile. She felt his lips on her throat, her tits, his hands on her hips, everything about him rough, desperate, like he wanted to devour her, and her nails dug deep into his chest. He growled, an animal noise that made her little clit swell and throb, and his body pressed tighter against hers, crushing her. She could feel his erection—strong, demanding—against her hip and she fumbled with his belt to free it.
There was something feral in his kiss. Sweet, tender Jacob was gone. This Jacob tasted ravenous, violent, like an animal let out of its cage. He shoved down the waistband of his pants—just enough—and his sheer size made her mouth go dry. His cock was hard, his head swollen red, much bigger than Chris, and for a second she wondered if he was more than she could take.
Even when he was so clearly aching to be inside of her, he took his time. “Goddamn, you’re beautiful,” he said in a way that sent shivers through her.
He spread her legs and stuck a finger inside of her. He crooked it and she whimpered, rubbing slickly against his knuckles. Then he fit another finger inside, and another; she was drenched and she swallowed them each greedily. He pumped them inside of her, making her tremble, and then the thought hit her: he’s preparing me.
As he coaxed her, he murmured, “Is this okay?”
He was a bull in a china shop and even now he seemed to know that breaking her was different from hurting her. She nodded and said, “Yes. Please. I want it.”
He aligned his cock between her legs and eased himself inside. She felt the push of his head and whimpered, arching up on her toes at the sudden intrusion. But then he eased inside her fully, and she gasped, her nails digging into his shoulders. She felt filled in a way she never had before, like he was able to open up places inside her she’d never known existed.