“I know,” she whispered. There it was again. Go all in, or all out. No pressure.
“I can be patient,” he said. “But I can’t separate myself from the Beast. If the Beast is unhappy—”
“Then so are you?” Holly finished for him.
She saw Jacob’s jaw tighten. “I’ll give you all the time you need. Just don’t tug my leash.”
“I’ve got some homework to grade,” she said suddenly, peeling back. “I should get started on that.”
His eyes never left hers. “I’ll see you upstairs.”
“Sure.” She ducked out of his grasp and went to hide in the couch.
She heard him sigh, and then finally he growled, “Dammit, Holly.”
She looked back at him, blinked. He lifted a hand, and then dropped it uselessly to his side. “Look—we’re married now. I’m not going anywhere. Neither are you. This’ll be a hell of a lot easier once you accept that.”
Was it that easy? Just stop asking questions, stop doubting? Go both feet in and never turn back? Holly gave a small shrug and then said simply, “I’m an academic, Jacob. Asking me not to overanalyze is like asking me to stop breathing.”
Jacob crooked an eyebrow and said, “Alright. Well, when you decide to shut off your brain, you know where to find me.”
Holly watched Jacob climb the stairs and heard the click of their bedroom door. She lingered downstairs and sank into the couch, raking her fingers through her hair as the clock ticked on.
Holly pulled her bag over and lifted out a yellow notepad and a pen. She pulled her notepad over and turned it to a clean page. There, she made two columns. She wrote:
Heart:
Head:
She paused, nibbling the end of her pen, then jotted down:
Heart: an organ designed to pump blood through the body.
Head: learning, reading, love through understanding, acceptance.
Holly stared at her list. Her chest ached suddenly. Holly rubbed her hand over her left shoulder, knitting her eyebrows. Her heart was like a broken bone, acting up when it rained, and it was going to take a while to clean all this rust off of the hinges around her ribcage.
She took a breath, drew a line underneath what she’d written, and wrote out another list. Only this time, she tried to imagine what Jacob would write down.
Heart: passion, loyalty, family, love.
Head: designed to fit perfectly between Holly’s thighs.
A small grin lifted her lips at her own joke and she twisted the end of her pen between her teeth. God, she was going crazy, wasn’t she? But maybe that’s what love was. Maybe it was high time Holly went a little crazy.
Chapter 25
Holly woke up with a face full of papers. Blearily, she peeled herself off her half-graded homework and groaned, cracking her stiff back. There was a blanket over her shoulders that she hadn’t remembered putting there. Jacob’s handiwork, no doubt. Falling asleep on the couch probably hadn’t been the best idea in the world and a bolt of fear ran through her as she looked at the clock on the wall. She’d woken up early; she still had plenty of time to pull herself together and make it to school on time for her first class. Holly shoved her papers back in her bag, made a quick breakfast, and then went upstairs to change clothes.
When she pushed the bedroom door open, she could see Jacob was still asleep in bed. And then her heart melted. On his chest, with his thumb holding his place, rested her copy of Pride and Prejudice. He was propped up against the headboard, as though he’d fallen asleep reading it, and his full lips were parted for deep sleep breaths.
And glasses! Perched on the bridge of his nose were clear, black-rimmed glasses. No wonder she had never seen him with a book in his hands before—knowing him, reading glasses were probably his dirty little secret.
And yet Holly had never been more attracted to anything in her life.
Well. She had a little time to kill.
Quietly, Holly crawled into bed with him. She drew back the covers and bared his overgrown chest, gazing over the hair that trickled down the center of his body and vanished underneath his boxers. Even now, the black silk boxers did little to contain him and Holly cupped her hand over them and rubbed. She felt him begin to swell under her touch and his body twitched, slowly waking up. But it wasn’t until Holly pulled the rim of his boxers back and licked his wanting, bulbous tip did she feel hear him groan, fully coming to life.
His eyes cracked open and he spotted her. “Mm…good morning to you too,” he mumbled and he pretended to stretch in an obvious attempt to casually swipe his glasses off his face (as though she hadn’t already very clearly seen him wearing them).
“Keep them on. Please,” she asked sweetly.