The moment Jacob’s lips touched mine again, I forgot how to breathe.
There was no gentle teasing now — no cautious patience.
He kissed me like a man starved, like a man who had lost too much already and would never risk losing again.
His hands slid into my hair, tilting my head back as he deepened the kiss, his body pressed against mine so tightly I felt every hard line of muscle, every beat of his desperate heart against my ribs.
“Mine,” he whispered against my mouth, the word so ragged it tore through me.
It wasn’t a question.
It was a prayer.
It was a claim.
It was a promise.
I whimpered, fisting my hands in the fabric of his shirt, needing him closer — needing him like air, like blood, like every damn thing I’d been denied.
“Yours,” I breathed back, voice breaking with the we
