My breath caught in my throat, my heart hammering so violently against my ribs I was certain the sheer force of it would give us away.
Her shadow stretched, long and distorted, across the manicured lawn. She took a hesitant step toward the lounge chair, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the blinding glare. "Jacob? Ruby?"
Above me, Jacob's body went dead rigid, his darkened eyes locked onto the gap in the privacy hedges where Mom stood.
Out of nowhere, a streak of gray fur launched itself from the top of the hedgerow.
It landed with a heavy thump on the patio stones, hissed viciously at Mom’s slippers, and bolted toward the fence in a frantic blur.
Mom let out a sharp, strangled shriek, stumbling blindly backward toward the sliding door. "Jesus!" she gasped, her voice trembling with her lifelong terror of stray animals. She stared down at the shattered cocktail glass, then shot a glare at the empty patio chairs. "Stupid cat... knocked the whole damn thing over."
She paused, squinting into the pitch-black perimeter of the yard. "Jacob? Ruby?"
Nothing but heavy, suffocating silence answered her.
"Fine," she huffed, her tone shifting to that dramatic, put-upon annoyance she loved to use. "If my husband and my daughter want to stay out all night raiding my liquor cabinet, be my guest! Stay out! I’m going to bed. I don’t even care about the stupid cake anymore."
She stormed back inside, slamming the sliding glass door so hard it rattled in its tracks. A second later, the blinding floodlights snapped off, plunging the yard back into the thick, humid cover of night.
Jacob didn't move a muscle for what felt like an eternity. His forehead was pressed flush against mine, a bead of sweat dropping from his brow to my cheek. Then, a low rumble started deep in his chest.
"You almost did it, Ruby," he rasped, his voice sounding like crushed gravel. "You almost got exactly what you were begging for. You wanted her to catch me balls-deep inside you on her own back lawn."
"I didn't—"
"Don't lie to me." He cut me off, his large hand clamping around my jaw, forcing my head up to meet the feral, predatory glint in his eyes. "I felt you arch. I felt you push back against my cock the exact second she called your name. You're a little adrenaline junkie, aren't you? You get off on the risk. You love the fact that I’m her husband, and I’m currently ruining you a mere three feet from her back door."
He didn't wait for a confession.
His massive hands gripped my knees, violently shoving them back toward my shoulders until I was entirely folded open, utterly exposed to the cool night air. Before I could even drag in a breath to gasp, he drove his hips forward.
The sensation of him sinking to the hilt was a violent, breathtaking invasion. I let out a high, keening whimper, forced to swallow the sound by biting my own lower lip until I tasted copper. He was impossibly big, so incredibly thick that he stretched me to the absolute limit—a delicious, agonizing kind of breaking.
"Look at me," he commanded, his voice a wicked, feral rasp.
I forced my eyes open, my vision completely swimming. Hovering above me, his jagged boxing scars were illuminated in the moonlight, his broad shoulders practically eclipsing the night sky. And then he began to move—gone was the slow, agonizingly teasing rhythm from before. This was a punishing, relentless, driving force.
Every time his narrow hips violently crashed against mine, the wet, heavy slap of skin on skin echoed obscenely through the quiet yard. It was loud, reckless, and devastatingly filthy. The damp blades of grass pricked at my bare back, and the intoxicating scent of crushed clover, male sweat, and expensive bourbon completely hijacked my senses.
"Is this what you wanted?" he grunted, his brutal pace accelerating until my head was snapping back against the turf with every thrust. "You wanted your stepdaddy to completely lose his fucking mind? To forget exactly who he’s supposed to be?"
"Yes," I choked out, my nails digging desperately into the rock-hard ridges of his forearms. "Jacob, please..."
"Please what? Harder? Deeper?" He let out a low, guttural growl, his teeth grazing dangerously over the wildly fluttering pulse at my throat. "I’m going to mark you, Ruby. I’m going to leave you so completely wrecked that you’ll feel me with every single step you take tomorrow morning..."
His filthy words sent a fresh, blinding wave of heat pooling between my thighs. I leaned into the sheer shame of it, the taboo acting like a lit match. I threw my arms around his thick neck, violently pulling him down. My body was operating purely on a desperate, primal instinct to be closer—to be completely consumed by him.
He shifted his grip, his massive hands sliding under my ass to hoist my hips completely off the ground, taking on my entire weight as he drove into me with a rhythmic power. I felt weightless, anchored to the earth only by the blistering sensation of him relentlessly tearing through my defenses.
The world narrowed down to nothing but the scorching friction, the suffocating heat.
"I can't..." I whimpered, my breath fracturing into short, panicked bursts. "Jacob, I'm... I'm going to—"
"Do it," he growled, his thumb sliding down to locate my swollen clit, ruthlessly pinning it against his own pelvic bone as he delivered a brutal, bone-deep thrust. "Scream into my neck, baby girl. Let the whole damn neighborhood know exactly who’s taking care of you."
The climax hit me like a runaway freight train. My vision flashed a blinding white, my muscles violently seizing as wave after wave of white-hot, electric pleasure radiated outward from the molten core where we were joined. I buried my face into the crook of his shoulder, my teeth sinking fiercely into his skin to muffle the feral scream that would have surely woken the entire block.
Jacob wasn't far behind. His colossal frame went entirely rigid, his muscles bulging under my hands until they felt like drawn steel cables. With a final deep surge, he buried himself to the hilt and let out a roar right against my ear. His release pulsed into me, flooding me with a thick heat.
We stayed locked together like that for a long time, collapsed in a tangled heap on the manicured grass. The only sounds left in the world were the distant, dull hum of a neighbor's air conditioner and the frantic, echoing thud of our racing hearts.
Jacob pulled back slowly, his dark eyes intently searching mine. He looked fundamentally different—sated and calmer, yet carrying a dark, possessive edge that had never been there before. He reached out, his calloused thumb gently brushing a stray blade of damp grass from my flushed cheek.
"Your mother was right about one thing," he whispered, a wicked, thoroughly unrepentant smirk playing on his lips as he cast a glance toward the silent house.
"What's that?" I asked, my voice barely a breath, my body still trembling despite myself.
"There is definitely going to be hell to pay."