A/N: Second installment of my Echoes verse.
Massive amounts of love to woodshavings, a goddess among betas.
mama when you leave
"No one comes in unless I invite them in."
It was easier when no one knew what the statue was, but Jacob's name still carries considerable weight and for the most part everyone respects his wishes.
Everyone, of course, but her.
Jacob brought her to the island for the third time in her two lives, taking her from family and love and acceptance, it is true. But it is also true that there is a man out there who is human now but free of the island, a man who has many friends in the world, a man who remembers that Kate saved him a bullet. The island is the safest place for her now; it is the one place the man will never return.
He deserves it, he supposes. This wrath of hers that seems uniquely directed at him, as though he were the cause of every ill to befall her in her short life. Wayne is dead, Diane is far away and Kate still can't bring herself to believe that Hugo is anything but a puppet pulled by Jacob's strings. She is angriest at Jack; he's in danger too but he has a life that he won't leave behind, a life that she'd barely gotten to be a part of, so the good doctor abandons her to the island and calls it honor.
Jacob is the only one left, and if he did that sort of thing anymore, he'd laugh at the thought.
Mother is dead, Brother is gone, Richard has moved on. These visits of Kate's, anger and bitterness and lists of all his failings though they may be -those that she knows about anyway; she only scratches the surface in truth- they are all he has left.
He wants to grab her, to shake her, shock her into silence until she realizes this, realizes that they are two of the same. Jacob's temper, though carefully controlled and hidden under the façade of docility, still rests just below the surface; if he wanted, he could give to her as good as he'd gotten. Instead he grasps her by the arm, ushering her out of his home (she didn't respect him; why would she respect his privacy?), instructing her to head back to her people; there is a storm coming in. He wonders if Hugo has discovered how to control the weather yet.
If someone were to ask him later, this is exactly how Jacob would recount the events of the day; Jacob doesn't lie, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't know how to live in denial.
He grasps Kate by the arm, yes, but she doesn't make it outside (not that night), and he doesn't get to warn her about the storm until much later, when the world outside the statue is already torrential.
To no one's surprise Kate fights him. The second his hand clenches around her arm she's in motion, her other fist headed right for him.
To her surprise -but not his- he stops the attack easily, having spent centuries dealing with much worse than Katherine Anne Austen.
To both their surprise, he counters by pressing her against the wall and shoving his lips on hers. That's all it is, shoving, for that's all he knows how to do. Having seen others kiss no more prepares him for the reality of it than watching a pilot in action makes one qualified to fly a plane. But in the moment, when rational thought has fled, all that remains is want and lonely and lustand it's tinged with anger and desperation.
Somehow they end up on the ground (she was trying to push him off and they fell, he supposes later), him scrambling to get on top of her (or does she pull him to her?), his hands clumsy and bruising (he forgets his own strength), as Jacob struggles to rid them both of their clothing. He gets his fly unzipped and his pants are pooling around the bend of his knees, her shirt soon torn off (he has to promise to buy her a new one later), but his hands fumble with the button on her jeans for a moment too long. He can feel Kate begin to reassess the situation, feel her start to pull away again even as he finally -frantically- drags them free.
In that moment Jacob feels a brief, ridiculous flash of anger at her, at all women, for daring to wear pants. The damned material cannot keep him from getting what he wants, what he needs, what he has craved since that day in the jungle. The panic rises from deep inside him; so close to his desires, he couldn't bear it if she were to go now.
Please.
It feels like the only word he's ever spoken.
She stares at him then, gazing up at him as though she's never truly seen him before. They stay locked in their uncertain embrace for a long moment -too long- and he starts to tremble from the forced restraint. He should wait for a verbal answer. Isolated as he has been all these years, he knows this. Be it acquiescence or denial, he should wait and respond accordingly to her wishes. But his whole body is aching for her and his dick is throbbing worse than it ever has and she is there, naked and warm and right there underneath him so chooses to take the slight inclination of her head as acceptance and plunges headlong into sin.
The instance he pushes inside her he knows that his imagination has failed him. In all his fantasizing, nothing has come close to the feeling of her around him, tight and oh, so warm and it makes him do things, say things-
He is aware of nothing but this, the sensations being caused in his body as his thrusts grow harder and harder and his grip tightens enough to make her cry out. He tells her that he loves her in dead languages and curses in the living ones.
When he comes he chokes Katie into her hair, and he won't be able to answer her later when she asks why.
Mother would be so disappointed.