Free Jacob by Jacquelyn Frank

swung his gaze to the Demon King. Noah’s sea green and gray eyes were a serious match to the grim press of his mouth.
    “Look, Jacob.” Noah indicated to something lying curled up on the couch next to his hip.
    Isabella.
    Beautiful Isabella. Curled up like a sweet kitten and breathing so deeply that she made a noise in the back of her throat with every exhale. Sound asleep, looking like an ethereal angel, and...
    Bruised.
    He stared in horror as he realized those were his fingerprints pressed deeply into her neck and throat, as well as the bare curve of her upper thigh. Everything came rushing back to him, the implications hitting him like a gut punch, stealing his breath away as his face burned in appalled shame.
    “Oh, no,” he rasped, his dismay and devastation grinding into those two simple words.
    “Easy, Jacob,” Noah said quickly. “Elijah arrived in time to keep you from harming her any further.”
    Barely, Jacob recalled. He remembered the lust, the craving for Isabella that had so overwhelmed him. He remembered how close he had come to taking her, mating with her, damn the consequences. In fact, the consequences had never once entered his mind. Even now, though he was full of despair over his lack of control, he couldn’t shake the urge he had to get closer to her, to touch her, to drag that delicate body in a crush against him and taste her again. It rode him heavily, rooted in his gut and groin, and he was filled with the dreadful conviction that he would never be able to remove that need from his soul. Ever.
    “I never meant to hurt her,” Jacob said quietly. The irony of speaking the exact words Kane had used gutted him with anger—anger at himself and frustrated outrage that those he highly respected had been witness to his humiliation.
    “We know that,” Noah said evenly, hoping to be some kind of comfort to him. “What we do not know is how she came to be in your home.” Noah leaned forward. “What in the world would possess you to bring a temptation such as this onto your territory?” the Demon King demanded of his champion. “You are not infallible, Jacob, even if you are the Enforcer. You are Demon. You too can fall to the madness of the Hallowed moon.”
    “I know that!”
    “Then why,” Elijah asked, “did you bring her to your home?”
    “Because she... because I needed to figure something out about her. She is not usual for a human female.”
    “You’re telling me,” Elijah said wryly, gingerly touching his bruised nose.
    “What made you think she was unusual?” Noah asked.
    Jacob took a deep breath before dropping the bomb. “She killed Saul.”
    The two Demons across from him sucked in air as if they were suddenly drowning for it. Jacob instinctively got to his feet and sat on the arm of the couch beside Isabella’s head, crossing an arm to the back of the sofa in a clearly protective gesture.
    “That is impossible,” Noah said quietly.
    “I saw it with my own eyes. Saul had completely Transformed. I miscalculated his power... his strength. It has been too long since I have fought an altered Demon. He severely injured me, but she stopped him.”
    “This little human creature killed one of us? One of the Transformed?” Elijah snorted in disbelief. “He must have been unconscious. Incapacitated.”
    “That same little creature broke your nose not twenty minutes ago, Elijah,” Noah reminded him dryly. “Were you unconscious or incapacitated?” The King was frowning, worry lines etching deeply across his broad forehead. “I have never heard of such a thing,” Noah informed them. “You were right to detain her, but it was wrong of you not to be forthcoming about it sooner. I do not understand why you put both of your lives in danger, Jacob. What would have kept her from possibly killing you? And then the way Elijah found you with her... ”
    “I cannot explain it. Any of it. I just... I just knew she was not a danger to me. Even in spite of knowing how she has