Page 28 of Hart's Redemption

“This is about more than lying. Out with it.”

I struggled again, and he tightened his grip, offering zero quarter. At last, the words I’d tried so hard to bury burst out of me. “You let me believe I was unlovable!”

Elijah

Josh’s anguished cry seemed to be ripped from his very soul. His face crumpled with agony and vulnerability. It damn near destroyed me. More than that, I hated that Priscilla and Kotori had been right. Even with the certainty of the bond, Josh stilldidn’t believe I wanted him. I’d tried so hard not to cause him anymore pain, and I’d done it anyway.

“Josh—”

“Don’t.” He made another half-hearted attempt to pull free, but we both knew it was in vain. He may have werewolf strength now, but I was still bigger. “Please.” He panted with the unmistakable effort of keeping his emotions reined in.

For a selfish second, I was actually grateful for his lack of control. I’d never seen him so raw, so exposed.

“Are you happy now?” he mumbled, turning his head to the side so he didn’t have to look at me.

“No.”

His gaze snapped back to mine, his surprise evident in his wide eyes.

“You insufferable man, how could you not see how absolutely crazy I am about you?” I stared down at him, my heart nearly full to bursting. Even angry, with his hair a violent shag of black and his face flushed from the fight, he was still the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen, and it didn’t even come close to how beautiful his heart was. In a death-defying move, I released one of his hands. The man had a mean right hook, and I didn’t expect the left to be any less.

Rather than take another swing, he reached out with a shaking hand until his fingers brushed my jaw.

I placed my hand over his heart and looked deeply into his confused eyes. “I love you, Josh. I love you so fucking much.”

His eyes widened, and his chest shuddered beneath my touch. His fingers ghosted along my jaw until they curled delicately behind my neck. He leaned forward and tentatively met my lips with his. The tension in my chest finally eased. I glided my hand up to caress the side of his face as I poured all of my love into that tiny contact. His hand tightened on the back of my neck,and he deepened the kiss, his tongue delving past my lips to steal my breath.

I moaned into him and abruptly found myself on my back staring up at Josh in a complete role-reversal. For a moment, I was terrified he’d used the kiss as a diversion so he could break free, then his mouth mashed down on mine. I instantly wrapped my arms around him to crush his body against me.

No sooner had I tightened my hold, though, than he was squirming in my grasp, his hands pulling relentlessly at my shirt. I immediately began giving his clothing the same treatment, hungry to feel the heated flesh beneath. The sound of tearing fabric joined our harsh breathing.

Josh’s fingers curled into my chest hair, and I growled out something unintelligible about needing him. Cold air washed over me as he suddenly hopped up. Then, just as fast, he was perched back on top of me, the heat of his body liquefying my insides, his mouth hot and persistent. I groaned as he shoved a small bottle into my hand while his own roved mercilessly over my body, his touch igniting me like nothing in this world ever had.

I tangled a hand in his hair, so much longer than it had been when we’d met, and rolled us. We bumped into something, which I absently shoved ‌aside. The noise of something else crashing to the wooden floor barely registered.

I devoured kiss after kiss before finally surrendering his mouth to taste the rest of him. A chorus of moans and breathy pleas to hurry the fuck up followed me down his body. By the time I reached his dick, he was a gibbering mess of need and absolutely fucking perfect. I didn’t waste any time claiming what was mine.

He bucked up hard from the ground when I wrapped my mouth around his length, his fingers instantly tangling in my hair. After only a few minutes of me sucking him, he pulledsharply, forcing me to look at him. A moan slipped free at the sight of him. His eyes were wild, the pupils dark pools that swallowed the green, and his mouth a swollen, delectable red.

“Baby…” It sounded like there was supposed to be more, but that one word was all it took to unravel me.

I crawled back up his body and clamped my mouth back over his. I flicked open the cap on the lube he’d handed me, not giving a single fuck about the mess I made. As soon as my fingers were slick enough, I guided them to his hole and watched with reverence as his body embraced the pleasure. I leaned forward to kiss and suck along the column of his throat.

His dick jumped as I massaged his prostate and a perfect string of precum stretched from his swollen head to his abdomen. His breath caught and ass tightened around my fingers so hard it made me dizzy. Though I knew we both had several rounds in us, I didn’t want him coming like this. I needed to heal our bond, and there was only one way that would happen.

Any other time his sound of disgruntlement when I withdrew my fingers would have been comical, but I was right there with him. He watched me with lust-hazed eyes as I rocked back to slick my cock and lined it up with his eager hole. I lifted his right leg and placed a kiss on the sensitive skin behind his knee before placing it on my shoulder and sliding home in one decisive thrust.

We moaned into each other and I could almost feel our fractured bond mending itself. I alternated between kissing his lips and breathing him in as I gently rocked into him. It didn’t take long for his ass to become a vice. I sharpened my thrusts as his body curled inward, simultaneously trying to pull me deeper and push me out.

“Yes,” he gasped, digging his fingers into my biceps as I continued to slam into him.

I sealed our mouths together for a brief kiss, then repositioned his other leg on my shoulders as well, bending him nearly double. I slid a fraction deeper and fought my release as another anal orgasm wracked Josh’s body.

“Fuck, baby, that’s it. You feel so fucking good,” he said between panting breaths once he came down from his latest high. “I love you. I love you.I love you. I love you.”

My heart cracked open as I finally saw what I’d been too stubborn to accept before.Thishad been living inside ‌Josh the whole time. Not once he’d completed the bond. Not when he’d told me he loved me on his deathbed. Not even when he’d quietly accepted my terrible treatment of him when I learned the truth about him.

He’d been hiding this intense love long before any of that. I let his legs fall off my shoulders so I could lean closer to him as I continued to bury my length in him again and again. Immediately he wrapped them around my waist and used them as leverage to rock back into me. I gripped his thigh tight, altering my angle just enough to send him over the edge again. It was more than I could take. Heat ignited at the base of my spine and crashed through me.