Page 41 of Healed Hearts

I glance down at the small bar in my belly button. “You like that, huh?”

“I definitely do,” he mumbles, his eyes glued to my body. I unbutton my jeans and drop them to the ground, quickly slipping my arms into the shirt Julian handed me. When I pullit over my head, I can’t help but giggle at myself because it looks more like a dress than a shirt. It’ssocomfortable, though, and it smells like him—some sort of woodsy scent that makes my eyes threaten to roll back in my head.

When my eyes find his, he’s staring at me with open lust in his expression. “You look…” he says, his voice trailing off.

“Like a child?” I ask, giggling again at the ridiculousness of what I’m wearing.

Julian shakes his head slowly, his gaze burning into me. “No. Not like a child at all. I probably shouldn’t say what you look like, lest I send you running for the hills.” He chuckles and darts toward me. Fear explodes in my stomach for a split second before he sweeps me into his arms and lifts me up, holding me tightly against his body. I relax into his hold immediately, and he buries his face in my throat and inhales deeply.

He climbs into bed, and a spike of trepidation shoots through me at the thought of him covering me with his body, but he doesn’t. He lies on his back, holding me to him the entire time. I raise my head and look down at him. His eyes are sparkling, and I can’t resist leaning in to kiss him again. The feel of his lips against mine seems to have opened the floodgates, and now I can’t get enough.

Chapter Fourteen

Julian

Holden seems like a man obsessed, and I am not complaining. Not one fucking bit. I dare a man alive to have him look at you with those gorgeous green eyes and not fold immediately. I didn’t stand a single chance.

Even now, he’s this vibrant ball of energy on top of me, literally stealing my soul from my body with his sweet mouth. I groan, my hands caressing his back through his borrowed shirt. He should be wearing my clothes all the time. He looks likeminein my clothes. But I’m not going to tell him that. He may have been brave enough to share his first kiss with me—something that still has me fucking mind-blown and feeling so overwhelmed and honored—but even so, there’s a layer of fear under each interaction. Like he’s scared the very next move will be me flipping him over and violating him.

He rocks his hips against me as he deepens the kiss a bit, his tongue coming out to hesitantly brush my lower lip. I moan, trying to keep myself perfectly still and let him explore without scaring him. He pulls back, staring down at me with wide, lust-filled eyes. “I think I’m going to need to do this every time we get the opportunity to.”

His words make me chuckle. “You have free rein. Do whatever you’d like.”

He cocks his head to the side. “Did you mean what you said earlier?” he asks, and I’ll be so honest, I have no idea what he’s referring to. His hip is grinding into my cock, his lips are wet from our kiss, and his eyes are…fuck. What was I going on about?

“Um, about what?” I ask.

A pink flush spreads across his cheeks, and I have to bite back a smile. “About me topping?”

I nod rapidly, the tiny bit of blood I had left in my brain rushing south quickly, making my cock throb against his body. “Oh, yes. I definitely meant that.”

“But… why?” he asks. He genuinely looks confused, like he can’t imagine a world where one, someone would actually want that and two, someone would want that with him. It breaks my heart.

I cannothave this conversation while he’s on top of me like this. My brain function simply won’t allow it, so I grip his hips and gently move him until he’s sitting beside me on the bed. I sit up against the headboard, and he pulls his legs up, sitting cross-legged at my hip, staring up at me.

My eyes drop to his thighs as his borrowed shirt rides up, exposing the supple skin. I groan and squeeze my eyes closed. “I moved you so we could have a productive conversation, but there is nothing productive happening in my brain with you sitting there looking like that.”

He giggles, and the sound lights me up inside. I can feel him shifting on the bed, so I open my eyes and watch as he pulls the blankets over his lap. “Well, you didn’t need to cover up.”

“I’d hate to be the reason you’re so distracted,” he says with a wink in my direction.

“Being distracted by you is hardly a chore, but maybe for this conversation, my blood should be in my big brain instead of my little brain.”

“Nothing little about it,” he mutters under his breath, and I laugh.

“Yeah, well. It’s not like you’re exactly hurting in the size department yourself, darlin’,” I say, smiling when his cheeks darken with color. Surely he’s not embarrassed by that. I definitely can’t let myself think about it or I’ll be even more distracted. “But back to the topic at hand. I enjoy it. I’ll admit that I’m lucky enough that my first experience was with someone I liked a lot, and he didn’t hurt me. There have been a couple of times when we went too fast, and it was painful for a minute, but as long as there’s adequate prep, it’s not painful. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.”

Holden’s eyes are wide, like he doesn’t believe what I’m saying, but he doesn’t say anything. “You know that what you went through and what two people who care about each other experience are separate things, right?” I ask, watching his reaction closely.

He nods slowly. “Of course I do.” It doesn’t sound convincing in the slightest.

“Do you?”

His features sharpen, and he turns a glare on me. “Yes, Julian. I had the ‘consent is important, and you offering your ass up in exchange for dinner wasn’t consent,’ talk with Roman many years ago.”

It’s clear I hit a nerve. I’m torn. Do I push further because I don’t actually feel like he believes that? Or do I let it go? We truthfully don’t know that much about each other, but I’d like to know him. At any rate, I think this conversation is important, so I decide to take the risk. “Okay, I’m glad that you had that talk. Do you believe it?” I ask softly.

None of the anger drains from his face. In fact, it gets worse. I hope I’m not fucking this up. “I don’t see why that matters any to you.”

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