Free Haven 3: Forgotten Sins by Gabrielle Evans Page B

though picking the thought straight from his frantic brain, Jonas reached out to him, offering his hand and another smile.
    “Phillip isn’t here, and he can’t hurt us anymore. I did a lot of thinking while you slept.”
    “What did you think about?” And more importantly, what had been the outcome of Jonas’s musings?
    “All the times you lied to me. I thought about all the secrets you kept from me.” Jonas crawled off the bed and right up to Nicholas, forcing him to recline on his elbows or bump heads with the vampire.
    “I thought about all the times you hurt me, and all the ways I’d pay you back for it.”
    Swallowing hard, Nicholas opened his mouth to apologize again but pressed his lips together when he realized he had nothing to say that would erase the damage he’d done.
    Jonas’s hard body settled over his, covering him from chest to groin and pressing him back into the floor. “Then I thought about what I would have done if our positions were reversed.” He dipped his head and licked a slow path up the side of Nicholas’s neck. “You know what I realized, Nicky?”
    “No.” Nicholas panted as he did a full-body shudder. His heart raced, his stomach fluttered, and his cock swelled painfully in the span of seconds. He wasn’t sure if he was answering Jonas’s question or verbally denying how much he wanted the things his mate was doing to him. The last time he’d let his dick do the thinking, he’d almost claimed Jonas, and that could never happen.
    Jonas nipped at Nicholas’s bottom lip and then swirled his tongue over it to soothe the sting. “I realized that I’d do whatever it took to keep you safe—even if that meant lying to you. Oh, I tried to deny it.
    I told myself that I would never purposely deceive someone I love.” He pressed their mouths together and tickled the seam of Nicholas’s lips with his tongue. “The truth, however, is that I would. If it meant never having to live without you, even if we were just friends, I would tell you every story in the book except for the one you wanted to hear.”
    “Jonas, stop. I can’t do this.” Nicholas tried to squirm out from beneath his mate, but Jonas held him pinned in place. “Please. We can’t do this.”
    “Nicky, I know all of your secrets now. I know what I’m getting into, and I know you can never claim me. It’s not ideal, but I can live with that. You are everything I want, and if that means this is all we can have, I’ll be the happiest man alive.”
    “Listen to me.” Nicholas freed his arms and stretched them up to grab Jonas’s face in both hands. “I can’t.”
    “Yes, you can. Phillip isn’t going to hurt me. Why are you so afraid?”
    “The one time I let my guard down, I almost claimed you. The need is always there, but it’s so much stronger when we’re connected like this.”
    To his surprise, Jonas smiled, turned his head, and placed a soft kiss in the center of Nicholas’s palm. “Then let me be in charge. Let me take care of you, Nicky.” Then he claimed Nicholas’s lips in a passion-fueled kiss before he had a chance to argue.
    The wet tongue that stroked in and out of his mouth made his head spin and his cock throb. Jonas tasted like heaven—warm, moist, slippery heaven. His gums tingled where his fangs threatened to elongate, and a fire blazed inside his belly.
    A needy moan escaped him before he could cut it off, but Nicholas was too far gone to care. It had been years since he’d had a taste of his mate, but it was even better than he remembered. “Mine!” Instinct took over, and his fangs burst through his gums. Nicholas fisted his hands in Jonas’s hair and jerked him down so that the fragrant skin of his throat pressed against his lips. Skimming his nose along the jumping vein in his mate’s neck, Nicholas groaned at the glorious scent. His mouth watered, his cock pulsed, and all reason fled his lust-filled brain.
    “Nicky.” Jonas said his name breathlessly as he rocked