“You got to paint my room aww pink and tuck me in every night and sway the bad dragons. But not Mack. Mack is a good dragon.”

Her eyes shone with this pleading kind of awe.

Magic.

I dropped to my knees in front of her, and I looked up at her mother, who was gazing down at us, her fingers running through my hair, before I turned my attention back to Bailey.

The little girl I would forever love as my own. Never think of her as anything else.

When I opened my mouth, I made a promise I would keep for both of them.

“I’ll slay all your dragons, and I promise, I will never leave.”

I sat on the edge of Faith’s bed, the sound of her moving around in the bathroom after taking a shower soothing me while I held the letter she’d given me to read.

Torn.

Torn between hatred and devotion.

Swallowing down the years of resentment and anger, I turned the letter over and over in my hands, not sure if I wanted to listen to a thing he might want to say.

Finally, I forced myself just to read it.

Jace,

If you have this letter, it means I got what was coming to me. You taught me about karma at a young age. I should have believed its truth. I didn’t. But that didn’t mean I didn’t respect you.

Well, respect and envy are a very fine line, aren’t they? I wanted to be you, and I hated you for it because I could never be that good. My heart never beat the same way as yours. Your soul ached to do good, and mine sought wickedness and greed.

Steven wanted me to prove my loyalty to him, and in turn, I broke the greatest trust I should have shared with someone. I put those drugs in your backpack and made the anonymous call that I’d seen someone breaking into the plantation.

I stole from you, but I’m the one who lost.

I lost everything. But it was always yours, anyway.

Take them. Love them. Don’t ever regret finally turning me away. It was what I needed. What they needed. It was time.

I know you’ll show Bailey what a real man is like. You’ll teach her devotion and loyalty. You’ll fill her with strength. Most of all, you’ll fill that house with love. After all, it was always your ghost that lived there.

Goodbye, my brother. That was what you were. If I could change one thing, I would have been a better one.

Joseph

Grief nearly cut me in two, and I squeezed my eyes closed after I’d read his final words. Part of me wanted to hate him. But hating him would solve nothing. It would never change the path we’d been set on.

The loss.

The lessons.

The love.

Love.

It creaked open the bathroom door, standing in the frame, her gorgeous face filling my eyes. I blinked at her, my throat growing thick, that feeling rising high.

So high.

I wanted to ride on it forever.

Faith slowly walked out, her hips a slow sway, the girl so sexy and she never knew it.

I knew she’d given me time. Privacy to read through the letter that had been left for me.

She came to a stop right in front of me, and I widened my knees, dragging her closer to me.

She set her hand on my face, her thumb running along the hollow beneath my eye.

“Are you okay?” she whispered her concern.

I let the letter flutter to the floor.

As wilted as one of the rose petals that fell.

Making space for something new to bloom.

I set both my hands on the outsides of her thighs, staring up at those chocolate eyes.

Emotion flooded fast.

A furious beat through my veins.

“Are you standing in front of me?” I let a grin quirk up at the corner of my mouth.

Faith smiled.

Smiled and that feeling swept me away, and I gripped her around the waist, spinning her around until she was pinned to the bed.

I gazed down at her.

At my love.

My life.

My hope.

My beauty.

She ran those fingers through my hair. “I guess that’s my answer then.”

I tugged at the towel she had wrapped around her body, revealing every soft, luscious curve. “You’re my answer.”

Her fingertips fluttered, hovering over the wound healing high on my chest near my shoulder before her hand traveled to my heart, her palm pressing flat against the beat.

I spread my hand over hers. “Beauty.”

Faith didn’t look away from my eyes as she pushed down my pajama bottoms, neither of us breaking our stare as I twisted the rest of the way out of them, as I crawled between her thighs.

“Beast,” she whispered.

I pressed into the sweet warmth of her body. I loved her and cherished her, every shift of my hips as I rocked into her filled with devotion.

With loyalty.

I’d known the second I met her this girl was more.

Tags: A.L. Jackson Confessions of the Heart Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net