Page 128 of Stepbrothers with Benefits
“Good,” he said in a far softer voice, still holding me up but planting kisses along my shoulders and neck. “Yours.”
“Mine,” I repeated back at him, loving the sudden shift to loving and tender after desperate and painful. Both were good, but it was perfect. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” he whispered, sounding far more like himself than he had since I’d first heard him talk. “I am too.”
“For what?”
“For what you’re going to deal with for the next couple of days.”
“I’ll buy a donut to sit on for the next couple of days if it’s that bad. It was worth it.”
“You were amazing.”
“Only for the past few minutes.”
“I’m going to pull out.”
“Okay...go slow?”
“Of course.”
He was slow and gentle. It still hurt like hell when he pulled out, but his hand was on my waist again to hold me up. I felt something warm leak out of me and down my leg before he kissed the back of my neck. Now it was his turn to lead me back to the room, after shutting off the shower and gently taking me back to the bed. He tossed the comforter over the sheets, and we lay down together, him behind me, wrapping his arms around me to keep our bodies flush.
Lying there, I realized something. “I was so stupid.”
“It happens,” he said softly.
“You arenotforgiving me that easily.”
“No. But who the fuck is smart and thoughtful when they’re freaking out because they think their whole world is about to collapse? You did wrong, by both of us, but if I held that against you for the rest of forever, then I can’t claim to know and love you completely, can I?”
“Even people you love can go too far for you to keep going with them.”
“But you didn’t. You reacted like a person watching everything in their life come under fire. It hurts like hell, but you didn’t hurt me because you didn’t care, but because you were afraid. I can forgive that...eventually.”
The ‘eventually’ calmed me down, and I took a deep breath, closing my eyes. “I could fall asleep right here, you know?”
“Yeah...but I want to be in one ofourbeds before we do that. Right now I want to...be, just for a bit.”
“Everyone and everything is still waiting for us.”
“They are.”
The size and weight of everything was just as much as before, but with Eli’s arm around me, the ache of the reminder of himin my ass, the intensity and honesty in his words as he had come deep inside me, the softness of his voice...it all seemed so much less. I had been stupid enough to run away from everything, and we had both paid the price. That I was feeling a comfort I hadn’t allowed myself before didn’t take away from the severity of my cowardice, but...the potential of his forgiveness, and the strength of his love made it all better.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
“I don’t either.”
“Raf said to take baby steps.”
“He’s probably right.”
“My first step was for you and me to be okay.”
“We’re not ‘okay,’ that will take time. But we’re here, together. And I don’t want not to have that.”
“I think that’s about as okay as I can expect right now.”
