Beth was shaking, but it wasn’t just her legs or arms or hands. Her heart was shaking, too. They couldn’t keep going like this. They couldn’t keep getting more serious, more intense. It was too much. Too close to…
“I love you, Beth,” he panted against her neck.
Her eyes popped open. She clutched his hair tighter in her hand as his fingers slid off her mouth.
“I love you,” he said again as her heart shook harder. “You, your body, your secrets, your fears. And I love who I am with you.”
He let her leg slide slowly down, but Beth wasn’t sure she could support herself. She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t…
He kissed her, soft and sweet, and her heart shook so hard she thought it might fly away. His thumb brushed a tear from her cheek, but he didn’t tell her not to cry. He didn’t ask anything from her at all, he just pressed his lips to the next cool tear that slid down.
“I won’t let you down,” he said.
“Don’t say that.” Her voice was just a rough ghost of a whisper. “You can make mistakes. You don’t owe me perfection.”
“No,” he murmured. “But you deserve it.”
She shook her head and tugged him back to her mouth so she could kiss him. “I love you,” she said, amazed at the way her heart slowed at her own words. “Just the way you are. And just the way I am, too.”
He smiled against her mouth, kissing her one more time before he stepped back to try to fix his appearance. Beth found her underwear on the floor and pulled them on, but the wrinkled state of her skirt worried her.
“Do I look like I just had sex?” she asked, patting down her hair.
“Yes,” Eric answered.
“Eric,” she scolded, still searching for the perfect curse when he reached to run his fingers through her tangled strands. He smoothed a hand over her crown, then pulled her shirt straight before tugging her skirt an inch to the right.
His eyes glowed with a warm smile. “There. Perfect.”
She started to fix his hair, then stopped herself. It looked good mussed. He looked sexy. And his brother would probably tease him about it, and they’d all laugh, and she loved to see Eric happy.
“Are you ready to do this?” he asked.
She was. She finally was.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-1526-9
REAL MEN WILL
Copyright © 2011 by Victoria Dahl
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Real Men Will Page 27