Her hands push lightly against my chest, and she pulls away, surprising me. When I open my eyes, she’s licking her lips and staring at my mouth, and she’s still close enough that I’m already struggling to resist pulling her back in.
“Are you two done or what?” I hear my sister’s voice in the distance. Then she bumps her hip clumsily into my thigh. “Move over, lovebirds. I want a turn.”
I stumble, pulling Daisy with me. But Loren and Blake are both grinning widely at me before they turn to give one another a relatively modest kiss, at least by their standards.
Daisy clears her throat, and I turn my attention back to her. “Um, thank you?” she whispers, but it sounds more like a question.
I run a hand through my hair, unsure of what to say now. I might have been able to play off that first awkward kiss at our wedding, but this is a lot harder to explain. Coming back fromthiskiss isn’t going to be so simple. Not only have I opened myself up to a new level of temptation, but I’ve also contradicted Daisy’s assumptions about me having an aversion to physical contact. The truth is that I don’t mind it one bit when Daisy touches me, and I sure as shit don’t hate kissing her.
Gah, what am I doing? I can’t let this?—
“Landry?” she asks quietly. “Are you okay?”
I realize I’m frowning and attempt to soften my expression. “Yeah, of course. Are you?”
She shrugs and forces a smile. “Mm-hmm.”
I sigh. I know I’m confusing the hell out of her.
“I think I’m ready to go,” I begin. “I mean, if you want to stay, I can come back for you later …”
“No, that’s fine. You can take me home now,” she says quickly, and I have to shake my head lightly to erase the thoughts she conjures up.
“Then we should probably get out of here before?—”
“Whoa, where are you running off to now?” Loren calls, and I roll my eyes.
“Home. It’s been a long day,” I mumble as she and Blake approach.
“You mean it’s gonna be a long night?” she retorts, and Daisy blushes again.
“Lo,” I growl. “Don’t start.”
She lifts her hands up in surrender. “Fine. This is me respectfully butting out of your love life. See how that works?”
I grind my teeth together and inhale deeply, trying to avoid biting her head off. I know my sister means well and that I deserve to be teased after all the crap I’ve pulled with her and her boyfriends over the years, but she doesn’t understand that this is a touchy situation right now.
“Yeah. Good night,” I manage in a somewhat neutral tone, and I catch Blake winking at Daisy out of the corner of my eye.
I lead her on to my Jeep, and the ride home is quiet. But there’s a different kind of tension in the air now. By the time we make it into the house, I feel like crawling out of my own skin. I want to stop Daisy and talk this out, for her to reassure me that it was just a chemical reaction and that she didn’t feel the same things I did during that kiss. Ineedto know we’re okay and that things can go back to normal between us. But I’m scared I’ll hurt her, and I’m even more afraid of having to admit that I want to kiss her again.
“Landry, wait.” Daisy reaches out to grab my sleeve once we’re inside, and I turn to face her. “I have a confession to make,” she begins, her eyes drifting down. “I … I don’t know how to say this, but … I enjoyed it. You know, when you kissed me in front of everyone.”
I press my lips into a hard line, trying to keep my expression blank. “You mean you enjoyed being physically affectionate with someone in public?”
She shakes her head softly, though I expect her to laugh. “Well, yeah, that’s definitely part of it. But …” She bites her lip, and I gulp, because I want to bite it, too. “It felt like more than an opportunity or a favor this time. I may not have a lot to compare it to, but Ihavebeen kissed before. And this was a really good kiss, at least for me.”
“Hmm,” I hum, pretending to consider what she’s saying, when I’m really just trying to drag my eyes away from her mouth. “Aside from the peer pressure aspect, I guess it wasn’t half bad.”
“So you enjoyed it, too?”
I shrug, trying to look aloof. “I certainly didn’t hate it.”
This time I elicit the smallest of smiles from her, and she crosses her arms as she glances coyly at me. “Your tolerance for PDA has improved, at least.”
“You make it easy for me,” I reply without thinking. But I shouldn’t be flirting with her like this anymore, not when we can’t keep this up. “And I figured you’d have wanted more than a little peck, at least in front of your coworkers.”
Her shoulders sag. “You only kissed me like that in front of everyone because you felt sorry for me, then?”
