Page 141 of Fake it ’Til Fall

She makes a small sound.

I kiss her deeper because if I don’t, I might say something I can’t take back.

Daisy’s back meets the door. I brace one hand beside her head to keep myself upright, because her mouth is ruining my balance and every reasonable part of my brain has abandoned me.

“Still okay?” I ask against her lips.

Her answer is her hand pulling my shirt from my jeans.

I catch her wrist.

She freezes.

I loosen my grip immediately. “Words.”

Her eyes lift to mine, bright and wild and furious with wanting.

“Yes,” she says. “Still okay. Very okay. Historically okay. Legally, medically, and possibly spiritually okay.”

“Good.”

“Do not smile right now.”

“I’m not.”

“You are internally smug.”

“I’m internally something.”

Her breath catches when my hand slips beneath the edge of her sweater.

Warm skin.

Soft.

Real.

I stop there, palm at her waist, waiting.

Daisy looks at me, and the humor falls away so fast it leaves both of us exposed. She nods once.

I slide my hand higher.

Her eyes close.

It’s the trust that gets me.

Not the heat, though there’s enough of it to make the air feel thin. Not the way she arches into my palm when my thumb brushes the underside of her breast. Not the sound she makes when I kiss the corner of her jaw, then the sensitive line below it.

The trust.

Daisy Thorn, who jokes her way out of hurt, who schedules disasters into manageable columns, who can smile so convincingly that most people never notice the cracks beneath it, is standing against her bedroom door and letting me touch her like she believes I’ll stop if she asks.

I would.

I would stop so fast it would break me.

I pull back just enough to tug my shirt over my head.