Page 86 of Made for Mayhem

What the hell was I doing?

I wasn’t supposed to cross that line. I wasn’t supposed to want to.

But her weight against me felt too easy. Too good.

She didn’t move. Neither did I. I rested my chin on her head, breathing her in like oxygen.

“I thought you couldn’t dance,” she said, sidestepping everything I’d just laid at her feet.

“Didn’t, not couldn’t.” I tightened my arm around her. “But someone once told me almost anything can be solved with a dance party.”

She tipped her head back, and the sight of her smile—small, exhausted, and real—nearly took my knees out.

“Is it working?” I asked, thumb brushing her cheek.

Her gaze flicked over my face like she couldn’t find a safe place to land. Then she nodded once and folded back into me.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “I think so.”

The music wrapped around us. For a long moment, nothing existed beyond the quiet rasp of our breathing and the slow sway of her body softening against mine.

Then her voice came, barely there. “You keep thinking you have to earn it somehow—love, worth, a place to belong. But you don’t, Ty,” she whispered. “You’re enough. You always were.”

The words hit like a punch to the gut.

“Daisy,” I warned, but there was no warning left in it. Only surrender. My hand slid up her back to the base of her neck, turning her face toward me. She came easily, eyes wrecked and open.

“Tell me not to kiss you,” I said, voice gone to gravel. “Tell me this is too complicated.”

For a heartbeat, the world narrowed to the inches between us. My thumb traced her jaw. Her eyes dropped to my mouth, then lifted again.

“I’ve waited for three years, Ty.”

My name in her voice undid me completely.

Fuck it.

The space between us vanished.

In an instant, I caught her mouth with mine.

The moment our mouths met, the noise in my head went quiet. Like some restless part of me had finally found where it was supposed to land. And the rest of me followed without hesitation.

The kiss started soft, almost careful. But the restraint didn’t last.

Three years of wanting broke loose all at once, rushing through me like a storm surge. My hands slid to her waist, pulling her closer, deeper into it.

Her fingers dug into the back of my neck, dragging me in as if she couldn’t bear even an inch between us. I groaned against her mouth, and she answered by arching into my touch.

I lifted her without thinking. She wrapped her legs around my waist and I backed us to the kitchen table and set her down, my body pressing between her knees.

Everything was heat and breath and disbelief that this was happening.

When her tongue brushed my lips, I opened for her. When her hands tugged at my shirt, I peeled it off and tossed it somewhere into the wreckage. When she shifted against me, desperate and searching, I felt it everywhere.

Anything she wanted from me, it was hers.

“I’ve wanted you for so long,” I muttered against her mouth, the words spilling out like a confession. “You have no idea how bad.”