Page 52 of Trip Me Up

Gently, slowly, I pulled back until our lips parted. I licked my throbbing lower lip. “Wow.” I heaved out a breath, stirring the silky hairs that had escaped her ponytail. If we did much more of that, I was going to come in my pants like a teenager. “Maybe we should stop there for now.”

“Coward.” She smiled, one corner kicking up higher than the other. “My brother Jackson’s favorite quote goes something like, ‘If things seem under control, you’re not going fast enough.’ He’s a big Mario Andretti fan.” But she scooted a few inches away.

My heart was going like a race car’s engine. We’d gone plenty fast enough for me. I needed a minute—an hour, maybe all night—to process how the kiss had changed things between us. “I’m sorry, I—”

She laid a finger over my lips. “Don’t be sorry. I get it.” She scooted a couple more inches away. “It’s out of our systems now. We can finish out the tour like colleagues and not a pair of horny teenagers.”

A chill crept into my heart.Colleagues?

“It’s all good. We’re good, right?” Her lowered eyebrows showed the vulnerability her words didn’t.

“Of course we are.” I could do colleagues. I just had to scrub that afternoon out of my memory so I never again thought about her kiss-swollen lips. Her dark hair mussed from my fingers. Her blown pupils edging out the violet. From kissing me.

Good luck with that, Niall.

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