follow where Luke led.
When Luke’s tongue brushed against the seam of my lips, I obediently opened my mouth wider. The first touch of his tongue inside my mouth was so strange, so foreign, that it almost knocked me out of the moment. I don’t know what I’d expected a tongue to feel like—to be honest, hadn’t ever given it any thought—but it wasn’t like this.
If it had been anyone but Luke, I might have balked at the unfamiliarity of that sensation. I wouldn’t necessarily have stopped, it’s just that I might have felt the need for a little time to mentally regroup and readjust my expectations. But I wasn’t about to risk losing this moment with him, not when I couldn’t help fearing it was the only moment we would ever have. I kept expecting him to pull away, to come to his senses and remember that I was his neighbor, the girl he’d never had any interest in.
It didn’t take long for me to adjust to the sensation of Luke’s tongue in my mouth. Not long at all. In a second or two, I was kissing him back with equal enthusiasm, if not with the same skill. He didn’t seem to mind, endlessly patient with my awkward fumblings.
We made out for what felt like somewhere between two seconds and forever, until I no longer felt like I was clueless and out of my league, until I forgot my fear that I would pale in comparison to Piper, until I practically forgot the rest of the world existed.
Unfortunately, the rest of the world did exist, in all of its current craziness. Our kiss was interrupted by a burst of raucous laughter right outside the front window. Luke broke away from me lightning quick, grabbing hold of Bob’s collar before the injured dog could leap from the couch and charge at the front door. Bob barked and tried to struggle away from Luke’s grip, but Luke was practically lying on top of him, holding him down, keeping him away from the potential danger of that mail slot. It was a good thing he’d won Bob over already or he might have had his face bitten off.
Lips still tingling from the glory of the kiss, I held my breath and once more pulled the gun from my ankle holster. But apparently this group of Nightstruck was just passing through, not stopping by to torment me. They were loud, and from the sound of it, they were idly smashing things as they went by, but they kept moving.
I didn’t relax and put the gun away until the last echoes of their voices faded into the distance.
“I’d better clear the table,” I said, standing up and pretending not to see Luke’s puzzled frown. Guess that wasn’t the kind of thing he was used to a girl saying to him after a nice make out session, but the interruption had brought all of my self-consciousness rushing back. I didn’t know what to make of him kissing me like that. Was it just one of those things that happens in the heat of the moment? Was he already regretting it, wondering what he’d been thinking? I’d just lost my father, and he’d basically just lost Piper, and people tend to act impulsively when they’re in that kind of emotional turmoil. If that was why Luke had kissed me, I didn’t want to face reality. Not yet.
So I acted like Ms. Fifties Housewife instead, taking longer than necessary to clear the dishes we’d abandoned on the dining room table when Aleric had come calling. When Luke tried to help, I brushed him off with a false, perky smile. And when that busywork was done, I decided I was in need of a long, hot shower, which gave me the excuse to flee to my bedroom and be alone.
Was I being an abject coward? Yes. But knowing that wasn’t enough to make me go back downstairs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I had feared that the kiss would make things awkward between Luke and me, and I was right. I’m pretty sure it was all my fault, that I was being a neurotic train wreck about the whole thing, but I couldn’t shake the suspicion that the kiss had been some kind of mistake on Luke’s part. That he’d just done it because he felt sorry for me, or because we had both been scared by Aleric’s visit, or just because he was your stereotypical guy and I’d been available. It was a