As if on cue, Chris bustled back with a basket full of freshly baked, delicious-smelling bread, which he placed on the table between them. Daisy’s eyelids slid to half-mast, and she moaned as the warm, tantalizing aroma drifted upward. She reached for a slice and bit right into it.
“Oh my God, this is amazing,” she said around a mouthful of bread, and Mason grinned at the lack of artifice. He grabbed her hand and pulled it toward him and tugged the remaining piece of bread from her fingers. With his teeth. He didn’t really think about the intimacy of the impulsive act until his lips brushed against the tips of her fingers. And then he couldn’t prevent himself from compounding the colossal error in judgment by giving her skin the tiniest of flicks with his tongue.
Daisy snatched her hand out of his hold, folded it into a defensive fist, and cupped her other hand over it, cradling her fist to her chest like an injured bird.
Chris whistled slowly before pointedly retreating.
“Don’t do things like that,” Daisy hissed, and Mason shrugged, his expression maddeningly unperturbed.
“I just wanted a taste of the bread,” he explained, and she glared at him.
“There’s a basketful of the stuff right in front of you. I’m placing a moratorium on all the pretend PDA when we don’t have an audience. And while we’re at it, I want no more of that practice kissing either.”
His hand hovered above the breadbasket as he perused what was on offer, taking his time with his selection while he kept her waiting for his response. He finally chose a slice exactly like every other slice in the basket and methodically ripped it apart, dipping chunks into the provided assorted preserves.
“You want this all to look good when it comes to showtime, right?” he asked between bites.
“It’s making me uncomfortable,” she confessed without thinking. Her words stilled his hands, and he gazed at her for a long moment.
“I make you uncomfortable?”
“The situation does. And the touching . . . and stuff.” Her voice petered out, and she cleared her throat awkwardly. His eyes narrowed as he kept her pinned beneath his gaze for a moment longer.
“I’m a tactile guy. It’s natural for me to casually touch someone when I’m talking to them.”
“It is?”
No. It was complete bullshit. He didn’t go around sucking people’s fingers, or brushing his knuckles against their cheekbones . . . he wasn’t wired that way, but he could think of no other way to divert her from the fact that he was a touchy-feely fucker around her. And her alone. How could he explain that to her when he couldn’t make sense of it to himself?
“I’ll try to curb my natural instincts. But I can’t make any promises. It’s what you signed up for when you asked me to be your fake boyfriend.”
“Fake date. Not fake boyfriend. There’s a difference.”
“Other people won’t see it that way. If they’re not used to seeing you date, they’re going to assume that this is serious between us.”
“What makes you think they’re not used to seeing me date?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe the fact that you’ve roped me into doing this for you?” Her teeth nibbled at her soft lower lip as she considered her words. Mason’s eyes dropped to that lip; her teeth were making little white crescents in the soft flesh, which almost immediately darkened into a deeper shade of red when the teeth moved on to a different location. It was distracting as hell, the tug and release of her teeth on that soft, juicy-looking lip. How was he supposed to concentrate on this conversation when she was doing that?
“Stop that!” Daisy jumped at the sudden harshness in Mason’s voice. Why did he look and sound so angry?
“What?”
He reached over and shockingly dragged his thumb down over her lower lip, tugging it from between her teeth and brushing the pad of his thumb over the sensitive surface.
“Stop biting your lip.”
“It’s a nervous habit.”
“I make you nervous?” His brows slammed together, making him look even scarier, and she shook her head.
“No. Yes . . . I mean, maybe a little.” He reached over again and his thumb gently rubbed back and forth across the surface of her bottom lip, one end to the other, and it felt . . . much too good. For a brief, crazy second she leaned in to his touch before sanity reasserted itself and she pulled her head back and out of reach.
She sucked her lip into her mouth, trying to rid herself of the residual sensation of his rough thumb so gently caressing her skin.
“Don’t do that again.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper, devoid of the commanding edge she’d hoped for.
“I can’t make any promises,” he muttered, and she sighed impatiently. He was just being difficult again. “I start having X-rated visions when you do that thing with your mouth.”