Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 83020 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83020 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
It could be the cool air, but I picture it being me that makes her nipples tighten against the fabric. I realize I didn’t spend nearly enough time with my mouth on her earlier. I feel like it was rushed and over too soon. Who am I kidding, of course it was over too soon. I didn’t give myself the opportunity to savor that connection because I was so focused on the end goal, having an orgasm that wasn’t of my own doing.
“Aria,” I manage.
“What’s wrong?” she snaps, now wide awake. “Is she okay?”
The baby wiggles in my arms, her eyes fluttering open when she hears Ali’s voice. When she sees that it’s me holding her, that tiny tremble begins in her chin.
“She needs you,” I confess, happy to be able to give my daughter what she needs but also a little heartbroken that I’m not enough.
“Poor thing,” Ali says, reaching for her.
Aria’s head jolts in that direction, a quick smile spreading across her little face as she sees Ali standing there. I hand the baby over immediately.
“Sweet girl, do you know how late it is? We should be sleeping.” Ali walks back into her room as she speaks. Aria makes bubbles, now wide awake. “I missed you, too, angel, but it’s bedtime.”
I follow, closing the door behind me. The room is no different than it was hours earlier when just Ali and I were in here together. What’s different is the guilt I felt after I came is no longer swimming in my gut. I feel like I have a better handle on my needs than I did when her towel dropped to our feet and exposed so many soft inches of her skin. Well, I guess I only thought I had control because remembering how we were together makes that need flare up once again.
I clear my throat as Ali climbs into bed and places Aria beside her. The crib is still in the room, but I don’t argue that she needs to put Aria in it.
I look toward the chair on the far wall, wanting to cringe because I know how damn uncomfortable it is, but I just can’t imagine leaving the room.
I look from the chair to the bed, finding Ali frowning at me.
“You won’t get any sleep in that thing,” she mutters, her small body curled around my daughter in a way that looks incredibly natural for her.
Ali rubs the bridge of Aria’s nose and over her eyebrows, a soothing pattern that makes me want to close my own eyes the way it does for the baby.
“You still have a bed,” she whispers, then she closes her eyes, that finger tracing the same path over and over on Aria’s face until my daughter’s arm drifts to the bed.
Her little mouth opens, and before long, she’s breathing deeply, finally perfectly content with getting her way.
Ali doesn’t open her eyes when I kick off my boots and pull back the corner of the blanket. I climb in the bed, knowing that trying to sleep both beside her and fully clothed will be next to impossible.
The soft breathing of both girls fills the room, and I find it oddly comforting to have them both in the same room with me. I turn, curling around Aria’s other side, and resist the urge to brush my fingers down Ali’s cheek. The soft light of the table lamp casts her closed eyes in darkness, highlighting her perfect lips. I don’t reach to turn off the light because I’ve noticed the soft light under her door back at the house when I get up at night for Aria. She needs the light.
I grow confused with the thought that I’d like to chase away all of the demons that visit her in the night that makes her keep the lights on.
I may not know how I feel emotionally, but physically, right here with the two of them, is exactly where I want to be.
Chapter 29
Alyssa
Slowly, I reach my hand across the mattress, but it doesn’t hit a sleeping baby. Instead, my fingers drift over warm, muscled skin.
I jolt, looking at the space beside me on the bed. The baby is gone. I jerk the blankets up, thinking I’m going to find tragedy, but all that’s under there is Harley’s body in dark boxer briefs.
“Misty came and got her,” Harley mutters, his eyes still closed. “Get some more rest.”
Rest? I couldn’t go back to sleep right now unless someone drugged me.
There’s too much to consider—the first being that my boss came to the room and took Aria. With that comes the oddity that I slept through all that when normally even normal house noises wake me up.
The bigger issue is that there’s a lot going on under the damn blankets.
“I’m getting cold,” he mutters, making me realize I’m still holding the blankets up and looking down at a very undressed man beside me in the bed.