Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
But I couldn’t do that.
She’d never allow that.
And, quite frankly, I didn’t understand the urge to do it.
So I did the only thing I could think of in that situation.
I got up.
I got dressed.
And I left.
Because that was the arrangement.
That was what I’d agreed to.
Quite frankly, I wasn’t sure I could take having her wake up, seeing me still there, and demanding to know what the fuck I was doing there still.
It already felt a lot like rejection each time she left a hotel room before I did. I didn’t need her outright kicking me out of one.
So I left on my own.
And hadn’t heard from her since.
It wasn’t unusual, necessarily.
There’d been times when we’d go months without having a meet-up, depending on hers or my schedule.
Still, I’d gotten up in my head about it since then.
Like maybe it was over.
For good this time.
Shit like that.
And when I got up in my head about it, my mood started to take a nosedive.
It was weird shit.
I’d been choosing to try to avoid and ignore it since then.
But now here she was.
In my clubhouse.
Looking softer and sweeter than usual.
Looking like she belonged there.
Holding Dell and Judge’s baby.
Giving me some weird-ass fucking thoughts.
Almost as if sensing those thoughts, Nyx’s head turned on the couch cushion, and her gaze landed directly on me, those stupidly pretty gray eyes giving me a breathless sensation in my chest.
“Judge was dead on his feet when I showed up,” she said, whispering so she didn’t wake up the baby. “I sent him upstairs for some sleep.”
“What time did you get here?” I asked, glancing at the clock on the cable box. It was hardly half past eight. She’d been working the night before, so likely hadn’t even gotten home until three.
“Half an hour ago. Morgaine owes me some hair stuff,” she said, waving at her long black hair pulled back into a ponytail. “Hence it being pulled back. It’s not as pretty without it.”
Somehow, I very much doubted that.
I was pretty fucking sure that it wasn’t possible for any part of that woman to be anything short of stunning.
“Why so early?” I asked, making my way to the kitchen because I knew that if I didn’t, I wasn’t going to be able to stop fucking staring at her.
“I was up. She’s usually up at the crack of dawn to let out her chickens.”
“Coach has been doing it since he gets up first,” I told her. “Coffee?” I asked, reaching into the mug cabinet.
“God, yes,” she said, eyes eager. And it was then that I realized there were purple smudges under her eyes. I couldn’t tell, though, if that was an always thing that she just hid under her makeup and I was only seeing because she had none on for the first time, or if it was a new thing.
“How do you take it?” I asked, a little frustrated that I didn’t know how she took her coffee when I’d been fucking her pretty regularly for years.
“Cream and sugar. And if you skimp on the sugar, you’ll be sorry,” she told me, giving me a soft smile as she rubbed a hand up and down the baby’s back as he shifted in his sleep.
I grabbed one of Dell’s travel mugs with the straw so she wouldn’t worry about spilling anything on the kid, then made it up and brought it over.
“Ugh, yes, that’s perfect,” she said, closing her eyes and letting out a little moan after taking a sip. “Hey, take him for a minute,” she said, putting the cup down and starting to rise with the kid and come toward me on the other couch.
“Ah, no,” I said, shaking my head. “He’s got a bed-thing,” I said, waving toward it.
“That bed-thing is called a crib,” she said, rolling her eyes at me. “And Judge says he has ‘touchdown’ right now.”
“The fuck is that?”
“It means he wakes up the second you put him down,” she said. “Come on. Two minutes. I just need to go to the bathroom.”
“Nah, babe… no.”
“Wait a second,” she said, brows pinching. “Have you never held him?” she asked.
“No.”
“He lives in the same house as you!”
“I realize that.”
“What’s the problem? Why won’t you hold him?”
“He’s small.”
“Yeah, because he’s a, you know, baby.”
“Don’t want to fucking break him or something.”
“I’m asking you to let him rest on your chest, not toss me him like a football across the room,” she said, moving toward me.
“Really, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said as she kept getting closer.
“Oh, stop being such a pussy,” she said, shifting the kid into her hands, then pressing him down onto my chest. “You’re gonna need to put a hand on him,” she said when I kept them out at my sides. “Like this,” she said, grabbing my hand and putting it on the baby’s back. “There you go.”