Page 77 of Cross-Checked

“Stay with me tonight.” After three nights of sharing a bed with her, there’s no way I want her across the hall when she could be here.

“No, it’s okay. I can find my way back to my place.”

I lie on the bed next to her before she can get up, my arm tightening around her ribcage, and pulling her so she’s cuddled into me. “That wasn’t a request.”

Her chuckle is low and sultry. “So now you think you’re giving me orders?”

“I answer to you in every way, AJ. This is the one and only place where you can let me be in charge, and I suggest you do if you want me to continue providing you with orgasms.”

“This was supposed to be a one-time thing.”

“And yet you came back for seconds, and thirds, and fourths...” I tease.

Her annoyed expression only makes me smile. “I’m going home now.”

God, I love it when she’s feisty.

I pull her back to me before she can get up from my bed. “Over my dead body.”

She tilts her head to look at me, a wild glint in her now very awake eyes. “If you insist.”

She’s so cute when she starts making threats. “Maybe you should climb up here and sit on my face...try to suffocate me while I give you yet another orgasm.”

Even though she’s shaking her head, she can’t seem to stop herself from smiling. “You’re incorrigible.”

“Maybe so, Sunshine,” I say, gripping her hips in each hand as I lift her up and set her with one knee on either side of my head. “Better sit on my face and teach me a lesson.”

There’s a moment of hesitation before her smile widens and she reaches forward for the headboard. And when she slides her knees farther apart so she can sink onto my face, I’m pretty surethat if she actually tried to kill me right now, I’d go happily—so long as I died with her cunt spread above me like this and my tongue gliding over her clit.

Because the sounds she’s making as a result, and the way she breathes out my name as she gets closer, is exactly the soundtrack I’d want to hear in the afterlife.

I’m surprised to find my bed empty and the sun streaming through my windows when I wake up. I didn’t set an alarm last night because we don’t have practice today, and I knew Abby would get me up at 6:30 in the morning. She’s like clockwork in that way.

But when I grab my phone off my nightstand, I’m shocked to find that it’s an hour past her wakeup time. And when I glance at the video monitor, her crib is empty.

In a panic, I jump out of bed. My feet are on the floor and my heart is pounding in my throat before it occurs to me that Abby can’t get out of her crib, and so AJ must have her. But how did I sleep through that?

When I pad out to the kitchen in nothing but my sweats, AJ and Abby are sitting on the living room floor. I watch from the doorway between the two rooms as AJ stacks soft, colorful blocks on top of each other, and then Abby pops up onto her knees and knocks them over, laughing. I’m sure I’m grinning like a lunatic as I watch them repeat the process several times—especially when AJ laughs and tickles Abby under the chin, calling her a “little monster.”

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It feels like there’s some sort of vise around my ribcage, making it hard to breathe, hard for my heart to keep beating. But...this scene. This fuckingscene is just so domestic, so perfect. And it hits me then that this is what I want for Abby and me—and I want it with AJ.

I must let out a sigh or something because Abby’s head shoots up, looking for me, and AJ’s back stiffens.

“Da!” Abby yells before crawling around AJ and toward me. I pick her up and give her a big hug, kissing the top of her head when she snuggles into my shoulder. I expect she’ll want to stay there for a while because she’s normally pretty clingy on my first day home from a trip, but after hugging me, she’s leaning down and whining. Squatting to set her on the floor, I watch as she crawls right back over to AJ, who’s staring at me with some sort of apologetic look on her face.

Moving closer, I sit down next to her. “Hey, what was that look?”

She glances back toward Abby, refusing to meet my eye. “What look?”

I put my hand on her lower back, rubbing circles there as she leans forward to rebuild the tower of blocks so Abby can knock it down again. “The one where you looked like you were...I don’t know, apologizing?”

“What would I be apologizing for?” Her tone is dismissive, like she’s trying to find a way out of the conversation.

After Abby knocks the blocks over and AJ claps for her, telling her what a good job she’s doing, I reach over and turn her face toward mine. I hate that I can’t read the look on her face. It’s like she’s put those walls back up, and I just want to crash through them. “What’s wrong?”

Her gulp is audible. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Don’t lie to me, AJ. That’s not what we have here.”

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