Page 66 of Test the Ice
What would she think if she knew?
I know she is firm on the whole boundariesthing, and it’s completely understandable. However,the kiss.It can’t just be me whose skin prickles with energy the second we touch. Her flushed face gives her away—and the way her pupils dilate when I move close.
Damn.
I take the heel of my hand and push down on my cock.
I shouldn’t picture her naked.
I shouldn’t think about that night in her car, where she came all over my hand.
It was so fucking hot it was all I thought about for a week.
A noise catches my attention, and I hold my breath.
Excitement sends me upright in bed. Is that Reese?
I angle my head toward the door and strain to hear the noise again.
My shoulders slump.
Charleigh is crying.
Either that or a wild animal broke into the house.
I continue to stare at my door as Charleigh’s cries grow louder. Since Reese has moved in, I haven’t heard Charleigh cry once. She squeals with excitement sometimes, her giggle contagious, but she hasn’t cried.
Not while I’m around, at least.
I glance at the time. It’s well after two in the morning. Another minute passes, and she’s still crying.
Worry gnaws at me.
Is she okay?
I don’t have much experience with babies, but a cry is a cry, right?
I tug on a pair of low-hanging sweats and creep across the floor. I quietly open my door and peek my head out into the hallway. There’s a single stream of moonlight from the window at the end of the hall and nothing else.
Charleigh’s room is two down from mine—not that I've gone around snooping or anything. But the fact that her cries are louder the farther I walk down the hall, I can only assume. I stop at the room before hers, the one that shares a wall with mine, and listen. The door is cracked, just barely, so I rap my knuckles against the wood and wait for Reese to stir.
My heart beats faster as I listen to Charleigh cry. I want to text Rhodes and ask him if he thinks it's okay to go in there and pick her up, but he’s likely sleeping, and if he isn’t, he’ll probably call me an idiot again.
“Reese?” I say her name through the crack.
Again, nothing.
Against my better judgment, I push on her door and poke my head inside.
With the blinds pulled, I can’t see anything.
I walk farther into the room but stop when my foot nudges something.
Her breath catches from below.
“Malaki?” My name is a whisper in the dark edged with her sleepiness.
I’m confused, my eyes straining to find her bed in the dark. “Charleigh is crying,” I say.
