Ripped - Cassia Leo Page 0,28
thumb over my bottom lip as he stares at my mouth. “Doesn’t matter. I want you to go back to sleep. That’s an order.”
He kisses me tenderly and I wrap my arms around his waist, lightly tracing my fingernails over his back. His kiss becomes hungrier and I moan softly into his mouth.
He chuckles as he pulls away. “Go to sleep, you horndog.” He kisses the tip of my nose before he gets up. “I’ll see you when you wake up.”
* * *
It takes me at least an hour to fall asleep after Adam gets my heart racing, the way he always does. But I manage to fall asleep shortly after he’s done with his shower, and when I finally open my eyes, the alarm clock on the bedside table says it’s past ten a.m. I haven’t slept past eight a.m. since before Mila was born. I guess I didn’t realize how tired I was.
I take a quick shower and half-dry my hair with a blow dryer before I head downstairs to join Adam and Mila. I find them sitting at the kitchen table with a few bowls of homemade play dough and some bottles of food coloring. Adam is a notoriously terrible cook, but he’s an expert at making homemade play dough.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” I say, bending over to kiss the top of Mila’s head.
“Good morning, Mommy. We’re making play dough. See?” She points at the bowls with her chubby finger.
“I see,” I reply as I lean over to kiss Adam’s cheek and whisper in his ear. “Keep banking those points and I’ll let you cash them in tonight.”
He laughs, turning to Mila as I continue into the kitchen. “Okay, baby, how many drops of red do we put in this bowl if we want to make the play dough pink?”
She holds up her hand, using her other hand to hold down her thumb. “Four.”
“Very good!” he replies, holding the dropper over the bowl. “Let’s count them together. One. Two. Three. Four.”
Mila’s face beams with delight and my insides turn to mush. God, I love those two monsters, even when they’re wreaking havoc.
“Okay, if we want to turn this play dough red, we have to put another six drops,” Adam says, plunging the dropper into the bottle of red food coloring again. “Six and four is how many?”
Mila scrunches up her face in confusion.
Adam puts the dropper back into the bottle and turns to face Mila. “You know how to figure out how many drops you need?”
She shakes her head.
“Okay, let’s try it like this. Knock knock.”
She smiles. “Who’s there?”
“Adam.”
She looks at him sideways as if this is a trick. “Adam who?”
“Adam together and what do you get?”
I shake my head. “You are the King of Dad Jokes,” I say, pouring myself a cup of coffee that’s probably been sitting here for hours. I don’t even bother heating it up in the microwave. I just guzzle it down black and cold, because I like my coffee as unadulterated as possible. If Adam heard me say that aloud, he’d probably say he likes everything as adult-rated as possible.
I finish my cold coffee and begin fixing the three of us some lunch. After we’ve eaten, I put Mila down for her afternoon nap while Adam heads out to pick Kaia up from school. I open his suitcase on top of the bed, where he left it for me, and I’m hit with a strong puff of smoke-scented air. I cough a little as I sort through his clothing so I can start doing laundry.
I don’t normally care if Adam smokes weed. I know it’s his thing. It helps him relax. When I’m not pregnant, I like to have a glass of wine or a beer once in a while. But he’s the one who told me he doesn’t want anything standing in the way of winning the championship this year. If he’s going to spend months away from home while I’m pregnant with twins, he shouldn’t be spending that time smoking away his shot at the title.
I grab the baby monitor and the basket of colored clothes, then I head downstairs to the laundry room. As I stuff the clothes into the washer, something catches my eye through the doorway leading into the unfinished addition.
The laundry room at the back of the house is the gateway to the addition, which will eventually be a new master bedroom with an en suite and French doors leading out onto a backyard deck. The