“Yes, it is,” he whispers with one adorable dimple, his voice deep and textured as he rubs the pad of his thumb down my nose. “Nobody’s ever worried about me before.”
“Yes, they do, Remy. Everyone who you love, loves you too. Pete, Riley, Coach, and Diane. They’re just better at hiding it from you.”
He looks at me thoughtfully, then he spreads his hand on my stomach as his lips scrape, soft and tender, over mine. “I’ve done this before. I’ve got this, little firecracker.” Those dark eyes watching me, he rubs his thumb over my forehead now. “Don’t get that little face for me, all right?” He crushes me to him and squeezes his eyes shut, groaning as if it feels good to him to hold me. “I want to make you happy. I want to make you fucking happy, I never want to make you sad.”
“Okay,” I say, still a little emotional, pressing my lips to his jaw.
“Okay?” he says, turning his head and pressing his lips to mine.
Sliding my arm around my stomach, I lace my fingers through his as I nod. “More than okay.”
Running my free hand over his hair, I curl one of my legs around his hips and rain a thousand and one kisses on his face, making him chuckle. I laugh softly with him, a smile curling my lips with every kiss I continue to press on him, but I don’t stop.
Now I know that he is really mine. These fingers have been mine from the moment they touched me. This face. These lips. His huge, kind, protective, possessive, and forgiving heart. He’s been mine since I’ve been his, and knowing this makes me feel like I’m being pieced apart, then put back together new and whole and happy.
“I want to sleep with you in me,” I plead, dragging my open mouth along his jaw, my fingers suddenly almost clawing the skin of his shoulder as I breathe in his warm skin and try to get closer with my swollen tummy in between.
He slips his hand between us and starts preparing me with his fingers as he turns his head to slowly, leisurely take my mouth, his tongue slowing me down, licking into me with lazy pleasure. “Are you ready?” he murmurs heatedly.
“Fill me . . .” is all I can say, and a breathless sound bubbles up my throat as he grabs me by the waist and sinks me down on his length, filling me up so I am so full and so penetrated by him, I can hardly talk, or breathe, or think of anything but that Remy is inside me, pulsing and hot, his mouth taking me, slowly, quietly, reassuring me he’s got this. And he’s got me.
? ? ?
HE’S STILL BLACK the day of the fight, and the atmosphere in the presidential suite is thick with tension as we wait for him to get ready.
Pete, Riley, and Coach hover by the master bedroom door, while I’m being eaten alive by my own sick worry, because I seriously don’t know if he should fight like this.
“Mention that motherfucker’s name!” Coach hisses to Pete. I think he wants to provoke Remington’s turbulent energy into action, but Pete shakes his head.
“We won’t use anger. He’s full of self-hatred when he’s low,” Pete whispers.
But what I’ve personally most felt is his inner struggle. He’s been inside himself, fighting. He doesn’t release a word of self-loathing, but I sense that he thinks the words, he feels them in his soul. The electroshock helped, but he’s still low. It breaks me that he needs to fight like this.
“Try warming up those muscles, Brooke,” Pete suggests.
Coming over to where Remy is tying up his boots in silence, I slip my hands up and down his back and loosen up any muscle that I can, awakening them with slow, deliberate hard presses of my fingers.
“All right, Rem, let’s get pumped up. I know you like this one,” Pete says as he sets Remy’s iPod on my speakers.
“Uprising” by Muse bursts through the room at high volume. The rebellious beat of the music seems to reach Remington’s ears, and his muscles start engaging under my fingers, like he can’t help but respond.
My heart quivers a little. Is he coming into himself?
He’s been so busy fighting inside himself, I just wonder if he has enough fight left for Scorpion.
He jerks on his other boot while I rub his hard muscles and try to transmit every ounce of good and healing energy I have to him. I warm each muscle, one by one, moving up his back, paying extra attention to his rotator cuffs. When I can’t stop myself from bending down to his dark head to ask him how he feels, he swings around and grabs the back of my head, holding it as he locks his mouth to mine and plunders me.