What. The hell. Is my sister smoking now?
I sit there, reeling about it all. Then I get up, turn the lock, strip my clothes, and brush my hair, setting it loose because I need to feel pretty and I need my Real. Holy god, how I need him. I just want something good to happen today and I want him to think I’m all right and safe, just like he wanted me to be.
I text him telling him I’d downloaded Skype to his iPad before the flight and left his user name and password on a Post-it. I then open my laptop and log in and wait. I seem to doze off with the phone next to me, and when I wake up later, I see Remington Tate: 11 missed calls.
“Oh, no!” I dial, and it rings, but he doesn’t pick up. I dial and dial, then I groan and shove it aside, pulling the covers up to my neck, suddenly cold.
I’m falling asleep again when I hear a little buzz. I see his name blinking, and my heart jumps and I click to answer, the sheets falling to my waist. “Are you there?” I ask.
I adjust my laptop screen while butterflies roar inside me. “Hey. I can’t see you! Move your—”
“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” he says.
“You won’t think that when you see me,” I dare.
I see him then. Propped back against the headboard . . . bare-chested and, I suspect, recently bathed . . . and my breath is history at the sight of his achingly boyish face. The hotel room is completely illuminated behind him, and my eyes narrow in suspicion.
“You’re not sleeping, are you?” I ask him.
He surveys me, and I survey back, trailing my gaze over his tan chest, all along his muscled arm, to the half-full blue Gatorade in his hand. The sight of all those muscles, the Celtic tattoos, his pectorals, his throat—god, those thick tendons of his throat, where I tuck my nose in at night—makes all my body tingle with remembrance of what it feels and smells and looks like.
A ribbon of need unfurls painfully inside me, and it spreads throughout my being until I can think only of this need: to kiss and hold him, touch and nuzzle him, smell his neck; his hair, feel his breath on me and every little callus of his.
Then I realize he’s still looking at me, the top of my body fully naked, and I’m instantly wet when I see the territorial, fuck-my-mate look in his eyes.
“Is this supposed to make me feel good?” he asks gruffly, staring at my breasts. “It’s fucking torture looking at you behind a screen.”
“Remy . . .” I say.
His eyebrows draw low over his eyes. “I don’t want you on your own. Is somebody there with you?”
“Nora was here, and I think Mel is outside with her now.” I leave it at that, because right now, I don’t want to tell him anything about my parents until it has all calmed down. He was rejected by his own parents and I swear that whatever I have to do, he won’t be rejected by mine. “Don’t worry, I’m not alone,” I assure him.
He nods, raking his fingers through his hair in frustration. Then he drops his face and rubs the screen with both hands. He lifts his head and narrows his eyes. “I want to touch you. I’m about to take a bite out of this fucking screen.”
A small laugh leaves me, then I groan and cover my eyes, too. Skyping is not such a great idea. Oh god, it makes you yearn. I see him and yearn and hurt and it aches. “It hurts to see you. I want to smell you too,” I say.
He lifts a camisole of mine. “I found this in my suitcase.” He lifts it and smells it, and I gasp and can almost feel his nose at my neck, scenting me. Licking me.
“Shit, Brooke, I want to be there, take you in my arms, spread you open on your bed, and fuck you until tomorrow.”
Desire explodes in my stomach as those rough words hit me. “Oh, god, me too.”
His eyes flash as he leans forward, the muscles in his upper body rippling with the move. “I wish I were there so I could squeeze your breasts and bite the tips and tell you how much I want you.”
My bones have disintegrated inside me. The place between my legs now burns and yearns. My voice is achy and needy, full of arousal. “I want you like I’ve never wanted anything in my life,” I breathe, my bare breasts already puckered in the air and sensitive even to the brush of the air-conditioning.
“Do you want my cock in you?” he asks roughly.
Exhaling a shaky breath, I curl my fingers around my breasts merely because they’re suddenly heavy and hurting. They’re hurting so much for him. “Remy, you’re killing me.”
“No. This is killing me,” he says softly, rubbing the screen in a way that lets me imagine his thumb scraping my lips, running down my jaw, circling the hard points of my nipples. “Tell me you want my cock in you and then pretend your fingers are me. Drop your hands, Brooke. Show me your nipples.”