I stiffen at his blank tone of voice.
“Do I think I can be a father? That I could even be a husband to you?” He turns with a strange, pained noise and buries that sound in the pillow, his muscles bulging as he slides his arms under the pillow to hold it to his face.
“Remy,” I say, forcing my voice to stop trembling and the pain inside me to shut. The f**k. Up. “I don’t care what your mind is telling you, how it’s making your body feel—you know. Remy. You know. You are good and noble and you deserve this. You want this.” I slide my arm around his waist and press closer.
“I deserve to be put down. Like a dog.”
The tears that had formed only moments ago slide out of my eyelids. “No, you don’t, no, you don’t.”
He shifts away from me but I don’t let him. I twine my arms around his shoulders and stop him from rolling farther away, and I run my fingers through his hair and caress his scalp. “I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you like a crazy f**king lunatic. If you’re a mess, I want to be a mess with you. Just let me touch you—don’t pull away,” I whisper, sniffing. He groans and turns his face into the pillow again, and as I touch him, he almost winces. But I touch up his arm, trace the B on his bicep, the Celtic tattoos. The noises he makes, like a true lion, like a wounded lion, make me feel as desperate and fierce as a lioness trying to lure back the interest of her mate.
I’ve thought it difficult, sometimes, when he’s manic, because he’s such a ball of energy, and so difficult to control. But nothing is as hard as right now, when my fighter is down in the dark, when he doesn’t want to do anything. When he feels he’s not worth it.
Brushing my fingers up his jaw, I scratch my nails into his scalp in a way I know he likes, and he lets me, but he doesn’t open his eyes, only makes those low, dark growling noises.
“Do you want to listen to music?” I ask him, and he doesn’t say no, so I reach for his iPod and place an earbud in his ear and one in mine, and I play “I Choose You” by Sara Bareilles.
He listens to the song as I pet him, exactly like he has petted me, and I want him to feel exactly how his petting and licking make me feel. I want him to feel cherished, protected, understood, wanted, loved, and nurtured. So I try my best . . . and I know my hands are not as big as his . . . and I know my tongue is smaller on his nape . . . but I know he likes my touch and he likes my tongue on him. . . .
So “I Choose You” plays about me choosing him . . . and how he is becoming mine and I am becoming his. . . .
And I whisper in his ear, “I will always choose you, Remy. From the first day I saw you, I loved what I saw and every day I love it more. And I love what I touch, the man I hold right here, right now.” I press the mound of my stomach into the small of his back. I’m unquestionably pregnant now, and it’s a tough maneuver to get the fit just right, but I really want to hold him as close as I can.
He suddenly rolls over. His arms wind around me like vises and then he rests his forehead between my br**sts, holding on to me. He doesn’t look at me, but I feel his need. I graze the top of his head with my lips and relax in his grip, so he knows I like being here.
Suddenly, he groans into my skin and his muscles ripple as he eases off me with visible effort and plops back down on the bed. “Go out, baby. Go somewhere else. I’m no good like this.”
Something squeezes in me. I don’t want him to feel coddled or pitied, so I plump my pillow like all is well and say, “I don’t want to go anywhere. I’d rather be here with you.”
He spares a look at me, and my heart moves just to feel those eyes on me. It beats even faster when he reaches out. He slides his fingers into my hair, his gaze never leaving me. His eyes have never been so bleak; he looks haunted, but in the black of his irises, I still see him. That fire that is him. That drive, that intensity, lurking in the background like a tiger. His hands coast down my spine, then drag around to my front and pass over my hard, sensitized ni**les, then he rests his head on me and spreads his hand open on my stomach.
“You really want to be with me,” he says gruffly. The hunter in him is still there. The lion. The raw instinct that is him. He pins me down with a questioning look that almost feels like a command. Yes, his eyes are dark and bleak, but those irises are still alive and hungry. Hungry for my affection, I realize. For me.
“Yes, Remy,” I say, without a hint of doubt, either in my voice or in me. “I do want to be with you. And don’t call me a masochist, because you’re my everything. My adventure and my real, rolled into one sexy, jealous, beautiful package, and you make me ridiculously happy. Nora might have turned into a junkie, and now I realize I’m no different. I’m addicted to you. You’re my crack, and you also happen to be the only dealer.”