He turns away. “What am I doing, Brooke?” he asks.
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 fuck. 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 fucking 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 breasts, 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 nipples, 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.”
He closes his eyes and exhales.
“You might not want to be with you now, but I want to be with you,” I tell him. “I left my entire life just to come be with you. Just you. And you know it wasn’t a bad life.” I stroke his hair. “I made my rent; I had good, caring parents, kick-ass friends, and could get a job in my new career. I left all that. I’ve left my dreams behind so I can come chase after yours—and after you. Like some stupid groupie.” An amused little laugh leaves me.
He lugs his big, solid body up to a sitting position on the bed, tips my head back, and cuts off my laugh with his mouth. “You’re no stupid groupie,” he whispers into me, sucking up my reply before he adds, “You’re my female, and you’re too fucking good for me.”
I shudder when he pulls me down and under him, and I moan and touch every bit of his skin that I can. “And you’re my male and are too good and precious for anyone, but you’re still my. Male. Mine.”
He growls and rolls over onto me so his erection is between my legs, his tormented gaze clinging to mine for hope as he jerks one of my legs around his hips. Then he grabs me by the knee and does the same with the other.
“I love you,” I say breathlessly. I thought I said it all the time, but I guess he needs me to say it right now, for the way his features go raw when he hears it makes my insides bubble with the need to say it again. Lifting my head, I repeat it with each kiss I place on his face. I decide to say it until he tires of it, and it takes a long, long time for him to finally take my mouth to quiet me.
At least sixty-four kisses.
He enters me on kiss thirteen. He moves in me, pushing deep each time I say “I love you,” taking it with a thrust, like the only way he thinks I will love him is for him to take it forcibly from me. “I love you,” I moan out on the next thrust, and he closes his eyes, and I feel him desperately sucking up my tenderness. I try holding my orgasm at bay as I hold on to his shoulders, saying “I love you, I love you,” but he’s hot, he’s beautiful, he needs me, and I need him. He takes me to the peak even as I fight it, and I orgasm at “I love you” number sixty-two.
His eyes look even more ravenous by then, like all my “I love yous” only kindled more of his hunger. And when he starts coming in me, he watches me as if he’s not sure he believes me yet, because he can’t believe himself to be lovable. So when he can’t help himself and crushes my mouth with his and shoves his tongue in, rough and hard, I grab him and kiss him back even harder.
He shudders in me, his muscles clenching. He grabs my hips to still me, but I rock them, coaxing him to come all the way in me. He moans softly and suckles my tongue, and I curl my legs tighter and lock them at the small of his back, my arms tight around him as he lets go, and when his muscles stop flexing and rippling, I still remain holding him, so he won’t get rid of me. He spares me his weight when he sags, and I come with him, entangled, burying my face in his neck as he rolls to his side. He’s still in me, and I don’t want him to come out.
“Don’t come out,” I moan.
He comes out as he turns me around, then maneuvers himself back in and starts licking me, one hand splayed on my breast, the other over my stomach. I moan and think I want to cry with happiness, because my lion is back. At least he cares enough about something. About us.
Like the baby and I care about him too.
Later, he plays a song for me called “Hold Me Now” by Red, and I realize he’s just asking me to hold him. I do, turning to him once he’s stopped grooming me, urging him to set his face down on my chest until his big body seems curled like he’s trying to fit himself to me, and even then, his hand is spread possessively over our baby.
A WEEK PASSES.
Aside from the few hours Remington forces himself to go train, he stays in our room, and he doesn’t seem to want me out of his sight. He doesn’t talk to me much, but he keeps an arm around me like a vise, and he wants me to feed him and fuck him all the time. I try keeping him interested in life, so I tell him about little things I’m able to glimpse when I go out of the room to bring us food. I tell him that I caught Diane and Coach kissing the other day. I tell him that Melanie is hard at work finding patterns for our baby’s room, and that Pete seems sad about Nora. He likes listening—I know he does.
The final approaches, and Remington hasn’t yet made it to the fighting ring on any of the recent nights. He’s dropped to second place after Scorpion. He could’ve fallen even more, but Scorpion lost a couple; he’s fighting while on drugs, according to Pete, and he hasn’t been as sharp as usual. To think that Nora is with that asshole worries me sick. She could be equally drugged and helpless, but the thought corrodes me in such a way I really can’t think about that now. All I want is for Remington to successfully finish this season—this is his dream. Then . . . then we have to find a way to once again get Nora home safe, even though I know, in my gut, the men have been planning something, but it doesn’t help my unease.
But now we’re three days away from the big fight, and Remington is still completely dark. Today he went to train and didn’t even look anyone in the eye. I know he feels things, bad things. I know he doesn’t voice them because it would be losing, and he won’t ever lose. Except for when he lost for you, a sad little voice tells me.
Everyone has grown extremely worried, and I feel especially concerned when Remy asks me to call Pete and Riley. They knock at the door of the master, and I cover Remy’s naked body with the white bedsheet so that only his muscled back and arms are exposed, and lead them inside.
“They’re here,” I say.
Riley approaches first and kneels at the side of the bed. “Hey, Rem, how you doing?”
“Bad,” he warns.
“What’s up?” Pete says.
Silence.
“I want you to take me . . . to the damn hospital . . . and schedule me.”
Riley’s eyes flare wide, as do Pete’s. The boys look at me for a moment, and Remington repeats exactly what he has just said. “I want you to take me . . . to the damn hospital . . . and schedule me to get that procedure,” he adds.