Mine (Real Book 2)

Remington is absolutely in love with my four-month-pregnant belly. I’m starting to really show and it excites him. No, it more than excites him. I’m excited too—I freaking love my pregnant belly! I feel amazing. No more nausea. And I do somehow seem to “glow,” but I think it has to do with the way Remy makes love to me as well as with the baby he put in me.

He measures my bump every morning with his hands when I’m standing studying myself in the full-length hotel mirror. Whatever he’s doing (out of the shower, brushing his teeth), he comes up to me to survey me as well, his gaze glimmering with pride as he cups me and measures me. His voice is gruff this morning. We just woke up and he’s naked, behind me, his lean, large body perfectly visible in the mirror behind mine as he ducks his dark head to nuzzle me. “You think you’re eating enough?” he whispers in my ear, right before he presses me back to him and brushes his lips to the hollow at the base of my throat.

“I’m not going to start eating like you!” I accuse as I turn in his arms and link my fingers at the back of his neck, grinning up at him like the love-struck fool he’s made me. Playfully, I poke his dimples. “We’ve established you have issues. You just want everyone to know I’m pregnant and taken.”

He lifts me off my feet so our mouths are aligned and he plants a big kiss on my lips, squeezing me. “That’s right!”

Today at the gym he wants to show me how to throw him—or, more especially, anyone threatening me—down. Now that I’ve been walking, then trotting a little, with full doctor approval, I feel like a million bucks. But what most makes me feel good is the way Remington looks at me. Hot-ass proprietary, this is my woman, this is my kid. I read that it’s completely normal to be hot and bothered when you’re pregnant, but I really can’t smell him without burning with the need to tear his clothes off and jump his sexy bones. Which I’ve been doing at least twice a day, to his complete male delight.

He hasn’t been black in the two months since I got here, but he’s been plotting something with Pete and Riley. The fact that the three of them are so secretive about it worries me. I think it has to do with Nora, but when I told him, “Remy, Nora sent me this note. She doesn’t want us to do anything about it and I might just wait until the final to talk to her,” he just chuckled and said, “Leave it to me now, all right?”

But it’s not all right.

I’m scared shitless.

This morning, he had a strange reunion with Pete and Riley in our living room. He looked at me and quietly asked me, “Can I talk to the guys alone for a moment?” Since then, I’ve gotten all worried about their plans.

And that’s the only part about being pregnant I don’t like. I despise being treated like an imbecilic, weakling, delicate little flower.

No, sir. And today I will prove it at the gym when I, in fact, succeed in throwing Remington Tate—pregnant belly notwithstanding.

I watch him do full sit-ups, his breaths fast and even, in and out, in and out. I watch him do three rounds of jump rope and three rounds of shadowboxing—swing, punch, swing, punch, guard, duck . . . his chest sweaty male perfection, the intensity with which he works out getting me all worked up. Coach yells at him from the sidelines, and Riley times his speed and makes notes on a clipboard.

By the time Remington is soaked and beckons me forward in the ring, I’m worked up to a lather of complete and total lust.

“Ready?”

Nodding, I climb into the ring with him.

I’ve got one of my catsuits on, one with a zipper right in the middle. His eyes suck me up in it and I swear they heat everywhere they touch. He pulls his gaze back to my eyes. “Ready?” his voice is gruffer.

“You have no idea how ready I am. I’m going to kick your ass and it’s going to feel amazing.”

“Kick my shin first, and then my ass—” He pulls me closer, his breath hot and warm on my ear as he whispers, “The key to throwing me is to take me off balance. If I or anyone heavier than you is balanced, you won’t ever knock them down.”

“Okay,” I say as he sets me aside, because the one thrown off balance with his nearness is me.

“You kick my shin, I rock off balance, then you sweep your leg out like you did last time and kick the weakest part of my heel—watch how you do it now! So rock me, then knock me down.”

Nervous butterflies take flight inside me, and I groan and roll my eyes. “I feel like I’m going to get hurt again. You’re still a tree, Remington.”

“With a fucked-up shin.” He waves me over, his lips curled in amusement, his dimples sexy and playful. “Come on. Keep your balance and throw me off mine.”

I look into his playful, glinting blue eyes while all my heart feels is about a ton of love, sitting right on me. “Hurting you goes against my every instinct,” I say dramatically, as if I truly believe I could nick him.

“You won’t hurt me one bit,” he says, laughing.

Then I seize him by the jaw and kiss him square on the lips before I draw away and stretch my legs. “All right, my pride says this must be done. What if you were Scorpion?”

He scowls. “You throw him, baby, and I mean now. Come on, rock my world, my little firecracker.”

I do. I kick his shin, putting all my weight into it until he says “ouch”; then I swing my leg so fast, I catch the back of his leg and feel him topple the instant I connect. But he’s still Remington Tate, and he naturally seems to stabilize. He plants himself back up, taking me off balance when he does. I squeak as I start falling, and he instantly grabs me and throws himself on his back, breaking my fall.

He chuckles as we straighten.

“You let me win,” I accuse, narrow-eyed.

He shakes his head. “No, you did that on your own,” he assures me.

“You’re a big, incredibly fit liar,” I say, shoving him.

He chuckles and sits up straighter with me on his lap, brushing my ponytail to the back of my head. “It wasn’t that hard, was it?” he asks me, stroking my cheek.

“No,” I breathe, then say softly so only he can hear in his ear, “but you are.”

He looks at my mouth, and I shift on top of him. He ducks his head and smells me, and I feel tingles rush all over my skin when his nose connects with the back of my neck.

“Do you like sparring with me?” I ask silkily as I prop my arms on his shoulders, getting all excited and worked up because of his massive erection under me.

“Hmm,” he says as he lifts his hand and seizes the back of my neck. “I like it when we spar like this. . . .” He kisses me softly and pushes his tongue into my mouth, and I feel electricity rushing from his tongue to my whole body. He’s wet from his workout and tastes hot and thirsty, and I feel even hotter and thirstier as I clutch his chest, his muscles slick and hard as I straddle him.

He fists my ponytail in his hand, holding me in place as he lifts his head slightly and gruffly says, “Riley . . .”

“Yeah, I’ll tell Coach.” Riley can’t conceal the laughter in his voice as he brings over some towels and drinks before he crosses toward the exit.

“Remington . . .” I chide.

His lips curl deliciously at the corners as he fingers the zipper of my catsuit and Riley yells over to Coach, “Hey, Coach, we gotta hit it so the guy can have his way with Brooke!” They disappear through the gym doors, and as they lock shut, Remington works his lips heatedly up my neck. “It’s not possible for anything to be this beautiful,” he murmurs to me as he slides his open hand sensually along the curve of my spine.

“So this is where we get to the kissing part, because it’s near impossible to get me out of this,” I whisper.

“It’s coming off,” he says, licking me. He kisses my mouth and holds my neck while he kisses me. Then he uses his free hand to lower the zipper of my catsuit. I squirm and moan because we’ve never tried this with me wearing something this complicated.

“It can come off, but not easily.”

“Let’s just make some room for me,” he murmurs hotly into my jaw as he reaches down to the apex of my legs and peels off a bit of fabric from each thigh; then he yanks and tears my catsuit open at the seam. I feel air steal through the opening and to the burning center of my being. He reaches a hand inside the tear and says, “Hang on to my neck,” as he maneuvers to tear and pull off the panties I’m wearing. He yanks them off and extracts them through the tear, his eyes twinkling, and a rush of arousal sweeps me like a storm.

“Oh please.” Bringing his head back to mine, I take his delicious lips, my hips rocking desperately over him.

He lifts me for a second then shoves his sweatpants off and brings me back down with one hand on my hip, that lone hand strong enough to ease me down and impale me on him. Big. Hot. Hard. Mine. I moan and lick his neck, lost as my walls stretch to take him. He grabs my head and takes my mouth harder. He’s moving, loving, lifting, and lowering me with one hand, the other on the back of my neck, holding and cupping me as he kisses me, his mouth strong and commanding, opening and tasting, retreating, teasing.

I come fast and hard, and his arms tighten like vises as my contractions ripple through him. I hear him growl softly as he lets me milk him. Then he lifts me up and carries me across the ring, resting me on the ropes. One of his arms protects me, and he hasn’t for one second pulled out from inside me. He starts moving again. I moan softly. I feel like I’m floating, suspended in the air by a thread and his arm, the only connection in my body to his arm and his cock in me. My ponytail falls behind me, my throat arches, and he’s there to devour it. I mew as he moves and sink my fingers into his bulging arms, feeling his biceps flex and contract with his body as he pumps me.

We don’t speak. We don’t need to speak with words; we speak like this. I lift my head and bite and lick him and gasp as I hear his breath, his muscles flexing and moving as he moves in me until I come again. He never, ever comes before me—he waits, primes me, watches me. His eyes darken as he watches me come now; then his jaw works and his body hardens as he sinks deep and holds himself there, and that’s where he explodes, when he’s all the way in, and I’m coming around him, hugging him within me, rippling and grasping him.

Instead of sagging this time, we tighten our hold around each other when we’re done. “Stay in me,” I plead to him. I’m catching my breath, my nails gouging his shoulders.

He pulls me closer and sinks his head between my breasts and breathes hard, like my skin is his air, then he lightly bites the top of my breast.

“I want to live in you,” he tells me in his gruff, tender voice that makes me melt, and he clutches me tighter and licks and laves his bite, his jaw rasping my skin. “God, I want to die in you.”

My bones feel liquid in my body, but even relaxed, I feel that pull of all his tornado energy working on mine. “You’re so possessive, I know you’ll take me with you.”

“No, I’d never hurt you.”

I laugh softly. “It won’t be your choice. You’ll take me with you because I will go where you go. You’re going to be the end of me, Remington Tate, but that’s the way I want to go.”

His face twists with pain as he drags the backs of his knuckles along my jaw. “No, Brooke. I will protect you even from me.”

We stare at each other for a moment, and the determination in his eyes to protect me only reassures me that, whatever happens, my life will always be intertwined with his, come good or bad. I will walk by his side, run, fight, cling, and chase his dreams, which have now become mine. “Like you said, I’ll love you if it kills us,” I whisper as I stroke his face. “We all die. I’d rather die loving the hell out of you.”

“Baby, I’m the one who’ll love the hell out of you,” he says thickly, squeezing me, making me laugh in complete and total happiness. “Remy . . . where are we going to have the baby?”

He straightens up and lifts me in his arms, with my legs still locked around his hips as we cross the ring. “Wherever you want to have it. It’ll be off season. I can take you anywhere you like.”

“I was thinking I could keep my apartment. At first, I wasn’t going to renew. But it might be smart to have somewhere to touch base. And I have a spare bedroom I used to do yoga in and could turn into a nursery. Melanie’s all for decorating it. . . .”

He sits us down on the stool at the corner of the ring, where a basket of towels and drinks awaits us. He grabs a towel and eases me onto his lap as he slowly starts cleaning me up, his profile calm and relaxed. “I’ll ask Pete to renew your lease for another year while we look for something else,” he tells me. “You can use the card I gave you to charge anything you’d like.”

I wind an arm around his neck and poke a hidden dimple. “So I’m to be your kept girlfriend and employee? Officially?”

He grabs the back of my head, angles my face up almost to the ceiling, and licks a path from under my chin right up to my mouth, where he roughly engulfs my mouth with his. “Officially, you’re Mine.”

♥  ♥  ♥

“WILL WE GO through the usual route for vaccinations, or will we find a doctor who works with us a different schedule? There’s so much evidence vaccines could be the cause of autism,” I tell Remington one night.

I’m eating tons of vegetables. I’ve read that different-color vegetables provide different antioxidants. Green veggies provide different ones than purple and orange ones, so I’m eating a rainbow every morning, noon, and evening. The best for Remington’s baby.

Also, pineapple is the fruit of the moment. It is all I want to eat. As soon as we reach every location, Remington orders Diane to bring all the organic pineapples she can find. I blend them with bananas to make smoothies. I eat them with cayenne pepper. Diane sautés them for me with little bits of turkey. I am a pineapple freak and Remington is amused like hell because of it.

“I’d say it’s a girl,” Diane told me yesterday, “because you’re craving sweets. But you look too good. When you have a girl—at least, when I had my girls, I looked like shit.”

“Why?”

“Girls steal your beauty. And your man’s love.” Her lips curl as she studies my stomach with narrowed, curious eyes. “But I wouldn’t trade my girls for anything. Have you done the string thing with a ring?”

“No,” I say and she explains how you wrap a string around a ring and hold it over your belly and watch it do either circles for a boy or lines for a girl. It sounded silly, but, of course, now I lie naked in bed and hold the ring I borrowed from Diane over my tummy. Remington is playing chess on his iPad, the backs of our heads pressing as he does his thing and I do mine. We’re going to Austin in a few weeks, and I know it’s starting to make him restless, because he’s not getting a lot of sleep.

I really marvel at the way he uses chess to center himself. All those nights he would be restless before and grab his iPad, resting it on me, I had no idea he played chess.

Now, I tie the ring onto a thread as he tells me, “We’ll get a doctor we like and have him work with us on our vaccination schedule,” and I nod as I finally hang the ring over my stomach and watch it move. “Is it a circle or a line?” I ask.

He stops playing and sets the iPad aside, turning to watch. I think it’s a boy because I’m carrying low and sleep on my left side, and my hair is full-bodied and shiny, but I’m not sure how true those old wives’ tales are.

“It’s doing both,” I answer myself of the damn ring, laughing. “What failure!” I squeak when he grabs me by the underarms and drags me to him.

“What do you want it to be?” he asks, spreading out over me and brushing a loose tendril behind my ear.

“Anything. I’m just so curious to know.”

“You can know,” he tells me, kissing the tip of my nose. “I’ll take you to a doctor so you can know, but I don’t want to know.”

“Why don’t you?” I slide my arms around his and stare into his blue eyes. “Are you afraid of loving it too much, too hard, before you even meet it?”

“Whatever they say, it won’t be real until we hold it.” He drops to his back and pulls me to his side; then he cups the back of my head and sets my face against his neck in my special crook, and I close my eyes and lightly lick him like he’s taught me he likes. He is so big, he loves so hard, he fights so hard. I’m giving him what he has never, ever had and never even probably knew he wanted. He’s afraid to hope. . . .

The next day, I hang around the sidelines, watching him pound the heavy bag. Hit. Hit. Hit. I’m doing some yoga stretches when I feel a definite bump coming from inside me. I stop breathing. I feel it again and I go utterly still, and it comes once more. It’s not a bubble. I feel as if something inside me is punching me, just like Daddy is punching the heavy bag.

My heart leaps and I leap just as hard to my feet.

“Remington. Remy! Remington fucking Tate!”

He swings around and stops the swinging bag with one hand.

“Feel this!” I take his glove off with shaky hands and toss it aside and put his hand on my stomach, my heart racing. Come on, little baby. . . .

Remington frowns in puzzlement. It kicks.

He narrows his eyes and presses his big hand closer, his eyes flicking up to mine. “Is that . . . ?”

I nod.

All of a sudden, he flashes me a white, arresting smile, his dimples as deep as I’ve ever seen them, his eyes bluer than the sea in Tahiti as he ducks his head as if ready to talk to the baby. “Tell her to do it again,” he whispers.

“She pays no attention to me.” My lips tip up in a smile as I nudge him playfully. “And it’s a he. Because my hair is shiny and I’m carrying low, I think. And he’s got quite a punch. Maybe if you ask him nicely, he’ll show you more of his moves.”

“Kick for Papa and let’s move it!” Coach yells from the other side of the heavy bag.

Remy smirks at me and Riley comes over, all lazy surfer-boy swagger.

“He moved? Jesus, I have to feel this,” he reaches out.

“Don’t touch,” Remington growls, slapping his hand aside.

“Dude, she’s like a sister—”

“Hands off, Riley,” he warns, shoving him aside with one arm.

Riley releases a great peal of laughter, while Remington grabs me closer with one hand and keeps the other spread on my abdomen, our gazes holding as we wait like two dodos for the baby to move.

When the baby kicks again, and he bursts out laughing, I’m so full of love, I hug him. “Is that real enough for you?” I breathe, a smile dancing on my lips as I tip my head up at him, my nostrils catching the delicious scent of his soap and sweat clinging to his skin.

“That felt fucking surreal,” he whispers, his eyes alive with joy, and, as if it were a contest for speed, he kisses my forehead, my nose, my cheeks, and my chin; then he grabs me by the waist and flings me in the air, a squeak of alarm leaving me as he catches me.

“Remington Tate, you’re the only man who flings his pregnant girlfriend in the air like that!”

“She’s a little firecracker and she loves it!” He flings me up again.

That night, for the first time, we play baby his first song. Remy puts his headphones on my stomach and plays Creed’s “With Arms Wide Open.”

The song tells the baby how he’ll show him the world and receive him “with arms wide open,” and I swear I can feel the baby’s comfort while his sexy, beautiful father stretches out beside me and starts kissing me.

“Has she got my hook?” he asks thickly, between those soft, drugging kisses as we hear the music trail into my tummy.

“He has definitely got your hook, because of course it’s all about you,” I softly tease, cupping his jaw.

He laughs. “All about me?”

“All of it. Everything. My whole life,” I say with a dramatic flair that makes it obvious I’m exaggerating, but his smile is so dazzling and huge, his big lion’s ego so grand in the room, I pat his jaw and laugh, and for some reason, I just have to say it again, if only to keep looking at that big wide grin on his face. “Yes, Remy, it’s really all about you.”