“But don’t let that ego get even bigger,” I warn him, now rubbing the warm oil along his pecs as I drop my voice and tell him, “You’re mine.”
Smiling, I slide my fingers down his forearm, I stroke down to his palm, then I impulsively lift his hand and kiss his knuckles, looking into his blue eyes, which shine with tenderness as he watches me. “This is mine, too?” I ask uncertainly.
He lowers his voice to a playful rasp as he runs the back of a finger along my cheek. “Depends, little firecracker. Do you want it?”
“I want it.”
“Then it’s yours, baby girl.”
Taking his other hand, I repeat what I did with the first one and kiss his knuckles. “And this one?”
“Do you want it?” He raises his eyebrows and happily jerks his head in the direction of the door. “All those ladies out there wanted it.”
“But I want it,” I protest.
He smiles indulgently and runs the back of a finger down my jaw again. “Then it’s yours.”
My voice thickens when I jerk down his towel so I can slick the oil into his calves and powerful thighs. I admire his sexy smile, those dimples and that rumpled hair. I ask, “What about you? All of you?” As I slick my oily hands up his eight-pack, I lift my head to search for his lips. He groans when I lick the seam of his mouth. Softly. I continue massaging his flesh as I start moving my lips over his. He’s a fighting machine and he’s mine, and my eyes briefly slide shut as I tend to him and breathe, “What about you, Remington? Are you mine?”
His thick rasp makes my ni**les bead. “Do you want me?”
God. My adorable big man of a boy. A boy with the strength of a thousand men. Playful and possessive. I am dying from need and love as I whisper, “I want you,” in his ear. “All of you. Black and blue and any other shade you come in.”
Groaning, he draws my head down to his lips and kisses me, hard and deeply. “I’ll answer that to you in bed.” He grabs my hand as if ready for the bed part, but I laugh and pull back.
“Five more minutes!”
He shakes his head. “Two.”
“Four.”
“Three, now take it or I’ll toss you up on the bed right over there, right this second.”
“Done.”
“Done, I toss you up on the bed?” he prods.
“Done, three more minutes!” I cry laughingly, speeding up my hands as I rub them along his hard pecs. My laugh fades when my thoughts drift back to the Scorpion’s men. “She used to slip into my bed at night when she had nightmares. She had such a vivid imagination, she’d see things, good and bad, where there weren’t any.”
“What are you talking about?” he asks huskily.
“Nora,” I say, unable to hide the sadness in my voice. “I just want you to know why I . . . I don’t know. Why I’ve always protected her. She seemed to need me, and we fell into those roles. She’s always needed protecting. But now I wonder if I don’t let her solve her own problems, will she ever learn a lesson? I’ve always wanted to protect her but now nothing will ever make me risk the baby and you, not even her.”
His expression is so gentle and understanding, a little knot of emotion winds in my chest. “Shh. Relax,” he says, stroking a hand down my hair. “He’s not getting the championship, or the prize, or your sister. He’s not winning. I. Get. It all. Do you hear me? I get the gold, the championship, the sister’s freedom . . . And I get to protect, and please, and love my girl.”
SEVENTEEN
AUSTIN IS A WHIRL
A group of deer leap across the greenbelt area behind the sprawling gardens of the Austin rental home. I point at them and say, “Look!” but Remy just grunts; he’s a little busy flipping a gigantic tractor tire over, again and again.
It’s so hot here in Texas, sweat trickles down my neck and dips into my cle**age.
Squinting in the afternoon sun, I ask Remy and Coach if they want anything from inside, and Coach shakes his head, while Remy grunts and starts turning the tire in the opposite direction.
“We’re almost done,” Coach lets me know. I nod and raise two fingers—meaning it’ll take me two minutes to go make my fifth trip into the house for lemonade.
Inside the house, I spot Riley at the edge of the living room, and he’s so motionless I almost don’t see him. His hands are jammed in his suit pockets, and he’s staring at the front door with a huge frown. My body kicks straight into high-alert mode, and a cold little kernel settles deep inside my tummy.
“His parents,” I say in disgust.
His parents. Two specimens of people who did not deserve a penis and ovaries, much less be permitted to reproduce something as magnificent as Remington! Raise him? Oh, no. Those ass**les just grabbed their boy, checked him into a mental institute, and never came back.
Tight-lipped, Riley gives me an affirmative gesture. “Pete’s handling it.”
Curling my arms around my stomach by pure protective instinct, my gaze falls on the front door along with his. “Why do they keep bothering him? Do they want to make amends?”
“Brooke!” Riley almost chokes on my name, his laugh one of the most humorless, sad laughs I’ve ever heard anyone give. “They’re ass**les. We’ve gone through this dozens of times and they know Remington will make them go away with a damn check.”
A potent anger overtakes me as I think of the way Remy gets restless every time we even get near his hometown. Last season, his parents looked him up again and found themselves on the receiving end of a check with his signature.
“They don’t deserve anything from him. Anything,” I whisper.
Before I know it, I’m charging across the living room.
“B! Just let Pete make them scat,” Riley proposes to me.
But instead I swing the door open and there they are, on the porch, pretty as you please. The man . . . he’s big as a mountain, beautifully aged. I swear it almost hurts to see the resemblance to Remy in him. Eyes the same electric-blue shade as Remy’s instantly train on me, but the expression in these eyes is completely different. The life and vitality, the drive and strength I see in Remington’s eyes are completely lacking in his father’s.
And his mother? As she surveys me with a critical eye, I survey her back, and in that neat little homemaker dress, she looks small, calm, and sweet—which only makes the confusion I feel more overwhelming.
These are people I could smile at in an elevator, or passing by on the street. They seem good and caring, but how can they be? How can they have abandoned Remy and then have the gall to come knocking on his door, again and again, like it’s their right to?
The mere thought of abandoning this little baby I hold inside me repulses me, and I still can’t fathom why anyone would do that to their own son.
“You’ve left him alone his entire life. Why can’t you leave him alone now?” I demand, glowering.
They have the gall to look genuinely horrified at either my appearance or my outburst—or, quite possibly, both.
“We want to talk to him,” the woman says.
Because that’s what she is, just a woman. I can never look at her and think of her as anyone’s mother, especially Remy’s.
“Look . . . we’ve heard about the baby,” she adds. Her eyes drop to my stomach, and I feel Pete draw closer to me, as though he expects her to reach out and touch my stomach, and he, on behalf of Remington, plans to stop her. “This baby,” the woman continues, pursing her lips into a thin line and gesturing at me, “could be just like him. Do you realize?”