“Your parents know you’re coming? Your sister?”

“I let them know I was coming, but they don’t know about us yet. I’m saving that for face-to-face. Only Mel and my two other besties know about it.” He draws my head back so he can look at me, “All right. But who are you going to call first if it gets worse? Me. Who are you going to call when you need anything? Me. I’ll be your everything. I’ll be your fucking booty call by phone. Anytime, wherever I am. Am I clear, Brooke?”

“I’m sorry. My mind froze on ‘booty call.’?”

“It did? What about it do you need me to clear up for you?”

The devil’s lift of one dark eyebrow heats up my body like a live little volcano. The idea of phone sex with Remington makes me both laugh and feel, suddenly, incredibly tingly, and I end up shoving his chest playfully. “I won’t call you for that! I know you’re going to be busy.”

His eyes twinkle. “Not too busy for that.”

“Why that glint in your eye? Have you done it before? I’ll bet Melanie has done it with Riley.”

Smirking, he runs his hands down the back of my head and back, then gently kisses my earlobe, my nose, his voice a little thick. “I want to do it with you.”

My sex grips and my nipples ache, and a hot flush spreads over me. I love our first times. The first time he played me “Iris.” The first time he invited me to run. The first time he kissed me, made love to me. We’ve never had a first of this type before.

“I want it too, but I don’t know if I can. If I touch there . . . with blood . . .”

His lips press into my forehead as he fingers the two top buttons of my top, his voice ten times terser than moments ago, “It’s just blood.”

The scent of him, the pheromones he puts out, spins me into a frenzy. My womb grips with want, and suddenly I throb so fiercely, my already sensitized breasts feel too constrained in my bra. “Remington, god, only you could make me horny right now when I’m so worried.”

His hands spread on my ass, and suddenly I feel his lips sliding over my ear; then he’s tonguing me gently, and a new heat builds between my thighs. “I want you so fucking much.” His voice is a raspy breath as he slides a hand under the waistband of my jeans and palms one of my ass cheeks under my panties.

He cups both my breasts and presses them together as he nuzzles me, side to side, growling against my skin.

“Whenever you want to, I want to,” he tells me, lifting his head and pressing his mouth to mine, his words vibrating against my tongue as I stroke hungrily across his. “Just call me and tell me. Tell me you want me. That you’re hot for me and I’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of my woman—whenever she wants. Whatever she wants.”

“Me too. You call me and I’ll take care of you.” I rub my thumb along the hard square of his jaw, then we close the distance between our mouths, and during the rest of the flight, he grabs the sides of my head and kisses me, and kisses me, and kisses me raw and swollen.

A CHAUFFEUR IN a fancy black Lincoln town car waits for us at the airport, and Remington tells the pilots he’ll be back in two hours. We ride in the back of the car in silence and as close as possible, and I scan the familiar scenery and power on my iPhone. I realize I’m doing anything to distract myself as we approach my apartment. Just like he carried me down the steps from the plane and into the car, Remy carries me out and into my apartment.

I squeeze my arms around his neck. “Stay. Remington, stay. Be my male prisoner. I promise to take care of you all day, every day.”

He laughs a rich male sound, looking into me with those heartbreaking blue eyes, then he scans my place with curiosity, and I feel butterflies when I see his genuine interest. He wants to see where I live. Oh, god, I love him so much it hurts me.

“I’ll give you a quick tour, and then you have to get your fine ass out of here,” I warn him.

He grins. “Show me my woman’s lair.”

With him carrying me around, I spread my hand out and show him my colorful living room. “My living room, Melanie decorated. She’s really good. Eclectic. She’s been mentioned in some local magazines, too, but of course she dreams about being featured in Architectural Digest. Pandora, one of my other friends, tells her she has a better shot at Playboy, though. They’re decorating rivals and like to pick on each other.”

He winks at me, and the wink travels all the way to form a little tingling in my gut as I point to the room adjoining. “And then that’s my kitchen. Small, but it’s only me here. And then the door here takes us to . . . my bedroom.”

We go in, and he sets me down at the foot of the bed; then he takes it all in with quiet wonder. I glance around and look at it through his eyes. It’s simple, the walls in nude colors. Some black-and-white pictures of athletes hang on the walls—close-ups of muscles. There’s a pinup wall with pictures of me, Melanie, Pandora, Kyle . . . some other friends. . . . I have two nutritional charts hanging, speaking of carbs, protein, healthy fats. And a framed quote Melanie gave me: A CHAMPION IS SOMEONE WHO GETS UP WHEN HE CAN’T.—JACK DEMPSEY. She got it for me when I damaged my ACL and was depressed, and I tried to be this champion.

I am looking at one now. Every day I look at one.

He walks to the pinup wall and inspects a picture of me sprinting past a finish line—number 06 on my chest—and runs his thumb over the photograph. “Look at you,” he says with ill-concealed male pride, and I didn’t realize I’d walked over to him until he turns and spots me.

He scoops me up and sets me back on my bed, this time in the center, brushing some escaped tendrils of hair back behind my forehead. “Stay off your feet for me,” he chides.

“I will. I forgot. It’s habit.” I scoot back so I rest against my headboard and pull him to me.

“You should go or I won’t let you leave me,” I whisper in his ear.

He cuddles me for a moment, his hard, solid arms wrapped snugly around my waist as he ducks his head and kisses, licks, and scents my neck, swiftly alternating between the three. He’s never scented me as much as he has in the past two hours. Now, he scents me slowly and deeply, then licks me just as slowly, and I feel his attentions, and lastly, his kiss, right in my sex. “When you tell me you’re in bed, this is what I’ll picture. This is what you see,” he rumbles as he lifts his head.

I’m getting teary, but don’t want to make this any worse, so I nod, but I know there’s no way on earth he could miss the crumpled expression on my face.

His eyes clasp mine as he draws back. “I’ll be back soon,” he tells me, cupping my cheek in his big, callused hand, and I hate that a tear slips out. He smiles at me, but that smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll be here soon,” he repeats.

“I know.” I wipe my cheek, take his hand, and set a kiss inside his palm, then curl his fingers around it so that whether he wants my kiss or not, he holds it. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

“Shit, come here.” He crushes me in his arms, and all my efforts to hold myself in check are shot to hell, and the waterworks begin. I start bawling.

“It’s all right,” he says, smoothing his hands down my back as a series of wrenching sobs take over me. It’s all right, I hear, it’s all right, little firecracker, but I just don’t feel like it’s all right. How could it be? He could need me. I need him. He could be black, and Pete could shoot more shit into his neck. Something could happen in a fight and they could not tell me because of not wanting to stress me and cause me to lose the baby. I feel weak and helpless when all I wanted in life was to be strong and independent. But I fell deeply and irrevocably in love. And now I am ruled by this love, for this man, who sounds like thunder when he talks in my ear, and smells like soap and him and like the ocean, and holds me in the strongest arms in the world—and when these arms are gone, my whole world will be gone with them.

“You need to go,” I say, dragging in a ragged breath as I push him away. Instead he sets his forehead and his nose against mine, and we breathe each other’s air.

We just don’t need to say it. I love you crackles between us and I hear the words as if he were yelling them to me.

He takes my hand, kisses my knuckles fiercely, and then frames my face and wipes my tears with his thumbs. “You okay, baby firecracker?”

“I will be. More than okay,” I promise.

My phone vibrates in my pocket and I shakily check the message.

“Melanie is five minutes away.” My voice is raw. Mel knows where I keep my spare key and will burst in here any minute, and Remington will leave.

He will leave.

My eyes blur again. “Please go before I cry,” I beg. Which is ridiculous, because I’m already crying like a baby and feel and probably look like shit. He curls his fingers around the back of my neck and closes his eyes as he leans his head on mine. “Think of me like crazy.”

“You know I will.”

Stormy blue eyes hold mine, his voice gruff as he leans over. “Now give me a kiss.”

I do, and he groans softly as his lips connect with mine. Little fireworks explode in me, and I feel his kiss, soothing my mind and my soul and my heart too. He spreads out his hand and fondles the small of my back gently as we kiss, low, deep, savoring, memorizing; then his mouth comes back up to absorb a stray tear from my cheek.

“Brookey!! Where’s the hot dad and the upcoming momma?”

He curses under his breath, and we kiss quickly once more. He nips and sucks my tongue, more roughly now, holding the back of my head in his hand, his delicious, raw kiss making my body feel sucked and bitten by a lion. My breasts hurt. My nipples throb in my bra.

And I squirm and press my thighs together as he finally edges away, our eyes briefly meeting. Clinging. His are hot and desperately hungry, like he’s a moment away from tearing my clothes off.

“You’re everything I never knew I wanted.” He tucks back another tendril of hair behind my ear, his eyes a little too brilliant as he draws back. “And all mine, remember that tidbit.” I hear Mel’s heels clicking outside, and Remington stands, somehow looking bigger than ever. Large, hard, blue-eyed, and beautiful. “Completely mine,” he says. “Brooke Dumas.”

A shudder runs through me as he backs away, his stare pinning me down on the bed.

I feel fucked here, in my bed, with his eyes alone, as I try to recover my breath. “I’m pregnant with your baby, if there was any doubt about whose I was,” I tell him.

“You’re both mine,” he says, pointing straight at me. “Especially you.”

I swallow back my excitement, and he turns to leave.

“Hey!” I call. “You’re mine, too.”

He nods, then flings his iPod in my direction. “Don’t miss me too much.”

I catch it and hold it against my chest. “I won’t!” I flippantly retort, all false bravado, then his low voice rumbles out in the hall, and I hear Melanie quietly reassure him, and then comes the awful sound of my front door closing.