“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 br**sts hurt. My ni**les 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 f**ked 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.
A stillness follows, the kind of stillness I sense only when he’s not around.
That’s when I tuck my face into my pillow and bawl my eyes out.
NINE
A RAINBOW IN SEATTLE
Melanie is the best thing about Seattle, and anyone who thinks otherwise can just kiss her ass. Mel is like a permanent rainbow in a city that’s eternally gray. From her flashy earrings to the line of bracelets up to her elbow, she clinked and clanked her way into my room in an explosion of colors, trying to cheer me up when my world had just walked out my apartment door and it took all my willpower to keep from running after him.
Mel took the merest second to assess the situation before taking action. She spotted the bawling mass on my bed, which was me, and she quickly pried my pillow free and replaced it with her big-breasted chest, and now her designer top is soaked from my tears as she waits for me to run out of them.
It’s been at least a half hour, or more, and I’m still going strong. Every couple of minutes, I just seem to need to pause for air.
Now, in one of my breathing moments, she pushes me away to stare into my eyes with a saucy curve of her lips. “You weren’t lying when you said Riptide Tate wanted you to be the mother of his sexy babies, were you? You two got right down to work, didn’t you! Huh?” She shoulders me a little and peers down at my stomach. “So when are you going to show? I want to see a little bump somewhere!”
“I know! Me too!” A smile tips my lips as I think about this baby. Oh, baby, the things you’re asking us to do to prove that we love you. “I want to show so bad, Mel.”
She grins at that, then examines me with assessing green eyes. “Hmm. Pregnancy glow. You’ve got it in spades, even with those weepy eyes. I can’t wait to be pregnant—I think it’s so sexy!” she cries. “What most makes pregnant being sexy to me is the fact that the baby daddy is sexy. It’s just sexy having a part of them inside you! How does it feel? Chicken, you have to feel like a woman now; you got the sexiest baby daddy there is!”
Oh god, I can’t even talk about Remington with my best friend without feeling my bones turn liquid inside me. Even my voice takes on a different tone—the exact same tone it seems to take when I’m alone in bed with him and loving him. “It feels amazing, Mel. Like he’s with me. Like we’re bound. Like I was supremely, royally f**ked.” I groan and lie back in bed and rub my lips, and I love that I can still taste my Riptide on them.
“Brooke, let me just say . . .” Mel drops down on her back next to me and stares at my ceiling. “When I saw him just now, I felt like dying a little inside. He’s so big and so hot my heels almost melted and I instantly felt four inches shorter.”
I can’t control my sudden burst of laughter, and Mel kicks her shoes off and rolls to her side, smiling at me in signature Melanie mischief. “His mouth was all red like he’d just French-kissed you to death. Riptide is a bit of a Neanderthal, isn’t he? He’s so f**king primal, ohmigod! I bet you guys do anal sex.”
“We do not! He’s animal but protective!” I squeal, squirming a little at the thought.
“Doggy style for sure?”
“Yes, but stop reminding me!” I cry good-humoredly. Then I close my eyes and spread my hands open on my abdomen savoring his baby inside me. “There’s truly something extremely sensual about being pregnant by him,” I admit. “I’m so hyperaware of my body, how it feels, how it is changing for this little baby. I feel my ribs and h*ps expanding to make room for it, my br**sts changing, all of me . . .” I sigh, then turn my head and stare at my best friend. The only one who ever really “got” me until Remy. The only one who likes me in any form I’ve come. “Mel, I can’t lose this baby.”
The smile she had been wearing vanishes, and she squeezes my hand over my still-flat abdomen. “You won’t. It’s Riptide’s baby.”
“We didn’t know there was a pity party here, but we’re glad we didn’t miss it!” says a male voice from the open door.
Sniffling, I lift my head to see my best male friend, Kyle, in Dockers and a polo shirt, standing right next to Pandora, her dark hair held back in a careless knot that sends spikes out of her hair everywhere. “You’re preggo?” she demands.