“Did you or did you not pee on a stick, baby?” he prods when I continue to hesitate.
“I did! I told you I did!” I groan as I go get the test, then I bring it back to the nightstand and read the instructions a third time. Then I gather my courage and put on my imaginary big-girl pants as I peel off the cover and peer into the screen.
The butterflies go off inside me.
My parents flash before my mind. Mom and Dad. Another generation. Maybe Nora told them that I’m seeing the man I work for, but if they don’t even know I’m with him, a baby on the way will leave them in need of therapy for a month. I shake off the thought, because honestly, what’s important now is what he thinks.
He. Remington Tate.
Your one and only
Riptide
. Possibly, my baby-daddy soon?
Shit.
This can’t be happening.
But it is.
I turn around to see him, and a whole truckful of love slams into my heart.
He’s jumping in the room, swinging his fists in the air, up and down. He hooks, jabs, frowns, and slams into his imaginary boxing partner—who seems to be a fast one, by the way Remington is jabbing and hitting back.
He is mesmerizing.
Ripped, raw, and so real. He is all mine—or at least, that’s all I want in the world. For him to be mine.
Calmly, as if sensing me, he stops swinging and lifts one of his sleek black brows that always seem permanently slanted. “What’s it say?”
“It says . . .” I stare at the small screen, and no, I’m not seeing double. I mean, I am, but it’s not a hallucination.
I think rocks have replaced my lungs, for I can’t breathe as I set the test down at the foot of the bed and walk over to him. Step by step, I stare into those black-gray eyes with the blue flecks that watch me approach in growing curiosity. Lifting my hands, I hold his scruffy jaw and really look up at him as he looks down at me, except I’m perfectly sober, and he’s perfectly amused.
“Remington, don’t forget this,” I anxiously whisper, my chest swelling with need of his support. “You’re black right now, and I don’t want you to forget what I’m going to tell you. I need all of you here
with me
.”
“Hey.” His dimple vanishes as he frames my face in his huge, callused hands. “I got you.”
“God, please do.”
“Yeah, I do. I got you. Now what’s wrong here? Hmm? If you aren’t, then we figure out what’s wrong with you. If you are . . .”
Jerking away before he can finish, I run over, grab the test, and bring it to him, my heart picking up a wild rhythm. I want his strength. I want his confidence. Even when he’s volatile, he is always so. Damned. Strong! I need that now.
Never taking his eyes off me, he takes the little stick I extend out.
But god, he might not be smiling for long.
My voice is calm and surprisingly steady. “Two lines means, supposedly, that I am.”
His eyes stay locked on mine for a moment longer, and then his lashes sweep downward as he turns the test screen slightly into the sunlight.
My own anxiety eats me on the inside as I wait for a reaction. We were joking on the plane, but he’s serious now. As serious as I am. His profile is completely unreadable as I take in the perfect form of his nose, how elegant it is. His mouth, relaxed and full, so freaking beautiful. His eyebrows, drawing slightly together in puzzlement as he deciphers the lines. Impossible for me to make out any emotion whatsoever.
When he sets the stick aside, my breath stops in my lungs, and when he lifts his dark head, nothing else exists in the world but this moment. He raises his eyes to mine, and my stomach wrings as hard as my heart does in my chest.
What if he doesn’t want me like this?
What if this is too much for us?
What if we’re strong enough to love each other, but not strong enough to love someone else—together?
What if we are not
ready
?
Our eyes meet. He studies my reaction while I study his even more desperately. And out of the thousand things I could have imagined to see in his face, I never imagined I would see what I see. He’s . . . pleased. No. He’s more than pleased. His eyes glow as if he were sexually hungry, but what he’s hungry for is something else. Then his dimples flash, and he laughs, and his perfect happiness explodes like a rainbow in me.
“Come here.” He picks me up and lifts me so that my abdomen is on his face, and he smacks a noisy kiss on me. I squeal when he flings me down on the bed and hovers over me.
The sight of those two dimples on his scruffy jaw delights me so much, I start laughing. “You’re a crazy man! You’re the only man I know who throws his pregnant girlfriend onto a bed!”
“I’m the
only
man,” he says, “as far as I know. There’s only one man in your world, and it’s me.”
“All right, but don’t tell my dad I agreed so easily . . .” I rub his shoulders, and he frames my face and settles down over me. If I thought he looked smug before, he gives a new meaning to the word now.
“Brooke Dumas pregnant with my baby,” he says slyly. His hair is standing up so much, I shove my hand in and watch my fingers play with it. A ripple of joy rushes over me. “My head is reeling. Kiss me.”
He lowers his head and tenderly mates his tongue with mine, tracing the flesh of my lips first, and then stroking my tongue with his so deliciously, all my taste buds awaken. He eases back to caress the back of one curled finger down the side of my face. “Make it look like you.”
“You’re the one who gave this to me.”
“No,
you’re
giving this to me.”
“All right, we’re both such giving souls.”
His laugh is so marvelous, it’s catching as he rolls to his side and gathers me in his arms and starts raining a bunch of slow kisses on me. “You’re mine now, from the top of your pretty dark head to the soles of your little feet.” He caresses my face with his callused thumb as he kisses the tops of my eyelids. “Don’t even think about leaving me again or I’ll come after you and so help me god, I’m going to tie you to where I am, and where I sleep, and where I eat. Do you hear me, Brooke Dumas?”
My already sensitive breasts bead under my bra, and I nod breathlessly. Shit, I love how possessive he is—and he’s doubly so whenever he’s black. I feel myself grow wet between my legs. “There isn’t a single part of me that doesn’t know I’m yours,” I assure him, and I take his hand and set it on my heart.
He clamps his jaw, and a spark of primitive awareness flashes in his eyes as he clenches his fingers around my breast. We start kissing. We start hard, and then go softer. We both slide closer at the same time, needing the contact like oxygen. He whispers in my ear, “
I’m so crazy about you,”
and as he nuzzles the top of my head, I clutch him close and gasp, “
I love you so much
.”
Looking extremely satisfied, almost like he does when he’s given me several multiple orgasms in a row, he turns me over and adjusts me, holding my stomach as he starts nuzzling the back of my neck while my mind continues reeling, and I imagine a little Remy running the way little boys run, clumsy and stumbling, and I touch my stomach as I let my lion pet me.
SEVEN
SIN CITY
We’re in Sin City now, and his eyes are back to his usual electric, piercing blue.
He woke up fully blue after he found out we’re expecting. We. Are.
Expecting.
We didn’t sleep that night. Remy was hard, and having his way with me, all night. He fucked me, sucked me, made me suck him, fondled me with his fingers, put his hand over mine so that I fondled him while he fingered me.
The next day, we were both well-fucked and sleepless when we ended up with the doctor who removed my contraceptive capsule. The kind man reminded me that after five years, any “arm thingy” needs to be changed. Mine was going on five and a half years, embarrassingly, and I admit I felt completely stupid for having completely forgotten to count, especially when I’d assured Remy I was on birth control.
But then I catch a glimpse of his twinkling, and
smug
, blue eyes as they silently tease me that I did it on purpose.
“Well,
you
could’ve used a condom,” I whispered with a scowl.
“With you?” he scoffed. Then he poked my ribs. “You’re mine.”
“Your birth control hasn’t been working for some time now, and it takes time for the body to increase its own hormonal production, although you seem to be doing just fine,” the doctor had said, and then he told us my due date. Which was thankfully almost two months after the season was to end.
I swear Remy looked so adorable at the doctor’s office, strong and athletic in his sports attire, sitting in a chair by mine, listening attentively to what the doctor said. A lot of the terms could have been Chinese to both of us. But he looked curious and concerned about me being able to run. And about how much should I eat? How many grams of protein? How many carbs? The doctor seemed confused at his need for specific gram counts, and I wanted to kiss my guy just for going to the appointment with me.
Lie. I didn’t want to just kiss him. I wanted to press my breasts against his chest until my nipples stopped aching and I wanted to blend my mouth to his, impale me down on his cock, and ride him to Australia and back.
If Remy is crazy aroused with my pregnancy, I won’t even begin to describe what the combination of his carnal blue eyes and my rioting hormones do to me. Now he’s determined that I go sniff food that doesn’t make me vomit so I can start eating for two. I’m worried that he’ll fatten me up to elephant size, so if he wants me eating, I’d rather eat fresh and filling foods than empty junk. And here we are, Diane and I, wandering through the Whole Foods on Las Vegas Boulevard.
Outside the store, there are billboards of gaming, women, and booze. This is Las Vegas, baby! But none of us are doing anything that needs to “stay here” at all. Remington is kicking ass at the gym, and Coach has actually upped his training hours.
He’s packing on more muscle and getting more ripped, and the entire team agrees that Scorpion deserves nothing but Riptide’s finest at this season’s final. So my beast has been training nine hours while I indulge in a bit of extra sleep in the mornings and then join him at the gym before he’s done. He’s eating protein like mad, and Coach has put him on L-glutamine shakes to preserve muscle mass, so now I’m also helping Diane choose the best foods for his body and mind.
Pete says if Scorpion wants to fuck with his mind again, we must make sure Remy sleeps right, exercises right, and eats right—so that he’s as stable as possible. Most especially he needs lots of omega-3 fats.
Today, we get so many fresh goods for my T. rex, that Diane and I need two carts. We stay all along the edges of the store buying fruits, vegetables, the best cheeses, dark chocolate, sprouted grains, and nuts. Then we head to the protein part and order fresh Alaskan king salmon, king among fish and as toxin free as fish hopefully get.
While we wait for several pounds of fish to be packaged, I inspect one of the lovely heads of broccoli we’ve got in one of our carts. I used to call them “little trees” and Melanie called them “green things,” which was what she called anything green—the only reason she ate veggies was because of the color. Mel loves color.
“My grandmother taught me all I know about food. She cured my grandfather’s depression with diet,” Diane tells me.
We order some wild-caught shrimp as well, and anything else that is wild caught and fresh, and the counter guy packs it all up.
“I had depression once,” I suddenly tell her, my eye on one dead fish eye. “It’s not a fun thing to have.”
“You? Brooke, I could never tell looking at you. Did something happen to bring it on?”
“I guess my life changed before I was ready for it to.”
I shrug and smile sadly at her. “I couldn’t believe the things that went through my head in those days,” I admit. “It all seemed so pointless. So dreary. It’s hard to think anyone can get out of that alone.”
“How did you?” she presses.
“I don’t know, I think a small part of me realized I was not my brain. It’s just another organ, like our kidneys or our livers.”
She’s perfectly sober, nodding in understanding, so I add, even though it sounds crazy, “My brain wanted me to die, but in some surreal way, I could feel my soul fighting it.”
Sometimes I can’t stop thinking and comparing: While I was depressed once in my life, for about two months, Remington goes through it continually, cycling again and again, rising and falling. Anyone who goes through this is a warrior. So are their loved ones, who fight with them. I swear, Remington’s soul is so strong . . . I know that when he sinks into the dark vortex, it’s his soul that conquers it. All that simmering energy inside him is too powerful not to rise back up. Like a . . . riptide.
“How did that feel?” Diane whispers as the man finally packs us several bags of ice.
“You know how you get any visual or audible stimulus, or when you touch something, your brain dictates a response to this sensual stimuli,” I tell her. “I see you, and my brain immediately sends out a response at the sight of you, which in me is comfort and happiness. But in my depression, I saw things, normal things, and the responses my brain would fling out would not match. It was crazy.”
“It sounds crazy!” she agrees.
I smile and we take the ice the man offers, say thank you, and push our carts down the lane to the deli meat and cheeses. I add, “The way I see it is as if our brains were the doctors, and the adrenals are the pharmacies that fill up the prescriptions. You could see a commercial with laughing children, and an unbalanced mind will quickly prescribe anxiety and tears over laughing children. Even if it logically makes no sense—it doesn’t matter. That’s the prescription your body was given.”
“I’m really sorry, Brooke. I’d never really thought about what all that must be like.”