He doesn’t hesitate and moves. My body tightens, and a cataclysm of arousal seizes me as I watch his forearm flex and his arm disappear beneath his waist. I can perfectly picture his big hand stroking over himself, and my pussy suddenly weeps.

“Remy, I want to kiss you there,” I choke, need clogging my throat, “and then I want to eat you all up, and afterward, I want to get all sticky and feel all loved and beautiful because of you.”

His voice gentles as I watch his arm move slightly. “Brooke, whether I’m there or not, you are loved and you are beautiful.”

“Remy,” I say, going south too with my fingers because I’d promised him. When I find myself slick and tender and swollen, I inhale sharply. “I need you. Call me on the phone.”

“What do you mean, little firecracker?”

“Call me on the phone.”

We hang up in Skype and I answer my phone on the first ring, and his voice sounds closer. So close it spills into me, sexier than sex itself, deep and dark with lust, and I can hear his breath in my ear, and a passionate fluttering arises everywhere inside me.

“I need you, Remy,” I explode. “I just need all of you—your heat, your mouth, your voice, you.” I close my eyes and slide my finger over the outer folds of my sex, stroking myself like he strokes me.

“God, tell me how much you need me,” he says, and his breathing sounds faster and a little rougher.

And suddenly his voice is just so close that in my head—he’s with me, his lips near my ear, his husky timbre sending a weak quivering to my thighs, and I whisper to him, “So much it’s torture to see you, to hear your voice.”

His voice is raspy. “Baby, I need you around me, clutching the fuck out of me.”

“I’m dying to see you.”

“In three weeks we’re fighting in Seattle, and I’m coming to you. And I’m going to strip you to your skin and reacquaint my whole body with yours. Every part of it.”

“I hate that you can’t be in me,” I admit thickly, my eyes fluttering shut as my body loses itself in the sound of his voice and a flush of heat spreads throughout my skin.

He’s breathing roughly. “Doesn’t matter. When I’m there, I’ll be all over you.”

He’s taken over my mind. I’m transported to our hotel room. To him. I’m there, in my head, with him. I imagine it all, remember it all. The way his thumb tweaks my nipples. How it rubs little circles of pleasure into my clit. How his tongue laves my areolas. Rubs against my tongue. Traces the seam of my lips. How it licks my nape. The back of my ear. The shell of my ear. Dipping into the crevice.

“Please,” I gasp as I start thrashing, clutching the phone against my ear with my shoulder as I use one hand to cup my breast, the other to rub myself.

His voice makes me imagine his face as it tightens with need and pleasure, and it only yanks me further into this whirlwind of pleasure as I hear him growl, “Brooke, I’ve got my cock in my hand and I’m pushing it inside you, and I swear I can fucking smell you. Tell me what you’re doing. . . .”

“I’m taking you. In me. I’m biting your neck and . . . Remy, Remy . . .”

I never knew I could come like this, but the instant I hear that low, drawn-out, sexy groan he sometimes releases when he’s starting to come, I lose it. Because I’ve never seen anyone come like he does. Tremors wrack my body, and I thrash in place while I struggle to remain clutching my phone, because I refuse to miss a single breath of him, a single sound he makes.

We pant afterward, sated, but as I lie there trying to recover, an utter loneliness creeps over me, suddenly overwhelming me. I can’t cuddle my lion, or kiss his lips good night, or feel his skin hot and hard on mine. I look down at my hand, wet with my own juices, and instead of feeling connected to him, for the first time, I’m more aware than ever that we’re apart. “I miss you,” I whisper sadly.

He’s quiet for a moment, then softly, tenderly: “I want to punch things all fucking day. There’s an ache in my chest I want to rip out of me, but it’s so fucking deep, I could tear my heart out and it would still be there.”

“Remy . . .”

“This is the last time I live without you. I’m half mad already and halfway into the fucking grave. I don’t like this. Every single monster in my head tells me you’ll run and I won’t be close enough to catch you. Every instinct in me screams at me to go get you. Every bone in my body tells me you are MINE—not a part of me, but my brain understands why the hell I sent you away from me. The rest of me can’t take it. You can’t convince the rest of me being away from you is right.”

“Remington Tate, I swear to you—I swear—that when I’m able to get up from this stupid bed and run again, you’re always, always, going to be the one thing I’ll run straight to.”

ELEVEN

SISTERS AND FRIENDS

Those first few nights when I first slept with Remy, I used to lie and cuddle at his side, not knowing what he was doing on his iPad. Until one day I shook aside my sleepiness and decided to investigate.

“What are you doing?” I said then, straightening up to take a peek.

He sets the Apple aside and drags me onto his lap, then he adjusts me between his thighs and grabs back his iPad, whispering in my ear as he shows me the screen, “Kicking the computer’s ass.”

“What is it?”

“Chess.”

I lean back against him with his hard arms stretched at my sides. “Are you winning? Of course you are,” I answer myself.

I stare at the screen, at the white and black pieces, and he explains each piece and how it moves, the pawns being the most basic ones. We continue the game, and what I am enjoying is watching his brain work as he moves his pieces, and hearing his breath in my ear. And how every once in a while, he nibbles my earlobe and sets a kiss on me.

He tells me to pick which piece to move when he’s up next. I decide to go for the big guns.

He laughs softly. “You don’t want to move our queen.”

“Why not? She seems like the most versatile and powerful piece.”

He taps the queen and puts her back in her place. “The queen stays by the king.” He kisses my temple.

“Why?” I counter.

“To protect him.”

“From what?” I turn and stare into his laughing blue eyes, and he sets his iPad aside and cups my face, smiling, like I should know why the queen protects the king.

Then he kisses me, and just to play chess with him feels like I’ve learned something new about him. That I also love. Just like the rest.

God. He’s a living, breathing treasure, and he’s letting me discover him, and all I want is to get lost in the complex divine darkness and light in him.

Now, he’s miles and miles away, flying to Chicago, but I’ve found that if I log in at night, I can play chess with him and let him beat the hell out of me. And I can write little comments on the screen, like, I’m going to get you now!

He only answers with a move that eats up one of my pawns.

And I make a stupid move and go, You’re dead meat! Both your king and queen! But I’m gonna make your king watch while I kill his woman!

He types, Nobody touches my woman.

I go, But you?

Now you’re getting the idea.

And I laugh, and then he calls me, and we forget the game, and I get lost in his voice and in the things he says to me.

By week two, I’ve visited my gynecologist, and I’m able to hear the baby’s heartbeat. Melanie records the event on her phone and sends it to me, so I send it to Remy, and he answers with a ?

I dial his number and hear his rough voice. He always sounds a little impatient, like he’d rather do anything than talk on a damned phone, answering with a gruff “yeah.” I tell him, “That’s the baby’s heartbeat.”

We both fall quiet for a moment. Then he says, “Let me hang up so I can listen. I’ll call you in five.”

I laugh and then wait impatiently. . . .

By week two and a half, Nora has been stopping by less and less. She’s somehow angry at me about something, or maybe I’m angry at her? I’m not sure. But even Melanie wonders what’s up with her, and I sometimes wonder if she’s grumpy because of Pete, for she keeps asking me about the fights, about our schedules, and about the Underground.

By this time, I’ve played most of Remy’s songs. My favorites are Nickelback’s “Far Away” and 3 Doors Down’s “Here Without You”—which I listen to over and over at night.

Melanie is now on a first-name basis with the florist. I get red roses every day. Every day. She gets a call from Riley in the morning and in the evening, requesting a full report for Remington. If I liked the flowers? If I’m doing all right? I’ve been sending a text every day—okay, actually more than one—and Remy always answers me after training.

I’ve watched hundreds of movies and Internet shopped till I dropped, and I’ve been seeing my parents. Things may be tense with them, but it gets better every time they come for a visit. At least they now seem accepting of, and almost excited about, the baby.

By the third week, I have read the entire What to Expect When You’re Expecting pregnancy bible and I’ve learned that the heartburn I’m feeling is normal. The weepiness? The anger? The mood swings? Normal. In the online forums, we90r64mama and 4uwtforever call it “pregnant-mama drama.” I have laughed my head off with their anecdotes of feeling possessive of their baby daddies and doing a thousand and one crazy things like checking their receipts and their credit cards, and spying.

I really think I’ve been doing all right with the pregnant-mama drama, PMD, until the start of the fourth week, when the bed rest starts driving me up the wall. I’m trying to keep my mind busy, if not myself, but I miss running, I miss the sun, I miss the fights, and I miss him.

At midnight, I had insomnia—normal!—and texted him a long, detailed message that it had been raining in Seattle and I found a song I want to play him. Has he ever heard “Between the Raindrops” by Lifehouse? Oh, and has he gone running? I miss running—it’s so frustrating to stare at these four walls. . . .

Then I told him I planned to get permission from my gynecologist so I could come and see him fight when he comes to Seattle next week. The only answer I got to all my questions was the one he texted:

No Underground for you yet, LF. Stay home.

Of all the things I imagined him saying, I never, ever imagined Remington would say this. And thus, the PMD began when all my sister’s words came back to haunt me, about him being a sex god of the Underground . . . and suddenly the PMD worsened as I imagined whores pleasuring him while he was all alone without me. Who’s giving him all the sex this primal male needs? It seems that all my pregnancy hormones are hard at work, not only helping me hold this baby, but hard at work driving me crazy in my head.

I forced myself to text: Why? Why don’t you want me at the Underground?

He didn’t answer, and all my fears raged even more fiercely, as I truly wondered: Why?