He touches my other breast, then he immediately cups them both and fondles them and starts playing with them, watching what he does with brilliant dark eyes.

His lip is bleeding from my bite in the place it always opens, and his chest is slick with sweat. I protest. “I bit you,” I say.

“Just put your lips on it.”

“Remy—”

“Put your tongue on it.” He bends again and nudges my lips with his, and I softly lick him, the way an animal instinctively cleans a wound. I suck on that bleeding lip gently. He drags his nose over mine and then licks my lips open. I hug him and part my legs and circle them around his hips.

Need races through me as he grabs my ass and lifts me in the air. I lift my bottom to help him, and I’m so drunk with desire my vision blurs as he carries me a couple of steps to the sofa.

He kisses my neck as he lowers me, then he circles his thumb between my thighs exactly where I’m wet and I mew softly. “You ready for me?” His voice rasps over my ear as he strokes my wet folds with his fingers. “Get ready for me.”

He pushes his long finger inside me to make me wetter, but I’m so drenched, it slides in easily. I contract and almost can’t keep from coming as he rubs inside my depths.

He slides his lips down my body and bends his dark head, his tongue running over my clit, lapping lightly as he holds me open by the thighs. I grip the back of his head, watching him do this to me. Then he kneels at the end of the sofa, grabs my hips, and drags me down a couple more inches—and he starts pressing in. Full. Hot. Harder than anything I’ve ever touched. I arch my body and gasp as he guides every inch of himself inside me, while my eyes lock on to his and his lock on to mine. He cups my face and drags his thumb down my bottom lip, pulling it roughly and lovingly as he keeps easing inside, until he’s fully seated in the deepest part of me.

I whimper as he rocks his hips.

He leans over and kisses my ear. “You miss me.”

I turn and kiss his mouth, gasping as I tilt my hips. “I feel like I’ve never been this wet and swollen.”

“I’ve never been this hard.” He pulls out and then eases back in, slowly and pleasurably. I feel him part me, open me, take me, fill me, then leave me. . . . I whimper and am about to beg him to come back in when he does . . . he comes in . . . rocking back in . . . the muscles of his arms, his Celtic tattoos and his B, rippling as he moves. The third time, he pins my arms up above my head and thrusts harder, the move jerking my breasts.

I scream and he muffles it with his mouth. I breathe deep, inhaling his scent.

“I love you . . .” I choke.

He stops in me, breathing hard. A low, guttural sound tears deep in his throat as he turns and starts licking my ear. Then he slides his arms around me as though to protect me as he picks up a rhythm that is fast, determined, raw, and primal.

I’m almost crying as I tilt my hips and turn my head to his ear, gasping as he savors my neck, squeezes my breasts, fucks me hard and fast. “Oh god . . . Remington . . . Remington . . .”

He sets his forehead on mine as his hips continue expertly rocking into me; then he brings his thumb up and starts to caress my clit while his cock drags, hard and pulsing, inside me. I loosen and shatter, shuddering uncontrollably as he takes my mouth with his deliciously hot kiss. Love, lust, need course through me as I come and thrash beneath him.

“All right?” he asks, slowing his motions as I continue to come.

“Yes!” Every inch of me screams for him. I arch up against him and undulate a little, wanting more, wanting him. He growls like he can’t hold back and pulls out, then thrusts back in, driving forward harder, holding me with one arm around my waist as I arch and he holds me in place with one hand as he enters me. I moan, and say, “Remy.”

His eyes are burning me as he drags a hand down the arch of my throat, between my breasts, then bends to lick me again. “Mine,” he whispers softly, reminding me.

“Yours, yours,” I say as my orgasm builds in me.

He presses his nose to my ear, growling as he comes, hot in me, his big body tensing over me, a guttural animal noise wrenching from his lips before he rasps again, “Mine.”

After he comes and holds me for a minute, he lifts me up in his arms, still inside me, and I tuck my nose into his neck. He carries me around the kitchen and grabs two green apples in one hand, then gives one to me as he carries us to the master bedroom.

I bite into it with a crunch as we settle down under the covers, and he bites into his own with a bigger crunch. We kiss a little, and he tastes like juicy, lemony apple. He finishes his first, then licks the juice from the corners of my lips, and I offer up my apple to him because I suspect he’s still hungry. He takes a big bite, smiling down at me when I turn it around and bite from where he did.

His legs move restlessly under the sheet, and I know my speedy Remy won’t sleep tonight, but if he wants to make love to me all night, he can. I hope he will. I shift to keep him still inside me as we both eat my apple and bite it on the opposite side at the same time. We laugh in unison, and I tell him, “Right now our baby is the size of a plum.”

“A plum?” He opens his mouth so I give him more apple, and I move my fingers to shape the size of a plum with my free hand.

“A plum,” I repeat.

“So little,” he says tenderly, sliding one big hand to the small curve of my stomach.

“So little,” I breathe, curling into his big warm body with a sigh, listening to him finish my apple and letting him lick all the juicy drops that fall on my skin.

FIFTEEN

HOW TO TAKE DOWN A TREE

Remington is absolutely in love with my four-month-pregnant belly. I’m starting to really show and it excites him. No, it more than excites him. I’m excited too—I freaking love my pregnant belly! I feel amazing. No more nausea. And I do somehow seem to “glow,” but I think it has to do with the way Remy makes love to me as well as with the baby he put in me.

He measures my bump every morning with his hands when I’m standing studying myself in the full-length hotel mirror. Whatever he’s doing (out of the shower, brushing his teeth), he comes up to me to survey me as well, his gaze glimmering with pride as he cups me and measures me. His voice is gruff this morning. We just woke up and he’s naked, behind me, his lean, large body perfectly visible in the mirror behind mine as he ducks his dark head to nuzzle me. “You think you’re eating enough?” he whispers in my ear, right before he presses me back to him and brushes his lips to the hollow at the base of my throat.

“I’m not going to start eating like you!” I accuse as I turn in his arms and link my fingers at the back of his neck, grinning up at him like the love-struck fool he’s made me. Playfully, I poke his dimples. “We’ve established you have issues. You just want everyone to know I’m pregnant and taken.”

He lifts me off my feet so our mouths are aligned and he plants a big kiss on my lips, squeezing me. “That’s right!”

Today at the gym he wants to show me how to throw him—or, more especially, anyone threatening me—down. Now that I’ve been walking, then trotting a little, with full doctor approval, I feel like a million bucks. But what most makes me feel good is the way Remington looks at me. Hot-ass proprietary, this is my woman, this is my kid. I read that it’s completely normal to be hot and bothered when you’re pregnant, but I really can’t smell him without burning with the need to tear his clothes off and jump his sexy bones. Which I’ve been doing at least twice a day, to his complete male delight.

He hasn’t been black in the two months since I got here, but he’s been plotting something with Pete and Riley. The fact that the three of them are so secretive about it worries me. I think it has to do with Nora, but when I told him, “Remy, Nora sent me this note. She doesn’t want us to do anything about it and I might just wait until the final to talk to her,” he just chuckled and said, “Leave it to me now, all right?”

But it’s not all right.

I’m scared shitless.

This morning, he had a strange reunion with Pete and Riley in our living room. He looked at me and quietly asked me, “Can I talk to the guys alone for a moment?” Since then, I’ve gotten all worried about their plans.

And that’s the only part about being pregnant I don’t like. I despise being treated like an imbecilic, weakling, delicate little flower.

No, sir. And today I will prove it at the gym when I, in fact, succeed in throwing Remington Tate—pregnant belly notwithstanding.

I watch him do full sit-ups, his breaths fast and even, in and out, in and out. I watch him do three rounds of jump rope and three rounds of shadowboxing—swing, punch, swing, punch, guard, duck . . . his chest sweaty male perfection, the intensity with which he works out getting me all worked up. Coach yells at him from the sidelines, and Riley times his speed and makes notes on a clipboard.

By the time Remington is soaked and beckons me forward in the ring, I’m worked up to a lather of complete and total lust.

“Ready?”

Nodding, I climb into the ring with him.

I’ve got one of my catsuits on, one with a zipper right in the middle. His eyes suck me up in it and I swear they heat everywhere they touch. He pulls his gaze back to my eyes. “Ready?” his voice is gruffer.

“You have no idea how ready I am. I’m going to kick your ass and it’s going to feel amazing.”

“Kick my shin first, and then my ass—” He pulls me closer, his breath hot and warm on my ear as he whispers, “The key to throwing me is to take me off balance. If I or anyone heavier than you is balanced, you won’t ever knock them down.”