“Okay,” I say as he sets me aside, because the one thrown off balance with his nearness is me.

“You kick my shin, I rock off balance, then you sweep your leg out like you did last time and kick the weakest part of my heel—watch how you do it now! So rock me, then knock me down.”

Nervous butterflies take flight inside me, and I groan and roll my eyes. “I feel like I’m going to get hurt again. You’re still a tree, Remington.”

“With a fucked-up shin.” He waves me over, his lips curled in amusement, his dimples sexy and playful. “Come on. Keep your balance and throw me off mine.”

I look into his playful, glinting blue eyes while all my heart feels is about a ton of love, sitting right on me. “Hurting you goes against my every instinct,” I say dramatically, as if I truly believe I could nick him.

“You won’t hurt me one bit,” he says, laughing.

Then I seize him by the jaw and kiss him square on the lips before I draw away and stretch my legs. “All right, my pride says this must be done. What if you were Scorpion?”

He scowls. “You throw him, baby, and I mean now. Come on, rock my world, my little firecracker.”

I do. I kick his shin, putting all my weight into it until he says “ouch”; then I swing my leg so fast, I catch the back of his leg and feel him topple the instant I connect. But he’s still Remington Tate, and he naturally seems to stabilize. He plants himself back up, taking me off balance when he does. I squeak as I start falling, and he instantly grabs me and throws himself on his back, breaking my fall.

He chuckles as we straighten.

“You let me win,” I accuse, narrow-eyed.

He shakes his head. “No, you did that on your own,” he assures me.

“You’re a big, incredibly fit liar,” I say, shoving him.

He chuckles and sits up straighter with me on his lap, brushing my ponytail to the back of my head. “It wasn’t that hard, was it?” he asks me, stroking my cheek.

“No,” I breathe, then say softly so only he can hear in his ear, “but you are.”

He looks at my mouth, and I shift on top of him. He ducks his head and smells me, and I feel tingles rush all over my skin when his nose connects with the back of my neck.

“Do you like sparring with me?” I ask silkily as I prop my arms on his shoulders, getting all excited and worked up because of his massive erection under me.

“Hmm,” he says as he lifts his hand and seizes the back of my neck. “I like it when we spar like this. . . .” He kisses me softly and pushes his tongue into my mouth, and I feel electricity rushing from his tongue to my whole body. He’s wet from his workout and tastes hot and thirsty, and I feel even hotter and thirstier as I clutch his chest, his muscles slick and hard as I straddle him.

He fists my ponytail in his hand, holding me in place as he lifts his head slightly and gruffly says, “Riley . . .”

“Yeah, I’ll tell Coach.” Riley can’t conceal the laughter in his voice as he brings over some towels and drinks before he crosses toward the exit.

“Remington . . .” I chide.

His lips curl deliciously at the corners as he fingers the zipper of my catsuit and Riley yells over to Coach, “Hey, Coach, we gotta hit it so the guy can have his way with Brooke!” They disappear through the gym doors, and as they lock shut, Remington works his lips heatedly up my neck. “It’s not possible for anything to be this beautiful,” he murmurs to me as he slides his open hand sensually along the curve of my spine.

“So this is where we get to the kissing part, because it’s near impossible to get me out of this,” I whisper.

“It’s coming off,” he says, licking me. He kisses my mouth and holds my neck while he kisses me. Then he uses his free hand to lower the zipper of my catsuit. I squirm and moan because we’ve never tried this with me wearing something this complicated.

“It can come off, but not easily.”

“Let’s just make some room for me,” he murmurs hotly into my jaw as he reaches down to the apex of my legs and peels off a bit of fabric from each thigh; then he yanks and tears my catsuit open at the seam. I feel air steal through the opening and to the burning center of my being. He reaches a hand inside the tear and says, “Hang on to my neck,” as he maneuvers to tear and pull off the panties I’m wearing. He yanks them off and extracts them through the tear, his eyes twinkling, and a rush of arousal sweeps me like a storm.

“Oh please.” Bringing his head back to mine, I take his delicious lips, my hips rocking desperately over him.

He lifts me for a second then shoves his sweatpants off and brings me back down with one hand on my hip, that lone hand strong enough to ease me down and impale me on him. Big. Hot. Hard. Mine. I moan and lick his neck, lost as my walls stretch to take him. He grabs my head and takes my mouth harder. He’s moving, loving, lifting, and lowering me with one hand, the other on the back of my neck, holding and cupping me as he kisses me, his mouth strong and commanding, opening and tasting, retreating, teasing.

I come fast and hard, and his arms tighten like vises as my contractions ripple through him. I hear him growl softly as he lets me milk him. Then he lifts me up and carries me across the ring, resting me on the ropes. One of his arms protects me, and he hasn’t for one second pulled out from inside me. He starts moving again. I moan softly. I feel like I’m floating, suspended in the air by a thread and his arm, the only connection in my body to his arm and his cock in me. My ponytail falls behind me, my throat arches, and he’s there to devour it. I mew as he moves and sink my fingers into his bulging arms, feeling his biceps flex and contract with his body as he pumps me.

We don’t speak. We don’t need to speak with words; we speak like this. I lift my head and bite and lick him and gasp as I hear his breath, his muscles flexing and moving as he moves in me until I come again. He never, ever comes before me—he waits, primes me, watches me. His eyes darken as he watches me come now; then his jaw works and his body hardens as he sinks deep and holds himself there, and that’s where he explodes, when he’s all the way in, and I’m coming around him, hugging him within me, rippling and grasping him.

Instead of sagging this time, we tighten our hold around each other when we’re done. “Stay in me,” I plead to him. I’m catching my breath, my nails gouging his shoulders.

He pulls me closer and sinks his head between my breasts and breathes hard, like my skin is his air, then he lightly bites the top of my breast.

“I want to live in you,” he tells me in his gruff, tender voice that makes me melt, and he clutches me tighter and licks and laves his bite, his jaw rasping my skin. “God, I want to die in you.”

My bones feel liquid in my body, but even relaxed, I feel that pull of all his tornado energy working on mine. “You’re so possessive, I know you’ll take me with you.”

“No, I’d never hurt you.”

I laugh softly. “It won’t be your choice. You’ll take me with you because I will go where you go. You’re going to be the end of me, Remington Tate, but that’s the way I want to go.”

His face twists with pain as he drags the backs of his knuckles along my jaw. “No, Brooke. I will protect you even from me.”

We stare at each other for a moment, and the determination in his eyes to protect me only reassures me that, whatever happens, my life will always be intertwined with his, come good or bad. I will walk by his side, run, fight, cling, and chase his dreams, which have now become mine. “Like you said, I’ll love you if it kills us,” I whisper as I stroke his face. “We all die. I’d rather die loving the hell out of you.”

“Baby, I’m the one who’ll love the hell out of you,” he says thickly, squeezing me, making me laugh in complete and total happiness. “Remy . . . where are we going to have the baby?”

He straightens up and lifts me in his arms, with my legs still locked around his hips as we cross the ring. “Wherever you want to have it. It’ll be off season. I can take you anywhere you like.”

“I was thinking I could keep my apartment. At first, I wasn’t going to renew. But it might be smart to have somewhere to touch base. And I have a spare bedroom I used to do yoga in and could turn into a nursery. Melanie’s all for decorating it. . . .”

He sits us down on the stool at the corner of the ring, where a basket of towels and drinks awaits us. He grabs a towel and eases me onto his lap as he slowly starts cleaning me up, his profile calm and relaxed. “I’ll ask Pete to renew your lease for another year while we look for something else,” he tells me. “You can use the card I gave you to charge anything you’d like.”

I wind an arm around his neck and poke a hidden dimple. “So I’m to be your kept girlfriend and employee? Officially?”

He grabs the back of my head, angles my face up almost to the ceiling, and licks a path from under my chin right up to my mouth, where he roughly engulfs my mouth with his. “Officially, you’re Mine.”

* * *

“WILL WE GO through the usual route for vaccinations, or will we find a doctor who works with us a different schedule? There’s so much evidence vaccines could be the cause of autism,” I tell Remington one night.

I’m eating tons of vegetables. I’ve read that different-color vegetables provide different antioxidants. Green veggies provide different ones than purple and orange ones, so I’m eating a rainbow every morning, noon, and evening. The best for Remington’s baby.

Also, pineapple is the fruit of the moment. It is all I want to eat. As soon as we reach every location, Remington orders Diane to bring all the organic pineapples she can find. I blend them with bananas to make smoothies. I eat them with cayenne pepper. Diane sautés them for me with little bits of turkey. I am a pineapple freak and Remington is amused like hell because of it.