Mine (31 page)

“No! So help me god, if
you
put yourself in danger because of her . . . because of me . . . I’m going to . . .”

“What?” He cocks an amused brow, then pats my ass with a smirk. “I like it when you punch me, and I like you angry too.”

“But I’ll be very fucking mad—like you’ve never seen me!” I glare menacingly at his chest as he starts stripping his boxing gear. “Don’t, Remy.” Reaching out before he enters the shower, I grab his jaw and force him to look at me. “Promise me.”

Amusement twinkles in his gaze as he runs the back of one finger down my temple. “What am I going to do with you, firecracker?”

“Promise me,” I urge.

“I promise you,” he tells me, “that your sister will be back with you very soon, and I’m crushing that insect this year.” He chucks my chin and goes into the shower, and I can’t explain the relief I feel. He’s never lied to me. His words aren’t so bountiful, but they carry such weight. He is winning this year, and whatever he’s negotiating, Nora will be free soon. Marginally relieved, I go pull out my oils. It takes him exactly four minutes to soap up, wash his hair, and step out with a towel around his waist while he uses another to dry his chest.

“Get over here and let me rub you down,” I tell him, and as he follows me to the bench that we usually find at the foot of most of our hotel beds, he pulls me into his arms and kisses the hollow of my ear.

“Who do you belong to?” he asks softly.

“Some lucky guy.” I urge him down to sit, fighting the urge to kiss every inch of him just yet.

“Tell me his name,” he commands as he drops down so that I can rub his muscles. He watches me kneel before him and set all my materials nearby, and he wears a devastatingly sexy tilt to his lips that is frankly irresistible.

“Why? Do you like the way his name sounds in my voice?” I ask as I unscrew the lid of my arnica oil.

“I fucking love it. Tell me his name now.” Hot blue eyes watch me as I pour the oil into my palms and rub my hands together to warm the liquid before sliding it slickly along his chest and shoulders.

“But . . . he’s . . . complicated,” I whisper, curling my fingers around his collarbone and throat. “I know him very well, and yet . . .” I pause and rub the arnica oil all down the solid length of one muscled arm. “And at the same time, he’s always still a mystery.” Sliding back up his arm and to stroke the oil across his trapezoids, I whisper in his ear, “He goes by Riptide sometimes, but I call him Remy. And I’m crazy about him.”

His chest rumbles with a chuckle, and I see the little stars of delight dancing inside his eyes as he looks into my face and tweaks my nose. “You’re good for my ego, Brooke my-pregnant-beauty Dumas.”

“But don’t let that ego get even bigger,” I warn him, now rubbing the warm oil along his pecs as I drop my voice and tell him, “You’re mine.”

Smiling, I slide my fingers down his forearm, I stroke down to his palm, then I impulsively lift his hand and kiss his knuckles, looking into his blue eyes, which shine with tenderness as he watches me. “This is mine, too?” I ask uncertainly.

He lowers his voice to a playful rasp as he runs the back of a finger along my cheek. “Depends, little firecracker. Do you want it?”

“I want it.”

“Then it’s yours, baby girl.”

Taking his other hand, I repeat what I did with the first one and kiss his knuckles. “And this one?”

“Do you want it?” He raises his eyebrows and happily jerks his head in the direction of the door. “All those ladies out there wanted it.”

“But
I
want it,” I protest.

He smiles indulgently and runs the back of a finger down my jaw again. “Then it’s yours.”

My voice thickens when I jerk down his towel so I can slick the oil into his calves and powerful thighs. I admire his sexy smile, those dimples and that rumpled hair. I ask, “What about you? All of you?” As I slick my oily hands up his eight-pack, I lift my head to search for his lips. He groans when I lick the seam of his mouth. Softly. I continue massaging his flesh as I start moving my lips over his. He’s a fighting machine and he’s mine, and my eyes briefly slide shut as I tend to him and breathe, “What about you, Remington? Are you mine?”

His thick rasp makes my nipples bead. “Do you want me?”

God. My adorable big man of a boy. A boy with the strength of a thousand men. Playful and possessive. I am dying from need and love as I whisper, “I want you,” in his ear. “All of you. Black and blue and any other shade you come in.”

Groaning, he draws my head down to his lips and kisses me, hard and deeply. “I’ll answer that to you in bed.” He grabs my hand as if ready for the bed part, but I laugh and pull back.

“Five more minutes!”

He shakes his head. “Two.”

“Four.”

“Three, now take it or I’ll toss you up on the bed right over there, right this second.”

“Done.”

“Done, I toss you up on the bed?” he prods.

“Done, three more minutes!” I cry laughingly, speeding up my hands as I rub them along his hard pecs. My laugh fades when my thoughts drift back to the Scorpion’s men. “She used to slip into my bed at night when she had nightmares. She had such a vivid imagination, she’d see things, good and bad, where there weren’t any.”

“What are you talking about?” he asks huskily.

“Nora,” I say, unable to hide the sadness in my voice. “I just want you to know why I . . . I don’t know. Why I’ve always protected her. She seemed to need me, and we fell into those roles. She’s always needed protecting. But now I wonder if I don’t let her solve her own problems, will she ever learn a lesson? I’ve always wanted to protect her but now nothing will ever make me risk the baby and you, not even her.”

His expression is so gentle and understanding, a little knot of emotion winds in my chest. “Shh. Relax,” he says, stroking a hand down my hair. “He’s not getting the championship, or the prize, or your sister. He’s not winning. I. Get. It all. Do you hear me? I get the gold, the championship, the sister’s freedom . . . And I get to protect, and please, and love my girl.”

A group of deer leap across the greenbelt area behind the sprawling gardens of the Austin rental home. I point at them and say, “Look!” but Remy just grunts; he’s a little busy flipping a gigantic tractor tire over, again and again.

It’s so hot here in Texas, sweat trickles down my neck and dips into my cleavage.

Squinting in the afternoon sun, I ask Remy and Coach if they want anything from inside, and Coach shakes his head, while Remy grunts and starts turning the tire in the opposite direction.

“We’re almost done,” Coach lets me know. I nod and raise two fingers—meaning it’ll take me two minutes to go make my fifth trip into the house for lemonade.

Inside the house, I spot Riley at the edge of the living room, and he’s so motionless I almost
don’t
see him. His hands are jammed in his suit pockets, and he’s staring at the front door with a huge frown. My body kicks straight into high-alert mode, and a cold little kernel settles deep inside my tummy.

“His parents,” I say in disgust.

His
parents
. Two specimens of people who did not deserve a penis and ovaries, much less be permitted to reproduce something as magnificent as Remington! Raise him? Oh, no. Those assholes just grabbed their boy, checked him into a mental institute, and never came back.

Tight-lipped, Riley gives me an affirmative gesture. “Pete’s handling it.”

Curling my arms around my stomach by pure protective instinct, my gaze falls on the front door along with his. “Why do they keep bothering him? Do they want to make amends?”

“Brooke!” Riley almost chokes on my name, his laugh one of the most humorless, sad laughs I’ve ever heard anyone give. “They’re assholes. We’ve gone through this dozens of times and they know Remington will make them go away with a damn check.”

A potent anger overtakes me as I think of the way Remy gets restless every time we even get near his hometown. Last season, his parents looked him up again and found themselves on the receiving end of a check with his signature.

“They don’t deserve anything from him.
Anything
,” I whisper.

Before I know it, I’m charging across the living room.

“B! Just let Pete make them scat,” Riley proposes to me.

But instead I swing the door open and there they are, on the porch, pretty as you please. The man . . . he’s big as a mountain, beautifully aged. I swear it almost hurts to see the resemblance to Remy in him. Eyes the same electric-blue shade as Remy’s instantly train on me, but the expression in these eyes is completely different. The life and vitality, the drive and strength I see in Remington’s eyes are completely lacking in his father’s.

And his mother? As she surveys me with a critical eye, I survey her back, and in that neat little homemaker dress, she looks small, calm, and sweet—which only makes the confusion I feel more overwhelming.

These are people I could smile at in an elevator, or passing by on the street. They seem good and caring, but how can they be? How can they have abandoned Remy and then have the gall to come knocking on his door, again and again, like it’s their right to?

The mere thought of abandoning this little baby I hold inside me repulses me, and I still can’t fathom why anyone would do that to their own son.

“You’ve left him alone his entire life. Why can’t you leave him alone now?” I demand, glowering.

They have the gall to look genuinely horrified at either my appearance or my outburst—or, quite possibly, both.

“We want to talk to him,” the woman says.

Because that’s what she is, just a woman. I can never look at her and think of her as anyone’s mother, especially Remy’s.

“Look . . . we’ve heard about the baby,” she adds. Her eyes drop to my stomach, and I feel Pete draw closer to me, as though he expects her to reach out and touch my stomach, and he, on behalf of Remington, plans to stop her. “This baby,” the woman continues, pursing her lips into a thin line and gesturing at me, “could be just like him. Do you realize?”

“Yes,” I say, thrusting my chin up. “I
hope
he is.”

“Our son is in
no
condition to be a father!” the man thunders in a deep, booming voice that startles me. “He can hurt someone. He needs to be medicated and
contained
!”

“Ohmigod, you hypocrites!
You
want to talk about good parents?” I ask, so outraged my lungs can’t even work right now. “Your
son
has grown into an honorable, noble man despite what he has to deal with, when
you’re
the ones who abandoned your only child! You took his childhood and threw him away, and you want to come here to tell him how to live the rest of his life?”

“Our son is sick! We want him to be treated and to check in with the mental facility periodically to make sure he’s calm and serene, like a normal person,” the woman says.

“No! You’re the ones who are! At least
he
knows what his problem is, but I think you both should figure out yours.”

The door behind us swings open, and Riley steps out with the fiercest glare I’ve ever seen him wear.

“You missed out on an incredible human being,” Riley says, and they look so shocked at his calm, threatening words, I think this is the first time he’s stepped out to greet them too. “As his parents, you were supposed to lift him up and hold him up. We’re not sorry for him, really, because he thrived. But we are sorry for
you
.”

“We’re his
family
,” Remy’s mother huffs.

“You
were
his family,” Pete corrects as he steps closer to me. “He’s ours now. And this is the last time we will ask you to leave. Next time we see you here unwelcomed, we’ll get the authorities involved.”

The man looks at me, and it feels so strange, eyes so much like Remy’s glaring at me with such cold contempt instead of tender heat. “You have to have some silly head on you to let my son get you like that,” he tells me, pointing at my stomach.

Suddenly I’m drawn back into a muscled wall. My breath tangles in my throat when a huge hand opens protectively over my midsection, and the sound of Remington’s voice from over the top of my head sends all the little hairs in my arms standing.

“Come near her or anything of mine again, and I’ll show you in a heartbeat how dangerous I am,” he says in a dead flat tone, all the more predatory for its quietness.

The volatile energy emanating from his large frame makes my pulse accelerate in anticipation of his parents’ reply. Neither of them seems capable of holding Remington’s stare too long. Lips pursed tight, the man grabs his wife and drags her down the walkway toward the small car at the curb.

My limbs are shaking, most of my weight resting back against Remy when he clenches my hips and tightly murmurs, “Get in.”

We go inside.

Remington grabs a water bottle from the kitchen and drinks it all down quickly. He’s still in his workout gear, his muscles glistening. He shakes his wet hair then he drops down on one of the living room couches and sends the empty bottle spinning on the floor, angrily watching it twirl. His elbows rest on his knees, his broad shoulders hard and tense, and his dark head is bent as he stares at nothing but that spinning bottle. Round and round it goes.

“I don’t think your parents like your choice of woman, Rem,” Riley speaks first. He’s trying to make light of what just happened, but nobody laughs. The tension in the air is so thick you’d have to hack at it with an axe.

Remington lifts his head and pins me down with violently tender blue eyes. “They ever come near you, I’m the first to know. Do you hear me, firecracker?”

The fierce protectiveness in his gaze makes an equally protective feeling wrap tightly around my gut. “They weren’t looking for me, they were looking for
you
.”