Mine (Real, #2)(20)
I drag my fingernails up to his temple, teasing them into his hair. “What did you think about when you grew up there?”
“I just took what I had and was satisfied with it.” He brushes my hair back and strokes my earlobe. “But if I’d known you existed, I’d have hunted you, I’d have caught you, and I’d have taken you.”
“But isn’t that what you did?” I ask, smiling.
“Exactly”—he bumps my nose with his, his blue eyes laughing—“what I did.”
Sighing, I rest my head on his shoulder and rub my fingers over his nipples.
He’s the best bed. He’s lying on his back, one arm behind the pillow, the other trailing over my spine, and I’m spread all over him, my tummy to his abs, my breasts on his lower pectorals, my head on his shoulder and perfectly aligned to tuck into his neck. He smells of different soap every time, with so many hotels we go to, and at the same time, he always smells like him.
Quietly, I run my fingers up his bicep and lightly massage it. “That better?” I prod, working deeply into the muscle and realizing it is f*cked up. Damn him.
But he says, “Yeah,” like it’s nothing and rolls me to my side. My insides immediately go hyperaware as he starts maneuvering me. He tucks me closer, and I moan softly deep in my throat and my sex swells because I realize what he’s going to do. He rolls me around to my side and adjusts me to spoon me, his big body warm and hard behind mine. He brushes my hair back and licks me, and I shudder as he slowly starts petting one heavy hand down my curves.
He licks me, pets me, drags his hand down my body while he flicks his tongue along the back of my ear, at my nape, the curve of my shoulder, lapping and tasting me.
Remy has thrived without love, even paternal love. He has thrived even when he fights a mood disorder every day of his life. He has thrived and gotten up every time he has fallen. The only times I have truly fallen, in my Olympic tryouts and when he lost last year’s fight, I’ve been permanently marked and have hobbled to get back walking. Yet he instantaneously stands to run.
He is so complicated and unpredictable, I fear that even when I’ve given everything of myself to this man, he will always have me, but he will never really be mine.
“I’m hungry,” he tells me in my ear, then eases out of bed and jumps into his drawstring pajama bottoms.
“Oh, no, I want to sleep . . .” I groan, and clutch my pillow as he grabs my ankles and hauls me down the length of the bed.
“Come eat with me, little firecracker.”
“Noooooo . . .” I clutch the pillow to me as he drags me down the bed and, in my last attempt to remain in bed, I kick into the air. “I’m getting fat because of you!” I laughingly squeak.
With a low, sexy chuckle, he lifts me up as if I were just the pillow, then tosses the pillow aside, only keeping me to kiss. “You’re beautiful.”
“Every beautiful woman in the world is beautiful because she sleeps,” I protest weakly, at the same time nuzzling his throat.
He grabs one of his Tshirts from his suitcase and hands it to me. I wiggle into it as he carries us out to the living area of the penthouse suite, then he drops me down on a chair and fishes out his food. He brings two plates, one heaping, and the other containing more normal portions. Then he plops down across from me and pats his lap with a meaningful stare.
I lean back in my chair and start eating an asparagus spear from the tip. “We have very bad eating habits. If you take me to a restaurant, I can’t eat perched on your lap like some sort of canary. People will think we have problems.”
He sticks a roasted cauliflower floret into his mouth and munches. “Who cares?”
“Excellent point.” Eating the stalk of asparagus down to the end, I observe him across me, with those tattoo bracelets on his arms, his hair a delicious mess, and his blue eyes twinkling. God. He is all. I want. In this world. Right on that chair. “And this is actually not as comfortable as you, I admit.” I squirm in the chair for emphasis.
He lifts a brow, his eyes sparkling devilishly. “Stop playing hard-to-get, Brooke. I already got you.” He tosses a paper napkin at me. I grab another, wad it, and toss it. He sets the fork down and reaches one long arm out to grab the end of my chair. He hauls it across the floor, and the moment he can wrap his arm around my waist, I squeak as he transfers me over.
“Settle down now. We both want you here.” He cups my face and turns me, his lips curling in a tender smile as he surveys my features with new intensity. “We okay now?”
Linking my fingers at the back of his neck, I meet his gaze. “Mostly I’m just angry at me. I’m hurt and jealous. . . . It makes no sense in my head, but the rest of me doesn’t listen. I just didn’t expect to have so much trouble figuring out how to cope with this.”
“You cope knowing I love you, that’s how you cope. I f*cking love you,” he hisses. “I want nothing more than to tell you it didn’t happen,” he continues, looking tortured, “There’s only one woman for me and I’d kill myself for you.” He nuzzles me like he means it, then trains his beseeching blue eyes on me. I swear I don’t think I’ve ever loved him so much as right now, this moment. “Forgive me. I forgave you, little firecracker. I forgave you before you even asked me to forgive you for leaving me. I wasn’t me when you left, baby, whatever pieces of me remained . . . that wasn’t me.”