My mother visibly softens, but it is my father who speaks first. “I’ll welcome him into the family when he proves to me he deserves to be the father of my grandchild!” He stands up, huffing, and walks to the door, slamming it behind him. I hang my head.

“I shouldn’t even be up. I’m going to bed, Mom,” I whisper.

“Brooke.” Her slow, hesitant footsteps follow me to my bedroom. She stops at the door and says nothing as I climb into bed; instead, I feel her worried gaze on my back for a moment. “Didn’t you use protection, sweetie?” she asks quietly.

“God, I’m not going to even answer that,” I say.

She remains at the door while a heavy silence settles between us, and I curl into a ball and stare off into my pin wall, at the picture that Remington touched. I won’t cry. I swear, I’m sick of crying, and I’m trying not to hate them just because I’m lonely, misunderstood, and hormonal. I know they love me. All they know is that some guy got me pregnant and dumped me here and that this baby will be a challenge for me. They don’t know anything except that my life will change, and they’re afraid I can’t handle it. They can be so judgmental even though they love me, I feel myself building up my walls, refusing to share Remy with them. Refusing to share the most precious, valuable, and imperfectly perfect thing in my life. “Go home, Momma,” I say, and she quietly leaves as I remain in bed, staring at all the roses he sent me.

And I see those blue eyes. . . .

You’re mine.

Both of you.

My throat hurts, and my eyes follow.

“Brooke, I’m here,” Nora says from the hall.

I don’t answer her. I’m so angry. She seems to sense danger in the air, because she lingers by the door and doesn’t enter. “You okay? Did you lose the baby?” she asks. My rage roils inside me.

“Thanks for betraying me, Nora,” I mumble. “And thanks for showing your complete and utter appreciation for Remington and what he did for you!”

“They had to know you were pregnant, Brooke!” she cries.

“It was my secret to tell, not yours!” I burst out, shooting up to sit on the bed. “Why are you attacking him? He did nothing but save you! What, you wanted a chance to look good to them, so you screwed me over? Who told you? I know it wasn’t Melanie; she’d never do this to me.”

Nora’s eyes are also a shade of amber, just a fraction darker than mine, but that’s where all our similarities end. How can we be so different? She was always the dreamer, and I the realist, but even so we’ve never felt so apart as we do today.

“Pete told me,” she says.

I groan, forgetting they have something for each other.

“It slipped! He assumed I knew and I felt embarrassed I didn’t know! You wouldn’t be hiding it if it weren’t wrong, Brooke. He’s Riptide! You’ll be discarded just like I was, if not worse. Those men are dangerous, Brooke. You’re never free of them, never.”

“Remington is not like your sick asshole of an ex-boyfriend! I am freaking in love with him and he loves me and I will have his baby if it KILLS ME, Nora!” I scream.

She blinks and I can’t even go on. Maybe I’m resentful that because of her, I almost ruined my life. Because of her—and me wanting to “rescue” her—Remington got hurt. “I’m sorry, Nora, I just . . .” I rub my face and shake my head drearily.

“I thought he was in love with me too, you know.” Her sadness creeps up on me, and I feel an awful wringing sensation inside me. “Benny, I mean. I thought he would give anything for me, and the moment it was difficult to keep me, he threw me away.” She looks at me, her face tired and sad. “He told me he loved me, and then he didn’t even look me in the eye to say good-bye. If I said anything to Mom and Dad, it’s because I don’t want that to happen to you.”

“Remy is different, Nora,” I say softly.

“Exactly. He has a thousand more women after him, Brooke. No. Not a thousand. A million more than Scorpion. He’s the SEX GOD of the Underground. Those guys don’t do wives and babies, they just don’t. I was there too, you know. He just can’t love you that much to go rescue me, me, somebody he hadn’t even met! And lose a prize that was practically already his, all for you? Nobody in their right mind can love anyone like that!” she cries and runs out, slamming the door shut.

The door shudders afterward, and I blink at it, completely floored.

What. The hell. Is my sister smoking now?

I sit there, reeling about it all. Then I get up, turn the lock, strip my clothes, and brush my hair, setting it loose because I need to feel pretty and I need my Real. Holy god, how I need him. I just want something good to happen today and I want him to think I’m all right and safe, just like he wanted me to be.

I text him telling him I’d downloaded Skype to his iPad before the flight and left his user name and password on a Post-it. I then open my laptop and log in and wait. I seem to doze off with the phone next to me, and when I wake up later, I see Remington Tate: 11 missed calls.

“Oh, no!” I dial, and it rings, but he doesn’t pick up. I dial and dial, then I groan and shove it aside, pulling the covers up to my neck, suddenly cold.

I’m falling asleep again when I hear a little buzz. I see his name blinking, and my heart jumps and I click to answer, the sheets falling to my waist. “Are you there?” I ask.

I adjust my laptop screen while butterflies roar inside me. “Hey. I can’t see you! Move your—”

“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” he says.

“You won’t think that when you see me,” I dare.

I see him then. Propped back against the headboard . . . bare-chested and, I suspect, recently bathed . . . and my breath is history at the sight of his achingly boyish face. The hotel room is completely illuminated behind him, and my eyes narrow in suspicion.

“You’re not sleeping, are you?” I ask him.

He surveys me, and I survey back, trailing my gaze over his tan chest, all along his muscled arm, to the half-full blue Gatorade in his hand. The sight of all those muscles, the Celtic tattoos, his pectorals, his throat—god, those thick tendons of his throat, where I tuck my nose in at night—makes all my body tingle with remembrance of what it feels and smells and looks like.

A ribbon of need unfurls painfully inside me, and it spreads throughout my being until I can think only of this need: to kiss and hold him, touch and nuzzle him, smell his neck; his hair, feel his breath on me and every little callus of his.

Then I realize he’s still looking at me, the top of my body fully naked, and I’m instantly wet when I see the territorial, fuck-my-mate look in his eyes.

“Is this supposed to make me feel good?” he asks gruffly, staring at my breasts. “It’s fucking torture looking at you behind a screen.”

“Remy . . .” I say.

His eyebrows draw low over his eyes. “I don’t want you on your own. Is somebody there with you?”

“Nora was here, and I think Mel is outside with her now.” I leave it at that, because right now, I don’t want to tell him anything about my parents until it has all calmed down. He was rejected by his own parents and I swear that whatever I have to do, he won’t be rejected by mine. “Don’t worry, I’m not alone,” I assure him.

He nods, raking his fingers through his hair in frustration. Then he drops his face and rubs the screen with both hands. He lifts his head and narrows his eyes. “I want to touch you. I’m about to take a bite out of this fucking screen.”

A small laugh leaves me, then I groan and cover my eyes, too. Skyping is not such a great idea. Oh god, it makes you yearn. I see him and yearn and hurt and it aches. “It hurts to see you. I want to smell you too,” I say.

He lifts a camisole of mine. “I found this in my suitcase.” He lifts it and smells it, and I gasp and can almost feel his nose at my neck, scenting me. Licking me.

“Shit, Brooke, I want to be there, take you in my arms, spread you open on your bed, and fuck you until tomorrow.”

Desire explodes in my stomach as those rough words hit me. “Oh, god, me too.”

His eyes flash as he leans forward, the muscles in his upper body rippling with the move. “I wish I were there so I could squeeze your breasts and bite the tips and tell you how much I want you.”

My bones have disintegrated inside me. The place between my legs now burns and yearns. My voice is achy and needy, full of arousal. “I want you like I’ve never wanted anything in my life,” I breathe, my bare breasts already puckered in the air and sensitive even to the brush of the air-conditioning.

“Do you want my cock in you?” he asks roughly.

Exhaling a shaky breath, I curl my fingers around my breasts merely because they’re suddenly heavy and hurting. They’re hurting so much for him. “Remy, you’re killing me.”

“No. This is killing me,” he says softly, rubbing the screen in a way that lets me imagine his thumb scraping my lips, running down my jaw, circling the hard points of my nipples. “Tell me you want my cock in you and then pretend your fingers are me. Drop your hands, Brooke. Show me your nipples.”

“Remy,” I say, my heart squeezing in need as I close my hands around my breasts.

A low, rumbling growl rips up his throat as he leans even closer. “Brooke,” he rasps, rubbing his thumb over the screen again. “When I see you I’m going to get my fucking hands all over you. I’m going to run my tongue all over your pretty body. Then I’m going to rub it for hours against your clit.”

“Oh, god, Remy . . .” My clit throbs between my thighs as I rock my hips as I think about licking his neck, his chest, the star tattoo on his navel.

“Why are you holding your breasts in your hands? Are you pretending that it’s me?” he demands huskily. When I nod, he tells me, “Good. Then pinch them slowly, like you like it. And then go south and rub yourself for me.”

“But I want to touch you,” I say, his command sending prickles of excitement racing across my skin. “I want to run my tongue all over your chest and lick your nipples as I stroke my hands down your biceps and rub up your quads and abs. . . .”

His eyes twinkle with mischief and he shakes his head. “No, Brooke,” he chides me. “Don’t talk sexy to me if you’re not going to do what I tell you first.”

“I’ll go south if you go south too,” I dare him, my pulse beating frantically in my throat while the heat he’s kindling inside me starts to slowly, surely, burn me.

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.