“But I mean really excited,” Pete says, clearing his throat meaningfully.

I hear a yell in the background, and a toe-curlingly familiar voice saying, “’Cause I’m the motherfucking king!!”

I stop packing and straighten, my eyes widening. “Is that him?”

“Yeah! He’s getting speedy.”

“Get over here already! I’m dying to see him!”

“The fight ends late tonight. But before the sun comes up, we’ll be flying your way.”

“Those motherfuckers want a piece of Riptide, they’re going to get fucking drowned!” I hear in the background.

Laughing in sheer joy, I instinctively wrap my arm around my tiny stomach. “Is he black then?”

“Not yet, but he’s getting there. I think it’s accumulated. We’re surprised he lasted this long. Fair warning, though. See you soon.”

“Pete, you watch out for him! No women, Pete.”

“You’re joking, right? They could tear their panties off right now and he wouldn’t be looking anywhere but toward Seattle.”

“Can I talk to him?” I ask, and my chest feels all this weird, excited tightness.

A moment passes, then his deep, guttural voice spills out through the receiver and flies straight to my heart. “Baby, I’m so pumped up, I’m ready to kick ass and come get you.”

“I know you are!” I say laughingly.

“I’m gonna KO everything they bring out, just for you.”

“And I’ll be waiting for you early morning too!”

“All right, sit tight—I’m coming to get you. Wear a dress for me. No. Wear something nice and tight. Wear your hair down. Or pulled up, shit, that drives me crazy too.”

“I’ll pull it up so you can take it down yourself,” I offer.

He drags in an audible breath, and then there’s a long silence, as if he’s imagining doing just that.

“Yeah,” he finally murmurs, and I can hear the growing terseness in his voice.

“Yeah?” I don’t sound any better, clutching the phone.

I can hear his breath calming down, and he sounds like he’s getting all rough and tender, like he does with me. “Yeah, do that.”

He melts me, and the flutters in me get newly recharged. I pack all day and then shower, soap up, try on a thousand things to wear, even a couple of dresses. I try my hair up and down and twisted, and then settle on a nice loose white linen dress and nude ballet flats with my hair up in the loose ponytail I frequently wear.

The next day, I don’t think I’ve ever prettied up so much in my life, and I can hardly sit still in Melanie’s convertible. Mel is one of those few who’ve decided that even if it rains more than two hundred days a year in Seattle, the other 165 are worth driving with the top down—and here we are, with the top down, on one of those pretty and sunny 165 days, waiting for the jet to land.

“I think I see it,” I say, pointing at the blue sky.

“Brookey, you’re so sweet like this. It’s like all your walls have come down and you’re a fifteen-year-old completely in over her head.” Melanie is thoroughly amused, her green eyes twinkling, her sunglasses perched atop her head.

I can’t even respond, because the jet’s two back wheels are touching ground, and the plane is so white and beautiful, streaked with a blue and silver line across its center that goes all the way to its elegant tail, I can only watch it land. Excitement makes my pulse dance as I curl my fingers around the car door. “It feels like I haven’t seen him in a year.”

“I’m glad to know I was able to make your time go by fast,” Mel says sarcastically, and then she squeaks and pulls me forward with a clink of her bracelets. “Hug your damn chauffeur—I brought you to the airport, didn’t I?” As the plane taxis to the FBO hangar where we’re parked, I turn and hug her so tight I almost hurt her. “I love you, Mel. Be good, and come see me soon?”

“I will, when I finish with my current projecto!” Then she nudges me and nods behind me. “There he is.”

I turn. The plane is parked so close one of its wings is less than a dozen feet from Mel’s car. As the stairs are being pulled down by one of the pilots, I anxiously yank the car door open when Melanie screams, “Your stuff, silly girl! Hey, don’t forget your head is on you!”

I come get my bag first, and when I turn again, Remington is covering the door. A thousand and one bells clang excitedly inside me. I know I should go haul my suitcases out of Mel’s trunk but when he swings down, taking three steps at a time, and hits the pavement, I run. It feels like now I can run—and I run straight into his open arms.

I squeak and he catches me, squeezes me, and swings me around, laughing with me. Then we look at each other, my breasts heaving against his hard wall of a chest, my toes still hovering inches from the ground as he holds me in his arms, and I see how the little blue flecks in his eyes catch the sunlight as he looks down at me like he wants to hug me, pet me, feed me, and fuck me, all at the same time.

“Take me home,” I breathe, clinging to his neck as he lowers me to the ground.

“My pleasure,” he rasps, engulfing half my face in one big hand. His forehead falls to rest on mine as he angles his lips to mine, and we hear Mel yell, “Remy, take care of her! She plays a tough little cookie, but her melted chocolate center is for you, you know!”

He laughs and goes to thank her. Riley hops off the plane and heads directly to Mel. “Hey, friend,” he calls.

Melanie “hey friends” him back as Riley pats Remington’s shoulder. “I’ll get her suitcases.”

I watch as Remington comes back to me, his body moving sinuously in his loose jeans and a gray T-shirt that is supposed to be loose but hugs all the right muscles in the right ways, and I’m not even breathing when he scoops me up in his arms and looks down at me with eyes that blaze two words: You’re mine.

He carries me into the plane as if we’re a bride and groom and the threshold of the plane is the door to our new home. Diane squeals and Coach and Pete start clapping when he sets me on my feet inside.

“Yay! There she is!” Pete says.

“Ooooh, Brooke, you look so beautiful pregnant!”

“Now at last my boy can keep his head in the game,” Coach grumbles, almost groaning in relief. With a soft laugh, I reach out to hug them, noticing that Remington tightens his hold on my waist and has trouble releasing me so that I can.

Riley climbs the plane then. “Damn, that girl looks good all the time. And so do you, B! You shine like a star!”

I hear a low growl behind me, and I think Remington has had enough of me hugging everyone. Before Riley can take a step forward, Remy grabs me by the hips and takes me, half carrying me, toward our seat in the back, and I know he’s extra possessive when he’s black, so I just settle down and lift his hand to lovingly kiss all his bruised knuckles.

“All right, Rem. She’s back, so no more throwing hotel stuff! We need you fully concentrated,” Pete says, in full business mode as the plane begins to taxi.

“As soon as we check in, I need your ass at the gym. I’ll be damned if I’ll let you face that motherfucker unprepared as we head to the semifinals,” Coach says.

“I’m always at my best—it’s my fucking ring he’s in,” Remington answers, but he’s only half listening, his expression fiercely protective as he watches me kiss each of his knuckles.

“Thatta boy! That’s what I like to hear,” Coach says.

Remy turns his hand in mine so that his thumb can scrape my bottom lip. Liquid black-gray eyes rake over me, and the male appreciation in his gaze only confirms that this white linen dress was definitely the way to go. I’m three months pregnant, but I swear, just the way he looks at me now makes me feel like a virgin.

He reaches out, and I hold my breath in anticipation of his touch, of his hand, warm and strong, the calluses on my cheeks. I can’t breathe as I feel the back of one lone finger curl and slide softly down my jaw. “Have you been thinking about me?”

“No,” I tease.

He smiles indulgently and drags the back of that finger down to my chin, back up to my temple, and to trace the shell of my ear. “Someone else on your mind?”

Delirious with the sparks his touch ignites, I still manage to shrug mysteriously. He smiles indulgently again, like he knows there’s no way I can think of anything but him—the center of the universe and the king of the world.

“You taking good care of my baby?” he asks roughly, and he blatantly lifts the skirt of my dress and slides his hand up and up, past my thighs and panties, so he can spread his fingers out on my bare abdomen. “Or have you been stealing out at night with a wig in old ladies’ dresses?”

The team up in their seating area seem to have just asked him something, but he only makes sure the skirt of my dress is still covering the tops of my legs as he keeps his hand inside, and I can’t even think, because the skin-to-skin contact has scrambled my brain. He smiles tenderly down at me as if he knows what he’s doing to me. Then he slides his free hand under the fall of my hair and starts caressing me. An embarrassing purring sound leaves me, and I hear his answering chuckle as he watches me. Two months of abstinence. Of wanting and missing and longing. Now all my cells buzz awake. He’s not even touching my breasts, which ache and feel heavier than ever. He’s not even touching my sex, which is soaked and clutching with need, but oh god, I feel pleasure from the roots of my hair to the soles of my feet.

His hand holds steady over my abdomen, skin to skin, but his fingertips massage my scalp as he works toward my ponytail, and I feel the touch of his fingertips in every part of my body.

His chest expands on a deep breath as he ducks his head and touches his nose to my neck, and I notice he’s breathing me in. Hot liquid need floods me and I almost whimper. Curling my fingers around the back of his muscled arms, under the sleeve of his soft T-shirt, I breathe his name, and before I can finish it, he turns his head to mine and slides his tongue between the seam of my lips. Oh, please, oh, oh.

The moist lap of his tongue comes back again. Pleasure shudders through me as my lips part, while my famished body screams at him to give me more, give me everything I want and love and need right now, right now, please, right now.

He gives it to me, but slowly. He savors me, his hand opening on my nape, his thumb caressing the band of my ponytail . . . killing me softly. . . . I moan and rub his shoulders as he parts my lips wider and delves in to taste, deeper, wetter. We’re moving so slow, it’s like a dream. Then he starts fucking my mouth headily, heavily, savoring every centimeter he gains with his tongue, prolonging the length he withdraws before he once again comes forward to taste me. Heat spills through my body—he’s driving me insane.

He undoes my ponytail and eases back to watch as my hair spills down to my shoulders, and his eyes, so black right now, devour me. He’s manic and he’s hungry, but he seems so happy—almost relieved—to see me, that I can see dozens of brilliant lights shining in his irises.

He slides his hand to the small of my back and pulls me close as he comes back in. His kiss roughens, and my head falls back to the seat from the force. Moaning, I move my mouth feverishly under his and don’t realize I’m clinging until I feel his shirt fisted in my hands.

“I missed you,” I gasp into his moving mouth, and he growls softly and licks down my neck. Every kiss is fire, back up my neck, to my ear.

“Tonight, after the fight,” he tells me, his breath deep and slow, mine fast and labored.

He squeezes me as he stares down at me, surveying the dazed smile on my lips. “Your wish is my command.”

“I command that you’re mine this night again—you’re mine forever.”

He says it so seriously, I laugh, but he doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t even smile. He’s looking at me as if waiting for me to say, once again, even if teasingly, that his wish is my command. I stroke his stubbly jaw. “What are you going to do to me tonight?”

He breathes in my ear, nibbling me softly. “Kiss you. Stroke and fondle you. Lick you. Pet you. Fuck and love you. Make you fall asleep with me in you.” He moves his fingers, huge and strong and scarred, on my abdomen. “Don’t you remember who put this in you?”

“Oh, I remember. It makes me hot to remember.”

“And it makes me want to put a thousand of these in you. But why don’t you look pregnant by me? Are you eating well?”

“Yes! Why?” I straighten as he withdraws his hand from under my dress. “You want me to blow up? You want everyone to know I’m pregnant?”