Remy

PRESENT SEATTLE

Brooke

I wake up snuggled into his hard body the next morning, and he smells like he does, and he makes me feel like he does, and I realize I still haven’t shown him his wedding present. My tummy grips with nerves and excitement when I remember I haven’t showed him my wedding present. Butterflies.

He always gives them to me.

I feel like a virgin every, single, time, he touches me, and kisses me, and makes love to me.

Quietly and with a chest overflowing with happiness, I look up to find him with his eyes closed, but a smile on his lips. I smile because I know he’s awake . . . as relaxed as I am. “Mr. Remington Tate, you got yourself married yesterday,” I whisper as I run my fingers up the hard muscles of his tan chest, up the thick tendons of his throat, his scruffy jaw, those beautiful dimples, teasing past the closed eyes, and to the standing-up ends of his spiky black hair, caressing him quietly while inwardly I’m swooning.

Watching him waiting for me at the altar yesterday, as I walked slowly—painfully slowly—up to him in my father’s arms when all I wanted was to run; he took my breath away.

Remington in a black tuxedo, his hair as dark and spiky as ever, his broad shoulders filling his jacket, fitted to his narrow waist and hips, and the way those dancing blue eyes watched me as I walked up to him . . .

Nothing existed as I stared into his eyes. Nothing ever exists for me when I stare into those eyes. It’s not the color, or the hue, it’s what I see in them. Every marvelous, complex thing that makes up Remy.

“Our baby will be six months soon, and you still give me butterflies,” I whisper quietly.

He’s a man. He might not know about butterflies, but I know enough for the both of us. And I’ve got a zoo full of them right now as he opens his eyes and looks at me. With those same blue eyes I want to stare at all day.

He angles his head to mine and feathers a kiss across my lips, and warmth surges through my being as his rough, delicious voice ripples through me, “You’re mine. My obsession. My dreams. My hope. My heart,” he whispers, his rough hands running up the sides of my body like they did all night.

“Tell me I’m your Real again, Remington,” I plead, trailing my fingers up his jaw as he looks at me.

“You’re my Real, little firecracker. You’re my everything.”

My stomach tightens when I remember the song he played me. The suite still smells of roses. I’ve heard the guys banter with him, telling him to get me something other than roses, something less old-fashioned. He won’t budge. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks about it, only what he believes they mean, and he uses them to talk to me. To tell me he loves me.

Remington is big on actions, even if he might not know it. He’s always proving, in so many ways, who he is, and what he feels. And I’ve done something . . . that I hope talks to him. Just like his roses and his songs talk to me.

Tummy clenching in anticipation, I turn to the nightstand and get one of my hair bands, which I tie around my wrist when I don’t use it to pull my hair in a ponytail. “Will you help me put this on?” I ask, passing it back as an excuse.

He sits up and lifts my hair, and I love how he lifts my hair with one hand while apparently trying to figure out how to use it with the other.

Then the movements stop, and a complete silence falls.

I hold my breath as he sets my hair band down on the mattress, and then he brushes my hair aside to reveal the back of my neck with both hands. Ever so slowly, slowly seducing my body, my mind, and my heart, like only he can, he traces the curve of my nape with the rough pad of one of his fingers.

Delicious tingles run through my body as he lowers his dark head to my neck, the deep male pleasure in his voice unmistakable. “What’s this,” he murmurs, licking it softly.

I feel his tongue rasp over my skin, and my heart flutters for him.

“Whatever it’s on, it means it’s yours,” I breathe. He buries his head in the side of my throat and smells me, murmuring, “That’s right,” then he turns me around by the chin so he can take my mouth and kiss me, long and hard. Remington Tate. My love, my husband, my baby’s beautiful father, kissing me gently as his fingers trace the tattoo on the back of my neck that says simply