As John Wayne plowed his fist into another man’s face, Brick wondered how the hell he’d gotten so fucking lucky. He’d spent the last forty-eight hours hating himself for what he’d said. What he’d done.
What kind of an asshole says “I love you,” delivers a rough good-bye fuck, then walks out while his girl was still on the floor?
The Brick Callan kind of asshole.
He’d been handed the woman of his dreams naked on a platter, and what had he done? He’d immediately looked for reasons why they wouldn’t work instead of ways they could work.
Remi giggled next to him on the couch. The lights were on low. The fire burning off the chill of the cold night. Snow falling silently outside. Their empty plates were stacked on the coffee table. Magnus was curled up on Remi’s feet under the blanket, exhausted from his catnip high.
It was like a fantasy. Not all of his fantasies had involved Remi naked. Some had been staged just like this. A quiet, snowy night with the woman he loved curled against him, borrowing his heat.
He stroked his hand through her hair, and she let out a sigh that sounded almost like a purr. It was perfect. This moment.
The fight on-screen moved from the pub into the street. Apparently, public brawls were a sport in Ireland. One he understood. He’d fight for Remington. He’d fight any enemy to keep her safe, to defend her honor. He’d fight to show her what was in his heart.
He let his fingers whisper up and down her arm. Slowly, rhythmically. Reassuring himself that she was there.
She wanted to spend time with him. To date without the distraction of sex. Of course, he’d been rail-hard since the second she’d walked in wearing her ridiculous plaid pajamas with her hair a mess and her face scrubbed clean. She was more beautiful to him like this. Because this felt like the real Remi.
Dipping his head, he indulged himself and dropped a kiss to her fiery hair. She looked up at him. Those wide green eyes spearing right through him.
He loved her. He always had. There had never been another choice.
Slowly he lowered his mouth to hers. The connection they shared was undeniable. His blood heated as her lips moved gently under his. As she sighed into his mouth and he breathed her in. “Remington.”
He took the kiss deeper, fighting to stay easy and sweet. But when he tasted her tongue, when she let out that tiny whimper that went straight to his cock, he was ravenous for her. He teased with tongue and teeth, stroking into her mouth as he pulled her into his lap.
He was so goddamn hard for her. Only her.
Then she was pulling back and taking a ragged breath. Her cheeks were red, and those lips were swollen and parted. It looked like an invitation for more. But when he moved to take her mouth again, she stopped him. “I’m going to head back,” she whispered.
“What?” His arms banded around her, his body tensing at the thought of her leaving. He’d gone two nights without her in his bed. He wouldn’t make it a third. “Don’t people who date spend the night together?”
She gave him a wide-eyed, dazed look. “Brick. Honey. I can’t trust myself to get between the sheets with you and not do all the things we’re not going to do.”
“I think I can fend you off,” he scoffed, tracing a thumb over her lower lip. It quivered at his touch.
She slid around so she was straddling him. But she stayed high on her knees, preventing the friction he craved. “No,” she kissed him. “You can’t.”
Gripping her hips, he yanked her down against his rigid arousal and watched as her eyes went glassy. Her gasp filled him with the kind of filthy desires one night could never quench. He needed more time with her. More from her.
He wasn’t sure if he was testing her or himself. Did she really understand that there was more between them than sex? Did he believe he deserved more from her?
When she put her hands on his shoulders and leaned forward, it was a soft, chaste kiss that she pressed to his mouth.
“Thank you for a really nice night,” she whispered, brushing another kiss over his cheek.
She took his fucking breath away.
“You can’t be serious,” he said as she got off his lap and started to gather their dishes. He rose, taking the plates from her and putting them back down.
“I’m serious. I hurt you. Now I’m making up for it.”
The throbbing erection in his fucking sweatpants was hurting him. He needed to be inside her. Needed to remind her how much she wanted him.
“You made your point,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said anything. We’re good. Come upstairs, Remington.”
“No.” She said it simply, finally, then left the room. He followed her feeling flummoxed and panicky. As if one word from her could stop him from tossing her over his shoulder and carrying her upstairs, making her scream his name as he drowned in her body.
“You know how I feel about you saying no to me,” he said, envisioning how satisfying it would be to tug down those pajama pants and lay a pink handprint on her ass. His pants weren’t even trying to contain his hard-on at this point.
“I’m not making a point or playing games or doing some grand seduction, Brick,” she said as she tugged on her boots.
God damn it. He could see right down her pajama top, and she wasn’t wearing a bra.
She really was leaving.
“I don’t want you to go,” he admitted, his voice whisper-soft.
She straightened and put her arms around his waist, hugging him. “I swear I’m not leaving to punish you or hurt you. I’m committed to doing this right, Brick. You mean a lot to me. More than…more than I think I even realized. I want to show you how important you are.”
“Then stay. Stay with me.”
Her smile was so sad and so sweet it went into his heart like a knife through soft butter. “If I stay, we both know what will happen, and that’s not what either one of us needs.”
He needed it. He needed it desperately.
Fuck. He reached for his coat. “I’ll walk you home.”
“No,” she said firmly. “You can stand here on the porch and watch me cross the street.”
“I want you,” he said, stunned that his voice actually shook.
“I want you, too. But I want to give you more than just a couple of orgasms. Okay?”
He didn’t answer her. Couldn’t answer her. His throat was too tight. Fear lodged in him. He’d pushed her too far. Been too honest. And now he was paying for it. She was leaving him. All under the guise of giving him what he’d stupidly said he wanted.
He wanted to pick her up, carry her upstairs, and reacquaint her with how desperate his need for her was.
But that wouldn’t solve anything.
Magnus wandered up next to him and yawned out a meow.
Brick blew out a breath. He had to let her go. Had to trust that she’d come back.
“Okay,” he said finally.
Her entire face lit up, and giving her what she wanted made him feel powerful in a way that conquering her body didn’t.
“I’m going to be the best damn girlfriend you’ve ever had,” she said brightly.
“Girlfriend?” She’d said the word. She’d labeled them.
“It’s official, big guy. Better get used to it. Thanks for the date.”
She rose on tiptoe and pressed another kiss to his cheek. “Good night, Brick.”
“Good night, Remington.” He stood there on the porch and watched her walk away from him. Watched her skip across the street and let herself in the cottage gate. She turned and waved under the streetlight, and he raised a hand.
“I can’t tell if I really fucked up or if she’s giving me everything I want,” he said to the cat when Remi disappeared. Magnus blinked and wandered back in the house. The lights in the cottage blazed to life, and Brick winced. She needed the lights when he wasn’t there with her.
Because he made her feel safe.
He stood there for another long minute. Waiting, hoping she’d reappear and jump into his arms.
But there was nothing.
His cell phone rang inside, and with a sigh, he closed the front door and went in search of it.
Remi Ford.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded, already turning for the front door.
“Nothing, you big goof. I haven’t had enough time to get into trouble. I just wanted to talk to you while I get ready for bed.”
“Seriously?”
“You’re the one who wanted a relationship,” she teased. “That means we have to have long, meaningful conversations over the phone. Let’s start with what did you want to be when you grew up?”
“A pissed-off, turned-on man waiting for a redhead to come to her senses and climb into his bed.”
“Congratulations on that oddly specific dream coming true.”
“Remi.”
“Brick. Come on. Play along. You might have fun.”
“Not as much fun as if you were naked in my bed.”
“William Eugene Callan the Third. You are not helping my resolve,” Remi said.
She didn’t bust his real name out often, but when she did, she meant business. He cleared his throat. “Fine. I wanted to be a cowboy, a bodyguard, and a game show contestant.”
“What game show?”
“I wanted to win both showcases on The Price is Right. I used to watch it with my mom. What did you want to be?” he asked, carrying their dishes into the kitchen. No room was the same without her in it. She took the light and color with her.
“You know, I don’t think I ever really thought of a job or a label and thought ‘that’s who I want to be,’” she mused.
“I do recall you giving your guidance counselor some migraines.”
“I knew what I wanted to feel instead of what I wanted to do,” she said on an adorable yawn.
“What did you want to feel?” he asked.
“Happy. Respected. Loved. I wanted to feel like I was important to someone beyond my parents and sister. I wanted to matter and not just in the ‘this is my weird little sister who sees music’ way.”
“That’s not how anyone sees you,” Brick said, climbing the stairs to his empty bed.
She sighed. “None of us see ourselves the way others do. Aren’t you the one who just recently confessed to not feeling like he was good enough for a certain someone?”
“This is what you talked to your boyfriends about?”
“I’m talking to you. We’re talking from a safe distance where no one’s clothes will fall off and distract us from the issue at hand.”
He sprawled out on his bed, one hand behind his head, and wished she was next to him. Wished he could turn his head and see that cascade of red hair spilling over his pillows.
“I’d rather talk face-to-face,” he grumbled.
“You’d rather be face-to-face so you can get distracted from talking,” she countered. “Now, tell me why on Miles Davis’s green earth you would ever feel like you’re not good enough.”
His Remi had never looked at him through the lens of reality. Maybe that was one of the reasons why he couldn’t leave her alone. He was addicted to the way she saw him.
“Come on, Brick,” she cajoled. “I really want to know where you got the stupidest idea in the history of stupid ideas.”
He sighed. “You know what my parents were like,” he said finally.
“And?”
“And what? When we met, my father was in prison for fraud.”
“I know that. And now he’s out and running a business according to your brother.”
“Remi, my mom walked away from us like we were nothing.”
“Honey, that doesn’t mean you were nothing. That doesn’t mean anything about anyone but her. Same with your dad.”
“It’s easy for you to say growing up with Darlene and Gilbert Ford, Mackinac’s answer to Leave It to Beaver.”
“I am no more my parents than you are yours.”
“Your parents loved you and each other enough to stay and work and fight for each other.” His gave up, took the easy way out, walked away. Part of him had believed that if he would have been better, his parents would have, too.
She sighed, and he wished she were here in his bed. “It devastates me to know that you don’t realize what a good, honorable man you are.”
His throat tightened. “I love you, Remi.” He knew she wouldn’t say it back. Knew she wasn’t ready. He had his own proving to do there. But he needed her to know. “So fucking much that it hurts.”
“I don’t know what to say,” she confessed.
He recognized the note of panic in her voice and wished he could hold her.
“You don’t need to say anything back. You just need to hear me. Do you?”
“Yes. I do.” She sounded breathless.
His cock swelled against his stomach at the tremble in her voice. The never-ending need for her was a constant hum reverberating in his blood.
“It makes me feel dizzy, like I’m on a carousel trying to get my bearings,” she said.
“That’s how it feels for me, too.”
“Do you really mean it, Brick?”
“Baby, I love you so fucking much I can’t breathe unless you’re in the same room. So much I wish I were saying it to your beautiful face and not just your goddamn ear.”
His doorbell rang, and he swore.
“What’s wrong?”
“Someone’s at the door.”
“Did you replace me already? Did you get yourself a new girlfriend before I even decided to be yours?”
“You were always mine,” he growled as he headed back down the stairs. “Always. The reason I asked Audrey out? Your dad told me about the guy you were dating in school. He sounded like he was perfect for you. A French hipster sculptor with long hair, and I was just a dirty-talking cowboy waiting for you to come home.”
“Jean-Claude? You gave up on me because of Jean-Claude? The guy smelled like mothballs and soup and he brought his fiancée along on our second date just so he could show off the pronunciation for ménage à trois. There was no third date.”
Brick yanked the door open and found Remi standing there. She tossed her phone over her shoulder and jumped into his arms. “I love you. I’m in love with you. I’ve never not loved you,” she said, raining kisses over his cheeks.
He wrapped her legs around his waist and held her tight as he kicked her phone back into the house, then slammed and locked the door.
“Say it again,” he commanded. His heart was going to explode out of his chest.
She cupped his face in her icy hands.
“I didn’t want to say it over the phone. I wanted to say it in person. I love you, Brick William Eugene Callan the Third. I want this to work. I want us to be together here. I want to live near family and paint in your house and wake up next to you.”
His arms banded around her possessively, and his mouth sought hers.
“You’re making my fucking life, Remi,” he groaned.
“Take me upstairs,” she demanded.
There was so much more to discuss. So much more at stake. But for now, the only thing that mattered was in his arms.
He took the stairs two at a time, making her laugh against his lips. Kicking the bedroom door open, he fell on the bed, catching his weight in one hand so as not to crush her.
“Say it again,” he demanded, his voice harsh.
Her green eyes lit up with something that looked a hell of a lot like love. “I love you. So much—Holy shit. Is that mine?”
Remi pushed against him, trying to free herself, but he was never letting go.
She pinched him hard right on the ass. “You bought my painting.”
He lifted his gaze from her face to the small painting he’d hung above his nightstand. “Yeah. Also, I officially hate that Raj guy. He’s a huge pain in the ass.”
“You bought my first piece,” she said, still staring at it.
He ducked his head to press a kiss to her throat. “I saw it in one of the photographs of you in your loft when I was cyberstalking Alessandra Ballard. It made me think of us.”
Her eyes were watery, and she blinked back tears. “Imagine that,” she said softly.
Remi nudged his chin up so he was looking at her.
“What?”
She wet her lips. “Stop settling for pieces, Brick. Take all of me.”
