He hugged her hard, wishing he could keep her right there, against his chest, locked in his arms where she was safe.
“Listen to me, Remington. None of this is your fault. This is how it’s playing out. There’s no point in wishing away how it started. What matters is how we’re ending it.”
“I hope it ends with my foot in his balls,” she whispered fiercely.
He vowed the man would never make it that close to her. Because if he did, a pair of handcuffs and a jail cell weren’t going to be enough.
“I need you to focus on Camille. She’s going to have to talk.”
Remi’s hands fisted in his sweatshirt like she couldn’t bear any space between them. He knew the feeling.
“He’s going to come for you, Brick.”
He hoped to fucking God that was the way it went down. He wanted his shot at the man who haunted Remi’s dreams.
“Don’t think like that,” he told her, stroking his hand over her hair. It settled him to slide his fingers through all that red gold.
“He’s going to come for Camille. And me. And you because it will hurt me.”
“I’m not going to let that happen.” He would walk through the fires of hell first.
“I know you won’t.”
There was something else happening in those beautiful green eyes. Another worry that had surfaced.
“Tell me what else is wrong,” he said gruffly.
She pulled in a shaky breath. “Is there something wrong with me that I want to be treated like…like I do when Camille was being hurt at home?”
His heart rolled over in his chest. Brick closed his eyes and took a breath. “Remington.”
A single tear rolled down her cheek and broke his fucking heart.
“You know it’s different.”
She sniffled. “I know you’re different. But does it mean there’s something wrong with me that I like it when my best friend...”
“Baby, come here.” He couldn’t stand watching her worry her way through this alone. He sat on the bed and pulled her into his lap. “What we do together, we agree on.”
“Technically don’t Camille and Warren have an agreement? She stays or he’ll kill her.”
Brick tucked her head under his chin. “This is different. You’re the one who told me that nothing we do together is wrong.”
She nodded. “And I believe that. I really do. It’s just it feels muddled in my head right now. Like maybe I shouldn’t want it. Or it shouldn’t make me feel so…safe? So I don’t know, treasured?”
He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Baby, what we have is different. This isn’t me controlling you with physical force. You know that, right?”
She nodded. “It is about control, but you don’t want to control me. You like it when I surrender to you.”
He fucking lived for it. A wild creature like Remi giving up control to him, trusting him to take care of her, was a potent turn-on. It filled a void in him that he hadn’t known existed.
“I do,” he agreed. “And you like submitting to me and letting me take that control. We both get something out of it. It’s a mutual agreement. A mutual satisfaction. Do you know that I would never hurt you in that way?”
“Don’t be a dumbass just because I’m being one,” Remi said.
“Then you also need to realize that if someone tried to hurt you the way Vorhees hurts Camille, I’d end him.”
She stiffened in his arms and didn’t relax until he began to rub little circles in her neck with his fingers.
“I’m not trying to humiliate you or control you, Remi. I’m trying to give you what you need. In return, you give me the same.”
“What do you need?” she asked softly, melting against him.
“I get off on having the uncontrollable Remington Ford do what I say. But, baby, when we have our clothes on and we’re out in public, if you started playing submissive with me, I’d lose my damn mind. I love your wild side. I love your fearlessness. I love your independence even when it drives me fucking crazy. When you let me take you, when you give yourself to me? There’s nothing more intoxicating in the world than you thinking I’m good enough to surrender to.”
She was like one of the wild stallions that the ranch he’d worked on would round up every winter. They called it breaking, and some men went into it with the intent to break the horse’s spirit. But in its truest form, it was about earning the respect of a wild thing. The grudging regard didn’t make the horse any less wild. It didn’t make it much easier for someone else to seat. But earning that respect made Brick feel like more of a man than if he’d taken it, broken it. Fear was no replacement for respect.
And that was something Vorhees didn’t understand.
She let out the breath that she’d been holding. “Now, see, when you say it like that, I feel like an idiot for getting it confused. I mean, I’m not going to say, ‘Hey, Camille, I get really excited when Brick pins me down and bangs me sixty ways to Sunday after spanking me.’”
He groaned as his cock stirred against her. She snuggled closer. “But I also don’t have to feel so guilty about it now.”
“It’s that easy?” he asked.
She looped her arms around his neck. “It’s that easy. You do what you do to please me, not hurt me. And pleasing you amps up my pleasure into the stratosphere. We’re like two missing puzzle pieces that finally fit together.”
He needed a ring on her finger. Needed that piece of paper binding her to him.
He held her quietly and waited for her to get to the next thing that was bothering her. He could feel it simmering under the surface.
“While we’re on the subject,” she began.
He smiled and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
“Have you ever...done this with...anyone else?” Her fingers were tugging at the hair on his neck.
He nudged her chin up to look at him. “You’re the only one.” She always had been. Somehow all those years ago, he’d known and he’d waited.
After a decade and a half of missteps, they’d found their way back to each other.
“So not even with Audrey?” she asked in a tiny voice.
“No,” he said, stroking a hand over her hair and admiring the way it gleamed under the light. A thought occurred to him that had him tensing. “Have you?”
“With Audrey? No,” she said, feigning seriousness.
“Remi,” he warned.
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have even known how to ask for it,” she admitted.
He relaxed slowly. “I hate thinking about you being with anyone else,” he admitted.
“Think how I felt,” she said.
“About what?”
“When you married Audrey. On your wedding night. On your first anniversary. Just imagine if it had been me and Spence,” she said.
The slice of pain was instantaneous, as if she’d jammed a knife between his ribs. How would he have survived that? How would he have looked across the breakfast table when they’d come to visit him? Would the four of them have been friends? While he pined for the girl his brother had?
“Jesus. Remi,” he said. His heart felt like it was in a vice.