Chapter Forty-One-Andrea
The house is quiet. Too quiet.
Twinkle lights glitter in the background, all the decorations my cousin and the kids, sweet Callie, hung around the house.
The scents of cookies and hot cocoa linger in the air, and it should feel homey. Pleasant. Warm with the promise of joy the holidays always seem to bring.
Instead, I feel anxious. And it has nothing to do with the pain in my back or the twins—soccer players I’m sure—I have growing inside me.
Callie is asleep, tucked in with her favorite stuffies surrounding her and the nightlight glowing soft pink against the walls.
I lingered by her bed longer than usual tonight, smoothing her hair, listening to her even breaths, almost unwilling to leave her side.
But I couldn’t ignore the sound of Remy moving through the house.
Heavy footfalls, the creak of the floorboards under his weight, the metallic clink of glass as he poured himself something in the kitchen
When I finally step into the doorway, he’s there.
Broad shoulders tight with coiled violence, his green eyes dark and stormy as he lifts them to mine.
I freeze. Not because I’m afraid, but because I feel it.
His fury. His hunger. His need for something I can’t name.
And for one suspended heartbeat, I know he’s asking me something without words.
Asking for permission.
Asking if I can live with the part of him that doesn’t forgive, doesn’t hesitate, the part that’s already plotting what comes next.
The world might see him as dangerous.
But me? I see him as mine.
So, I don’t flinch when I see his thirst for revenge. I don’t cower when I feel the weight of his rage filling the room like smoke.
No—I lift my chin.
I walk toward him.
And when I reach him, I slide my hands up his chest, into his hair, and I show him with my body what I can’t yet speak out loud.
I accept him. All of him.
His darkness. His violence. His power.
Because every part of him is mine. And everything he does, he does for us.
“Andy.” His voice cracks, just once, and that’s all it takes.
“I know,” I whisper, before pressing my mouth to his.
It isn’t soft.
It isn’t gentle.
It’s savage, desperate, two storms colliding.
His hands crush me against him, his mouth devours mine, and I moan like a woman already undone.
Clothes scatter—his shirt ripped off, my dress shoved up, underwear torn with a growl that rattles my bones.
He lifts me up, using the wall for balance. Then he carries me down the hall to our bedroom like I weigh nothing at all.
When we get to the bed, he lays me down, spreading my thighs wide, caging me in with all that furious need.
“Say it,” he growls against my throat, biting hard enough to leave marks.
“I love you,” I gasp, nails clawing at his back.
“Whatever you do, Remy—it’s okay. All of it.”
That breaks him.
Or maybe it makes him whole.
Either way, his mouth is on mine again, and then he’s inside me—hot, thick, filling me to the hilt in one brutal thrust that makes my vision go white.
“God, Andy. You kill me,” he groans.
“Never that,” I whimper, feeling his hand slide between us, swiping back and forth against my slippery clit.
“No, Baby, you make me whole,” he says. “This pussy feels so good. You were made for me. Believe me?”
He rocks into me. That big, beautiful dick of his strokes inside me, hitting all the right spots, and I swear, I see stars.
“Yes, I believe you!”
We’re loud. We’re desperate.
We’re claiming and clinging and breaking and building all at once.
“Remy!”
My voice bounces off the walls, echoing like a prayer.
His guttural grunts mix with my frantic cries, and there’s nothing in the world but this—our bodies, our love, our fury colliding in the most primal way.
Because tonight, I don’t just accept him.
I choose him, and I let him know it.
Every violent, obsessive, protective part of him.
And in return, he worships me the only way he knows how—by taking me apart piece by piece and putting me back together again until all I can see, think, breathe, feel and know is him.
I submit, God yes, do I submit, and with his name on my lips. Trust me—nothing has ever felt better.
His hand is brutal on my hip, pulling me back against him with each thrust, while the other fists in my hair, jerking my head to the side so he can bite my neck, hard enough to leave marks that will last for days.
His teeth graze, then sink.
I scream, but I don’t want him to stop.
“That’s it. Take me. Take all of me,” he growls, voice so deep it vibrates through my bones.
The wet slapping of our bodies should sound obscene, but all I hear is us—raw and unfiltered, love and lust tangled until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
My clit throbs where he’s grinding into me, my pussy clenching tight around him with every stroke. I’m dripping down my thighs, making a mess of us both.
“Good girl. Look at you—so tight, so greedy for me,” he pants, his chest slick with sweat against my back.
“Please, Remy—”
“You don’t have to beg, Wife. You own this cock. It’s yours. Use it.”
I whimper, clawing at his back, pushing back against him like I’m starved, like I’ll die without his cock buried inside me.
“That’s it, Baby. Milk me. Pull the cum from my balls,” he commands through clenched teeth, his thrusts pounding harder, faster, until I’m gone.
The orgasm rips through me, sharp and devastating.
My pussy strangles him, every nerve ending sparking, every muscle shaking as I scream his name.
“Fuck, Andy,” he snarls, hips jerking as his cock throbs deep inside me.
I feel it—hot, thick, endless spurts of him flooding me, filling me so full I swear I’ll never be empty again.
“Mine,” he growls against my ear, one last punishing thrust driving me flat against the bed.
“Yes—yours,” I sob, bliss breaking me wide open.
I feel him pulse again, feel the warmth of his seed spreading, dripping, as his body cages mine.
And I know—I’ll never play games with this man’s heart again.
He is the only man for me. Forever. For always.
And I’m keeping him.
I’m keeping our family.
I don’t know how long we lay there afterward—skin damp, breaths tangled, hearts still racing in the same wild rhythm.
But I know this: I’ve never felt so alive.
It isn’t just the way Remy touched me, claimed me, made me come undone again and again until I was nothing but his.
It’s what came after, when he whispered my name against my temple, his hand protectively splayed over the curve of my belly like he was holding both me and our babies in place.
That’s when it settled in me.
I didn’t just give him permission. I gave him my allegiance. My loyalty. My heart.
And it feels right.
Because what is marriage, really, if not choosing someone fully—darkness and all?
My father used to tell us kids that power was always dangerous. But what mattered most was who you wielded it for.
Remy? He wields his for me. For Callie. For the babies. For us.
I trace idle circles on his chest with my fingertip, and he kisses my hair, whispering something low and filthy that makes me giggle even as I blush.
For a few blissful days, we live like that—closer than ever, stronger, unstoppable.
Until the call comes.
We get the news early, the morning before Callie wakes up.
Julio Castillo—coward, monster, manipulator—has been granted visitation.
Christmas Eve.
At our house.
I feel the words like a blade in my stomach. For a moment, devastation presses down, thick and suffocating.
The idea of that man stepping foot into the home we’ve built, looking at Callie with his greedy eyes, trying to stake a claim he doesn’t deserve—my blood runs cold.
Remy is pacing, fury rolling off him in waves, phone in his hand like he’s one breath away from crushing it.
And me?
I should fall apart. I should collapse under the weight of it.
But instead, something hardens in me.
A core of steel I didn’t know I had.
I press my hands over my belly, feel the tiny lives moving inside me, and think of the little girl already asleep upstairs with her stuffed elephant and her favorite bunny and sparkly pink night-light.
No one is tearing this family apart.
Not Julio. Not a judge. Not anyone.
I lift my chin and meet Remy’s blazing eyes, and for the first time, I don’t just accept his rage.
I match it.
“They’re not taking her from us,” I whisper, voice low but steady. “Not on Christmas. Not ever.”
His jaw flexes. His green eyes glitter and his nostrils flare.
And then he nods.
Once. A sharp, decisive movement.
And I know, I know what he’s really saying without so many words.
I know what he’s going to do.
And I should be appalled, but I’m not.
I’m proud. I’m so fucking proud to call this man, this warrior, mine.
“Come back to me in one piece.”
“I will. I always will,” he rumbles back.
And I hear what it really is.
A vow. His vow. To me.
I kiss his lips, and he lingers for one long, beautiful second before he leaves to do whatever he has to. And I love him all the more for it.