Mine

FOUR PHOENIX RISING

I feel like shit the next day, but then I hear Remington murmur, as we quietly have breakfast, “Run with me to the gym?”

I nod.

He seems to be watching me like he can’t figure out what to do with a detonated grenade. I’m trying to figure out what to do with myself too. I have never felt so consumed with jealousy and hurt, anger and self-loathing in my life. I’m so nauseous I don’t even eat, just sip an orange juice, and then I slip into my running pants and tennis shoes, and try not to barf when I brush my teeth.

Arizona today is an inferno of heat, and on the trail outside our hotel, I pull on my cap and quietly stretch my quads, trying to concentrate on the second thing I love most in the world after Remington: running. I know it’s going to make me feel good—if not good, then at least better.

We haven’t talked about it.

We haven’t kissed.

We haven’t touched.

Since I bawled like an idiot in his arms last night. When I woke he was looking out the window, his profile unreadable, and when he turned, as if sensing me, I had to close my eyes because I’m just afraid that if he’s gentle with me I’ll break again.

Now he bounces in place as I stretch. He’s wearing his gray hoodie and sweatpants, every inch of him a running boxer you would die for. Kill for. Leave your entire life in Seattle behind for.

“Okay,” I whisper to him, nodding.

“Let’s hit it.” He smacks my butt gently and we start running, but the sleepless night means I don’t really have the speed that I want. Remington looks just a little tired today, quietly running beside me, pumping his fists in the air.

I keep waiting for my endorphins to kick in, but my body isn’t my friend today, and neither are my emotions. I want to sink into a quiet corner and cry again, until I cry it all out and it doesn’t hurt anymore, until I’m not angry at myself anymore, or at him, for saying yes to everything, anything, he could get his hands on while for months he refused to put his hands on me.

I’ve stopped running and put my hands on my knees, sucking in a breath to calm down. Remington slows down and pumps his fists in the air as he comes back. I want to groan in protest over how shitty I feel when he looks more than decent. He stops close to me, and I use my cap to shield my stupid face.

“If we’re running to the gym, we need to get there today,” he whispers in amusement, reaching out and tipping my hat back. I bite down hard on my lip as he surveys me, forcing myself to hold his gaze.

He smiles down at me, his dimples popping as he stands there. A little arrogant, a lot hot, Remington Tate, the man of my dreams. In that gray hoodie. Those blue eyes peering at me. He’s so aerodynamic as he runs; even when tired, he defies gravity. His shoulders, rock hard, stretch the material of his sweatshirt as his feet tap the sidewalk.

Just please somebody kill me now.

“I think I’ll walk there,” I tell him, kneeling down to add another impulsive knot to the laces of my tennis shoe, so I can look at my Nikes instead of him. “Go on without me and I’ll be there.”

I’ve never refused to run with him. This is our time, this is special, but I feel weak and faint and miserable.

Dropping to his haunches to level with me, he pries my cap off and surveys me, no more dimples on his face. “I’ll walk with you,” he tells me easily, putting my cap back on as he straightens.

“You don’t have to. Coach Lupe is waiting.”

He seizes my chin and pins me down with tormented blue eyes. “I. Will walk. With you. Brooke. Now give me your hand and let me help you up.”

He spreads out his hand and I see it, and I want it, and it’s there. I get up on my own and start walking.

He laughs softly as he steps to my side. “I don’t fucking believe this,” he mutters.

He shoves his hands into his sweatshirt, dark head bent as he glares down at the sidewalk and ambles next to me. His hoodie fell when he bent to offer his hand, and his black hair is an adorable mess, and god, I want to rumple it and kiss it and pretend I’m strong like I used to be, but instead I’m nauseous and feel as strong as a little stick.

“How many were there? Do you know?” I hear myself ask.

He makes a low, growling sound and pulls two fistfuls of hair before dropping his hands. “Just tell me what you want me to do. What do you want me to say? You won’t stop crying, you won’t fucking eat, you circle around my touch. Why the fuck are you letting it matter?”

“Because you don’t even remember; you don’t even know what you did to them, who they are. One could be pregnant with your fucking baby as we speak! They could take pictures of you. They could . . . take advantage of you!”

He bursts out laughing and looks at me in tender amusement, as though nobody could ever hurt him, but they can. Fucking smug asshole—they can!

Even when he is the strongest, most powerful human being I’ve ever known, when he’s black, he’s both reckless and vulnerable, and he could hurt himself and he could definitely get hurt. The thought that anyone, especially some tarts, had access to him when he was like that, makes me feel like going nuclear. I wipe an angry tear and keep walking, then he crowds me with his body and purposely brushes the back of his hand to my own. He rubs his thumb over mine. “Just take my hand, little firecracker,” he softly prods.

Dragging in a breath, I force my pinky finger to move, and he hooks our little fingers around each other. I feel the warmth of his touch race up my arm, and I think he notices I can’t suppress a little shudder. He teases me, in a low voice that melts everything in me, “I give you my hand, and you give me your pinky?”

“Remington, I can’t do this right now!”

I start running ahead, and he just joins me at the gym, unzipping his hoodie and slapping his gloves on. He starts pounding his bags without a single glance in my direction and with very, very hard slams. I stand by the sidelines, tense by the way the air crackles between us, like a suddenly haywire electrical circuit about to combust. Coach looks at him, and looks at me, and Riley comes up, equally concerned as he surveys us both.

Nobody talks to him and nobody talks to me.

I go to the bathroom and start throwing up.

THE HEAT IN the Phoenix Underground arena is oppressive.

The costly seats are crammed together, one after the other, and about five hundred people are now wildly screaming as Butcher and Hammer have a go up in the ring. Then wham! Smack! And Hammer ends up bloody and motionless on the floor.

“Wow, that was unfortunate for Hammer,” Pete says.

Kirk “the Hammer” Dirkwood hasn’t even twitched since he dropped splat on the canvas.

Butcher, though, is an enormous fighter. So meaty he’s double or triple the size of any other fighter, his fists look like iron balls, and his knuckles look like spikes. He’s just been announced the victor, and now he yells out a string of curses to the crowd, tells them he’s the “greatest motherfucker this ring has ever seen!” and suddenly, the canvas shudders under his feet as he angrily starts marching in the ring, yelling even louder, “BRING ME RIPTIDE! Let me have a fucking go at Riptide!!!!”

They’re dragging an unconscious Hammer out of the ring, and my stomach is knotting up by the second as Butcher bangs his chest like a gorilla and keeps yelling in a voice that is frighteningly craggy and monster-like. “RIPTIDE!! You hear me? Come out, pussy! Come face me like you did Benny!”

“He’s chums with you-know-who,” Pete tells me with a roll of his eyes. “And now, thanks to last year’s final, he thinks he can beat Rip too.”

The crowd gets restless. I notice that the Butcher’s hunger has only aroused the public. They heard the name, and it spreads like wildfire across the stands, starting with murmurs and rising to a crescendo: Riptide! Riptide! RIPTIDE!

Immediately I know, with every fiber in me, that they’re going to bring him out. He’s wanted, not only by Butcher, but by the entire screaming arena.

“Riptide! Riptide! RIPTIDE!” they chant.

I feel like a ginormous fist is squeezing the contents out of my stomach as I wait for a glimpse of him. He’s angry at me. He’s angry at me because I’m being ridiculous and I hate that I can’t stop being ridiculous and then I’m angry at myself.

“Riptide, Riptide!!” the crowd continues screaming for him.

There’s a commotion as the organizers seem to scramble to comply as the crowd’s demands get even louder.

“RIPTIDE! RIPTIDE!”

“Give us fucking RIPTIDE!”

The speakers flare to life, and the announcer sounds breathless. “You asked for him, ladies and gentlemen! You asked for him! Now, let’s bring out tonight the one you are all here to see! The one, the only, RRRRRRRiiiiiiippppppppppptiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide!”

The crowd roars in delight and my body screams in silence as all my systems kick into overdrive. My heart pumps, my lungs expand, and my eyes hurt as I pin them fixedly on the walkway. All the vessels and capillaries in my body dilate to accommodate blood flow, and my leg muscles feel ready to run, even though all I can do is squirm uneasily in my chair. I can’t ever seem to make my body realize that Remy is not in danger. Nor am I. My brain cannot comprehend that the man I love does this for sport, for a living. For his mental well-being. So I sit here while my body unleashes all the same hormones it would if I were being cornered by three raving bears ready to eat me.

And then I see him enter the arena—strong, magnificent, in control.

He takes the stage quickly and removes his robe while Butcher keeps pounding his chest as the crowd receives Remington with all their love and devotion. Like they always do.

I hold my breath and my hands fist in my lap as I wait for him to look at me.

It kills me. First, I watch in anticipation, then in dread, then in disbelief, as he makes his turn, unsmiling, then drops his arms at his sides and gets into place. The bell rings.

The men charge. I wince when Remy’s head flies to the side from the impact.

“Oh, no!” My stomach drops, my eyes blurring when I see blood.

The awful sounds of bone cracking against flesh follow, one after the other, as Butcher delivers three more consecutive blows, all to Remy’s face.

“Oh, god, Pete,” I gasp, covering my face.

“Shit,” Pete tells me. “Why didn’t he fucking look at you?”

“He hates me.”

“Brooke, come on.”

“We . . . he’s . . . I’m having trouble coping with the women, all right?”

Pete looks at me with a conflicted expression, and his stare bores into my profile, as if he wants to say something but can’t.

Remington growls angrily and lifts his guard as he shakes his head, easing back. His face is bloodied from the nose, the lips, the little scar on his eyebrow, and I don’t even know where else.

Butcher swings again, but Remy blocks, and they exchange jabs for about a minute until the round break is called and they go to their corners. Riley puts something on the wounds, and Coach is yelling stuff to him. He nods, shakes his arms out, flexes his fingers, and comes back, angry now, as he goes toe-to-toe with that burly awful beast and his spiked knuckles.

They go at it again. Swinging and slamming.

Remington feints to the side and Butcher throws his fist into the space where Remy used to be. Remington comes back with an uppercut to the face that connects so hard Butcher rocks sideways.

It takes a few moments for Butcher to recover his footing. He swings out his arm, but Remy ducks and comes back with a punch to the ribs, the gut, and the face, all landing with perfect speed and precision. Pow, pow, pow!

Butcher throws a fist out once again, aiming for Remy’s face, but Remy blocks the punch and once again returns with a hit of his own—slamming his knuckles straight into Butcher’s ugly fat face. Butcher falls to his knees.

At my side, Pete’s excitement keeps building, and I hear him mumble, “Come on, Rem. Why are you letting him get in? You’ve got this.” He turns to me and whispers, “You can teach speed and agility, but you can’t ever teach a man to be a heavy puncher like Rem is. Soon as he starts hitting like he wants to, it’s over.” I see he’s grinning, but I am not.

Remy is still bleeding, and as the fight progresses, he keeps catching a couple of punches with his body.

I loathe, loathe, loathe when he gets injured, even though it’s my job to help him recover. He laughs and spits, almost like he’s enjoying it.

Last season’s nightmare of a fight did something to me, and watching this—this—kills me all over again.

My fear has grown and festered, and tonight, it is overwhelming. For a moment, my head spins faintly—but at the same time, I’m sure my adrenaline is keeping me awake, keeping my body fed and ready to defend him.

Butcher stands up again and whacks out another punch to the face, and Remington’s head swings, but his body stays firmly planted. My tree is always so firmly planted. He swings, and hits back even harder. The two men clinch, then shove away from each other, and Remington charges again, the blood on his face pouring in streams now as, once again, he goes pow pow pow!

His rapid, consecutive punches cause Butcher to start backing off. The fat man bounces on the ropes behind him but refuses to fall. Remy corners him, his chest glistening with sweat and his muscles rippling as he smashes Butcher’s gut and then his face.

My breath has left me. Fear chafes my insides along with other, colliding, sensations, like this incredible arousal that always seizes me as I watch him battle. He’s so spectacular. The power in his body, the ripple of his muscles, the perfect flex when each muscle hardens and lets go. Remington uses both intellect and gut instinct to fight. He seems to plan, plot, then just roll with it, but more than anything, he seems to live in the moment. To love it.

His face is concentrated now as he pummels Butcher until the man has crashed down in a red pool at his feet. Literally, at his feet. His face splat on Remy’s boots.

Remy’s lips curl in pleasure by the sight, and he steps aside, turning his body in my direction.

“RIPTIDE!” the announcer yells, and as his arm is yanked up high in the air, his gaze finally targets me.

My pulse stops inside me. The noise is gone. Even my heartbeat feels nonexistent. It’s stupid how much I need this, but when he finally lifts his arm and swings his head to me and his desperate, angry, blue eyes land on me, I shudder in my seat.

His gaze is vividly possessive and furious, a drop of blood sliding to his eyelid from his cut eyebrow, blood dripping from his nose and lips.

And when the ringmaster asks him something, he nods, and they call up another fighter for him.

“Yeah, now he’s gonna need to work off that rage,” Pete mumbles to himself.

A new tornado of nerves sweeps through me when I hear this. I swear, if I didn’t know better, I’d think he was doing this just to torture and punish me. The endorphins will keep him from feeling any pain. In fact, he’s so proud and driven that he’s relentlessly taught his body to embrace it. He constantly pushes it to the limits, and I think his threshold for pain might be higher than that of any other athlete I’ve ever met, but my own limits have been way beyond met for the evening.

Remington scores several hits on the new guy, using great combinations of punches, but although Riley tried curing him at his corner, blood continues pouring down his face.

Both fighters exchange hard jabs and suddenly the ring is a swirling maelstrom of flesh moving and muscles hardening. I keep track of Remy through the ink bracelets on his biceps as he throws what I’ve heard Riley call “punches in bunches.” He scores one in the ribs, one in the jaw, and then he throws in a right hook, his most powerful punch.

His opponent rocks, stumbles, and falls, flattened out.

The crowd screams.

“RRRRRRRIPTIIIIIDE! Ladies and gentlemen, your victor, once again! Riiiiptiiiiiiide!”

I’m so worn out. I’ve turned to jelly, Jell-O, everything soft and stupid.

“RIPTIIIIDE!”

It feels like an eon passes, but in fact, it takes only about twenty minutes to get out of the Underground riding a stretch limo to the hotel, and my legs shake as we shuffle into the car. All my senses scream for me to tend to my man as he plops down on the seat across from mine, while the feisty part of me still wants to hit him because . . . what the fuck went on out there?

“Dude, what the fuck were you doing?” Riley starts up, sounding as puzzled as I feel.

“Here you go, Rem.” Pete passes him a gel pack for his jaw. “I think the eyebrow cut might need a stitch.”

“How do you feel, boy? Did getting the fuck pounded out of you feel good?” Coach demands in complete indignation from where he sits up front. “Where in the fuck was your game?”

Remington takes the gel pack, sets it aside, and looks directly at me, where I sit motionless on the seat across from his.

He wears his gray sweatpants and a comfortable red hoodie, the hood drawn over his head in order to keep his body temperature leveled. He’s sprawled, big and quiet, in the seat, but his nose is bleeding, his lips are bleeding, the slash above his eyebrow is bleeding. His face is such a mess, I feel like there’s a bomb inside my stomach just looking at it. And yet he looks back at me with clear, observant blue eyes.

I guess I should get used to the fact that my boyfriend gets punched for a living, but I can’t. I can’t sit here and see his face, bleeding and swelling, without wanting to hurt whoever did this. I want to punch something really badly, and I’m shaking with the need to reach out and hug and draw him to me while I mentally count the minutes it will take to reach our hotel.

I hear Riley tell me, “Here, Brooke, let’s exchange so you can tend to him.” Jolting from my seat, I settle down on Remington’s right, and quickly delve into his open duffel bag, extracting my alcohol swab packets, some salve, and strips.

“Let me try to fix you,” I whisper to him, and my voice, oh god, it sounds so intimate even when the entire car is watching. It’s just that I don’t seem to have any other tone except the one that came out: low and sandpapery with emotion.

He turns fully in my direction to let me disinfect the wounds, and his gaze . . . I can feel it, a roaming, curious, palpable thing on my face as I apply the salve to the part of his lips that always gets cut—the fleshy part of his bottom lip. My teeth instinctively bite down on my own as I press some salve into his. God, I loathe when he gets hurt.

“Do the eyebrow one too; it looks a little deep,” Pete instructs.

“Yes, I got it,” I reply, still in that voice I don’t want to use right now but can’t seem to modify. I’m trying to be efficient with my hands, but they’re shaking more than I want them to, and the heat of Remington’s body, which is extra hot after the fight, surrounds me as completely as his arms sometimes do. His fast breath bathes my temple, and it takes everything in me to quell the impulse to lean closer and breathe it inside me just to appease myself with the knowledge that he’s all right. And at least breathing. Still pumped up with adrenaline, I head to the gash above his eye and press the wound closed between two fingers. God. I almost can’t take being this close to him. A hundred little prickles run from my fingers, to my arms, straight to my throbbing little heart.

Dragging in a breath, I add gentle pressure to the cut while I inspect the rest of his face . . . to find the blue of his eyes completely zeroed in on me. Things grip inside me.

He’s sprawled in the seat, angled in my direction, but his stillness makes me hyperaware, for I can feel all the coiled energy in his body as if he’s ready to spring. On me.

My heart kicks up a little more in speed, and I hold my breath as I lean closer, grab another tissue, and whisper in the most level voice I can manage, “Close this eye.”

Keeping the slash above his eyebrow pinched together, I start cleaning the blood that’s dripped to his eyelid. Obeying me, he squints one eye closed and remains watching me with the other as if there’s something in my expression that he craves to see.

His voice suddenly rasps through the dark. “I’m all fucked up.” The unexpected, guttural whisper prickles across my skin and almost makes me jump. “My right bicep’s fucked and my shoulder, my left oblique and trap.”

“Dude, that’s insane. How can you fuck all that up in a night?” Riley asks in bewilderment.

“Brooke, you know what to do,” Coach commands from up front.

Quickly nodding, I look into Remington’s blue, blue eyes, the way they shine in male contentment, and I clamp my jaw when it finally dawns on me what’s going on here.

WHEN WE REACH our hotel suite, I am fuming.

“You let him punch you on purpose.”

He plops down on the bench at the foot of the bed and looks at me, tossing an empty Gatorade bottle aside. “I’m all fucked up, come fix me.”

“You are fucked up, all right, but it’s not the bicep that needs some tender loving care!”

“You’re right—it’s not.” His eyes shimmer in the soft lamplight as he watches me. “Are you going to come fix me?”

“Only because you pay me to.” Huffing angrily, I grab my massage oils, specifically my arnica oil and my mustard oil for inflammation, then I go and turn on the shower. “We’re getting you in a cold shower.”

His lips curl as he stands and waves me over, and when I come over in puzzlement, he wraps his big arm around my shoulders. “What? You need help to walk? You were bouncing a few minutes ago,” I tell him.

“Endorphins killed the pain,” he murmurs into my ear as I curl my arm around his waist and lead him to the bathroom. “I told you I was all fucked up.”

I prop him against the wall and open the shower door, and as I check that the water is ice cold, he sweeps me up in his arms, turns the knob to medium, and carries us inside, clothes and all.

The water rushes over us, and I gasp in surprise and kick in the air while all my clothes get plastered to my skin. “What are you doing?”

He pulls off my shoes and tosses them over the glass partition above the tub, then he sets me on my bare feet and tugs my skirt down my legs. All those pheromones he puts out after fighting suddenly wage a war on my senses, and I start feeling so hot, the only thing keeping me from turning to ashes is the water pounding on my skin. “What are you doing ?” I breathlessly demand.

He yanks off my top and it splats to the marble floor with a wet sound. He strips, and I’m so overwhelmed with anger over the way he let himself get punched, and so stimulated by the sight of his muscles flexing as he strips down to his golden, wet skin, I want to hit him and kiss him at the same infuriating time. When his boxing shorts hit—splat!—and he kicks them aside, ohmigod, my eyes hurt.

I have to bite down on my lower lip, trying to quell the instinct to fling myself at him and give him anything he needs. Keeping his eyes leveled on mine, he steps back into the spray, his broad shoulders shielding me from the water, then when I feel the slow scrape of his thumb sliding up my chin and gently tugging my lower lip free of my teeth, I hear his voice thick as he whispers, “That’s mine to bite.”

I’m not breathing. He has this overpowering effect on me. I could fight my reactions to him, but I’d lose. My eyes hold his, and the possessive glimmer in his gaze bullets through me. Rivulets of water slide down his jaw as he grabs my ass and presses me close, his erection biting into my tummy as he stares down at me with relentless intensity.

“You,” he says, his voice terse and commanding as he drags his wet thumb across my lips, “are going to love me until I die. I’m going to make you love me even if it hurts, and when it hurts, I’m going to make it better, Brooke.” He eases his thumb into my mouth and rubs it purposely against the tip of my tongue, the move quietly demanding that I lick it. When I do, my breasts ache and I watch him extract his thumb to brush the wet pad across my bottom lip. “You’re going to fucking love me if it kills us.”

My lungs ache for breath and the rest of me aches for his hands on me. And when my gaze flicks upward to find those blue eyes pinned on mine, his face hurt and sweaty, all the testosterone in the world courses through him, pulling and enveloping me, so I can barely take living right now I want him so much. He makes me feel this all-consuming, soul-searing, heart-wrenching, painful need for him that’s more than physical, more than emotional.

My sex grips so tight, it takes all my effort not to whimper. My senses are heightened by his nearness. I can’t help but notice how the drop of blood on his lip is the color of his RIPTIDE robe, bright and perfectly oxygenated. How his steady, hot breath bathes my wet face. How, slowly, his fingers spread wider on my ass, and one of his thumbs grazes the skin of my jaw. He destroys me.

“Stop hurting yourself,” I say miserably, trying to ease out of his arms only to hit the cold marble behind me.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he rasps, then pulls me close by the ass and nuzzles me. “You. Crying in my fucking arms. Because I fucking hurt you. That hurts. You . . . not touching me. Not looking up at me like you do, with those sweet little happy eyes. Hurts. I’m hurting like a motherfucker and not one piece of me hurts on the outside like it does where you make it hurt.”

Fighting to hold my raw emotions in check, I drop my gaze and furiously blink back the moisture in my eyes.

“I hurt here too.” He guides my hand over to his massive erection. “I hurt all night, watching you come apart for me. This morning. And at the gym.” He presses me close, and I moan softly and drop my forehead to his pecs as I struggle not to fall apart again.

He takes pity on me and lets my hand go, but my fingers burn at my sides, and I don’t know what to do with my hands. My head spins with his nearness. I want to take my fingers up every inch of his muscles and erase the touch of every other hand that has ever been there. I want to—

I don’t even know. I can’t think of anything now except the growing, painful throb inside my body. Inside my heart. My sex. He’s grabbed the soap and starts soaping up my naked flesh. As if doing it for the first time, he watches his hands work between my legs, his fingers curl and lather up my breasts, his thumbs rubbing soap over my nipples.

“Did you like the fight?” he asks in his quiet, deep voice as his powerful hands glide smoothly down the outside of my legs, up the inside of my thighs, rubbing my pussy. He goes around then, soaping and massaging the flesh of my ass cheeks and in between.

The pleasure of his sure, familiar touch is so complete, I bite back a moan as I watch him wash me.

One of his eyes is a little swollen, and the gash above his eyebrow still looks bright red. His plump bottom lip is still cut at the center. He’s hurt, but getting hurt is nothing to him. He wanted my attention and would do anything to get it, and even if I want to hit him for being so reckless, the urge to kiss every cut and gash is stronger than anything.

Remington has been abandoned his whole life. Parents. Teachers. Friends. Even me. Nobody has ever stuck with him long enough to show him he’s worth it. What he did, just to get me to touch him and give him some love, makes me burn to drown him with my love until he never, ever, has to ask for it.

“I refuse,” I whisper in a fervent voice, “to sit there and watch you getting hurt on purpose.”

“I refuse to let you push me away,” he says with equal fervor, filling one large, soapy hand with the weight of my breast.

Shaking my head with a frown, I let my eyes drift shut when he tilts the showerhead to my face. The spritz washes away my shampoo, and when he slides his hands down my hair to help the soap trickle down my body, I can barely keep it together.

Taking action before I lose it, I seize the soap and make lots of bubbles, then I reach out to the slick muscles of his chest and rub my soapy fingers over his hard, smooth flesh. His chest jerks at my unexpected touch, and when my eyes flick up to his, my knees almost give. All of my body clenches as I hold those starved blue eyes, my fingers rubbing wetly up his thick arm, down his chest, across his eight-pack. My voice, thick with emotion, is barely heard above the trickling water. “Is this what you wanted? When you were out there, recklessly letting yourself be hit?”

Gently, he grips my face in one hand, his voice stern and passionate as he enunciates every word. “I want you. I want you to touch me, to put your lips on mine—like before. I want you to love me. Stop fucking punishing me, Brooke. I love you.”

He presses his lips to mine, testing me with a fast, rough kiss, withdrawing to look at me with panting breaths.

His grip tightens on my face. “Is my girl going to let this break her? Is she? She’s stronger than that. . . . I know she is, and I need her to live. I need her to fight for me and I need her to fight with me. As far as I’m concerned, that never happened. Only you happened, Brooke. And you’re still happening, aren’t you, firecracker?”

Our gazes hold, and I don’t know who is hungrier, needier, or more desperate. His gaze claws into me, he looks so starved, and I feel rabid. My chest starts heaving, my heart hammering, and before I know it, my fingers push into his hair and I pull him to my lips at the same time he slams me back against the shower wall and crushes his mouth with mine.

I gasp as his taste zings through me as he forces my lips apart, sliding one of his hands up to frame my face, locking me in place as he opens me up with the force of his mouth, making me groan and claw at his scalp as I anxiously seek out his tongue with mine.

But he finds me first. No. He does not find me. He plunders me, his tongue rubbing and fucking mine. A low, pleased growl runs through his chest as he lifts me up in the air to align our mouths better. His closeness, the touch of our flesh, exhilarates me. My skin prickles where we touch as the need builds between us. I feel roped to him in a way that makes me certain that nothing can ever pull me back.

I suck hungrily on his tongue as he turns off the shower and carries us outside. He drapes a towel over me while I continue clinging, sucking his tongue, nibbling his lips, my blood rushing fast through me like an awakened river as he walks us to the bed.

He lowers me over the comforter, and he drapes the towel over my body, lightly rubbing it over my skin while he ducks his head and whispers, “Let me go get dry.”

I moan in protest when he leaves me. I’m so hot, but so wet and cold, my teeth chatter as I watch his muscled buttocks flex in the sexiest way a man’s buttocks can flex as he disappears into the bathroom. Even as every inch of my body pulses, I shakily tuck my towel tighter around me and absently dry myself, my eyes fixed on the bathroom door.

Ohmigod, I hurt like a motherfucker, too.

When he finally fills the threshold with those magnificently broad shoulders and that beautiful eight-pack, rivulets of water still slide from his hair, down his throat, to his chest and down to the towel draped around those narrow hips. My breath goes. I can see he’s run a towel over his head and his dark hair is standing up and spiked, those blue eyes shining greedily as he makes sure I’m on the bed as he left me. Suddenly all the love and painful jealousy I feel rushes through my bloodstream like lightning.

He steps in without removing his gaze from me, and I pull open my towel to watch his face harden and his eyes flash as he takes me in, completely naked.

He reaches for his towel and strips it away, and my airway constricts when I see his large erection bobbing heavily as he comes to bed and uses another towel to gently dry my wet hair.

“I’m rubbing you down with oils first,” I warn in a breathless whisper as he finishes.

Smiling devilishly, he tosses the towel aside, grabs the arnica oil I was reaching for, and tosses it onto the carpet to join it; then he brushes my wet hair back, his eyes weighted as he cups the back of my head and lowers his head to mine. “Rub my tongue with yours.”

He parts his mouth on mine, and our breaths mingle, and a delicious shiver runs through me as his lips pull me apart and our tongues flick out.

“Your lip,” I breathe, so he’s careful.

He playfully nips me and brushes my tongue with his again, rubbing a little harder and driving me insane. “Your lip,” I moan, squirming needily beneath him.

He draws back. Then, torturously slow, he caresses the backs of my legs, awakening a thousand and one tingles.

“Remington, your lip . . .” I protest when I see the cut bleeding again, and I reach out to catch a drop of blood with my finger.

“Shh . . .” His tongue flashes out, and he licks and sucks my finger; then he lets go and watches me with those violently tender blue eyes as he trails his fingers up the backs of my legs to stroke my buttocks.

My breasts rise and fall as he runs his fingers up my legs, then possessively cups my ass. “Are you turned on by this?” he asks.

“Yes.”

He slides his hands to the backs of my knees, down my calves, then slowly back up until I’m dissolving into my bones and dying.

“How turned on are you?” he asks softly, settling a kiss on my stomach.

“I have to put something on that lip again,” I breathe. A thousand flames lick my body as I sit up and reach with trembling hands for my salve and manage to press some to his cut.

He presses a kiss to my fingertip, and I close my eyes as a bolt of pleasure arrows through me. “Remy . . .” I say, melting.

“Lie back down,” he tells me. Dizzy with anticipation, I do as I’m told.

“Don’t kiss me, Remington,” I warn.

He whispers roughly, “Fix me up later.”

A shudder courses through me as he caresses my sex, briefly opening my lips with his thumb while, at the same time, he ducks to slide his tongue across the tip of one nipple.

I buck a little, mewing, and he laughs softly as he licks my other nipple, tonguing it, playing with it, before covering it with his hot, wet mouth and sucking.

He runs his hands up my body, growling, “God, Brooke. You knot me up and tear me open. You’re getting me in you now.”

“Okay,” I gasp eagerly as he spreads me wide, his erection pulsing and hard as he flattens me on my back and covers me with the heat of his body. His mouth sears my own, and I disintegrate on the mattress. We’re both wound up. I need him like I need air. The way our skins touch. The way his calluses rasp over me. The way my hands slide over his slick chest. I claw his back as he buries his face in my neck and his mouth works hungrily over me like he doesn’t know whether to kiss, bite, or lick, so he does all three.

“Who do you belong to,” he rasps urgently.

“You,” I pant.

He grabs my legs and pulls them around his hips, then pins my arms above my head, looking down at me, his eyes devouring my face, my mouth, raking me with a look that is dark, and tormented, and starving.

He curls his fingers into mine and crushes my mouth with his. This closeness to him—the tangle of our limbs, our tongues, our breaths—activates all the pleasure centers in my brain and all the mating instincts inside me. Fire streaks through my veins as our tongues rush to meet. I moan, he groans, my body tingles on every point of contact with his as he rocks his hips against me. His chest against my nipples. His cock against my sex entry. His thick, powerful leg muscles almost crushing my thighs. Our palms against each other.

My every cell knows this is my mate and prepares me for him. Just him. He lets go of me and palms my ass as we intensify the kiss, his fingers proprietary and firm, bringing me closer until we are perfectly aligned, and I tip my head back so that his tongue reaches every corner in my mouth. “Yes . . .” I gasp.

He draws back, and our eyes meet in the shadows. The need I see in his eyes takes my breath away. He is the most male and mesmerizing thing I’ve ever seen. He ducks once more to set his hot lips on mine. Wet. So, so, hot. I gasp as he slides a hand between my legs. He turns to suckle my earlobe, and I run my tongue over his skin and the stubble of his jaw, anywhere I can taste as he passes his thumb over my sex.

“Oh, that feels so right . . .” A burning rush spreads through my body when his fingers slide between my legs to caress me. My blood starts boiling, and my folds grow damper.

He murmurs my name in that thickened voice that drives me crazy and lowers his lips to my breasts, laving the tips. They feel extra sensitive today, shooting ripples of pleasure to my sex. I gasp and bite his earlobe, saying his name. I can’t say it enough. “Remy . . .”

“Go off for me,” he pleads, plunging his longest finger inside me. I thrash and clutch his shoulders as his fingers burrow into my cleft. I’m soaked, my whimpers of pleasure echoing in the room.

“Shh, baby, loosen up for me.” He slides down my body and bends to lick my belly button. He drags his tongue down my navel and then I feel him trailing it lower. I scream when he traces my clitoris. He pulls me open with his thumbs and licks into me. Pleasure rushes through me as my body tightens for release. Then I come.

I gasp as he licks me all up and am still thrashing in residual waves when he goes up to his knees between my legs, takes his cock in his hand, and feeds it into me. I see his muscles clench, his body working as he pushes himself deep. I moan when he presses my clit down with his thumb and fucks me even deeper with his big, thick cock.

Thrashing as a sound of pleasure escapes me, I tilt my hips up for more. He mutters my name and leans over to brush kisses along my face, cooing down at me, “You’re so fucking tight, baby. . . . You drive me so crazy.”

When he’s buried in me, we stop.

I hear our breaths, my own rapid heartbeat, in this stillness.

The urgency is there, pulsing and shimmering in our bodies. But he’s in me. I have him. I fucking grip him and don’t want to let go.

He doesn’t want to come out of me—he’s in me. Hard and pulsing. Completely possessing me.

We start kissing as he sinks a little farther in, his mouth primal and raw, loving but deliciously rough. I feel that familiar stretch of him inside me and bite his neck, whimpering as I adjust. He stays in place, waiting for me to start moving.

I wait, though, and pant, my eyes close as I relish him, wide and long and alive, inside me. I love his nipples, his skin, him. I rub the tips of my fingers over the dark points. I hear him exhale in pleasure as I raise my head to suck one softly. I love his rumble. He takes my head in his palm and tips it back, kissing me lovingly. I tear free and run my tongue over his other nipple. “Remy . . . I can’t wait. . . .”

He growls and starts moving, whispering as he nuzzles the top of my head and tangles his fingers in my hair. Tight . . . beautiful . . . my Brooke Dumas . . .

His words caress me.

Nobody ever taught him how to love.

He does it instinctively.

Pulling me closer, he suckles, nips, bites, and licks me, drawing out the pleasure until my eyes burn. My body clutches him. I can’t breathe, and all I hear in the room are our combined sexy sounds—and the ones he makes drive me half-crazy.

He thrusts, slamming hard. He’s wound me up by now, and I scream. He fists his fingers in my hair, kissing me as our hips pump fast and violently, with hardly any rhythm now.

I come a second time, and he penetrates completely and holds me tight as he goes utterly still. I feel his warmth and a hot growl followed by a kiss in my ear as he comes in me. Then we ease in relaxation, our breaths calming.

He grabs me and pulls me to his chest as he rolls, our bodies slick with sweat. He wants me naked, and I want him to hold me naked. He eases out as I start relaxing, then he tests my entry and pushes his semen back in, surprising me.

Our instincts suddenly take over. My hips rock to his fingers. The warmth of his breath bathes my throat as he presses his mouth to my skin. I can hear us, the noises we make—my whimpers and his growls of male satisfaction of pleasuring his mate. A bubbling sound tears out of me as I begin shuddering.

He’s not touching my clitoris. It is not receiving any stimulus, but the way he pets my body with his hand, shoves his semen back into my body like he never wants to leave, and licks my skin with slow drags of his tongue, makes my sex grip around him and my nipples bead so that even the air is a stroke that he means to give to me. When he bites the back of my neck, I buck and cry out, “Oh god!”

He pushes me down on the mattress on my stomach and keeps gently biting my neck, marking me as he fucks me doggy style.

By the time we sag onto the bed, it’s a task for me to summon my energy to move. I’m a boneless heap beneath him, still trying to make my lungs work.

Slick with sweat, he rolls to his back and uses one arm to bring me with him, our skins glistening from our workout. My chest is so full of love and my body so well fucked, I feel both dead from exhaustion and as alive as the sun. I spread out over him and cup his hard jaw.

“Do these hurt?” I lightly graze the cuts and the slight purple area on his temple. Before he can answer, I buzz a kiss over each one, and I wonder if he’s ever been kissed where he’s been hurt. So I kiss him there, on every mark, and then I kiss the one on his lips, briefly buzzing it.

I ease back and smile at him, stroking his hard jaw. “Did you think about me before you had me? Did you wonder if I existed? How I would be?”

He tucks a strand behind my ear and studies my face. “No.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever fall in love. Did you?”

“Never,” he says again, those sexy dimples out in full force.

I drag my fingernails up to his temple, teasing them into his hair. “What did you think about when you grew up there?”

“I just took what I had and was satisfied with it.” He brushes my hair back and strokes my earlobe. “But if I’d known you existed, I’d have hunted you, I’d have caught you, and I’d have taken you.”

“But isn’t that what you did?” I ask, smiling.

“Exactly”—he bumps my nose with his, his blue eyes laughing—“what I did.”

Sighing, I rest my head on his shoulder and rub my fingers over his nipples.

He’s the best bed. He’s lying on his back, one arm behind the pillow, the other trailing over my spine, and I’m spread all over him, my tummy to his abs, my breasts on his lower pectorals, my head on his shoulder and perfectly aligned to tuck into his neck. He smells of different soap every time, with so many hotels we go to, and at the same time, he always smells like him.

Quietly, I run my fingers up his bicep and lightly massage it. “That better?” I prod, working deeply into the muscle and realizing it is fucked up. Damn him.

But he says, “Yeah,” like it’s nothing and rolls me to my side. My insides immediately go hyperaware as he starts maneuvering me. He tucks me closer, and I moan softly deep in my throat and my sex swells because I realize what he’s going to do. He rolls me around to my side and adjusts me to spoon me, his big body warm and hard behind mine. He brushes my hair back and licks me, and I shudder as he slowly starts petting one heavy hand down my curves.

He licks me, pets me, drags his hand down my body while he flicks his tongue along the back of my ear, at my nape, the curve of my shoulder, lapping and tasting me.

Remy has thrived without love, even paternal love. He has thrived even when he fights a mood disorder every day of his life. He has thrived and gotten up every time he has fallen. The only times I have truly fallen, in my Olympic tryouts and when he lost last year’s fight, I’ve been permanently marked and have hobbled to get back walking. Yet he instantaneously stands to run.

He is so complicated and unpredictable, I fear that even when I’ve given everything of myself to this man, he will always have me, but he will never really be mine.

“I’m hungry,” he tells me in my ear, then eases out of bed and jumps into his drawstring pajama bottoms.

“Oh, no, I want to sleep . . .” I groan, and clutch my pillow as he grabs my ankles and hauls me down the length of the bed.

“Come eat with me, little firecracker.”

“Noooooo . . .” I clutch the pillow to me as he drags me down the bed and, in my last attempt to remain in bed, I kick into the air. “I’m getting fat because of you!” I laughingly squeak.

With a low, sexy chuckle, he lifts me up as if I were just the pillow, then tosses the pillow aside, only keeping me to kiss. “You’re beautiful.”

“Every beautiful woman in the world is beautiful because she sleeps,” I protest weakly, at the same time nuzzling his throat.

He grabs one of his T-shirts from his suitcase and hands it to me. I wiggle into it as he carries us out to the living area of the penthouse suite, then he drops me down on a chair and fishes out his food. He brings two plates, one heaping, and the other containing more normal portions. Then he plops down across from me and pats his lap with a meaningful stare.

I lean back in my chair and start eating an asparagus spear from the tip. “We have very bad eating habits. If you take me to a restaurant, I can’t eat perched on your lap like some sort of canary. People will think we have problems.”

He sticks a roasted cauliflower floret into his mouth and munches. “Who cares?”

“Excellent point.” Eating the stalk of asparagus down to the end, I observe him across me, with those tattoo bracelets on his arms, his hair a delicious mess, and his blue eyes twinkling. God. He is all. I want. In this world. Right on that chair. “And this is actually not as comfortable as you, I admit.” I squirm in the chair for emphasis.

He lifts a brow, his eyes sparkling devilishly. “Stop playing hard-to-get, Brooke. I already got you.” He tosses a paper napkin at me. I grab another, wad it, and toss it. He sets the fork down and reaches one long arm out to grab the end of my chair. He hauls it across the floor, and the moment he can wrap his arm around my waist, I squeak as he transfers me over.

“Settle down now. We both want you here.” He cups my face and turns me, his lips curling in a tender smile as he surveys my features with new intensity. “We okay now?”

Linking my fingers at the back of his neck, I meet his gaze. “Mostly I’m just angry at me. I’m hurt and jealous. . . . It makes no sense in my head, but the rest of me doesn’t listen. I just didn’t expect to have so much trouble figuring out how to cope with this.”

“You cope knowing I love you, that’s how you cope. I fucking love you,” he hisses. “I want nothing more than to tell you it didn’t happen,” he continues, looking tortured, “There’s only one woman for me and I’d kill myself for you.” He nuzzles me like he means it, then trains his beseeching blue eyes on me. I swear I don’t think I’ve ever loved him so much as right now, this moment. “Forgive me. I forgave you, little firecracker. I forgave you before you even asked me to forgive you for leaving me. I wasn’t me when you left, baby, whatever pieces of me remained . . . that wasn’t me.”

My heart squeezes when I look at him. I take a roasted cauliflower floret between two fingers as a peace offering and lift it to his lips, feeding it to him.

Eyes glinting, he takes it all in his mouth, including part of my fingers, licking them. He’s still feasting on my fingers when he follows suit and grabs a piece of cauliflower and feeds it to me, and as all the herb flavors and olive oil melt in my mouth, I suck on his fingers too. I love the way his eyes flash when I do that.

“I love you, but don’t ever let them punch you on purpose like you did tonight,” I tell him in a raw, emotional voice, rubbing my wet fingertips over his lips, feeling them move under my touch at his gruff whispered, “I won’t until you make me.”