“
I’ve toppled men much heavier than you!”
“
A fucking tree topples sooner than Remy, Brooke,” Riley shouts.
“
Well, I can see
that
,” I grumble, and cup my mouth to yell, “Thanks for the heads up, Riley.”
Cursing under his breath, Remy holds my arm as he leads me, hopping, to the corner, where he drops down on a chair and, since there’s only one, hauls me down on top of him so he can test my ankle. “You fucked your ankle, didn’t you?” he asks, and it’s the first time I ever actually hear him sound so … annoyed at me.
“
I just seemed to
wrongly
send all my weight to my ankle,” I grudgingly admit.
“
Why’d you hit me? Are you pissed at me?”
I scowl. “Why would I be?”
His eyes peer intrusively into mine, and he looks frighteningly solemn and definitely annoyed. “You tell me.”
Ducking my head, I stare down at my ankle and refuse to spill my guts out to anyone but Melanie.
“
Hey, can we get some water over here?” he calls out, a sharp note of frustration in his words. Riley brings over a Gatorade and a plain bottle of water and sets them both on the ring floor at my feet.
“
We’re wrapping up,” he tells us, and then, sounding concerned, asks me, “You all right, B?”
“
Dandy. Call me tomorrow please. I can’t wait to get back in the ring with this dude.”
Riley laughs, but Remington doesn’t spare him a glance.
His chest is soaked with sweat and his dark head is ducked low as he inspects my ankle, his thumbs pressing around the bone. “That hurt, Brooke?”
I think he’s worried. The sudden gentleness with which he speaks to me makes my throat ache, and I don’t know why. Like when you fall, and it doesn’t hurt, but you cry because you feel humiliated. But I’ve already fallen worse in front of the world, and I wish I hadn’t cried back then just as fiercely as I wish not to break down in front of the strongest man in the world.
Scowling instead, I reach to try to inspect my ankle, but he doesn’t move his hand away, and suddenly several of our fingers surround my ankle, and
all
I can feel are his thumbs on my skin.
“
You weigh a ton,” I complain, like it’s his fault I’m an idiot. “If you weighed a little less I’d have toppled you. I even toppled my instructor.”
He glances up, scowling. “What can I say?”
“
You’re sorry? For my pride’s sake?”
He shakes his head, clearly still annoyed, and I smile sardonically and reach down for the Gatorade, unscrewing the top.
His eyes drop to my lips as I take a sip and I can feel, suddenly, something unmistakable on his lap beneath my bottom. As the cool liquid runs down my throat, it makes me realize the entire rest of my body is feverishly hot and getting hotter.
“
Can I get some?” His voice is strangely husky as he signals to my drink.
When I nod, he grabs the bottle in one big hand and tilts it up to his mouth, and my hormones discharge all at once at the sight of his lips pressing against the rim.
Right over the spot mine have just been.
His throat works as he swallows, then he lowers the bottle, his lips now moist, and when he hands the Gatorade back to me, our fingers brush. Lightning shoots up my veins. And I’m entranced by the way his pupils have darkened, and the way he’s staring at my eyes without any laughter in his eyes. When I automatically try to cover my nervousness by taking another swallow, he watches me way too intently, his lips unsmiling. Beautifully pink. The cut on his lip’s still healing. The one I want to lick. A ribbon of longing unfurls deep inside me. And it hurts. I’m on his lap, and I realize one powerful arm is around my waist, and I’ve never been so close. Close enough to touch him, kiss him, wrap all my body around him. I’m suddenly dying and flying. I just can’t pretend this is no big deal anymore. I want him. I
want
him so badly I can’t think straight. It
is
a deal. A big deal.
I’ve never felt like this.
I know it’s crazy, and that it’s never going to happen, that it can never happen, but I just can’t help it. He’s like my Olympics, something that I’m never going to have, but which I crave with my entire being. And I absolutely loathe the thought that his arms have been around one, possibly two, women less than twenty-four hours ago, when I wanted it to be me.
Agitated all over again at the memory, I try standing, carefully, and he takes my Gatorade and sets it aside as he grabs two towels from a basket and wraps one around his neck, then drapes the other around mine, all the time holding me up by the waist. “I’ll help you up so you can ice that.”
He lowers me from the ring like I weigh no more than a cloud, and then I have to lean on him, my arm around his narrow waist as we walk out.
“
It’s fine,” I keep saying.
“
Stop arguing,” he says.
In the elevator, he keeps me close to his side and his head ducked to me, and I can feel his breath near my temple. I’m painfully aware of how big he is, compared to me, and of his five fingers splayed around my waist, and of the exact moment he shifts his nose and lowers it to the back of my ear. It tickles when he exhales, and he’s so close, his lips would brush the back of my ear if he speaks. I hear his deep inhale all of a sudden, and my sex organs throb so fiercely, I ache to turn around and bury my nose in his skin and suck all the air I can into my lungs. But of course I don’t do this.
He walks me to my room, and my body is in such a state, my brain can’t even come up with a topic of conversation to get rid of the tense silence that accompanies us.
“
Hey, man, ready for the fight?” A uniformed hotel staff member, who seems to be a fan, asks from across the hall.
Remington gives a thumbs up with a dimpled smile before turning to me, pressing his jaw into the hair at the back of my ear. “Key,” he says in a guttural whisper that elicits goose bumps. He swipes it and brings me inside.
Diane isn’t here, and I know she’s probably making his super luxe dinner right now. He sets me down on the edge of the second queen bed, which I guess he figures is mine because Diane has a picture of her two kids facing the first bed, and he grabs the ice bucket. “I’ll get you ice.”
“
That’s fine, Remy, I’ll do it later…”
The door closes before I can finish, and I exhale as I bend to palpate my ankle to assess the damage I caused.
He leaves the lock out so he doesn’t have to knock, and I stiffen when he returns and slams the door shut. He runs the water in the bathroom, and then he’s back, looking enormous and commanding inside my hotel room as he plops the bucket on the carpet.
He kneels at my feet, and at the sight of his powerful body and dark head bending down to tend to me, a rush of wanting ripples through me with such force, I stare down at the ice and want to dip my head in the bucket.
He yanks off my tennis shoe and then my sock, then he holds my leg gently by the calf as he eases my foot inside. “When we get this fixed I’m going to show you how to knock me down,” he whispers. When I can’t answer and am completely undone by his touch, he glances up, and his eyes are both tender and intimate. “Cold?”
Though the rest of me is anything
but
, my toes start freezing as the water envelops them. “Yeah.”
As he sinks my foot deeper, my entire body tenses from the frigidness, and he pauses midway down. “More water?”
I shake my head and ram it down the rest of the way, thinking,
No pain no gain
. My lungs seize up as my body absorbs the cold. “Oh, shit.”
He notices my grimace and yanks my foot out, then he shocks me, flattening my icy cold feet against his stomach to warm me. His abs clench under my toes, and his eyes hold mine in a grip so powerful, I’m drowning.
Voltage surges through me. His warm, big, callused hand is curved around my instep, holding my feet to his stomach so firmly it almost feels like he wants me there. I wish my hands were my feet, feeling those washboard abs under my fingers. Every dent perfectly presses against the arch of my foot and my toes, and the numbness has left me completely.
“
I didn’t know you gave pedicures, Remy,” I say, and I can’t understand why I sound so breathless.
“
It’s a fetish of mine.”
He shoots me a lazy smile that clearly tells me he’s all bullshit, then he reaches into the bucket with his free hand and pulls out a single ice cube. He sets it lightly on my ankle and drags it over the tender flesh, carefully watching what he does. My reaction is swift and violent, seizing my entire body with a complete and total awareness of him.
My heartbeat suddenly roars up in my head. God, this man is more tactile than I am. Then, as if to confirm my thoughts, the hand holding my foot to his stomach shifts slightly, and he rubs his thumb along the arch of my foot while the cool ice cube continues being rubbed across my skin. A tingling begins at the center of my stomach, and I’m afraid within minutes, it will take over my body.
My voice trembles like the rest of me. “Do you do manicures too?”
He glances up at me again, and my heart turns over from the effect his blue eyes have on me.
“
Let me do your feet, first, then I’ll do the rest of you.”
My stomach clenches when he finishes that phrase with another smile, this one quite slow. Every muscle in my sex starts to ripple as the ice slowly continues to stoke a gently growing fire in my insides.
I’m entranced as he watches the ice over my creamy white skin, the silence charged with electricity. Helplessly I drag my feet slightly over his stomach, feeling the ridges of his abs under me. He looks up, and the piercing intensity in his eyes draws me right in until I’m breathless and drowning.
“
Feel better?” he murmurs, raising his dark brows, and I can’t believe how his voice affects me, how his touch affects me, his scent, how another human can have such power over me. I can’t let it.
I remind myself that when you want a man, you’re in control of what you give him. In control of what you let him take. But I can’t block out the images of him, and me, together. Of
me
tearing
his
clothes off and of
him,
crushing
me
against
him
. Images of his lips on mine, of us falling recklessly in bed together, throb through me. He makes me feel eighteen. Virginal and wanton. Just thinking of boys … except he only makes me think of one. And he’s very male. Very man. But a little bit playful, like a boy.
A big, bad boy who had fun with his little whores on his coffee table last night …
The sudden, brutal reminder cools me down like a dip in the frigid waters of Alaska. “It feels perfect now. Thank you,” I say, my voice cool as the melting ice as I try wiggling my foot free from his grip.
I’m about to successfully pull free when the door opens with an unlocking noise, and Diane enters. “There you are. I must feed you now so you can recharge for tomorrow!”
Staring at me as though confused about the change in me, Remington frowns slightly as he tosses the thawing ice in the ice bucket and sets my foot back on the carpet as he stands. “I
am
sorry, about your ankle,” he says to me, softly, as he straightens, his expression confused and almost vulnerable. “Don’t worry if you can’t make it to the fight.”
“
No. It wasn’t your fault. I’ll be fine,” I rush out.
“
I’ll ask Pete to get you some crutches.”
“
I’ll be fine. Serves me right for messing with trees.”
He stops at the entry then glances back at me on the edge of the bed, his face unreadable.
“
Good luck, Remy,” I say.
He stares at me, then at Diane, then rakes a hand through his hair, and leaves, looking somehow … agitated.
Diane stares at me in complete puzzlement. “Did I come at a bad time?”
“
No.” I shake my head. “You came just in time before I made a total fool of myself.”
Not that trying to knock a man like him off his feet had been a very smart move to begin with
.
Dancing to the music
Pete wants me out of backstage. And so do Coach and Riley.
“
He needs to zone out, go get your seat, you’re distracting the hell out of him,” Pete tells me, and although he’s the one I consider most gentle among the men in the team, he really sounds frustrated today. Maybe because it’s his birthday number thirty-two and he’d rather be anywhere else. “Here. Take this ticket and go meet the girls next to you. They’re nice people, and they’re here with us. We’re all partying later.”