Real

The Underground simmers with energy tonight, and about an hour ago I quit looking for Nora among the crowd, somehow fearing the sight of me has encouraged her to go into hiding. I’m determined to make her come out—I just don’t know how I’m going to do it yet. But I’m definitely plotting.

For now, I’ve let myself be swept into the magic of the fights, and I find myself watching all the contenders more avidly than I ever have before, if only to try to see their fighting strategies in case they final and have to face Remington.

Some fight extremely dirty, and I realize there’s no one who fights like he does. Remy fights like he loves it. He has a blast up in the ring, making himself a lion and his opponents mice he’s just playing with. He jumps up and down sometimes, making the crowd participate when he clinches his opponent only to then let go and point at him, as if asking, “Do you all want me to beat this asshole’s face in?”

Of course the crowd roars, and I’m all wound up, jacked up, and more, exhilarated just watching him.

When he was announced tonight, the Austin crowd went wild, most everyone present standing and hollering. I watched with a fluttering stomach as he strutted down the pathway and climbed into the ring—the room suddenly coming alive with his presence. Now banners keep waving across the room as he pounds his third opponent of the night, and he’s worn the other man down so bad, it will probably end in a couple more minutes.

He’s on a roll. He’s taken out anything and everything they bring out. I haven’t really seen any of his opponents able to get a really good hit on him, his face is intact and so is his guard.

Somehow I feel that he’s proving something to this city where he was born. I feel like he’s telling his parents with every punch that they were wrong. And it makes me privately cheer for him even more. I’m so stunned from what I learned, and I just can’t picture Remington being locked up anywhere, helpless and angry. He’s a man who is strong and primitive, who knows exactly what he wants, and it enrages me to think anyone hurt him when he was younger and more vulnerable. It makes me feel fiercely protective of him, and makes me wish I’d known him sooner, as if I could have even done something to stop it.

I hear the slam of his KO and the screaming that follows, and my heart is already skipping in my chest as the ringmaster grabs Remy’s arm and raises it.

“Our victor of the night, Remingtoooooooon Tate, your RIPTIDE!!”

His arm raised in victory, I hold my breath in anticipation and wait for what follows. What he always does next.

He seeks me out with those blue eyes.

My body seizes the instant he swings his gaze to mine. His smile flashes, but it has an edge to it today. He’s been fighting with fierce intensity, and his smile is as equally intense, a blast of sex, and suddenly there’s nothing innocent or playful about it. He keeps his gaze trained possessively on me as his breaths continue jerking out of his powerful chest and rivulets of sweat slide down his body, and he looks as perfect as he did the first moment I laid eyes on him in Seattle.

I want him more than ever.

I’m so wet, and so desperate with what he makes me feel, I just stare back at him, not returning his smile, my eyes imploring him to finish whatever is going on between us, whatever it is that leaps like currents of electricity between us whenever we’re close. I’ve put it all out there, telling him I want him, and he continues to be as unattainable to me as a comet.

With glinting blue eyes, he points at me now, then at himself, and then at a figure approaching me in the pathway before my seat. The figure is carrying a bright red rose.

She shoves it in my line of vision. “From Remy,” the smiling young girl whispers.

Another rose follows, and a different voice proudly states, “From Remy.”

A third one falls in my hand. “From Remington.”

A fourth. “From Riptide.”

“From RT. Sorry those jerks egged you . . .”

“From Remy.”

My pulse is somewhere near the moon, while at the same time, my world drops from underneath me. I stare in utter disbelief at the line of people forming before me, easily several dozen, all of them handing me red roses from him. Rem watches, with that dimpled smile that fairly tells me that I belong to him, and my heart aches so much I want to rip it out of my chest and throw it somewhere. Word of what he did in Los Angeles must have gone out through Twitter or I don’t know how—all I know is my arms are full of roses, and they’re all from him.

From a man who fights like crazy, arouses me like no other, is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. From the man who plays me sexy music, gives me his T-shirt to sleep in, protects me as fiercely as a lion, and yet won’t take me when I’m naked and trembling in his arms.

And suddenly I can’t stand it anymore.

I don’t even glance at him when we ride back to the house. His gaze is glued to my profile, every cell in my body aware of it. I know he wants to know if I’m grateful for my roses, but my insides are so wound up, I’m simmering. All my desire for him has not been appeased, and it has morphed into the sort of anger that will probably give me a disease and kill me.

I’m shaking with it. With need. With pain. With fury.

How dare he.

Make me want him like this.

Offer me the job of my dreams, and then become the center of my very existence, until I’m ready to risk everything for him. Even my job. My family. My friends. The city where I grew up.

How dare he touch me in the shower, and kiss me like he wants to eat me for every meal until he dies! How dare he be my living, breathing fantasy come to goddamned life only to tease and torture me until I can’t stand it. I used to feel so damned free and happy that I didn’t have any romantic dramas. I used to hear Melanie rant and rave and I’d tell her, “Mel, he’s just a man. Chin up and onto the next.” And now I’m in knots because of one man, and my own advice is worth shit because there is no other man like him to me.

I no longer even feel free. I’m taken and yet the man who’s taken me won’t have me. If I weren’t so angry and frustrated, I’d throw the biggest damn pity party of my life, second only to the one I threw following the Olympic trial fallout.

“You were awesome, Rem!” Pete tells him in the car, sighing with pure delight. “Man, what a great night.”

“Great fight, son,” Coach says, sounding the happiest I’ve ever heard the somber man. “Never broke form. Never dropped guard. Even Brooke felt the love tonight, huh, Brooke?”

Silence follows, and I hold still in my seat and just watch the lights flickering out the window as though I’m not even hearing their conversation. I absolutely refuse to gush about my roses or compliment him. Yes, his fans showered me with roses and he fought like a true freaking wonderful champion. . . . My pussy clenches as I remember the powerful blows of his fists, and now I refuse to think more about that either.

“You totally killed it,” Riley says.

I notice Remington doesn’t respond to their compliments. His gaze now feels like a scorching brand on my profile and his energy is becoming as tumultuous as mine. He must have wanted a different reaction to his gesture. He must have wanted me to be all gushy and tell him, “Oh my stars, you’re so amazing!” But I won’t. Because I hate what he does to me. I hate that I want him like this, I hate that I feel so volatile I want to tear his eyes out and then go cry about it. I want to fling all these roses in his lap and tell him to fuck them now because I don’t even want him to fuck me anymore!

So when the roses are set with water in one of the ice buckets in my room and my anger has festered into gargantuan proportions, I storm down the hall and find Pete in the living room outside the master bedroom.

“Remington?” I demand.

“Showering.” He points to a door, and I charge forward through it, slamming and locking it behind me.

I spot him across the room, standing on the threshold of the bathroom.

He’s fully naked, dripping wet, fresh out of the shower with a towel in his hand, and instantly he jumps erect.

His stunned gaze fixes on me, and the towel falls at his feet.

I’ve never had this view of him in the nude, and to see his physical perfection and the most beautiful cock I’ve ever seen, perfectly working, only enrages me further. The blood rushes like burning lava in my veins as I charge forward and slam my fists repeatedly into his chest, as hard as I can without breaking my own bones. “Why haven’t you touched me? Why don’t you fucking take me? Am I too fat? Too plain? Do you just delight in fucking torturing me senseless or are you just plain damn mean? For your information, I’ve wanted to have sex with you since the day I went into your stupid hotel room and got hired instead!”

He grabs my wrists and angrily yanks me forward, pinning my arms down. “Why’d you want to have sex with me? To have a fucking adventure? What was I supposed to be? Your one-night-fucking-stand? I’m every woman’s adventure, damn you, and I don’t want to be yours. I want to be your fucking REAL. You get that? If I fuck you, I want you to belong to me. To be mine. I want you to give yourself to me—not Riptide!”

“I won’t ever be yours if you don’t take me. Take me! You son of a bitch, can’t you see how much I want you?”

“You don’t know me,” he strains out through gritted teeth, his face anxious as he clenches my wrists at my sides. “You don’t know the first thing about me.”

“Then tell me! You think I’ll leave if you tell me whatever it is you don’t want me to know?”

“I don’t think it, I know it.” He grabs my face in one open hand and squeezes both my cheeks, his eyes violently blue and almost frantic. “You’ll leave me the second it gets too steep, and you’ll leave me with nothing—when I want you like I’ve never wanted anything in my life. You’re all I think about, dream about. I get high and low and it’s all about you now, it’s not even about me anymore. I can’t sleep, can’t think, can’t concentrate worth shit anymore and it’s all because I want to be the fucking ‘one’ for you, and as soon as you realize what I am, all I’ll be is a fucking mistake!”

“How can you be a mistake? Have you seen you? Have you seen what you do to me? You had me at hello, you fucking asshole! You make me want you until it hurts and then you won’t do shit!”

“Because I’m fucking bipolar! Manic. Violent. Depressive. I’m a fucking ticking time bomb, and if one of my staff messes up when I get another episode, the next person I hurt can be you. I was trying to break this to you as slowly as possible so I could at least stand a chance. This shit has taken everything from me. Everything. My career. My family. My fucking friends. If it takes this chance with you, I don’t fucking even know what I’m going to do, but the depression will hit me so deep, I’ll probably end up killing myself!”

My eyes sting as the words float like awful whiplashes in my head. Every shocking word stuns me to my bones. He curses and releases me, and I take a step back and watch him angrily step into a pair of drawstring pants.

Helplessly, I watch him grab a T-shirt from the closet, and my heart has completely stopped beating in my chest. The word “bipolar” is not really one I’m familiar with. I’ve never met anyone who’s been bipolar, but suddenly I go back through these weeks, and I get a little hint of what it is. I do. I get it. Remy both loves and hates himself. He loves and hates his life. One second it’s all good, the next it’s all bad. He’s hot, then he’s cold. Maybe he’s never been accepted, not even by himself, and maybe everyone drops him cold the second it gets . . . steep.

A thousand emotions roil in my chest, and I can barely contain them all in my body.

His chest heaves as he watches me across the room now, his eyes brilliantly blue as he clenches his hands at his sides and waits for me to speak, the T-shirt still in his grip, dangling at his side.

Suddenly all I know is that this man has assumed godlike proportions in my mind, but now I realize he’s also human and imperfect, and with every aching, quaking inch of my body, I want him all the more. So much I want to drown if he denies me tonight.

Dragging in a fortifying breath, I feel my hands tremble as I slowly open the buttons of my top, sifting them one by one through my fingers. The rustle makes his eyes drop to my chest and his eyes flash in pain. His stare devours me so fiercely I feel the bite of his eyes in my heart.

“I’m take as-is. I’m not medicating. It makes me feel dead and I intend to live my life alive,” he warns in a rough, angry whisper.

I nod in understanding. I refused to take antidepressants when I supposedly, clinically, needed them after my fall. I believe it is your choice how you live with your sickness, and sometimes the remedy is worse than the disease. He’s a man who eats right, and any chemical can unbalance him even further. He controls his environment and what he can, and I can see how he strives for the keys to good health—exercise, good sleep, and good food intake—to keep him as stable as possible.

I’m no one to tell him what to do. But does he even realize how important he is? Where he’s gotten to, all on his own? Does he see what a great team he’s built? I can see how Coach, Diane, Pete, and Riley love him even when they quarrel. I wanted to belong to this team, but now I just want to belong to this man.

And I want him to belong to me.

“Take your clothes off, Remy.”

Flicking my last button, I part my shirt through the middle, and the T-shirt he’s still holding in his balled grip falls to the floor as his fingers spasmodically open.

His eyes rake me, his voice an angry pained rasp. “You have no idea what you’re asking for.”

“I’m asking for you.”

“I won’t let you fucking leave me.”

My throat closes up with emotion, making the words hard to pronounce. “Maybe I won’t want to.”

Pained desperation flashes in his eyes. “Give me a goddamned guarantee. I won’t let you fucking leave me, and you’re going to want to try. I’m going to be difficult and I’m going to be an ass, and sooner or later, you’re going to have fucking enough of me.”

Shaking my head, I toss my top to the floor, then push my skirt down my hips and step out of it. Trembling down to my soul, I stand in only my plain cotton bra and panties, my breasts rising and falling. “I’ll never have enough of you, never.”

At first, my words seem to have no effect on him.

And I think I’m slowly dying.

Then a low, hungry sound rips up his throat.

My breath stalls in my throat.

He stands watching me, motionless in those loose pants, his legs braced in a fighting stance, his eyes bursting with need. His broad shoulders jerk with his breaths, and he curls his fingers into fists at his sides. The deep roughness of his voice scrapes my flesh. “Come here then.”

The command comes so unexpectedly my legs quake. All my systems rush to work together, but at the same time, I can’t move.

I feel like a bunch of organs struggling to come into one. Rapid heart. Sweating skin. Tremors in my nerve endings. Complete uselessness of my lungs.

All of my body wants the same thing but it seems too wound up to unite.

When I at last come together with a ragged breath, I feel so alive and yet so unraveled, even my toes tingle when we—me and this heart and these bones and this skin—finally manage to take the first step.

A fierce nervousness eats me raw, all the way to my destination.

Remington’s breathing escalates. His powerful chest rises even faster as I approach. Step by nerve-wracking step, I feel my pulse throb in my temples as the heat of his stare creeps into me. Between my legs, I burn for him. My nipples throb. The hard tips push painfully against the cotton of my bra. Each pore in my body wants to beg him to suck them. To touch me. To love me.

Stopping a foot away, I can barely breathe as the smell of his soap envelops my lungs, drugging all my senses. His arms come out, and he tangles ten angry fingers in my hair as he yanks my head back in his fists and buries his nose in my neck, growling softly. His deep inhale reaches me, and a shudder runs through my body as I do the same, absorbing every color and flavor of his strong male scent into my body. His tongue flashes out to lick a wet path up my neck as an arm coils around my waist, and he crushes me to his body, whispering, “Mine.”

Lust and love burst through me. “Yes, yes, yes, Remington, yes.”

Tangling my fingers up in his hair, I eagerly push my breasts to his chest and anxiously rub my pained nipples against his diaphragm, my arms violently locking his head to me as he continues scenting me with deep, somehow desperate inhales. My body jolts with pleasure.

He grabs my face with his callused hands and drags his tongue from my neck, along my jaw, breathing roughly as he heads for my mouth. He licks the seam of my lips. Dampening me. Priming me.

His tongue probes at the seam; then he adds his lips and uses them to open me. He nibbles my lower lip to tease it apart from the top. A soft whimper feathers out of me and he muffles the sound when he dives in to taste me, wet and hot and hungry. My response is fast and wild, and our tongues collide in a heated frenzy of wetness and panting.

My pliant body melts into his hard one until his strong arm, coiled around my small waist, is all that holds me upright. I don’t know if I’m bad for him, or him for me. All I know is that this is as inevitable as an incoming tsunami, and I’m just bracing for the swim of my life.

We taste and suckle each other, and I’m so thirsty he could feed me his kiss all night and I’d still be dying in the desert. He grips my hair tighter in one fist and keeps me in place as though he fears I’ll pull away from his delicious mouth, and I’m so afraid this is a dream that my fingers tighten reflexively in his wet hair because if there’s a fire in this hotel, if an army of crazy fans comes storming inside, or if Scorpion himself comes into this bedroom, I am still not letting Remington Tate break away from me.

The wet heat of his mouth unravels me, makes me so high I moan and suck lightly on his thick tongue, loving how Remington groans with me and pushes it deeper, giving me more.

He grows restless. Among the slick kissing sounds echoing in the room, his drawstring pants rustle as he shoves them down his legs, his arm muscles bulging as they clench against me. The linen fabric pools at our feet, and then he rams his thumbs into the front opening of my bra and yanks at opposite sides until it jerks loose. My breasts bounce free, and I’ve never felt so full as when he cups them in one big hand and lifts them higher to suck. He laves my nipples with his tongue, first one and then the other, and he brings up the other hand to engulf both gentle curves as he runs his calluses across my straining nipples. I moan gratefully when he sticks his tongue back in my mouth, because I’m just so hungry I can’t stop shuddering.

The slick kissing sounds echo around us once more. He squeezes one breast and shoves a hand between my legs, cupping me under my panties. He rubs me with the heel of his palm, and then rubs his longest finger along the moist folds of my entrance. Tremors of anticipation ripple in my womb.

He tears his mouth free, sets his forehead on mine, and watches as his hand moves sinuously under my white cotton panties. We’re so breathless I don’t expect his voice, guttural and rough as it explodes on my face, his forehead still resting on mine as he watches his hand caress my wetness: “Tell me this is for me.”

My arms clench around his strong neck as he teases the very tip of his finger inside, and a mind-blowing pleasure bolts through me. “It’s for you.” Gasping, I kiss his hard temple, his jaw. A sound of protest leaves me when he withdraws his hand; then he grabs the edges of my panties and tears them off in a single breath.

Excitement runs through me. He grabs me by the waist and flips us around, slamming me back against the wall. My legs fly around him as he cups my ass in his hands, and the next second I feel him—there, at my entry. His hardness meets all the exterior part of my slick opening, and he grabs my wrists and pins my arms up above my head, locking them in one hand.

“Are you mine?” he asks gruffly, as his hand returns between my thighs and briefly enters me.

I gasp. Undone. Delirious. “I’m yours.”

His expression is tense, ravenous, so hot as he shoves his finger deep into my channel. “Do you want me inside you?”

My need clogs my windpipe as pleasure shoots down my legs. “I want you everywhere. All over me. Inside me.”

His hand trembles with restraint as he withdraws it, and, once again, he settles his erection between my legs. He doesn’t enter, but he allows me to feel what he will give me. Our gazes cling desperately as we rub. We rock our hips together. We pant. We want. And I can’t take my eyes off him.

He’s even more beautiful than when he fights and is cocky and angry. More beautiful than when he trains and is sweaty and tired. More so than when he’s smiling and playful. Even more than when he’s thoughtful and relaxed being rubbed down with oil. He’s more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen—his face taut and raw with need, his eyes dark and half-open, his nostrils flaring, his mouth parted to breathe, his neck corded with veins, his tan deeper and darker as his overpowering arousal rushes color through his skin.

He holds my arms imprisoned as he caresses me with his hardness. Tempting me. Promising me. All I can do is whimper in a silent plea for him to take me. My sex ripples. My blood storms through my body. I’m being claimed by the man I love, and I am ready.

I.

Am.

Ready.

Darkened blue eyes watch me for a heart-stopping moment. One second I’m empty, the next he’s in me. He fills me slowly and carefully, like I’m his prized treasure and he doesn’t want to break me—as if he thinks no one else will receive him as snugly, and willingly, and lovingly as me. He’s wide and hard, all man, impaling me. He shudders and groans as my sex muscles grip his pulsing length, and he’s so big. A new whimper comes, almost painful as I squirm, wanting more, wanting less. Deciding my need for more is beyond anything, I drop down even farther and throw my head back, a weak sound escaping me as my body adjusts.

Gently he grabs both my breasts in his callused hands and pushes his tongue into my mouth until I swallow my own scream and drink everything his tongue gives me. He’s pulsing fiercely in my channel, holding himself fully seated inside. My body trembles in delirium when he drops his head and runs his tongue over my jaw, along my chin, down my neck. When he suckles a nipple into his hot mouth, my insides grip as my orgasm starts building, and I shudder in fevered heat and thrust my hips wantonly against his.

“Remy,” I beg as my arms tighten around his neck. I clench my thighs around him, tilting my pelvis. The move shoots excruciating pleasure through my body as his hardness drags inside me. My eyes roll into the back of my head.

I’m not going to last. He’s too big, feels too good, I need him too much.

“Remy . . .” I moan, out of my mind, rocking my hips. “Please, please . . . move.”

He groans as though he’s afraid he won’t last either. But he tries to please me, and withdraws, and then thrusts back in. We’re both undone, and a similar desperate sound of pleasure tears from our throats. He repeats the motion of his hips and drops his forehead to mine with a growl of restraint, and then he starts kissing me like his life depends on it.

“Brooke,” he rasps into my mouth. His hands clench on my hips as he pulls out and plunges back in, deep enough to bury every inch in me. He immediately goes off. The warmth of his incredibly violent convulsions and the powerful jerks of his cock shuddering inside me take me. Tremors crash through my body. My systems stall and restart as a bunch of stars fall through the back of my eyelids.

I clutch his muscled body as it clenches and twists against mine, licking his neck as his muscular body strains and finally relaxes. He growls in quiet satisfaction into my temple.

We continue panting and gently rocking our hips even as the orgasms stop, and Remington vibrates against me with so much need, he doesn’t even let me catch my breath.

He grabs me by the ass, my legs still locked around his lean hips, and carries me to the bed. He’s still inside me, still hard.

He sets me down and props a pillow under my head, and then he starts moving inside me, so slowly I mew and rake my nails down his back, watching him brace up on his shoulders, loving his perfect arms, his perfect thick throat, his face undone with pleasure as he starts fucking me fast and hard, like an animal. My nipples throb just looking into his lust-darkened eyes.

He brings his head to mine and feeds his tongue past my lips until I swallow my own gasps. “You wanted me.” His breaths come fast, his eyes wild. “Here I am.”

He fucks his cock into me ten times, fast and hard, making me yelp in delight over his claiming, and when my muscles seize up and my body prepares for another earth-shattering orgasm, he lets me come, keeping the frantic pace. Then, growling and prolonging his own orgasm, he pulls out to rub himself over my skin.

Quaking, my throat rumbles with a moan as he drags the slickened head of his cock along my inner thigh while one of his hands caresses a throbbing breast tip. I’ve always liked the fullness of my B cups, but they feel small and fragile in his big, callused hands.

He groans, though, like he really likes to squeeze them, and twirls his tongue up my neck. “I’ve wanted to touch you for so long, little firecracker.”

Pleasure shoots across my nerve endings as he pinches and tweaks. His teeth graze the skin under my jawline, exposed when I arch up to his body.

His muscles surround me, hard and strong, clenching and flexing, his cock gut-wrenchingly hard and sexy, rubbing all over my body and smearing his semen on me. I’m so delirious, I want to have this man inside my sex and my mouth, and in my hands, all at once.

He suddenly plunges back into my sheath, harder and deeper, his fingers digging into my hips, and I’m still so wet and swollen, I meet his every thrust, desperately moaning his name. “Remington.”

This isn’t about foreplay. It’s about claiming and taking, about relieving this throbbing, painful physical ache that is so powerful it makes my soul hurt. But I’m singing inside now. I can’t even believe the way he smells, the way he feels. Better than all my fantasies.

And I realize while I’m gasping please, oh god, you’re so hard, you feel so good, he has his own chant, telling me so sweet and wet as he licks every part of me he can. I love that he rubbed his scent on me, that he licks me everywhere, that I get to feel his teeth, his calluses, his skin, the bite of his blunt fingertips on my flesh.

Wild sounds tear out of me, ragged like my breaths. There’s no way for me to trap these raw, lustful noises. The deeper ones Remington makes make me crazy. He surges back to watch my breasts bounce as he fucks me fiercely hard, and his eyes glow like a predator’s as his hips slam against mine. He’s primal, animal, taking me; and he’s mine.

My teeth knock as my body grips every inch of his thrusting cock. My fingers dig into his drool-worthy buttocks as I draw him in deeper, twisting under his weight until I snap. I release a cry when his warmth spills inside me, and he follows with a low moan, clenching my hips as he slows the pace until we’re a mass of tired muscles and bones, sweat slicked and entangled on the bed.

I feel delicious afterward. Loose and warm, and very, very wanted.

Sighing, I grab one heavy male arm and drape it around my shoulders so I can snuggle in the nook against his chest, and then I kiss his nearest nipple. He has the sexiest, smallest, brownest, most perfectly pointed man-nipples I’ve ever seen, without a single hair anywhere on his chest. Just kissing it makes my sex clench again, even when it’s completely sore.

He grabs my languid body and positions me right above his body as he lies flat on his back, like he’s my bed and my legs run down the length of his, my body facedown as he faces the ceiling. We’re abs to abs, belly button to belly button. He nuzzles his nose across my temple as he slowly caresses my ass. “You smell of me.”

“Hmmm,” I say.

He clenches one ass cheek in his hand and buzzes his nose against my temple. “What does ‘hmmm’ mean?”

I smile in the darkness. “You said it first.”

“It means I want to eat you. Your little biceps. Your little triceps.” He kisses me on the mouth and drags his tongue over my lips. “Now you.”

Seizing his hand, I squeeze it in between our bodies so that he can feel everything that he smeared me with all across my abdomen. “It means I’m going French this week and not showering so I can smell you on me.”

He groans and shifts us so that my side hits the bed, and then he reaches between my legs to where I’m drenched in what he just gave me. His eyes glow in the shadows as he slides the soft liquid semen dripping down my thigh in a path leading back into my swollen entry, as if he doesn’t want to come out of my body.

“Sticky?” he asks in a gruff murmur, bending his head and licking my shoulder as he pushes his semen back inside with one finger. “Do you want to wash me off you?”

The thought of him pushing his semen back inside me makes me so hot, I grip his head and come closer to him. “No. I want you to give me more.”

He brings his damp fingers to my face and pushes his middle finger into my lips, as though asking me to taste. “I wanted you since the first night I saw you.” His voice comes out gruff as he watches me suck his finger into my mouth.

His taste does crazy things to me and my sex ripples with the need to feel him inside me again. “So did I.” I’m breathless and straining for a decent breath as I lick every drop.

He shoves a second damp finger into my mouth, and his salty ocean taste invigorates me. My eyes drift shut as I drag my tongue all down the length of his fingers. I’m so eager I think I moan. “Do you like my taste?” he thickly murmurs.

“Hmm. That’s all I want from now on.” Mischievously I take a little bite of his fingertips, and suddenly, I can feel his erection coming back up against me. Something I said . . .

“I’ll always want my Remy fix after dinner,” I continue, and I’m the one getting super thrilled when he continues thickening. “And maybe before breakfast. And after lunch. And at teatime.”

He groans, then drags himself between my parted legs and bends his head downward to taste me. His tongue flashes into me. My eyes flutter closed as my spine arches, the heat of his mouth shattering me. He grabs my buttocks in his hands and squeezes my flesh as his wet tongue slides across my clit over and over again.

“I . . . want to . . . come . . . on every part of your body . . .” he murmurs into me, his eyes closed as he surges up and shoves his erection against the outer slit of my entry.

I’m on fire with want. I need him inside me again, in my mouth, in my sex, in all my being. I grip the back of his head and rock my hips restlessly in a silent plea as I push my tongue into his mouth. “Come wherever you want, inside me, outside me, in my hand, in my mouth.”

When I grab his hardness in my fist, he instantly goes off, hot and liquid, spilling on my wrist. The convulsions are as powerful as he is, and my sex creams up hotly when I watch. He’s so magnificent and raw that suddenly I roll him onto his back and jump down on his erection, taking him in me with a whimper of surprise over his size again. He barks out in pleasure and throws his head back, gripping my hips and pulling me up, then lowering me again as he rams back up and his hardness keeps jerking inside me. Eventually, and before I know it, a scream of ecstasy tears through me as I convulse with him, feeling his warmth burst deep inside me again.

I’m totally limp and near comatose when I fall back on him.

“The night they sedated you . . .” I ask him, hours later, as I buzz the tip of my nose against his nipple again, still breathless over a long petting session. We can’t get enough. We’re like teenagers. Making up for weeks and weeks of wanting. “That was an episode?”

The pillow rustles as he nods, and I slide my hand over his speed-bump abs and rub him gently as I peer up at him, unsure whether he wants to do this right now. “Can we even talk about it?”

My touch seems to make him close his eyes, his voice velvety smooth as he cups the back of my head in one big hand, and he presses me down against his neck, cuddling me to him. “You can talk to Pete about it.”

I’m sticky with our desire and I like it, run my hands over him and know that he’s sticky too. The thought of taking a bath with him, washing “him” off, and then getting sticky all over again makes me want to moan. “Why don’t you talk to me about it, Remington?” I ask softly.

He sits up and twists his feet off the bed; then he drags his hands down his face. “Because a lot of episodes I don’t remember what I do.” He pushes to his feet and moves away from the bed.

Shit. I made him pace now.

“All right, I’ll talk to Pete about it, but come back to bed,” I say, quickly relenting when I notice the tension in his stance.

He stares out the window, his body perfect. So perfect. Legs braced apart, arms crossed, his muscles perfectly fed, formed, and taut. “I remember you.” His voice roughens. “In my last episode. The tequila shots. The way you looked. The little top you were wearing. The nights you slept in my bed.”

To think he notices what I wear does something tingly to me. I’m almost sure when he turns around I’ll be a pool of lava on the bed, already waiting for him to come fuck me.

He seemed so happy that day, with the shots—his energy was like that of a sun.

And then it flipped into night so quickly.

“I wanted us to happen so bad,” I painfully admit.

He turns. “You think I didn’t? I’ve wanted us to happen since . . .” He comes back to bed and drags me to him, kissing my lips fiercely. “Every second I want us to happen.”

I touch his jaw. “Have you ever hurt someone?”

Grief flicks into his eyes again, and he looks haunted, dropping his arm from me. “I hurt everything I touch. I destroy things! That’s the only thing I’m good at. I’ve found whores in my bed I can’t remember bringing back with me, and I’ve tossed them naked out of my hotel room, pissed like hell because I don’t remember what I did. I’ve stolen shit, vandalized shit, woken up in places I don’t even remember getting to . . .” He drags in a breath and sighs. “Look, since Pete and Riley alternate days off, there’s always someone to knock me out for a day or two when I get out of hand. I hit a low, and then I’m back. Nobody gets hurt.”

“But you. Nobody gets hurt but you,” I whisper sadly, and I reach out and snatch his closest hand within mine merely because I’m afraid he’ll get out of bed, and I don’t want him to. It feels like it took me a lifetime to get him here with me in the first place.

“Remy, do they have to knock you out like that?” I lace my fingers through his as I ask the question.

“Yes,” he says, emphatic. “Especially if I want . . . this. . . .” He signals to me, and to him, with his free hand, and clenches me with the other. “I want this. Very badly.” He nuzzles my nose with his. “I’m trying not to fuck it up, all right?”

“All right.”

He kisses the back of the hand that is holding his, his eyes sparkling once more. “All right.”

♥   ♥   ♥

MY INTERNAL CLOCK just won’t let me sleep past 6 a.m., even after a night such as the one I spent with him. Tickles of delight rush across my skin as I remember all the ways we made love to each other last night. My gaze lands on him, and the immense proprietary sensation that overcomes me is so powerful, it’s all I can do not to attach myself permanently to his big body of sin.

Quietly and with a dopey smile that won’t leave my face, I slip out of bed, knowing Riley and Pete won’t let him oversleep much, and definitely not beyond 10 a.m.

Pete is already in the kitchen, pouring himself some coffee, and since there are a thousand things I want to ask him, I join him. Curling my legs under my body on a chair in the small breakfast table, I watch him view the morning paper as I take a few sips of my coffee; then I clear my raspy throat and say, “He told me.”

For a moment, the only emotion on Pete’s face is shock, but then it changes to dubiousness. “He told you what?”

“You know what.” I set my coffee down and arch an eyebrow.

Pete lowers the paper, not smiling. “He never tells anyone.”

His words make me frown. “Don’t look so alarmed. He told you once. Didn’t he?”

“He didn’t tell me, Brooke, I was his nurse. At the ward. At least for his last year.”

My mind spins in confusion as I try to envision Pete in scrubs and taking care of my big bad fighter in some hospital. I just didn’t see this one coming. At all. The image is so incongruent I have trouble holding it in my head. “You were with him at the ward?” Okay, I know I sound stupid, but that’s all I seem to be able to ask.

Pete’s lips clench tightly as he nods. “It pissed me off.” He scowls darkly at his coffee, then shakes his head. “He’s a good dude. A little reckless—but it’s not his fault! He never picked on anyone. He was as closed off as a damned wall, that kid. He just ran like hell out in the yard and did his pull-ups on a tree outside, all day wearing his headphones and blocking everything out. They had him all drugged ever since one time he got speedy and told everyone they should escape. They all followed, and there was a big mess, and from then on, no one would even give him a chance to get speedy again; they just kept shooting shit up his veins and sparing themselves the trouble.”

“My god.” The shock, horror, and anger I feel sweep over me like a sickness, and I can barely swallow the sip of coffee I have in my mouth.

“Remy’s not crazy, Brooke,” Pete emphasizes, “but they treated him like he was. Even his parents. All he had in terms of comfort were some damn headphones. Which is why the guy rarely expresses himself. He just can’t. He’s been too closed off for years.”

With a heart that’s just melting for him, I realize that since the beginning, Remy has opened up to me through music, which is something that seems familiar and comforting to him, and suddenly, vividly, I want to hear each one of the songs he’s played me all over again.

My eyes sting a little, and I lower my head so Pete doesn’t see that I’m touched beyond words. Remy is a quiet man. He’s a physical man and yields to his physical instincts, but I don’t think he even knows how to verbalize his emotions very well.

I wonder if I’m a little closed off like Remy too?

In my life, I’ve frequently counted on Melanie to say things that I want to but feel too shy or embarrassed to admit out in the open. I never even told anyone after my ACL tore that it fucking sucked.

Remy’s so different from me, and yet we’re so alike I swear I can understand this man in my soul.

Suddenly I have to fight the impulse to get on my feet, go back to bed, and curl up with him.

“Was the night at the hotel . . . when you shot him up with something . . . what was that?”

“An episode. It’s not really another personality like people think. Well, it is, in part, but it’s more like a mood. It’s an alternate gene expression, conflicting with his previous one. Typically, some external trigger will shut down a gene expression and another becomes activated, which shifts his mood dramatically.” Pete meets my gaze with his warm, worried brown eyes, his features twisting in pain. “He suffers greatly, Brooke. Not only because it’s confusing for him, but because he doesn’t remember what he does when he goes manic.”

I’m flashed back to all those nights he came for me in my room, with those darkened eyes, and kissed me senseless until morning. “But he told me he remembered some things?” I say hopefully.

“Sometimes he does, but sometimes he doesn’t. The point is, he can’t trust himself to know for sure what he will do when he goes black.”

Which is why he’s been trying to be so careful with me . . .

My insides go mushy all over.

“So who told Riley, then?”

“I told Riley. I had to hire an extra so I could take a day off now and then. Otherwise I’d come back and Rem would’ve gotten himself in shitloads of trouble. Coach also knows about it, of course, and Diane suspects something is up, but she doesn’t know the actual diagnosis. She just thinks he’s moody.”

Sighing at that, Pete pours himself some more coffee. “I helped him sign out of the ward the moment he could. I’d just quit, and he told me he wanted to go see his parents, and he’d pay me if I gave him a lift, so I agreed.” Anger slashes across Pete’s face as he returns to his seat. “But the parents wanted nothing to do with him. They were scared at the mere sight of him. Shit, you should’ve seen the drama. The mother started crying, the father told Rem they wanted to live in peace, and Rem just stood there. I could see him struggling for words. I don’t know if he wanted to beg them for a chance or not, but he didn’t say anything. They all but slammed the door in his face. So we left, and Remy started fighting for money. He was good, so he got into pro boxing and hired me full-time as his assistant. He got a house in Austin and took another shot with the folks, and when at last they seemed to be pleased with his growing fame, they invited him to dinner. But it was the weekend the competition provoked him, and they hired some asshole to follow him out of a match. Remy has a short fuse even when he’s in a normal mood.”

My coffee has grown cold, so I also go and fix myself a new one as I process all of this. Pete continues as he watches me sit down.

“So he got kicked out, it was all over the news, and the parents never showed up at the restaurant.” He sighs while I sit there, both of us sad and hurting for Remy; then he adds, “It doesn’t sound like much, what he told you, Brooke. But living with it can get difficult.”

His eyes bore into the top of my head, and I know he’s gauging me. I can feel the question in his eyes almost as if he’d spoken it. He’s worried about me leaving Remington. And I don’t know what guarantee I can give anyone, especially when I have no idea what to expect from his bipolarness. But I know I want to stay. I really do.

“He tried to go to college too,” Pete offers. “But he couldn’t finish a degree, was always getting into fights. With any provocation, the guy’s instinct is to charge, and he kept introducing his knuckles to anyone at school he thought deserved it.”

“Was that where he met Riley?”

“Not on the other side of his knuckles, no.” He laughs, his eyes sparkling for a moment. “Rem actually stood up for Riley. Riley wasn’t the charming young man you see now when he was in college.” He winks playfully. “He was like me. Both geeks, I tell you. Neither of us was all that cool. But Rem saved Riley’s ass once, and Riley followed him like a dog right afterward, asking him for a couple of pointers to defend himself. That’s how I met Riley, when they sparred.” He grins. “But hell, Brooke, even with the moves, he was still geek material. But Remy was the coolest bad boy ever. Everyone wanted a piece of him, especially the women. He’d get them all over him, all day, and even the guys would follow, especially when he was getting high. Excesses abound when he’s in his beginning black days. Alcohol, women, adrenaline, adventure.

“He was actually under intense scrutiny all those years at the psych ward because of the eye-color change,” he adds. “It’s not uncommon for BPs to have it, but it’s rare. Two conflicting gene expressions, varying when one is triggered and the other is shut down. We have cocky, confident Remy, and black Remy. Black Remy still has a good heart, but he’s not reasonable. He’s not mean and certainly not evil. But he’s unpredictable and violent, and tends to destroy things, even himself. He flies high and then crashes low. This time you saw his low, it wasn’t nearly as bad as his other lows. Somehow Riley and I felt maybe it was because you kept him interested. He seemed to want to see you and kept coming out at least for that.”

“Pete, how can I help him?” I ask helplessly, pushing my coffee aside and giving him my full attention. “Please tell me how to help him, I get sick thinking of you using that stupid shit you shoot up his veins again.”

He sighs and tugs on his perfect black tie, loosening it a little. “I just don’t know with you, Brooke, but I know you’re a game changer. He’s never gone after someone the way he went after you, but even then, I’m sorry, but I can’t stop using the sedative—and he doesn’t want me to. Remy . . . his whole life is waiting for the other shoe to drop. You have to understand what it’s like, that his normal side sometimes doesn’t remember what the black one does. There have been instances when police come knocking on his door, telling him he just broke into a liquor store and robbed it, and he’d be, ‘No fucking way—I’ve been in bed all night,’ and they go, ‘Sir, the liquor is still in your car.’ ”

“Seriously?” I blink at that.

He nods somberly. “He fears he’s going to get black, then wake up blue and you will be gone. Because he did something to hurt you.”

I think of how important my contract of three months working for him had seemed. And remember the night he went crazy, yelling at Pete and Riley where the fuck was I, and what had they told me about him?

Somehow the realization makes me feel warm and claimed once more.

“Everything bad happens to Remington when he’s black,” Pete adds with a clatter of his empty coffee cup. “He wakes up and finds he was kicked out of boxing. Last time he bet all his money and woke up to find that if he loses this season, he’ll end up with very little to stand on. Riley and I try to get him under control, but he’s a handful. He’s too strong and too damn stubborn. And now there’s you. I don’t know if you’re good for him, or the worst kind of Achilles’ heel there is. But it’s not our choice, is it? Remington wants you.”

Pete’s words roll inside my head as I stare off at the peach-colored walls. It’s taking me time to absorb all of this information. I don’t know what it is to love someone like this. My life in Seattle awaits—Melanie . . . my parents. I’ve got at least one more month, and I want to spend every second I can with him. I just love him more with every bit that I learn. He’s complicated and complex, a labyrinth I want to lose myself in. He’s my fighter, and I really want to fight to be with him.

But I just don’t know what I’m going to have to fight against. If it’s some fear in me . . . some fear in him . . . or that black side of him.

“I want him badly too,” I tell Pete, patting his shoulder. “So much I might shoot some shit up your veins if you keep shooting him up with that, you know?”

He laughs.

And I carry my empty cup to the sink, wash it, then fiddle around with some breakfast items, and send a text to Melanie telling her:

The earth moved. Yes! It was that freakingfuckingtastic OMG!!!!!!!!!!!

And finally, just before 10 a.m. and before Riley comes to molest us, I go back to bed and lock myself in with Remy. Setting a tall glass I mixed up for him on the nightstand, I lean over his naked form and murmur, while my heart and my sex organs swell up with his nearness, “Get up, you sexy piece of man-ass.”

Then I grab Remy’s sexy ass and squeeze those rocks and clench my teeth because I want to bite them, he’s so frickin’ juicy and hot.

“I’m not Diane, but this used to be the breakfast of champions before the champion tore her ACL and shot her knee to hell. Now you get her services in bed, consisting of all sugary treats for this”—I squeeze his biceps—“and these”—I slide my hand over his abs—“and this.” I tap his lovely head and his mesmerizing maze of a brain.

Suddenly I realize that if it weren’t for that double accident, I wouldn’t be here. With this man. And it’s the first time I realize I might not only be glad, but grateful, that the universe redirected me in my path.

His sexy voice is muffled by the pillow. “Why are you bringing me breakfast in bed?”

I slap his bum, and his flesh doesn’t move one whit. “Because you look like my every fantasy and feeding you gets all my juices going. It’s a female thing. Come on, drink.”

He sits up, squinting those baby blues, and grabs the glass. It’s a protein shake made of dates. I’m wild about dates: they taste like caramel and I can eat about two dozen in a sitting when I get my period and get that unstoppable hunger.

“That’s so fucking good,” he says, then tips the glass back for more.

I grin and watch him drink the rest, feeling warm all over. I love how well he eats, really clean. His body likes him for it, and so does his skin. I’ve never seen Remy eat junk food. Even when he’s pigging out on room service, it’s vegetables and fish or meat for him. I don’t think he likes treats. It shows discipline and responsibility with his body, and I admire it. His fighting is aggressive to his cells and demanding of his ATP, which is the source of energy the cells produce, and I love that he feeds himself correctly right after. He’s an athlete in heart, mind, and body, and it’s incredibly hot to me.

My phone pings while he downs the last of the drink, and the message is actually Melanie’s answer to my text. Figuring she must be running this morning without me, I set it aside to answer later. “It’s Melanie, my friend. She’s excited that there’s been some action between tua and mua.” I grin.

He laughs, the sound rich and awesome; then he sobers, his eyes so tender on my face my insides go mushy. “You miss her?”

I nod and want to tell him that she knows Nora also, and that she’s like my shrink, but suddenly he bounds out of the room, so I start gathering my athletic gear. In a couple of minutes, he returns with a piece of hotel stationery.

“Tell her to present herself at the Southwest counter, with the code on this paper. There’s a ticket under her name so she can meet us in Chicago. I’ll take care of her room.”

“No!” I say in pure thrilled disbelief.

His answering two dimples go straight to curl my toes.

“Remy, I . . .”

I don’t know what I want to say, but actually I do.

I want this man to know that I am absolutely wild about him, and I’m not going to quit as soon as it gets steep. But I’m too afraid of being the only one to say something so . . . lasting.

If I say the “L” word to him, what will it mean for my future? I want him concentrated. I want my fighter to win. And I want him to say the “L” word to me not because he heard it first, but because deep in his inner complicated emotional world, he’s certain that he feels this for me.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask instead.

One dark eyebrow quirks upward as he comes over with his two dimples. “Why do you think?” He kisses my ear and whispers, into my hair, “Because your ass looks great in those tight pants you wear. It’s a guy thing.”

A laugh escapes me, and his dimples deepen. He tugs me closer and scents me, and I bury my face in his neck, smelling it; then we need to part with a sound that’s a mutual groan. I go to my old room to get changed, and on my way there I text Mel.

Brooke: My man is so wild about me he just got tickets to fly my BFF over to meet me in Chicago. Just please don’t offer anything sexual in gratitude because a) I will have to kill you and b) that’s what I’M going to do but c) there’s always Pete and Riley around.

Melanie: OMG OMG OMG! You’re serious? I’m going to go work the boss so I can go!

Brooke: Work her hard! I’m dying to see u!!

The thought of seeing Melanie makes me grin and my insides bubble during the day. I urgently need to talk to her or I’m going to explode with what I’m feeling.

♥   ♥   ♥

THAT DAY, AS Remy works out, I get busy on my phone and make a few discreet calls to the hotels in town. Nora isn’t checked in at any of them, but I know she’s with that Scorpion man. He’s so gross I can’t even fathom why my romantic little sister would get involved with him. He’s not even a sexy badass like Remington. But I’m formulating a plan, and Melanie is going to be the one to help me bring it about perfectly without setting off a single one of Remington’s protective instincts.

The thought makes me glance at him, and he’s easily jumping rope, making those slapping sounds as the rope flies all over him in twisting, turning, one-foot-then-the-other moves. My loins heat up as I remember the feel of him, the many times we’ve made love. I’d wanted to know what it feels like to have him inside me. Now I do. And I feel like I’m being possessed by everything male and powerful in the world.

Later, when I stretch him, and my hands roam so freely over his warmed muscles, I feel like he’s been made for me. Mine to touch. Mine. Mine. Mine. Scorching heat rages through me as his slick torso clenches under my fingers. His chest is heaving, and he’s tired, and he needs to go eat, and all I can think of is jumping him when I get him back in bed with me.

As I go around the bench to work on his back, he snatches me in one arm and draws me onto his lap, burying his nose in my hair. “Hmmmm,” he softly growls in my ear.

My nipples instantly perk up. Now that I know that “hmm,” to Remington, means he wants to eat me and my traps and my biceps, I can’t help the liquid heat flooding between my thighs.

He draws back with glinting male eyes and tucks a strand that came loose from my ponytail behind my ear. “I can smell how hot you are for me,” he murmurs with a famished gaze on my mouth.

My breath goes choppy, and I slightly peer past my shoulder.

I see that Coach and Riley are busy picking up all the stuff Remy left littered about, like gloves and ropes, so I turn back into him and whisper, “Well, have you seen you?” My lips brush the shell of his ear as I slide my hands around his shoulders and run my fingers down his muscled back. “Have you seen you? I can barely take my hands off you. Asking me to take my eyes off you is like asking me to deliberately drown—I just can’t do it.”

His sparkling blue eyes capture mine, and he lifts one hand and grabs my ponytail, working it free of its elastic band. He tosses the ribbon aside, then runs his fingers down my loose hair. “You’re mine now. I won’t let anyone else have you.”

“I know.” I sigh dramatically. Like it’s a chore.

He smiles tenderly at me, then forces my arms around his sweaty neck. I see the drops of moisture still clinging to his forehead and they just make me want to dry him with my mouth.

“I like me when I see myself through you, Brooke.” Gently, he seizes my ankles in his grip and guides my legs around his hips. His eyes glint in pure male contentment when his erection hits the spot between my legs, and he sweeps his head down and takes a nip from my outstretched arms, his teeth nibbling my bicep through the sleeve of my track jacket. “Hmm. And I like you like this even more.”

“Remington!” I try prying free but he holds me down on his lap, laughing as I pointedly slide my eyes in the direction of Riley and Coach, who are still cleaning up. “What is this? Free-sex-show day?”

“Take a hike, guys!” he shouts, and within five fast heartbeats, we’re alone. With the enormous gym and all the mat area, the weight equipment area, and the boxing ring, just for the two of us. The gyms he uses are always rented entirely for him, and the knowledge that no one will be coming shoots fire through my veins.

Remy slides his hands around my hips and spreads his fingers over my ass as he pins me down on his erection.

My breath stalls as I brazenly bring one of those big male hands upward; then I slowly force his grip around the curve of my breast, the swell covered in a skintight tank under my open track jacket.

He doesn’t move for a heart-stopping moment. Then he ducks his dark head and uses his nose to nudge my jacket wider open to one side, and then the other. The sensual way his face nuzzles and reveals me hitches my temperature several degrees. I feel fevered by the time the mounds of both my breasts become fully exposed in my tank. Before easing back, Remy angles his head slightly to lick my chin; then he leans back to watch, engrossed, as his fingers curl tighter around my breast, his eyes at half-mast.

A world of sensation rushes through my bloodstream when he squeezes me with the hand I had put on me.

His thumb scrapes to stroke across the pebbled tip that pushes into my sports bra and top. I gasp. He’s breathing hard now. His eyes eclipse as they coast down my flat abdomen in the skintight tank, taking in my toned thighs in my track pants, down to where my pussy is nestled in a tight V of emerald green nylon against his cock.

My inner muscles clench wantonly when those blue eyes settle and focus solely on this part of my body. Where my wet little kitten presses against the large erection swelling prominently in his gray sweatpants.

“I want you naked,” he rasps.

“Remy, how can I look them in the eye if they know we’re doing that right now? Right here?”

His gaze glints in pure mischief as he slowly eases my open track jacket off my shoulders. “I thought you couldn’t take your eyes off me.”

“I can’t.”

“So you admit you like my muscles?”

“I love your muscles.”

“You like how I use them?”

“Yes.” My breath is short and choppy as he grabs me by the hips, lifts me to standing, and pulls down my track pants until I’m in panties and sports bra.

“You like what I do to you with my mouth?” he continues.

“Yes.”

This very moment I want to kiss my Under Armour sports bra almost as much as I want to kiss him. It has a zipper right in the middle, and it is as easy to get off as a front-clasp bra. When Remy slowly lowers the zipper, I bite my lip and watch his face. Lust filled. Male. Making me tingle all over.

“You like what I do to you with my fingers?” His voice is low and smooth, and I’m completely entranced by the questions he asks me.

“Yes, Remy.”

He bares my breasts, and if I glance anywhere but at him, I know I will see myself naked in the tall, mirrored walls that surround us. He has a monopoly on virility, this man, and I don’t know what it will do to me to get such a vast view of him from all angles. My sexy muscled Remington, gloriously naked, and multiplied by ten? Oh, god.

“Do you like what I do to you . . . with this . . .?” When he slides his sweatpants off, I’m fainting with the sight of ten Remington’s butts in the reflections behind him, his powerful legs from behind, his narrow waist and broad shoulders.

And his cock, standing before me.

I’ve just died.

“Definitely, yes.”

Up on tiptoe, I use his shoulders to propel me upward and crush his mouth with mine, and he sucks on my tongue and yanks my panties down my legs and sets me down on the mats, our naked flesh sliding smoothly against the other’s.

“What if someone comes?” I halfheartedly protest.

“No one’s coming here but you.”

He’s splayed me open and drawn my legs and arms out, and now he just looks his fill.

I pant in anticipation, feeling exposed. To him. His piercing blue stare strokes the flesh of my bare pussy lips, and I feel that stare inside me. Where I’m clenching wet and swelling. My clit throbs, and if he only parted my lips, he could see how swollen he makes me.

My heart pounds wildly as I hear the rustling sound of the mats when I brazenly spread my legs apart even more. Need catches thickly in my throat when his face tightens; then he brushes his hand between my legs, his thumb moves lightly across my pussy lips.

His eyelids droop, and his expression softens as his thumb dips into the fissure. My breath stalls, and I catch my lower lip between my teeth.

A shudder sweeps through me as he drags his thumb from my pussy to my belly button, then between my breasts, to stroke the lips of my mouth with the same thumb he just used to caress my sex. He cups the swell of my breast in another hand and thumbs it while he thumbs my mouth too, and I’m no longer breathing. The touches are painfully teasing, and a tremor rushes through me as he finally tightens the flesh of my breast in his palm, pushing my nipple outward as he slowly bends his dark head. He prolongs the moment, making me whimper by the time the tip of his damp tongue slides slickly across the hardened pebble.

My eyes blur. Tremors of fire shoot through me, and I desperately part my mouth to taste the finger he used to caress my pussy, which still hovers against my lips and is scented of me. I need to lick something, need to use my tongue on something, and as he heads to my other breast, he watches me intently and pushes his thumb deep into my mouth as if he knows what I want.

My tongue wraps feverishly around him as he nips the tip of my throbbing nipple. Ecstasy crashes through my body. Gasping, I bite down on his thumb as he uses his lips to nip my breasts equally hard. Pleasure radiates through all my being as he tugs on my nipple with his teeth, and I desperately grab his shoulders and sink my nails into his skin while he slides one hand between my thighs.

“Do you need me to make you come?”

He pushes his thick, long finger deep into me, and my sex squeezes him. My entire body clenches from the exhilarating sensation of his touch inside me.

“Yes, but I want you inside me,” I gasp.

“That’s where you’re going to get me.”

He strokes my inner channel, and I close my eyes as I disintegrate under him. My hands slide up his rock-hard torso, and I store the firm, fabulous feeling to memory as my pelvis pushes up to his palm in anxious need.

My nipples ache, and I stretch to rub my breasts against his chest while I trail my fingers along his back. “Make love to me.”

He groans and strokes his tongue against mine. “Not yet . . .” he murmurs, and sucks the flesh of my lower lip into his mouth, releasing it to blow air across the tender wet flesh. “Not yet, but soon . . .”

His voice is guttural, but there’s a gentleness in it that dissolves my insides so that I can do nothing but pant. He drags himself between my parted legs and buries his head between my thighs, and his tongue flashes across my clit.

My eyes slam shut as I arch to him, the heat of his mouth short-circuiting my senses. He cups my buttocks in his huge hands and locks me to him, his wet tongue sliding in to taste my clit again and again.

“You like that?” he asks, the words muffled.

I nod. Then, realizing he can’t see me, I rasp, “Yes,” just as he looks up.

He lowers his face to me again, growling deep but gently as he buries his dark head between my legs and teases my clit with his tongue. My knees tremble as my legs try to swing open even wider.

An orgasm keeps building in my core, all my muscles clenching taut, and I claw at the top of his head, grabbing a fistful of damp hair, “No . . . please . . . I want to come with you.”

He doesn’t listen.

His head is busy moving between my parted thighs. He makes low purr-like sounds between my legs and is so surprisingly ravenous I can feel his teeth. His nails bite into my thighs as he devours me like he’s the one deriving pleasure from the act, and I’m so turned on by the way he laps me up that I come.

Convulsions rock me beneath him, and he makes another sound and keeps on going as he adds a finger in me. He lifts his head and watches me climax—and I keep going off like a rocket for him, exploding in a thousand and one pieces. It’s always so intense with him. . . . I’m shuddering as he comes up, and he’s pulsing against my hip bone as he crushes my mouth.

“Let me,” I breathe, and I reach between our bodies, but he clamps my wrist within his big hand.

“Easy,” he tells me, struggling to catch his breath, but I ignore him and anxiously grab the top part of his shaft.

Arousal shoots through me again when I feel the silky wetness at its crown. Groaning, he lowers his dark head and licks my earlobe, his breath hot and fast in my ear. I touch him hesitantly, somehow expecting him to stop me, but he doesn’t.

I make a sound of pleasure and turn my head to him.

We start kissing.

He takes the kiss to the next level, adding tongue and teeth, which lights up a fire in me. Sensations rush through my body with each damp flick, my fingers clenching in his shaft as my grip slides over him.

My other hand goes to his hair, and I hold his kiss to me. I wind my fingers in the silky sable of his thick, soft hair as I bury my entire being in his taste, in him. His erection vibrates in my hand, and I shake with a new, even fiercer need when I feel his size, his strength, pulsing hot and commandingly.

He’s so overwhelmingly sexy that every second I lie here, underneath him, I die a slow death. I want to gobble him up. I love the way he guards me, protects me, the way he looks back at me, the way he feels—this is the most aroused, stunning man I’ve ever held in my hand.

I try to close my fist around him, and though I can’t, I sense whatever holds him back, breaks when I try to squeeze him.

He pulls me up to crush my mouth with his, then easily flips me around and hauls me up to a doggy position. “Like this,” he commands in my ear, then forces my head around to crush my mouth again until my lips feel swollen because of him.

He tears free and sets his forehead at the back of my head with a hungered groan that resonates in my core. My sex pulses when he inhales me, and he keeps scenting me as he rubs his cock along my bottom.

It feels too good when he pushes in. I cry and turn my head. And then I see his reflection, how he’s completely over me. Mounting me. And he’s so beautiful it mesmerizes me. He’s naked and glistening from his exercise, and all his muscles are engaged as his hips rock, his arms holding his upper body aloft from me. He uses his arms to fuck me, his back, his abs, his thighs, his buttocks. His whole body. I don’t even see myself, just a quick glance at how petite I look under him, apricot-white against his tan, my hair no longer in a ponytail falling down the sides of my face and my shoulders, my breasts bouncing, and the look on my face . . . I never even knew I could look so smoky and aroused, my rosy cheeks and my eyes shining like crazy because I’m looking at the only man I’ve ever truly had feelings for.

He holds me up on my hands and knees and whispers, “Look at me.” And urges my head up so I meet his gaze in the mirror.

He wants me to see, and I can barely keep my eyes open. The sight of us making love is excruciatingly addictive. My eyelids flutter shut, and Remington pulls out and drags himself along my fissure, squeezing my ass cheeks around him, then thrusts with a decadent groan into my achingly wet pussy. “Look at me.”

I do. When I open my eyes, I see all those packed muscles, his square shoulders, his flat, hard pectorals and his small, brown nipples glistening wetly, and I tremble as I see the muscles of his right hand flex as he slides it down my abdomen and between my legs. His body vibrates against mine, and I’m ready to come when he adds his thumb in heart-stopping circles across my sensitized clit. I bloom open with need. He’s beautiful, and he’s the most virile thing I’ve ever seen. And he’s mine.

The look of passion on his face is because of me. The lust in his eyes for me. A fierce orgasm coils in my midsection, and I moan feebly, begging him for its release.

He hears me.

He watches me in the mirror like he’s never seen anything like me . . . his eyes wild, primal. Possessive.

Every ounce of me throbs in pleasure as he withdraws and halts the crown of his hard cock at my wet entry, the move halting my climax at the tremulous pinnacle, and then he pushes back into my body in a slow, delicious rhythm again.

“Yeah . . .” he rasps, his eyes closed as he shoves himself forward. My orgasm tightens and strains inside me. I shudder at the sexy image of him, lost to me, and suddenly he growls and grabs my hair in his fist, turning my head and slamming his mouth to mine.

My pussy is liquid with want. His cock drags inside me, thick and hard, in my sex, in my being. I grip him tighter with my sex muscles and rock my hips back restlessly in silent plea. “Push every inch of you in me . . . I want every inch of you,” I beg.

He thrusts deeper with a roar, the move startling a whimper out of me. The pace we set suddenly is feral, rapid. I can see my breasts bouncing as he rams me, my body jerking under the powerful rocking motions of his hips. His biceps clench as he grips my hips and holds me still for him.

He’s undone already.

His hips rock on me and I’m a mass of quaking lust with the magnificent sight of him behind me. Eyes closed, muscles bulging, face taut. I push backward and swallow a moan as he spills in me, warm inside my depths. The convulsions are as powerful as he is, and my sex creams up hotly as I watch and instantly follow.

He keeps pumping into my pussy as the tremors seize me, holding his hand between my thighs and caressing my clit with those big callused hands that drive me crazy. I cry his name softly and he groans mine, and when we’re sated on the mats, I just know.

I know. For sure. One hundred percent to the tenth power.

I’ve fallen head over heels, irrevocably in love with him.