The people inside the cars around us are staring. “You’re breaking a couple hearts just sitting there, Rem,” Riley chuckles from the back and angles his thumb over at a car filled with coeds.
They start squeaking when I look at them, and my guys laugh.
Turning straight ahead, I curl my fingers into my fist and slip my ring back on, then I survey my knuckles. I’m so ready for the season. Brooke is already packing for Racer. Seems like the plane luggage is going to be full of baby stuff, strollers, and everything Racer has invaded us with since he was born. I’m f**king anxious to have Brooke just for me for a night where she doesn’t need to hurry out of my arms and tend to him.
“Hotel suite ready?” I ask Pete as the traffic finally starts easing.
“Yep.”
“My iPod?”
“Yep. Took it this morning, and headphones.”
“Every detail to the T as discussed?”
“Everything,” Pete says.
I raise a brow at him, but he starts to drive forward, leaving me musing on the word everything.
I can’t wait to take her in my arms.
I can’t. Fucking. Wait. To marry her again.
The first time I married her, it was in City Hall, now we’ll be in a real church.
I wanted to ask her to marry me with a song after last season’s final, but Racer decided to drop by early, and I ended up proposing with Brooke in the beginning of labor in my arms, breathing in short, panting breaths of pain. “The song was supposed to ask you to marry me, but you’ll have to settle on me doing the asking,” I’d whispered, looking intently into her eyes. “Mind. Body. Soul. All of you for me. All of you mine . . . Marry me, Brooke Dumas.”
“YES!” she’d cried, laughing, and crying. “Yes yes yes,” she’d repeated, and I’m so f**king glad she kept saying yes because I couldn’t hear it enough. I’d wanted to win the championship for her. I wanted to feel worthy of her. Right then and there, with that one word, she made me feel like I was.
And hours later I was half mad with pain watching her give birth, and I barely thought I could take it when I heard the first cry of our—our—baby. I wanted a girl as perfect as Brooke, and instead, she gave me something I never knew I wanted: something perfect that looks like me.
PAST
ATLANTA
The heavy bag swings. Slam. Wham. It swings, side to side, as I drive my fist into the center and follow with my left, then my right. Slam. Wham. Thunk. Slam.
Coach tells me I’m showing off, and I’m not going to waste my words and explain to him the ways I intend to keep showing off my moves in front of her.
I picture Scorpion, my mortal nemesis’s face, in the center of my bag and wham. Bam. Thunk.
When I boxed with professionals, everyone wanted my ass. I was younger, faster, and stronger—you’re not taught this shit. You have a good fist, or you don’t, and fists were all I had. But when I look at Brooke, I’m aware of another use for my hands, how their palms and the tips of my fingers want to trace every inch of her slim, lean, little body.
“What is Remington having for breakfast?” she asked Diane this morning as she walked into the suite.
I perked up at the table, and when Brooke noticed, she smiled and said, “Good morning, Remington.”
The way she says my name feels like a lick across my body.
“Good morning, Brooke,” I rumbled.
Pete and Diane observed us in noticeable amusement.
Once Brooke had brought her plate over to the table and sat on the opposite side of where I was, I watched her slide the fork into her mouth and suddenly became so thirsty that I jammed a carrot into my mouth. She licked the corner of her lips, and I wanted to go over there and haul her down with me, on my lap, lick up the flavors from her mouth.
I leaned back as Pete told me something, and I wanted to toss all the plates aside and spread her on this table, get her ass in my hands, lick my tongue across her spine and up to her neck while my fingers worked all the soft and wet spots of her. I grunted at the thought.
“What?” Pete says.
She looked up at me.
I scowled at Pete. “What?” I said.
He shook his head and stood while Diane asked Brooke something about how she dealt with all these men. When she laughed at that, my body tightened and I stared. Her throat curved back, her ponytail falling. I wanted to pull it down as I tipped her head back and kissed her.
“You done?” Riley asked from the door. You done ogling her? I could see him think.
Scowling, I grabbed my stuff as we headed off.
Now I’ve been pounding the bags—all of them—as fast and hard as I can, and I still can’t get rid of all this extra energy. Pausing for a moment, I look at her on the sidelines, hot as f**k in her tight exercise gear and ready to put her hands on me. I want them so badly, tonight I want to keep her for hours in my room, working on my body.
On me.
The crowd starts shrieking my name, and I quickly jump off the ring and grab a Gatorade from the bucket at Coach’s feet.
“Remington,” he snarls.
I shake my head and stalk down the walkway. I could tell by his tone that he wanted to have words, and I’m not in the mood to get my head chewed off in front of Brooke.
Back at the hotel, back in my room, I drop down on the bench at the foot of my bed and wait, sipping my Gatorade, replaying the pretty smile she gave me before the fight.
By the time she walks into my room, I’m so impatient, it feels like I’ve waited for this girl all my life. Our eyes lock, and the hunter in me goes wild. Her cheeks are flushed, and her legs long and endless in those jeans she wears. I want those legs and those arms around me, that mouth under mine, whispering my name. Fuck me, when can I have her? I loathe thinking I’m going to make her mine and the day my dark side catches up with me, she’ll be gone, her walls will be up and she won’t let me in, and I will be forever every woman’s adventure. A sex god and a plaything. Nobody’s real. Nobody’s choice. Nobody’s anything.