I close my eyes and my mind feels quiet. It is quiet. I like it. I’m not thinking of anything except the pounding of her heart under my ear. Then I feel her fingernail along my earlobe and I tighten my hold to keep her locked to me. Tenderness oozes out of her like a blanket. I shouldn’t want it this much, but I do. Nobody can take this from me.
“You guys want a time-out when we get to the hotel?” Pete asks us in a voice that I can barely recognize as Pete’s.
She’s moving her fingers in my hair, and when she doesn’t speak, I move my head yes, not lifting it so that she won’t take her hands away. I crave her hands. It’s not the contact as much as the tenderness in her touch. The way her fingers respect my muscles, push just enough, support and help them let go. It happens inside me. I don’t believe in words, but I believe in this.
She strokes me all over with both hands, softly, and I hear her chatting with Diane about a recipe for me while we ride to the hotel, and her heart is steady and strong under my ear, and she’s small and fragile and smells like she does, and I am never letting her go.
I will. Kill myself. Before letting her go.
When we get to the suite, I’m anxious again. She’s getting her cosmetics out of her suitcase, and I watch her hands move on her bag and pull out her toothbrush, and then she brushes her teeth. And I do nothing but crave crave crave. Inside me in the very pit of my being.
I want to break that fucking toothbrush and anything that takes her from me.
She rinses and towels her hands as I approach. She looks at me questioningly and I can’t explain what I need, but I am in a tangle and roiling and I need her like my next breath, and if I had to choose, I would choose her over oxygen.
I lift her in my arms and carry her to the bed, and she cuddles into my neck and breathes me as I lower her.
I pull off her small shoes and toss them aside, then take off mine and speak gruffly. “I want your hands on my head.”
She edges back on the bed. “Does it calm your racing thoughts?”
I take her hand and spread it over my chest. “It calms me here.”
Just feeling her fingers spread over me, I can breathe better, I stop thinking. I stare back into her eyes and slide next to her, then I drop my head to her chest and smell her neck. I’m so fucking in love with her I don’t think anybody could ever hurt me like this girl could. Not Scorpion, not my parents. Because I don’t care about them. Now all I care about is her.
I feel her softly kiss the top of my head as she runs her fingertips through my scalp.
This is the way I want to die one day.
With her at my side, our bodies touching. I won’t need to say anything, and she won’t need to hear it, because she gets me. She gets that words are sometimes bullshit and people don’t mean what they say and through it all it’s only actions that matter. And all I care is that she gets me. We are yin and yang or whatever that shit is called; she is my female and I need her. I knew it from the instant I saw her, and she knew it too, and that’s why she ran. She wanted me to chase and I did. I will chase her every time she wants to see if I want her and need her enough.
Quietly, she caresses me. I lie completely still and soak up her caresses, taking what she gives me, because she makes me realize I am so starved for it that I would kill for this, and for her.
And my brain goes quiet and my heart is calm and my life is at a standstill, and the pendulum that I am, all the swinging to and fro, finally stops and I feel like I finally found my center.
I THINK I fall asleep. I dream of elevators, pink pants, swings, and Paris. I dream of her laughing in a Hummer limo and cupping my jaw and touching my hair and looking at me like I am the only man alive and like she loves me.
I wake up and she’s holding me in her arms and I don’t know what time it is, but I see she’s still in those pants. She tells me to take them off her, and I do, and I make love to her, and to my disbelief I fall asleep again.
My stomach wakes me. It is empty and grumbling. There’s warmth all around me, and Brooke’s hair. And I absorb it. I’d stay here all day if my stomach weren’t so vicious and my muscles so demanding.
I grumble at her, “Hungry,” and grab some sweatpants and stalk out to the kitchen. I grab some celery and peanut butter and start wolfing down to calm the hunger, a bit, then immediately start thinking about what else I can shove down my throat.
She appears and starts exploring what food is in the hot drawer. When I see her, I’m scooping up peanut butter on a celery stick and munching and almost swallow my tongue.
My eyes widen, and I drop the celery and cross my arms, staring while I feel a whole lot of good things rise up in my chest.
“Look at you,” I growl.
Clad in my RIPTIDE robe, she brings over some plates and I am delighted that her scent will get all over my robe and then on me when I wear it.
“I’ll return it when we get back to bed,” she tells me.
I shake my head and pat my lap. “If it’s mine, it’s yours.”
She sets down the food and I cup her hips and set her down on my lap as I stare down at the plates with a watering mouth.
“I’m so fucking starved.” I grab a red potato and chomp on it.
“You would love my mom’s red potatoes. She adds cayenne pepper and gives them just a little kick,” Brooke tells me as she forks one up and munches.
“Do you miss home?”
I chomp on another potato while Brooke looks at me for a moment. She has an expression and sets down her fork and fully faces me, then strokes the scruff of my jaw with her fingertips. “When I’m not with you, I do miss home. But when I’m with you, I don’t miss anything.”
I smile because I’m relieved. She brushes a dimple with her lips, and I growl and rub my nose against her little one. “I’ll tuck you close so you don’t miss it,” I promise her.
“Please do. In fact I’m sure there’s enough space right here.” She wiggles on me and I nip her little earlobe and squish her easily, saying, “That’s right!”
We laugh, and I take her fork and grab a potato and feed it to her. She takes the fork back and feeds me too. I eat, but I like feeding her more. All my instincts home in on her mouth’s opening for me and on her eyes watching me as I come feed her.
The way her eyes shine on me make me feel like I am a god.
I slide my hand under her arm and caress her while I fork up a bite for myself, then I cut some for her.
She watches me as I cut, and I watch her as she bites and savors it and gets all my blood pumping so fucking hot, I’m burning all the way down into my soul.
“Who do you belong to?” I ask her, stroking my fingers up and down the divots of her spine. But suddenly food isn’t what I want. I set down the fork and slide my hand through the parted fabric of my RIPTIDE robe, curving it around her waist. I set a kiss on her ear, rasping, “Me.”
“Entirely yours.” My heart tangles at her admission as she maneuvers so she’s straddling me, and she buries her nose in my neck and slides her arms around my waist. “I’m getting so nervous about the big fight. Are you?”
I chuckle and peer down at her. “Why would I be?” I tip her head back, and she looks worried, frowning. “Brooke, I’m going to break him.”
I want her to know there is no doubt in my mind I am going to break that motherfucker. I don’t hate him, I don’t give a shit about him, but he’s not taking what’s mine. I’ve worked all. Fucking years. For this. My whole life. I fight to live, and I live to win.
“Remy, I love the way you fight,” Brooke whispers, searching my face, “but you have no idea how nerve-racking it is for me.”
“Why, Brooke?”
“Because. You’re . . . important to me. I wish nothing touched you, and every few nights, you’re just . . . out there. Even knowing that you will win, it does a number on me.”
My chest tangles again at the thought of her leaving me, getting sick of me. “But you’re happy, Brooke? With me?”
I wait for her to answer. I don’t know if she understands that I don’t ask a lot of things I want to, I am not used to asking. I am asking her if she loves me. If she wants to be with me. If she will stay with me. If I make her as happy as she makes me.
She looks at me and I see the concern and tenderness in her gaze, and the knot inside me starts loosening before she even speaks, for I know the answer.
“Deliriously.” She slips her arm around my neck and presses close like I like her, whispering, “You make me happy. You make me deliriously happy and delirious, period. I don’t want to be without you for a second. I don’t even want all those women to look at you and shout at you the things they do.”
Her possessiveness gets to me. It speaks to me so deeply that I instantly feel possessive of her—I want to physically show her she has all my devotion, so my voice comes out rough. “I’m yours. You’re the one I bring home with me.”
I go to her neck and drag her soft scent into my lungs until I’m relaxed and satisfied, then I buzz the back of her ear and tell her, “You’re my mate, and I’ve claimed you.”
I can tell by her soft smile that she likes it. That she likes that I’ve claimed her. I start feeding her again, and it gets all my instincts up and running in the satisfaction of being able to provide and feed her, protect and love her.
We fall into an easy rhythm and she starts telling me about Melanie, Riley, and how those two have become friends, and I tell her, “Tell me more.”
“My sister, Nora, used to fall in love with anything. She used to make fun of me and tell me I didn’t like men.”
I scrape my hand down her spine, smiling. “Did you tell her you were waiting for me?”
She laughs and pokes a finger into one of my dimples. “I’ll gladly tell her that now.” She smiles and pokes both my dimples now. We keep eating, and I feel immense satisfaction that she’s never given her heart away. It is mine. She is mine.
“Do you remember anything nice about your parents?” she asks when we get back into the bedroom.
“My mother used to cross me every night.” I lock the door, and briefly I remember my mother. “She crossed me on my forehead, over my mouth, and over my heart.” I don’t mention that she also mumbled and prayed words all day that had nothing to do with the rest of the things she did to me.
“She was religious?”
It comes easily to block out the memory as I pull out my iPod and my headphones and shrug, bring my stuff to the nightstand. I won’t be sleeping for shit tonight. My head is already starting to buzz with things to do, punching bags to hit.
“Do you miss your family?” she asks softly.
I get into bed with her and I tell her the truth. “You can’t miss anything you’ve never had.” I grew up with my music, and that will always be with me. I would miss that like crazy and couldn’t live without it. Frustrated with my robe, I pull it off her and ease the satin off her shoulders. She knows I need her naked and pulls her arms loose for me, then cuddles her small, lean body against my bare chest.
