RR&R 01 Real (34 page)

He shakes his head, then takes my hand and spreads it open over his wide chest, his voice textured as he traps my gaze with his. “It calms me here.”

A tangle of emotion hits me as I feel his heart beating, slow and powerful like only great athletes’ hearts can beat, under my palm. I stare into his eyes, seeing that same fierce longing in them I just saw, and I love him to such a degree I swear that my heart just picked up the rhythm of his.

He slides next to me, both of us dressed as we settle on the bed comforter. He drops his head to my chest and snuggles every bit of his huge muscles into me, inhaling my neck. I lower my face and kiss the top of his head as I start running my fingertips through his scalp.

He hasn’t slept in long, endless, restless, crazy days.

Days where I’ve felt him stroking my hair and my back at night. Where I’ve heard the low muted noise of him listening to his music. I’ve heard him eating in the kitchen at midnight, taking cold showers, and when those showers don’t seem like enough, I’ve woken up to find him well on his way to making love to me.

But I haven’t heard him sleep for so long…

So when his breathing evens out, and I realize that he’s fallen asleep in my arms, in the middle of the day, in the middle of a manic episode, I don’t know how I can contain the emotions swelling in my chest.

Quietly, I wipe a tear from my cheek, and then another. I never imagined this kind of man existed. Or that I could ever have something like this for myself. These moments. This…connection. I never thought that the desperate, almost painful longing I feel for him could ever be reciprocated from him, to me.

Crying in happiness for the first time in my life, I stroke his hair, his jaw, his neck, down his arms, looking down at his perfect, full lips, his hard, strong jaw and forehead, his perfect nose, quietly loving every inch of him.

Sunlight steals through the room and illuminates him completely, allowing me to drink his perfection in like a junkie. Our shoes are discarded on the floor, our suitcases still bursting full near the door. We’re in yet another beautiful suite of another luxurious hotel, and I swear in my life, I’ve never felt so complete as I do this moment, with this man sleeping in my arms, with his thick arms around me, his nose into my cleavage, his breath warm on my skin. In a strange place, in a new room, far away from everything I’ve known…

I touch my lips to his ear. “It’s because of you,” I whisper, closing my eyes. “I’m deliriously happy. Completely at home anywhere you are.”

I’m so determined to guard his sleep, I skip dinner even when my stomach rumbles. Soon it calms down, and all the time, I keep giving his big, beautiful body little touches that quietly say—I love you, Remington.

He stirs in the middle of the night, and by this time, I’m exhausted but as determined as ever, my arms heavy as I caress him and pet him.

Coming awake with a soft groan, he easily grabs me and tucks my body into his so that now I’m the one cuddled into his deep chest as he languorously kisses the hollow of my ear. “Brooke,” he says.

Just one word.

“
Yes, Remy,” I whisper, my voice just as groggy as his as I nuzzle his collarbone.

Before I can remind him why, I hear him flick open the button and slide the zipper purposely downward.

My every muscle clenches. I groan softly and press my nose to his neck, pressing closer like a kitten aching for his petting. “I was waiting for the sexiest man in the world to take them off me.”

I turn on a lamp and slide into the first thing that pops out of his suitcase, which ends up being one of his RIPTIDE red satin robes.

I tie the sash tightly around my waist, and the fabric feels delicious and cool against my skin. The robe is huge on me, reaching all the way to the bottom of my calves, but I grin because I just love wearing his things. I pad out after him to inspect whatever Diane left for us in the kitchen.

Inside the hot drawer are two warm plates of parmesan crusted chicken and a spinach and beet salad with a side of red potatoes. I pull them out and get our utensils when I spot Remington already lounging at the dining table, gloriously bare-chested and in a pair of low slung sweat pants.

He’s scooping up peanut butter on a celery stick and munching, but he stops eating when he spots me and immediately swallows whatever he had in his mouth.

His eyes widen, and he drops the remaining celery stick and leans back in his chair, crossing his muscled arms so the ink vines at the top of his biceps look dark and sexy. “Look at you,” he says, the words a growl of pure male pleasure.

The word RIPTIDE burns deliciously into my back as I head over with the plates, grinning. “I’ll return it when we get back to bed.”

He shakes his head and pats his lap. “If it’s mine, it’s yours.”

I set the food on the table, and he cups my hips through the satin and draws me to sit on his lap. “I’m so fucking starved.”

He grabs a slice of red potato with his fingers and pops it into his mouth, licking his fingertips.

“
Do you miss home?”

His home has been a fighting ring and tons of hotels. His family has been his team and his fans.

My chest swells to near bursting for him.

Remington is not a man of words. He is a man of gut and actions.

This big, strong man sometimes needs to be taken care of, and I swear I’m dying to be the girl who takes care of him more than I’ve wanted to be anything else.

He, who’s never had a home, wants to know if I miss home?

When I sleep like a queen, in a soft bed, in his arms, and eat the best food there is, and do my job, and spend time with him when he is sometimes cocky, sometimes grumpy, and always adorable?

Setting my fork down, I turn to face him and stroke the scruff of his jaw with my fingertips. “When I’m not with you, I do miss home. But when I’m with you, I don’t miss anything.”

His dimples briefly appear, and I bend to brush my lips over the closest one. He growls softly and rubs his nose against mine. “I’ll tuck you close so you don’t miss it,” he rasps.

When I sense his restlessness, the one that comes with his mania, I realize he seems to want something to do. So I yield while he completely overpowers me and teases my lips with a brush of the fork, and I obediently open up and let him feed me.

I love the way his eyes darken every time he looks at my mouth as it opens for food.

He slides his free hand under the satin sleeve and lovingly caresses my triceps as he turns back to his plate and forks up a bit of everything for himself.

I watch him take a big bite, and then I wait for him to cut up more chicken and bring it to my mouth, along with a bit of everything else.

He watches as I bite, savor, and finally, swallow, his lips curved in a tender smile.

The certainty in his voice carries such depth and power, I almost feel pity for Scorpion. Remy is not only going to break him, he’s going to have fun doing it. “Remy, I love the way you fight, but you have no idea how nerve-wracking it is for me.”

“
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.”

“
But you’re happy, Brooke? With me?”

“
Deliriously,” I admit, and I hug him and smell his neck, loving how his scent relaxes me. “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.”

With that, he readjusts me to the side and resumes feeding me.

He seems to delight watching my lips open and close over what he brings to my mouth.

He likes feeding me, and I think the obsessive male delight he’s deriving from it dates back to his ancestor, the Neanderthal man.

We gobble up all the food, pet and kiss each other, and I tell him about Melanie, how she and Riley slept together one night and now seem to have become great texting friends, and he laughs and encourages me, “Tell me more,” as he keeps eating.

So I tell him about my parents, how Nora used to fall in love with anything that walked, and he smiles and I just love making him smile.

“
My mother used to cross me every night.” He locks the door, and I know it’s to keep Riley from bursting in the next morning and seeing us naked. “She crossed me on my forehead, over my mouth, and over my heart.”

“
She was religious?”