When I set my lips on the rim, it’s wet from hers, and the way she watches me drink makes my balls hurt. I want to toss this shit aside and drink directly from her mouth. Instead, I return the Gatorade and make sure I brush my fingers over hers at the exchange, because I’m a devil and I need the contact. My eyes stay locked on hers as I steal that touch that shoots like a bolt up my arm, and neither of us is laughing.

She tries standing, and I instantly take the bottle and set it down, then I wrap my arm around her waist. “I’ll help you up so you can ice that.”

She leans on me as I lower her from the ring and help her out of the gym, her arm coming around my waist.

“It’s fine,” she keeps on telling me.

“Stop arguing,” I softly command.

She keeps her arm around me as we board the hotel elevator, then I lock her at my side as we ride upstairs. In profile, her nose is exquisitely dainty, and that smooth, pink mouth is perennially curved in a way that tempts me to kiss it. Her scent tickles my nostrils, and as if with a mind of its own, my nose drops as I try to find the source of that delicious smell. Holy god, I want to lick up all that sexy sweat from her neck.

One of her firm, high-perched tits softly presses into my rib cage, and I can’t pull my brain out of there. I’m painfully aware of the way that sweet little tit brushes against my side as we exit the elevator.

“Hey, man, ready for the fight?” a hotel staff member asks from across the hall, and I offer him a thumbs-up as we reach her room.

“Key,” I whisper to her.

She fumbles, then quietly I take it from her hand, slide it into the slot, and help her inside. The first bed has a ton of family pictures facing the nightstand. I set her down on the second one and I grab the leather bucket. “I’ll get you ice.”

“That’s fine, Remy, I’ll do it later,” she protests.

I pull the lock out to stop the door and go into the hallway to fill the bucket up half with ice. When I return to the room, I add some water.

Her face is pink in embarrassment when I kneel at her feet and set the bucket on the carpet, and the black of her catsuit only heightens the peach hue of her skin. I remove her tennis shoe and her sock, then I curl my hand around her calf muscle and guide her foot into the cold.

“When we get this fixed, I’m going to show you how to knock me down,” I whisper, flicking my eyes up to hers, and, god, I could eat her. Eat. Her. She’s biting down on her lower lip, her eyes wide and almost vulnerable as she lets me guide her foot into what has to equal the freezing waters of Antarctica.

“Cold?” I ask.

She sounds like her lungs are closing. “Yeah.”

Slowly, I sink her foot deeper, and she tenses completely, all the animation gone from her face. I’m torn between the urge to stop torturing her, and fixing her ankle. “More water?”

She shakes her head and then surprises me when she shoves her foot all the way under the water. “Oh, shit,” she gasps. And I know I should hold her foot in no matter what, but my instinct to protect her is so fierce I yank her foot out, flattening her skin against my abs to suck the cold out from it with my body heat. My muscles clench in shock, and her wide, surprised gold eyes lock on my face in startlement. Every one of her tiny, cold toes burns into my flesh, and I’ve been so successful in teaching my body to embrace pain, I want them closer. I curve my hand around her instep and hold her flat against me.

She looks breathless. From the cold. Or from me? She also sounds breathless. “I didn’t know you gave pedicures, Remy.”

“It’s a fetish of mine.”

I smile a lazy smile, then I pull out an ice cube and stroke it gently across her ankle. I make sure that her skin doesn’t burn as I circle around her, and I’m moving slowly enough that I can hear her breathing rhythm quicken. I shift my hold on her foot and rub my thumb along the arch while still caressing her with the ice cube.

Her voice trembles through me, like a feather stroking my insides. “Do you do manicures too?”

I glance up at her, on the bed, looking at me like a woman does when she wants to give herself away, and the hunter in me is so ready I let her know with my tone of voice what I’m thinking, what I truly want, when I say, “Let me do your feet first, then I’ll do the rest of you.”

I keep going with the ice, and when the slide of her foot across my abs feels like a caress, shocks of electricity course through me.

“Feel better?” I ask gruffly, and my head is screaming at me to kiss her. She looks like she wants it. Her pink mouth is parted. Her eyes shine with heat as she looks down on me. Her feet are on my stomach, caressing the squares of my abs—and not by accident. My hands are cupping her foot, and I crave to bend my head and lick her toes, the arch up her foot, up her leg. I want to peel that catsuit off her body, feel her skin with my lips, my fingers, my knuckles, my palms. I’m drawn to her strength and her sweetness, her bravado that makes me want to push and tease her, that draws me out of my own cave, my own walls, if only just to chase her and bring her back to my cave with me.

I don’t know the name of this, or maybe I do.

It’s the one thing in my life I don’t plan on fighting.

For the first time in my life I’m thinking of things other than fucking and fighting. I want to take care of this girl. I’m thinking about how I want to fuck her hard and kiss her softly, hold her tight and suck her gently, when she abruptly tells me, “It feels perfect now. Thank you.”

We engage in a slight tug-of-war for her foot as she tries to pull free, and I’m not too happy to let her, and then the door swings open and Diane appears. “There you are,” she tells me with a big grin. “I must feed you now so you can recharge for tomorrow!”

I stare at Brooke, confused as hell, and the way she stares at me as if I’d imagined the connection puzzles the shit out of me. What the hell? Right now, I could’ve bet my life that she’d wanted me as much as I’d wanted her. I toss the ice into the bucket and lower her foot. “I am sorry, about your ankle,” I tell her. She wanted my apology, and now she has it. “Don’t worry if you can’t make it to the fight.”

“No. It wasn’t your fault. I’ll be fine,” she hurries to say.

I’m still confused as I push to my feet. “I’ll ask Pete to get you some crutches.”

“I’ll be fine. Serves me right for messing with trees,” she calls out as I head for the door.

I stop and look at her, trying to read her, and for a moment she stares back at me, looking just as confused as I feel.

“Good luck, Remy,” she says.

Pummeled by a shitload of frustration, I consider charging across the room and slamming my mouth on hers, giving her a kiss so fucking wet and deep, there will be no doubt in her mind that she is mine. Instead, I shove my fingers through my hair and leave, then charge straight into the suite, where I know I’ll find Pete either on his laptop or on the phone.

“Get someone to look at Brooke’s sprain. Get her some fucking crutches. And get two of your own cars after the fight tomorrow, I want Brooke alone.” I cross the living room in search of food.

Pete dials to concierge. “Do you want the Escalade or would you like someone to drive you?” His yell reaches me in the kitchen as I scour for the food Diane prepared.

“Get me a driver, I want my hands free.”

PAST

SHE FIGHTS

I’m in the zone.

Standing so I can stretch my legs and bounce in place, I curl my fingers and twist my neck to one side, then the other. Riley lifts three fingers, and I’m up in three. After a couple more jumps, I pry off my headphones, slip into my robe, and then wait until I hear it: “And noooow, ladies and gentlemen, say helloww to the one, the only, Remington Tate, RIPPPPPTIIIIIIDE!”

Taking off down the walkway, I follow my name, then I leap into the ring, strip off my robe, and hand it over to the guys at the corner. The noise heightens as I open my arms and turn around, taking a good look at my crowd. Hundreds of heads are turned in my direction, waving banners and shit in the air as the name Riptide shudders upward and across the ceiling rafters.

My arms still out, I keep turning, scanning the crowd until my eyes lock on her. Brooke Dumas. Sitting right where I want her. She’s framed by the groupies Pete and Riley brought up to my room, and they have nothing on her. She wears her hair down, and her smile, fuck, her smile is just for me. I smile back at her, thinking, this is for you.

Then I focus on my opponent, wait for the bell, and take him down. Working up a sweat, I take out a second fighter, a third. On my fourth and fifth, I keep jabbing, hooking, shooting out double punches, straight power punches, countering, attacking, and defending.

On my eighth, I block a power punch from his left arm, then I bury my hook in his ribs and finish him with an uppercut to the jaw that knocks him out completely with a thunk. He tries to rise, but slumps back down.

The public roars as my name takes over the entire room.

“RRRRRRIIIIIIPTIIIIIIIDE!” The ringmaster lifts my arm, and I’m catching my breath as the announcer yells, “Our victor, ladies and gentlemen. Riptiiiide!”

The screams are almost deafening, and I turn around and look at her, the smile on her lips so perfect, I can’t fucking wait to kiss it.

It takes me five minutes to shower and change at the hotel, then I cross the lobby to where Brooke waits in the back of a black Lincoln.

I slide in and shut the door behind me, and when I settle in my seat, the back of my hand rests against the back of hers. I carefully watch her for any signs of her wanting to pull away.

We head into traffic.

Brooke still hasn’t protested.

So I run the pad of my thumb over the back of hers, watching her reaction.

She inhales a quick breath, and the way her tits push up against her glittery top makes me hard. I think about running my thumb up her bare arm, her slender neck, then trailing it over that plump, pink mouth I want to feel all over me.

“Did you like the fight?” My voice is low and gruff.

She stares out at the window, her thoughtful profile making me want to fucking beg for it.

“No. I didn’t like it,” she admits as her eyes finally come to mine. “You were amazing! I loved it!”

The words hit me with such joy, I laugh, and I grab her hand, lift it to my mouth, and scrape my lips across the small rises of her knuckles, looking at her.

“Good,” I murmur, staring deep into her eyes. It takes all my effort to let go of her. But I want her to get used to me first. I want her to smell me, feel me right here. I want her to feel my body heat and get accustomed to me. My presence. Everything about me. When I sit next to her, this is the last time I want her shoulders to go tense and tight.

Soon, we reach the club. I help her out of the car, and when she slides her small hand deeper into mine, I feel so fucking possessive, I don’t let go of her. I want every man looking in her direction to know this one’s fucking mine. In silence, I lead her past the bouncers and to a private room in the back.

“Pete is getting a lap dance,” Riley tells me at the door of the private room, and I’m disappointed when Brooke quietly pulls her hand free from mine. “You don’t mind treating him to one as a birthday present?” he asks me.