I almost moan when the fight begins.

Remington looks invigorated. He punches the new fighter repeatedly, jabbing, hooking, ducking, and he turns to me in between punches, just to see that I’m looking.

I am.

I see him.

I feel him.

I want him.

I fucking love him more than anything or anyone in this world.

The man doesn’t stand a chance against him, and I watch in utter and complete fascination.

All these weeks, with all these hormones, missing him like crazy, wanting him like crazy, loving him like crazy . . . He’s as close as I’ve ever had him in weeks, and I am dying for him so badly, I’m gripping my chair so tight my knuckles are white. I want him inside me like I want my next breath. Right now it’s all I can think of—all I can think of is that he is mine, and I am his, that I am not letting him go, that I will make him want me again if he ever stops wanting me, and that there will never be a moment of my life when I will let go.

With every win, his name is called, his arm is raised, the crowd roars, and those blue eyes find me in my ridiculous outfit and his jaw tightens and his body tenses, as if he can’t stand to see me without touching me. My entire body responds and I tremble in my seat with the way he looks at me. I may look awful, but he still wants me. Lust burns in his eyes, and the promise that he’ll take me dances inside those irises. My heart throbs. I remember him.

I remember his skin, his calluses brushing over me. His breath. I see his body up on display, glistening with sweat, every cut and ripped inch perfect, and I can almost taste it, feel it slide against mine.

All night I am a mass of happiness, excitement, nerves, and quaking, overwhelming need.

“Mel, I don’t want him to come see me in this costume,” I tell her, for the first time regretting my clothing choices. I look ugly, whorish, unclean, and ridiculous, and this is not how I wanted Remy to see me tonight.

“All right, let’s get you home and make him come to you,” she mutters. She starts pushing me, and suddenly I hear the voice bursting through the speakers. “KNOCKOUT! Yes, ladies and gentlemen! Our victor this evening, once again, I give you, Riptide! Riiiptiiiiiiide!!!!!!!!”

His name echoes around me as the public chants, “Riptide! Riptide!”

“Of course you’d do the exact opposite of what I asked you to,” a guttural, insanely deep and sexy voice whispers behind me; then I see a muscular torso move in front of me, and I’m lifted into a pair of deliciously sweaty arms.

Remington turns to Melanie instead of to me, and I hear him tell her, almost growl, “I’m taking care of this fireball. Riley can give you a ride home.”

His scent spins around me and completely disarms me. I want to hit his chest and tell him to let me go, because I’m still a little angry, but my fingers have linked at the back of his strong neck in my fear of falling, and I’m motionless in his hold—absorbing the feel of his arms around me. Good. Scary good. His bulging biceps pressing into my sides, his thick forearms glistening with a sheen of perspiration, like the rest of him. The rest of beautiful, infuriating, complicated him.

“Have fun, Brooke,” Melanie says with a twinkle in her eye as she comes to pat my shoulder, whispering in my ear, “Dude, in my life, I’ve never seen that glimmer in a man’s eyes before; he’s going to fuck you so bad.”

In the locker rooms, Riley greets me with a beyond-thrilled grin on his face. “Hey, Brooke! Since Rem’s got you tight, I assume you are Brooke?” he says as he hands Remington a small duffel bag.

Remy nods and whispers something to him, then he carries me outside and summons a cab and, instead of taking me home, gruffly tells the driver the name of a hotel two blocks away. He’s dehydrated, and he unzips his duffel, takes out a smartwater and starts gulping it down as he uses his free arm to haul me onto his lap.

His grip tightens around my waist when I try to move from my spot, and my heart hammers crazily in my chest when he tucks the water back into his bag. He ducks his head, and takes the deepest, longest inhale of me he’s ever taken. Lust spirals through me. I’m still a little bit angry, but between my thighs, my clit pulses to the point of pain. He grabs my face, turns me, and nips my earlobe, breathing heavily, completely aroused under my butt as if he wants me. As if he desperately wants me.

“God,” he rasps into my ear, his arms clenching around me as he fucks his tongue into my ear. A tremor of need races up my body and makes me bite back a moan. I’m torn between hitting and kissing him because he’s killing me. My panties are drenched, my breasts hurt, my heart hurts, every part of me hurts as he dips his tongue into my ear, outside the shell, behind it, with that same desperation I feel.

When we arrive at the hotel, I’m stewing in my own anger and at the same time simmering with lust because of the way Remington has worked himself into a crazy arousal in the back of the taxi. Rubbing his hands on me, licking and nipping me. Scenting me like he’s starving for air.

He picks up a key from the front desk and then we’re riding up in the elevator, and I say, “Put me down,” in a thick, alien voice.

“I will soon,” he murmurs back at me, his eyes flaming with heat as he looks down at me.

Even with those blue eyes taking me in in the most unsexy dress in the universe, in the worst makeup possible, with awful hookerish red lipstick, the primal lust in his gaze sprints through me like little lightning bolts of pleasure.

I feel like a simmering volcano, my blood stewing in my veins from an overpowering mix of anger and arousal. But the arousal, I hate how it’s quickly winning as his scent keeps reaching my lungs. My tongue hurts in my mouth. I want to lick his throat and take that sexy mouth with mine and make him show me he still wants and loves me.

My heart whacks fiercely into my ribs as he slips the key into the slot and carries me inside, heading to the end of the hall, where the master bedroom usually is.

He sets me down on the foot of the bed.

“I don’t know if I should kiss you or hit you.” My voice quivers with emotion.

Then I feel reenergized and smack my fist into his hard pectoral and push at his chest so he goes away. I grab his beautiful face and crush his sexy mouth to mine. His taste shudders through me like a gunshot of ecstasy until I yank angrily away and hit his wall-like chest again.

“Your songs made me cry! I missed your voice, your hands! I’m a pining stupid pregnant fool for you, and you want me to stay like some fifth-century good little wife, waiting for you while you’re out there wetting every woman’s fucking panties. I won’t do it. I refuse to be that girl—do you hear me?”

“Yeah, I hear you.” He leans over and slides his fingers to cup the back of my head, then his husky, desire-thickened voice dances over my skin. “Now come here and kiss me again. . . .” He draws me closer and I hit his chest more weakly, moaning in protest.

“Did you touch someone?” I cry, trying to twist free.

He tightens his hold on my nape and fastens his hungry gaze on my lips. “No.”

“Then why didn’t you want to see me? I don’t understand you!”

His eyes flash in frustration. “You don’t have to understand me—just love the hell out of me. Can you do that? Can you?” His thumb drags with sensual roughness across my lower lip. “Do you?”

I can’t reply. While he stares at my mouth with a deliciously carnivorous stare, I’m drinking in the shadowed jaw, the blue eyes, the spiky hair, his high cheekbones and square jaw, the dark slashes of his eyebrows, every beautiful inch of his face, so achingly close that every organ inside my body starts to throb. I hear myself whisper, “Do you still love me?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he says.

I moan as his fingers caress the back of my neck, the touch scrambling my brain. He intoxicates me with his nearness, makes me drunk with the smell of his sweat, his soap, him. Every time he’s near, he heightens my senses, and I’m so emotional, all these hours missing him, all these strange hormones, my voice trembles when I speak. “Do you still love me, like before?”

“I’m fucking insane about you!” he cries in disbelief.

I close my eyes and moan softly, clinging fiercely to the words.

“I told you I loved you with every petal of every rose,” he tells me in a low, husky whisper. Then he scrapes the pad of his thumb over my mouth again, more roughly this time, with more need, as his voice, velvet-edged and strong, sends a ripple of heat through me.

“At the institute one of my female doctors got a rose. She told me it was from her husband, because he loved her and he was away. Isn’t that what you send when you’re not there to tell someone you fucking love them? Brooke, I’ve never done this before, but it fucking hurts to look at you through a fucking screen. It hurts to text. It hurts like no fucking punch hurts.”

He spreads his fingers open at the back of my neck as if he needs to touch as much of me as possible, his eyes glowing to such a fierce degree, it only makes my heart thud harder.

“Didn’t you hear the songs!? They were all for you, Brooke. Didn’t you know I thought of you? Missed the hell out of you? If I haven’t showed you I love you, then tell me in what ways I’m fucking this up!”

“I wanted you to want me at the fight! Like you always do. You’ve always wanted me there before. Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you come see me before?”

“God, I want you there like I want nothing! Do you think I enjoy a second of this hell? If I’d come seen you before the fight, you think I’d have the will to leave you? How can you think this is easy for me, Brooke? How?”

The vivid frustration in his eyes cuts me so deep I drop my head, because, no, I don’t think it’s easy for him at all.

“You think you need me, little firecracker?” The gruff question travels all the way through me, and I have to press my thighs together to stop the tremor in me. “Baby, the way you need me can only barely cover half of the way I need you.” The unexpected sadness in his voice yanks my gaze back to his.

“My game is half of what it used to be. I can’t concentrate. I can’t sleep. I can’t get in the game. I’m like a robot out there. I feel a hole right here—right fucking here.” He places his fist over his chest. “I’m trying to protect my girl. Three doctors, three, said she had to be in bed for the first three months, with no travel. I can’t see her, I can’t make love to her—I am trying to do the right thing when my gut screams that SHE belongs with ME.” He narrows his eyes, exhaling roughly through his nose. “Every second that you and I breathe, you belong with me.”

“Remy, I’m sorry. This is driving me crazy too.” I cover my face and try breathing through my constricted throat, but he grabs my wrists and forces my arms to my sides, seizing my gaze with his own, his eyes vividly blue.

“I love you so much.” He engulfs my face in both big, beautiful callused hands. “So fucking much, Brooke, I still don’t know what to do with myself,” he says, and kisses the bridge of my nose with a low, shuddering breath. “I miss everything about you, from the way you smile to the way you look at me to the way the bed smells when you’re with me. I love you like I love nothing in my life, nothing. It eats me up inside like a disease to want to come get you and bring you back with me.”