Page 53 of Real (Real 1)

“I’d like to talk to you, Remington, if you have a moment.”

“Yes, Brooke, I want to talk to you too.”

His flat tone does nothing to help my rapidly fleeing confidence, but I follow closely at his heels. The slight autumn smell mingled with a scent of ocean clinging to his skin gets me awfully hot, and I’m almost cross-eyed with desire when he leads me into the master bedroom.

He closes the door behind him and turns to me, and a shot of heat shoots through me as he curls a hot, big hand around my neck and bends to scent me. Undone by the possessive gesture of his nose buried in my hair as he drags in a long, deep inhale, I grab his t-shirt in all my fingers and bury my face in it, aching for him. “Don’t let me go please,” I beg. He wrenches free of my grip and releases me, almost as if he’s annoyed he grabbed me in the first place.

“If you want me so much, then why’d you leave?” He unnerves me as he watches me sit down on the bench at the foot of the bed and crosses his powerful arms, his eyebrows drawn together as he widens his stance almost threateningly. “Did I say anything when I was manic?”

With a sudden vivid recollection, I remember every amazing memory, and I seize on one. “You wanted to take me to Paris.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

“And make love to me in an elevator.”

“Did I?”

“And to have me in my pink pants,” I thickly admit, and an unexpected warmth climbs up my cheeks.

He keeps staring at me, his face taut in an unreadable mask. His arms are crossed tight as if he’s holding his raging emotions in. I’m shaking because I can’t determine if the look in his eyes is love, or hate. It is simply consuming. Consuming me.

“You forgot the part where we played each other a song,” he tells me in a quiet murmur, and the realization that he probably remembers the tender way he made love to me after that causes a burning emotion in my chest to quickly spread up my throat.

I hold my breath in silent shock when he reaches for my hand and takes it in his dry, firm grasp, lifting my fingers to his lips.

My heart speeds up as I stay in my seat, watching in delicious agony as he turns my hand in his grip. He stares down at the center of my palm before he bends to flatten his tongue over my skin and gently licks me. Need explodes in my tummy.

“That picture made me very angry, Brooke,” he rasps into my skin, as he drags his tongue wetly across the sensitive nerves at the center of my palm. “When you belong to someone … you don’t kiss anyone else. You don’t kiss his enemy. You don’t lie to him. Betray him.”

My systems roar back to life as his teeth graze the heel of my palm.

My voice shudders out of me. “I’m sorry. I wanted to protect you, like you protect me. I won’t ever go behind your back again, Remy. I didn’t leave because you were manic, I just didn’t want you to get manic or low because of me.”

He gives me a dark nod as he rakes a quick, thirsty look over me, and he lowers my hand back to my lap. “There’s something I might have missed then. Because I still can’t understand why, the f**k, you would leave me when I f**king needed you!”

The pain in his voice strikes a chord within me, and instantly my eyes sting.

“Remy, I’m sorry!” I cry wretchedly.

He groans, agitated, then he pulls out the letter I wrote from the pocket of the jeans draped haphazardly on a chair by the corner. The paper is crumpled and broken in the middle from so many reads. “Did you mean what you wrote to me?” Hearing his dense, distressed voice causes the little hairs on my body to jump.

“Which part?”

He grabs the paper, and yanks it open, ramming a thick finger to the words:

I love you, Remy.

Then, he crumples it in his fist again, watching me in anger and despair. My heart constricts as I realize he can’t even say the word out loud to me.

Who has ever told him that they love him?

I have.

In a letter.

In a thousand songs.

But not out loud.

Even his parents only wanted money. They never accepted him or gave him the love he deserved. And me? Oh, god, I left him. Just like everyone else. Throat thick, I nod up and down really fast, and his jaw clamps as hard as rock, as if he’s holding some wild feeling back. “Say it,” he coarsely whispers.

“Why?”

“I need to hear it.”

“Why do you need to hear it?”

“Is that the reason you left after the fight?”

Burning tears fill my eyes.

There’s desperation in his question, and I think he wants to know so badly because it might be the only reason he’ll be able to get over my leaving.

Raw pain opens new in my chest as I imagine him waking up in that hospital bed, after what he did for me, to realize that I left. When I’d said I’d never get enough of him …

“Is it, Brooke? Why you left? Or because you’re ready to quit on me? I thought you had more mettle, little firecracker, I really did.”

He’s wildly searching my face, and I feel just as wild looking back at his breathtakingly handsome features, noting the slight scar above his eyebrows remains.

I touch it on impulse, and the instant my finger connects with his healing skin, the words burst out of me.

“I love you. I love you.” His breath seizes in his chest, and I continue in a rush. “More than I’ve ever thought it possible to love any other human being. I left because you broke my heart, again and again that night, with every one of your bones. I left because I couldn’t take it anymore!”

He closes his eyes, and his torment reaches me so deep, my own confession opening me, making me vulnerable. I hear his ragged exhale of breath, and I’m hurting all over at the memory of what he did for me, to rescue Nora. I drop my hand, and my voice trembles fiercely. “I don’t want you to ever let anyone hurt you deliberately again. Ever. Not even for me, Remy. Never. You are worth. Too. Much! Do you hear me?”

He lifts his hand and cups my face in fiercely trembling hands and draws me up against him, and I shudder as I absorb the feeling of his arms again. My heart pounds because I know this is the first night of the rest of my life, and I want it to be.

“I’d do it a thousand times for you.” He scents me. And I scent him. “A thousand. A million. I don’t care if I’m humiliated. I don’t care about anything. All I knew was you were willing to kiss that motherfucker’s ink for your sister, and I had to give her back to you.”

“Oh, Remy, you didn’t have to do anything.”

“I did. And I will. And I’d do it all over again. I’m only sorry only Pete could know. He stayed in a hotel room with her and one of Benny’s goonies, then helped me transfer her when I delivered the championship. I just couldn’t let you stop me, Brooke.”

“But you wouldn’t even look at me…” I say, squeezing my eyes shut. “That was as painful as the rest of what happened.”

“If I’d looked at you, I wouldn’t have been able to through with it.” His voice is rough with conviction, and I cover my face and try not to think of the way Scorpion delighted in humiliating my proud fighter. It makes me want to fight and cry at the same time, and I shake my head.

He’s quiet.

Then, he releases me with a pained noise coming from deep within him.

He stands and paces, pushing his fingers like angry claws through his hair. “I knew this would happen.” Dark clouds darken his blue eyes from underneath drawn eyebrows. “That’s why I didn’t want to touch you. I knew I’d go crazy if I touched you, and now, it tears me open to ask you to be with me when I know I’m just going to do something to f**king hurt you again!”

“Yes! Yes you probably are, you idiot! And it’s going to be a damned skydive for me, and I’m going to hang on tight and just jump with you because that’s what you do to me. I’m crazy about you. My life now sucks without you. I’m not here for the job. Although I love it, but it’s you I want. It’s you I came for that first night. It’s always been about you. I want to be with you, but I won’t do it only on my side. I want you to love me back, Remy. You’ve never told me how you feel about me!”

His eyes are brilliant blue, and they ignite with a fire that heats my entire being.

“Brooke, you honestly don’t know?”

I stare, and he kneels on the bed and holds my face.

“Jesus, when I saw you that first night in Seattle, I felt like I’d just gotten plugged into a socket. I got high just with the way you smiled at me, Brooke. The way you looked at me with an expression of pain and awe drove me crazy. You turned away to leave, and you wore these really nice pants. Your butt was just up there as you walked away, all perky and round. And I just wanted to finish the damn fight so I could go after you. The former fight I swear I just fought for you to watch me. So you’d see me. See that I’m strong and could fight for you, protect you. I daydreamed of kissing you, of making love to you. I was planning it in my head even when I jumped out of that ring and went after you. When your friend gave me your number, I got to the hotel to find a roomful of girls, the kind Pete always has for me, and I couldn’t look at any of them. I wanted to look into your eyes and make you smile at me.

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