“I think you get on his too.”

“You do?” She scowls at me, then her eyes widen in pure disbelief. “You mean he doesn’t like me?”

Groaning at her obtuseness, I push her in his direction. “Mel, just go do him.”

“I don’t even like him,” she argues, but I’ve already swung around to board the elevator up to the P, and I slip my key to our room with a wild anticipation to see him.

He sits at the desk, with his laptop open and with his music on his ears. He lifts his head when I approach, and when his boldly handsome face with those heartbreaking eyes looks at me, my insides shudder uncontrollably.

His spiky black hair gleams in the soft hotel room lighting, and in those comfortable sweatpants and tight t-shirt, he exudes pure raw masculinity. The sight of his full mouth opens up a ravenous hunger inside me and I just hurt with the physical pain of wanting that mouth on me. His arms on me. His voice, telling me it’s all going to be all right. Because every second that passes by, I loathe myself more and more for what I did.

But Remy has protected me from his fans, and I would protect him from this too. From anything. Especially from Scorpion. I will protect him so that the only time Remy has to face him will be on that ring, where I will gladly watch him make that bastard wish he were dead.

Close to exploding with all my emotions, I jump on his lap, then take off his earphones and slip them briefly over my head so I can listen to what he was hearing. A crazy wild rock song bashes into my ears and I frown in confusion.

He watches me with darkened blue eyes that go half-mast as he leans to kiss my nose, cradling my jaw as his thumb runs sensually across my mouth. My stomach cramps, and I fear that Remy can actually see the fear and self-loathing that I am tramping down inside me.

Dropping his headphones onto the desk, I ease to my feet and hurry to the bathroom, feeling so violated I wash my teeth and add Scope until my mouth feels swollen. I barely take a step out of the bath when I suddenly need to return and thoroughly do it all again. For the awful sensation across my skin, I swear I could have a live scorpion crawling up my cheek, and the sensation is eating at me.

Finally I come back out. My mouth is minty fresh and even my lips feel numb with cleanness.

Remy has set his headphones aside. His full attention is on me, his dark eyebrows furrow as he tracks my return. He seems confused and slightly distrustful.

The sight of him makes me emotional, and I’m afraid I’m going to break down at any second. I hate that I feel like I don't deserve him anymore, even when all I wanted was to keep him safe and uninvolved.

I've never wanted to take care of someone in my life like I want to love and take care of him.

A painful lump builds inside my throat.

“Remy,” I say thickly, my heart pounding because I don’t know how I’ll cope if he questions me about tonight. “Would you hold me for a bit?”

I desperately want my special place in his arms, the place I fit in like nowhere else. He makes the perfect nook for me, engulfing me like a nest and warmer than anything. I want it so bad, my heart aches in my chest.

I wait, shaking a little, and I think he notices and relents.

“Come here,” he says softly, shoving his chair back as he extends out his arm, eagerly snuggle into his engulfing male hug. He chuckles when I squirm to get closer, and I’m acting so needy that his dimples take a peek, which seems to delight him.

“You missed me?” His eyes dance as he cups my face and I feel all his calluses on my jaw and cheeks, and that comforting feeling that only Remy can arouse sweep through me.

“Yes,” I gasp.

He gathers me close and holds me snug to his chest as he lowers his lips to mine. Our mouths graze softly, then connect, and he opens up with a soft breath that claims my mouth, his tongue sending shivers of desire racing through me.

His fingers outline the curves of my breasts as he drags his mouth along my jaw and sinks his nose into the back of my ear, inhaling me, groaning softly in pleasure, and blood pounds in my brain, leaping excitedly from my heart. “Remy …” I plead, grabbing his t-shirt and shoving it up to his shoulders.

He grabs the cotton in his fist and with a muscular yank, tosses it over his head, and I quickly slide my hands over his chest, kissing every part I can get.

“I missed you so much,” I choke out emotionally, kissing his collarbone, his jaw, grabbing his hair as I press my face into his neck anything to get close to this man.

He engulfs me in a big hug and strokes my back, then holds my face as he whispers, “I missed you, too,” setting a kiss on my lips, then on the tip of my nose, my forehead.

I tremble with his admission. “But I missed your voice. Your hands. Your mouth ... being with you … watching you … touching you … smelling you …” I trail off. He smells so good, like he does, clean and manly. I take his lips more desperately.

He returns my kiss, slowly at first, then with more compulsion as he unbuttons my shirt and strips me bare with fast, anxious hands.

I know he’s not as verbally expressive as I, but I can feel his burning urgency when he grabs my hips and pulls me back to his lap, as though he needs to be inside me as fiercely as I need him to fill me. I’m naked and he’s still wearing his sweatpants, but I’m dying with love and the need to physically express myself to him.

My whole body clenches when his erection settles hot and pulsing between my thighs, and there’s an overwhelming need in me to give him something I've never given any man before.

Shivering uncontrollably, I slide between his powerful thighs at the same time he yanks down his drawstrings pants and shoves them partly down his hips. I see a peek of his star tattoo and then his erection pops free, and in the instant my knees hit the carpet, my fingers and hands are all over his heat, his hardness, his heavy testicles, all full and primed for me.

“I want to kiss you here…” My voice shakes with desire as I look into his lust-tightened face through eyes that I can barely keep open from the want, “I want to drown in you, Remington. I want your taste … in me …”

A sound of a hungry male being thoroughly pleasured rumbles up his throat when I take him in my mouth, and he skims my hair with all his fingers as he rocks his hips, slowly, up to my mouth, gently giving me what I asked for and taking what I desperately want to give.

My sex burns wet with every drop of escaped semen that I taste, and I’m so intoxicated with this man, I can’t stop enjoying the raw look on his face as I work my tongue along his enormous hard length.

He’s as undone as me when I add my teeth, suck his tip, then take it down to my throat until I have to suppress my gag reflex, and I’m still dying for more, I will never get enough of this man, and when he’s pumping out of control into my mouth, and his fingers are fisting into my hair, and his muscles are tightening for orgasm, I suddenly notice his eyes are a little less blue as he watches me.

He's definitely speedy.

Super. Completely. Speedy.

Medically, Pete says it is called manic.

And he suspects that this episode might have been triggered the night I went out with Melanie and Riley, for during their financial meeting, Rem apparently asked only three questions of Pete, and none of them had anything to do with the finances he’d been explaining.

At what time did she say she’d be back?

You sure Riley’s getting her?

Why the fuck are they taking so long?

Pete says he closed the money topic and dispatched Remington to his room as soon as Riley texted we were on our way back, and that’s when I found him hearing the loudest rock song I’ve ever listened to, all while wearing a somber, thoughtful expression on his face. Did he think I would never come back?

And is that what he does when his insides begins to spin in turmoil? Listen to hard rock?

I don’t know. All I know now is that he fucked me four times that night, like he needed to claim me once more, and now Remy has totally gone rogue and appears to run on Red Bull 24/7.

He’s like fully charged.

His usual cocky self to the tenth power.

He attacks me in bed like a lion this morning. “You look especially good, Brooke Dumas. Good, and warm, and wet, and I wouldn’t mind having you on my breakfast platter.” His tongue twirls a wet line between my breasts with his tongue, then goes all out and licks my collarbone like my lion always does. “All that’s missing is a cherry on top, but I’m sure we have some.”

The mischief in his eyes melts me as he produces a cherry from within his hand, which makes me realize he’d probably fetched it from the kitchen during the night and had been waiting to pounce on me the instant I woke up.

Lord, he is a predator indeed.

Groaning groggily, I roll to my back and look into his heart-stoppingly handsome face. Scruffy jaw. Dark eyes twinkling. Dimpled smile.

God, I’m done for.

“Who’s your man?” he asks gruffly, and he kisses me, rubbing that cherry against my clit. “Who’s your man, baby?”

“You,” I moan.

“Who do you love?”

Tremors run across my limbs as he tortures my clit with the cherry and at the same time penetrates my sex with one long finger, and I stare dazedly into his eyes. I can see miniature flecks of blue in their mysterious depths, and oh, I desperately want to tell him, You, I’ve only ever loved you, but I can’t. Not like this, not when he may not even remember. “You drive me crazy, Remy,” I whisper, and brazenly grab his cock and drag him anxiously to me, so that he can fill me up and rub my swollen sex with his hard cock and make me smell of him again.

The entire week, he’s on high maintenance mode, and I can barely keep up with him, but I really love it. I'm riding the high with him. His smiles blaze. He needs to take sex breaks now from training. He can’t see me without needing to fuck me. When I go stretch him he wants me as soon as I touch him.

I now notice that when he’s black, his eyes aren’t really black, but a really dark navy, flecked with gray and blue. But his mood is … somehow, black. Not always, but sometimes. It’s either supremely elevated, or super pissy. Sometimes nothing makes him happy. Diane is feeding him shit. Coach is not training him hard. And I’m looking too much at Pete, for god’s sake.

But even as ridiculous as it sounds, these things seem like a very big deal to Remy, and now it seems like my entire day is absorbed by his energy and stamina, and I’m just scrambling to keep up.

“Who are all these people here for?” I ask when we land in New York to find a crowd of spectators have lined up at the FBO where he parks his jet, and they’re barely being held back by yellow chords and airport security.

“For me, who else,” he declares.

He sounds so cocky even Pete cackles and says, “Get off it, Remy.”

He grabs me seductively to him. “Come here, baby. I want these good folks to know you’re with me.” Large, sure hands grab my butt cheeks as flashes go off.

“Remington!”

He laughs and ushers me into the Hummer limo before all the others get in, pinning me down to his side as he fits his mouth and kisses me like it’s our last night alive, his hunger wild and unleashed. “I want to take you somewhere tonight,” he rasps, into my mouth. “Let’s go to Paris.”