Real

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.



“Please do. In fact I’m sure there’s enough space right here.” I wiggle meaningfully on his lap, and he nips my earlobe and hugs me tight, saying, “That’s right!”



We laugh, and we end up eating from the same plate, the same fork, taking turns to feed each other.



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.



“Who do you belong to?” he asks softly, stroking up and down my spine.



My heart melts as he sets the fork down and slides that hand into the robe through the parted fabric, curving it around my waist. He bends his head and brushes a kiss over my ear, rasping, “Me.”



“Entirely yours.” I maneuver so I’m straddling him, and I bury my nose in his thick, warm neck, sliding my arms around his lean waist. “I’m getting so nervous about the big fight. Are you?”



His chuckle rumbles in his deep chest as he edges back to peer down at me. He looks thoroughly amused. “Why would I be?” He tips my head back by the chin so that his laughing dark eyes capture mine. “Brooke, I’m going to break him.”



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.”



“Why, Brooke?”



“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?”



His face tenses on that question, and suddenly he looks super intent, very much like the times he asks me “Did you like the fight?”



I see the fierce need in his eyes, and I know my answer matters to him just like what he thinks about me matters to 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.”



His voice changes like it does when he talks intimately to me during sex. “I’m yours. You’re the one I bring home with me.” He smells my neck, then buzzes the back of my ear, and whispers into me, “You’re my mate, and I’ve claimed you.”



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.



“Do you remember anything nice about your parents?” I ask when we head back to the master bedroom and I climb into bed.



“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?”



Remington shrugs his big shoulders, and I see that he stops by his carry-on to pull out his iPad and his headphones.



Honestly, the thought of Remington’s parents is torture to me. How could someone so religious abandon the best most complex and beautiful human being I have ever known? How could they?



Remy carries his stuff to the nightstand, and I realize he’s setting up all his items close by. He’s preparing to hold me the rest of the night because he’s fully aware he won’t sleep.



“Do you miss your family?” I ask as he joins me.



The bed squeaks as Remy settles into bed and immediately reaches for me. “You can’t miss anything you’ve never had.” I don’t expect that reply, and I want to both cry and nurture and protect him from everyone who’s hurt him.



He pulls loose the drawstring of his Riptide robe and eases the satin off my shoulders. He likes me naked so he can do all his licking lion-like things, and I like pleasing him. So I pull my arms out and toss it aside, loving when he cuddles me up against him, skin to skin.



Suddenly, with all my might, I want to give him all I have. My body, my soul, my heart, my family.



“If I told you something,” I whisper as we find our favorite spot, facing each other, my leg between his thighs, our bodies entwined and touching as much as possible, “would you remember tomorrow?”



He pulls the covers up over us and tucks my face into his neck, his hands wandering up and down my spine. “I hope I do.”



I feel his feet moving restlessly against mine, and I smile and reach up with my arms to stroke his hair to help him relax, and then I get an idea. A brilliant one. One where he will understand what I want to say, and in this way I won’t pressure him into anything he might not feel comfortable with. In fact, he won’t really need to respond to it at all.



I reach over him to the nightstand and grab headphones and his iPod, praying that I will find the song in there. I am crazy about this song and I have never, ever, identified with it until this second when I want to shout each of these lyrics to Remington Tate right now.



“Put these on,” I say excitedly. He grins because I know he loves it when I play him music. He straightens up against the headboard and puts on his headphones and then drags me toward his lap, and I crawl there.



I find it. It is the perfect song to tell him I am crazy about every special part of him.



So I select Avril Lavigne’s “I Love You” and play it.



I hear the music start, and excitement courses through my veins as he raises the volume and I can hear the lyrics start speaking to him even from where I sit on his lap.



I know he might not remember this tomorrow. I know his eyes are black, and that playing him a song won’t count as having said the words, but we’ve spent so many nights together. We train with each other, bathe together, run together, eat and feed each other, caress and talk, and I don’t think Remington has ever opened up to anyone like he has to me. I’ve had my walls up all my life, and I’ve never let anyone inside until I suddenly realized he was…in.



I breathe him and live him every day, even dream about him while lying next to him in bed.



Even if this man doesn’t recognize the emotions in his raw and untamed heart, I at least hope he will know by my song that he’s become my…everything.



Excited beyond words, I hear the song continue playing and watch his face, gnawing my lip as I study his expression. Every lyric is so perfect, the entire song is meant from me to him, including the chorus which I swear I can hear right now;



You're so beautiful



But that's not why I love you



I'm not sure you know



That the reason I love you is you



Being you



Just you



Yeah the reason I love you is all that we've been through



And that's why I love you



He listens while assessing my face, his expression intent as he scans my features. My full lips. My amber eyes. My high cheekbones.



“Play it again.” His voice sounds so asperous, I almost had to read his lips to understand what he said.



I click the button to replay, but instead of listening to the song again like I expected him to, he rolls me over and lies me on my back, then sets the headphones on my head and adjusts them to my smaller frame as the song starts.



And in the next second, I’m listening to the “I Love You” song that I just played for him.



And which Remington Tate now plays for me.



I close my eyes, my heart shuddering in my chest, what I feel for him swelling inside me until I feel full and helplessly consumed on the inside. I feel his lips on mine, the song playing in my ears as he starts kissing me in a way that is not sexual, but infinitely tender.



This is the way Remy opens up to me, and I’m tingling from the top of my head to the soles of my feet as I soak up every single thing he’s trying to tell me, with this song, with his lips, with his whisper touch, even knowing he might not remember any of this, it doesn’t make it any less real to me.”



Pictures of you



My afternoon was going perfectly well.



Remington has a day off from training and is now completely carb loading and piling up his muscles with energy—and his plate too. He refused to eat Diane’s meals and brought us all down to the hotel restaurant buffet instead. The men are eating separately, discussing “fight” stuff, and I’m having a lovely time with Diane trying to determine the ingredients of what we’re eating. A taste of … orange? Hint of cardamom?



And then my phone bleeps. I’m thrilled to see it’s a message from Mel.



Melanie: I hate to give that ahole Riley any credit, but he was right. There’s a picture on the internet of you kissing that embodiment of Gross that night!! And it’s going viral!



My world stops.



I’m flashed back to that night, where I’m up on tiptoes kissing the embodiment of Gross, and suddenly it makes perfect sense that someone—his goonies?—would capture it on camera. Of course.



If someone spent four minutes taping me at my Olympic trials, in the most humiliating moment of my life, there would also be someone ready to tape me at the second most humiliating moment of my life. Of course they captured it on camera. Maybe not the first time I failed to hit the spot. But how about the second time I had to hold it for five seconds?



My bottom drops, and I feel like I’m drowning before the storm even comes, just at the mere sight of the cloud incoming.



With frozen lungs, I lower my phone back into my purse, somehow feeling as though everything I do seems to be in slow motion. I glance at the table where the men discuss their strategy for tomorrow night, and I notice Remy is easily listening to them. One second he’s normal, relaxed and lounging back, with his legs splayed open on a pink dining chair of the hotel restaurant, and the next I see him looking intently at his phone as it vibrates.