Real

My heart sinks to my toes, but seconds pass, and nothing happens.



I can’t read his profile, but he has gone utterly still. Then it all happens in a blink of an eye. He turns the entire table with a gigantic crash, and Coach ends up on the floor, with a thousand plates and food over him.



In the same move when Remington catapults to his feet, he shoots his cell phone across the room, where it crashes into pieces against the wall as he starts for me, and Pete scrambles to his feet and reaches into his back pocket.



“No, Pete, no!” I burst out, loathing the idea of Remy being tranquilized.



I try to stay calm but my heart pounds a thousand beats a minute. I’ve never dealt with Remington angry at me since we’ve been together, and suddenly I’m a little afraid of him, but I don’t want him to know that I am.



Trembling in my seat, I stay utterly still as he comes to stand before me, breathing like a bull, his nostrils flaring, his eyes burning black in his face, his fists trembling at his sides. But it’s the hard desperation in his gaze that sends awful chills down my arms.



It takes me about ten times the normal effort to speak. “Do you want to talk to me, Remington?” I ask, my voice raw.



I brace myself for his shout, but somehow, the cold sliver of a whisper he answers with is infinitely more threatening.



“I want to do more than talk to you.”



The hairs at the back of my neck rise in alarm. “All right, let’s talk. Excuse me, Diane,” I say in deceptive calm, and push my chair back so I can stand up, my legs wobbling.



He looks bigger than ever, and the entire restaurant is looking at him.



Diane scrambles away to the toppled table to help Coach clean up.



Remington’s hands flex and fist at his sides as he glares down at me. His jaw works as he breathes, fast and choppy, and I notice Riley has just come up behind him, next to Pete.



There’s a fierce battle inside Rem’s eyes. He’s struggling like he knows he has to control himself but can't. As if the anger is beyond him.



I try to calm my pulse while I burn with the need to calm him. I know that when I set my hands on any part of his body, he relaxes under my touch. I know he needs to receive my touch sometimes as fiercely as I need to give it to him. Except he’s never been like this, and I’m afraid that for the first time in my life, my touch won’t be welcomed by him.



The thought of the only man I have ever loved feeling betrayed by me is almost crippling.



He hasn’t even spoken, and yet I can feel his turmoil so completely surrounding me, whatever he has to tell me already hurts somewhere deep and profound inside my body. I hurt him. I hurt him, and I instantly hate me for it. My wind pipe swells in pain.



“I just went to see my sister,” I painfully breathe, a well of regret and anxiety roiling inside of me.



He reaches out with a fiercely trembling index finger and touches my mouth—the one I kissed Scorpion’s filthy cheek with—and then he leans forward to bite me, and I gasp in mingled shock and desire at the prick of his teeth I feel on my skin. “You go negotiate with scum like him? Without me knowing?” he asks in a low, turbulent voice as his thumb scrapes unsteadily over my lips.



“I went to see my sister, Remy. I couldn't care less about the scum.”



He touches my hair, and the touch is so very unexpectedly gentle, I want to die with the way it contrasts with the lighted frenzy in his eyes and the way his thumb starts desperately scraping over my lips. “Yet you kiss that fucking asshole with the same mouth you kiss me.”



“Please just count to ten.” Helpless, I touch his sleeve.



He narrows his eyes, then rushes on to say, “One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-TEN.”



He leans over and seizes part of my shirt collar in his fist, drawing me closer to him, the distressed look in his eyes cutting me like talons. “You kiss that motherfucker with the same mouth I would kill for?”



His eyes are wild as he touches my lips again, this time with the tip of two fiercely trembling fingers, and suddenly all I can see is torment. His eyes are black. Dark and haunted. And I can’t stand that I put that darkness there, and I feel his pain, with every bone in my body I feel it.



“My lips hardly touched the tattoo.” My voice is whisper quiet as my windpipe begins closing down. “I did just what you do when you let them get a hit and give them false confidence so I could see my sis.”



He slams his chest with a loud noise. “You’re my fucking girl! You don’t get to give anyone false confidence!”



“Sir, we need you to leave the premises now.”



Remy’s head swings around as the manager comes forward, and suddenly Pete and Riley stop the poor man from getting closer, Pete swiftly extracting a checkbook as the terms cost of damages echo in the room. Remy’s narrowed eyes slide back to me, and he’s so angry and gorgeous, and such a damn handful, I just don’t know what to do with him.



He comes closer and slides a finger down my jaw, and I respond to it, my scared body primed for sex with the barrage of hormones his temper has shot through me. “I’m going to go break that fucker’s face,” he whispers, the velvet promise laced with threat as he leans and slips his tongue into my mouth, “and then I’m going to break you into my submission.”



“Remy, calm down,” Riley says.



“That’s all right, Riley, I don’t break that easy, and he’s sure welcome to try,” I snap, finally giving Remington the big black scowl he seems to be begging for.



He scowls back and ducks his dark head, breathing hard into my face as he grabs my hair in his fists and crushes my mouth with brutal possession, swiping my lips with punishing flicks of his tongue. “When I get you in bed, I’m going to scrub you raw with my fucking tongue until there’s nothing anywhere on you from him. Only me. Only me.”



His erection bites into my stomach, and I realize he’s gone completely territorial, claim-my-mate, prove-to-her-my-ownership crazy on me. My thighs go liquid, and I gasp and strain closer. “All right, take me there,” I plead, weak with the urge to ease the both of us.



He jerks back and narrows his eyes. “I don’t have fucking time to take care of you,” he snaps as he starts for the door, and I cry out in breathless panic.



“Remy, come back. Don’t get in trouble!”



He spins around, and my stomach knots as I see the look of determined murder on his face, his fists shaking at his sides as he jabs a finger in the air and points at me. “Protecting you is my privilege. I will protect you and anything that you value as if it were mine.”



My breath catches at the way he stares at me.



“That sick asshole has just begged me to end his miserable life, and I’m happy to oblige,” he snarls, his eyes raking me angrily from the door. “He’s just taken something sacred for me and pissed on it!” He storms back, pushing his finger in between my breasts as he points. “Understand me. You. Are. Mine!”



“Remington, she’s my sister.”



“And the Scorpion will never let go of her. He keeps his women drugged and dependent, their minds in pieces so tiny they can’t even think. He’ll never give her up unless he wants something even more than her. Is it you? Does he want you, Brooke? He could have drugged you. Stripped you. Fucked you—goddamn my life, he could have fucked you!”



“No!”



“Did he touch you?”



“He didn't! They’re doing this to provoke you, don’t let them! Save it for the ring tomorrow. Please. I want to be with you tonight.”



“I was with her the whole time, buddy, nothing happened,” Riley intercedes, patting his arm and trying to back him off a bit.



I see the look of betrayal settle in his eyes when he hears Riley speak, and before I can stop him, he swings around to grab Riley’s shirt in his fist. “You let my girl get in that scumbag’s face, you little shit?”



Panic seizes me when he lifts Riley off the ground. “Remy, no!” I come to his side, tugging futilely at his arm.



He shakes him in the air, and Riley is getting purple. “You let her kiss that filthy scum’s ink?”



Pete looks at me. “I’m sorry,” he mouths, and then to Remy, “All right, buddy, let’s put Destroyer to bed now, huh?” and he rams a syringe into his neck, and Remington drops Riley to the floor and yanks the syringe out of his skin, tossing it empty aside.



I hold my breath when he comes and grabs me. He stares at me, his eyes blazing, and opens his mouth, hesitates, then makes a low, pained noise as he crushes my mouth and delivers a kiss that both claims and punishes me, and then he lets go of my arm and stomps to the door, leaving me licking my raw, swollen lips and staring after him.



Riley coughs as he pushes himself to his feet, rubbing his throat as we all realize Remington is gone.



“What the hell?” Pete blinks in complete disbelief at the open door from where Remy just walked out.



“It’s supposed to put down an elephant, no?” Riley glumly asks Pete.



“Supposed being the operative word.”



Shaking his head, Riley dusts off the glass from his jeans. “Must be all the adrenaline in him. Shit.”



“Pete, get your shit straight, both of you! You just shot him with a sedative! He can drop down in an alley for all we know, be robbed and … oh god.” I cover my face as I think of all the things he can do wrong, or can happen to him.



“Calm down, Brooke, we’ve got it. Riley, you get another two of these tranquilizers, I’ll meet you in the car,” Pete says, then he turns to the manager and signals at the check he still holds between his grasp. “So if you could send the bill to the presidential suite? I guarantee we’ll be moving out by morning.”



“I want to help!”



“Damn, you’ve helped enough, Brooke,” Riley tells me, looking at me like I just unleashed the apocalypse. “Just go upstairs and wait for him. You’ve got your work cut out for you when he gets back.”



I’m pacing like crazy as I wait to hear something. Anything.



I see all of his things across our suite, his iPad and laptop, his toothbrush in the sink, his clothes still in his suitcase, some hanging in the closet, and a horrible anxiety works its way down my nerve endings.



Remington just went out there and could throw everything away for me. My lips are sore from the torture of my teeth as I go back to the past and wonder what would have happened if I’d said I wouldn’t kiss that stupid tattoo. I might never have talked to Nora. She’d never have a chance to break free like I offered her.



At the moment, it felt relatively harmless, considering, and also it had felt like I had no choice, but how I sorely wish Remington would never have found about it. Even angry, I could feel his hurt, and now I’m worried sick about it. Even if he has his fists in Scorpion’s jaw right now, his Underground victory would be shot to hell, and I can’t even wonder what that awful reptilian sick-dick might do to Nora as retribution if Remy hurts him tonight.



Oh, god.



The thought of me ruining, not only my own career, but Remy’s as well, positively shatters me.