Real

She spices all his meals with natural herbs like thyme, basil, rosemary, a little dash of garlic or cayenne pepper, and some kick-ass combinations that I’ve been jotting down for when I get back home. She’s divorced at thirty-nine, and she also told me that we’re finishing the last fight in New York at the end of this tour, a city I’ve always wanted to visit.



Tomorrow Remington has his first fight out of two in Atlanta, and this afternoon I find myself hanging out at the sidelines of his privately rented gym, waiting to stretch him once he’s finished. It’s our third evening here, and I’ve already realized that Remington Tate trains like a madman.



A.



Mad.



Man.



Today in particular, he seems unstoppable.



“Any reason why he’s still going strong at this hour today?” Pete asks Coach Lupe.



“Hey, Tate! Stop showing off in front of Brooke!” Coach yells, and we hear a laugh from across the gym, where Remington is killing—heartlessly murdering—a speed bag.



“I can’t wear him out,” Lupe says as he turns back to us. He drags a hand down his bald head as he checks some sort of timer he has draped around his neck. His usual scowl deepens in intensity. “We’re going on nine hours today and he’s still got juice. But don’t even look at me, Pete. We both knew this was going to happen since he…”



Both their heads swing toward me, as if they can’t speak until I make myself scarce, and I raise my eyebrows. “What? Do you want me to leave?”



Lupe shakes his head and goes back to Remington, who’s still on the speedball, and it is flying in the wind like a bat flapping everywhere. His arms swing with perfect precision, each thrust hitting the ball dead center as it swings back. The sound it makes is rhythmic and faster than a second, thadumthadumthadumpthadump…



“Nine hours a day really is excessive, don’t you think? Even seven a day is crazy,” I tell Pete from the sidelines. Today we’ve gone way past his 4-4 training times, and I’m stunned that the man still keeps going.



Even when I trained for the Olympics, I didn’t hit it quite that hard, and frankly, Remington’s training schedule leaves me agog. Today he’s done hanging abs, where he hangs from his feet and swings his body up to his knees, as fast as he can, perfectly working those washboard abs like he’s doing nothing. He does pull-ups, push-ups, mountain climbers, planks. He jumps rope with only one foot, then switches to the other, then he crosses the rope, swings, twists, and turns, all while I barely even get to see the rope, he makes it fly so fast as it rhythmically slaps the ground. After that, he shadow boxes or hits the ring with a sparring partner, and if his sparring partner wears out before he does, like he did today, Remy goes back to the heavy bags or the speedball, and ends up soaked.



“He likes wearing himself out,” Pete explains to me as we keep watching him. “If he can still give a punch late in the day, he bites Coach’s head off that he didn’t ride him hard enough.”



It takes one more hour for him to slow down, and by the time Coach whistles for me, I’m the one who’s dead tired from the visual stimulation of watching Remington Tate work out. Every move he makes is so aggressively primal it feels sexual to me.



Even in sweatpants and an easy t-shirt, there’s no way you can miss the clench of the muscles of his upper body through the damp cotton fabric, and the way his sweatpants hang low on his narrow hips make my breasts feel so heavy and painful I swear to god I can’t imagine how it will feel when I’m lactating one day.



Stifling a hot little shiver, I make my legs move and head over to the floor mats, where Remington is standing, waiting for me, already shirtless. Rivulets of sweat cling to his torso, and I know he’s perfectly warm and that his muscles have been trained to exhaustion. There’s no more muscle glycogen in storage, his glucose will be low, and he’ll be so hot he’ll be like a warmed pretzel when I maneuver him. The mere prospect of it makes me equally hot. It’s a dream of mine, to dedicate my life to this, but it’s such a tactile job that with this man, it’s a big challenge. Not only because his muscles are so strong compared to my own, but because I can barely make contact with his bronzed skin without feeling buzzed. Every pore in my body jumps to attention and hones in on whichever part of my body is touching his. I really hate this loss of control in me.



Now I watch his muscles bulge as he towels himself off and haphazardly drags the towel across his damp hair, leaving it even more sexy and spiky. I’m also wearing tennis shoes and a tight running gear outfit to make myself move easily over him, and those striking blue eyes sweep over me as I approach.



He's panting, unsmiling, then he drops on a bench while I go around and come up to him from behind.



He groans when I wrap my fingers around his shoulders and start digging deep. Sparks of excitement strike me low in my tummy when I make contact, but I try quelling all my reactions and focus on loosening his neck, his triceps, his biceps. I push into his pectorals, his core, trying not to respond like a woman to every clench of his muscles under my fingers, the amazing tautness of his skin beneath my touch.



We work on every joint, pulling everything loose, my moves occasionally making him make a low, purring sound. My sex muscles clench and I try to relax them, but every time he groans, they grip and clench tighter.



I hate it when they do that too.



It seems that the art of relaxing this man seems to wind me up to the tenth power.



But at least I’m not jobless anymore.



Breathing slow and deep, I spend extra time as I rub his deltoids, the roundest, squarest part of the shoulder. I stretch and roll them, and then I follow to the supraspinatus, a small muscle of the rotator cuff, and also the most injured of the four muscles surrounding that cuff.



He’s still panting when I’m done, except now, so am I.



Coach whistles. “All right, hit the showers. See you at six a.m. tomorrow and ready to fight. Now go eat. A whole goddamned cow.”



Remington pulls me up from where we’d worked on his back on the floor, his blue eyes sparkling as he clenches my fingers a second longer than I expected. “No standing on me yet?”



It takes me a moment to remember our conversation from the plane, and I smirk. “Not yet. But don’t worry. If you keep working out like this, we’ll get there before you know it.”



He laughs, and drapes a towel around his neck as he heads to the showers, and hours later I’ve figured that he must have fallen dead asleep after the exertion he put himself through. I, on the other hand, lay awake, sleepless. I’ve already squeezed my triceps three times since our arrival and have determined I’m not fat, and even then, I still wonder what hmm means.



I think about the plane and his hands on my triceps and his blue eyes on my face and the way his gaze rakes me when I walk over to stretch him. I think of the way he’s teased me and amused himself with me these past three days, and I just don’t understand why all that makes me squirm inside and feel hot little chills all around me.



My adrenals are going to be shot if this keeps up.



I try to think of something else, but my legs are restless under the sheets, and the need to go out and run eats at me. I wish I could sprint my heart out, feel those endorphins instead of these odd little pings in my nerves that gnaw me raw, this strange need that blooms up inside me when I see Remington Tate. Even when I denied it to Melanie, I was so sure he’d wanted me that first night in Seattle, I just don’t know what happened that I got hired instead.



But it’s what I wanted, wasn’t it? A job.



Except that the price to pay for my new job is a little bit of sexual torture. Big deal. I’ll just block him out better tomorrow. With that new resolution, I grab my iPod from the nightstand and turn on my music and force myself to listen to any songs except the ones he’s played to me.



Running



“Remy! Call out Remy already! REMINGTOOOOON!”



The group of women on the seats behind me are screaming their throats off.



So you can understand how it is really, really hard to block out the man when everyone around me is clamoring for him, especially when my body is alive with adrenaline for the fight that’s about to start.



It’s a deliciously familiar feeling, actually, the one that simmers in me as I sit among the spectators at the Atlanta Underground, waiting for Remington to come out to the ring. I feel like I’m the one competing, and my body is perfectly ready. My blood rushes hot and liquid inside me, my adrenals pump me full of the right hormones, and my mind seems as clear as newly scrubbed crystal. My legs are motionless under my seat, and so are my hands, but this is merely a ruse. The stillness of preparation. Where outward, all is calm, and inward, there’s a fire roaring. This is the one minute where everything goes quiet and gathers inward, so that when it’s time to explode outward, it will be with concentrated precision that your energy unleashes in a perfectly planned burst.



Even now, I remember my perfect crouching position at the starting blocks, the way all my senses seemed to hone in on the one sound of the starting shot, where everything—and I mean everything—zaps awake on that sound, and you go from standstill to running your heart out in a fraction of a second.



Now it seems that all I’m waiting to listen to is his name being announced, and when I finally hear “REMINGTON TATE, RIIIIIPTIDE!” there’s a new rush sweeping through me, and yet there’s nowhere for me to run, there’s no relief to what’s coursing in my body, only this incredibly powerful ache being fed by the very same hormones my body keeps outputting, which I have no way of stopping.



I rise from my seat like the entire roomful of people do, but that’s all I can do as I watch him take on the stage in the way only he knows how to do. The crowd gets instantly high on him, and I’m lightheaded too. There he is, a woman’s living, breathing fantasy, doing his slow, cocky turn, spiky black hair, darkly tanned chest, dimpled smile—killer smile—all in the package of Remington Tate. He’s perfection itself, and a new surge of hormones sweeps through me as I do what the rest of the crowd does and take in his visual, so blatantly on display in those low riding boxing shorts and so strikingly sexy, he becomes the center of my attention.



The center. Of my. World.



Ever since I stopped competing, I’ve gained body fat and am now at a healthy eighteen percent. I’m curvier than I ever used to be, with a little extra lift in my butt, and nice padding to my breasts. But I have never been more aware of my body and all its inner and outer parts than when I interact with this one man. I just don’t even know if I can ever get used to it. Can ever make him stop doing this to me. Can ever let myself “own” the fact that—yes, this man drives my body out of control.



“And now, the famed and acclaimed Owen Wilkes, the ‘Irish Grasshopper!’”



While his feisty red-haired opponent takes the ring, Remington’s blue gaze sweeps the crowd until he spots me. Our eyes lock, and I’m instantly breathless. His dimples come out to form such a perfect smile, it runs all the way through me, electrifying my nerve endings.