Real (Real #1)

Real (Real #1) Page 20

I expect this threat to have more of a reaction. He’s a man. This is an open invitation to uncomplicated sex, just what men want. I’m making it easy for him, basically accepting him “as is,” no more questions asked. He will either work it out in bed with me and be able to train tomorrow, or he’ll have a restful night of sleep without me. And I hate that he doesn’t seem budged to the make-love option which was honestly the one I was praying he’d go for. Instead he studies my face with eyes that I notice are definitely, definitely, not blue today.

“All right,” he says, with a smile I’m not quite sure reaches his eyes. He sets me down on my side, grabs his iPod, clicks his own music, and doesn’t give me another song.

So now I guess I won’t be sleeping with him either.

Wow.

I think I just broke my own heart.

We’re in Los Angeles now, and the weather here is so blessed by the gods, I just want to be outside all day. Diane and I are roommates again, and we love having breakfast in our little balcony.

In fact, ever since we arrived at chilly Denver almost a week ago, we were back to sharing quarters after my idiotic make-love-to-me-or-die ultimatum to Remy. Although I was totally forlorn to realize I was no longer his roommate to be deliciously taken at night, Diane was so excited when we got to our room, she actually leapt over and hugged me. “You should room with me more often, you!”

Turns out Remington booked us a presidential suite like his, and we each had our own room, with a shared living room and dining area. I still didn’t know if I wanted to sigh, or laugh, or cry, that’s how wound up he’s got me.

That evening we arrived, I remember his body in my hands, his sweaty bare skin under my fingers, and it was all I could do to keep my pulse under control as I rolled and rubbed the firm, lean nape of his neck. I edged closer to whisper in the back of his ear, “Mind telling me why Diane and I are in a suite, Remy?”

He let me turn his neck one side, then the other, my fingers lightly resting on his scratchy jaw with a sexy day’s of whiskers, and he never answered. “You can’t do this, Remington,” I added.

But he turned his head slowly, and he touched my lips so that every part of my body remembered having his lips on them. “Stop me. I dare you,” he said, then grabbed his towel and walked away.

I just don’t understand him.

I miss Melanie to talk to.

I wish I could talk to Nora too. She was always my little sister in crush, in lust, or in love with a boy, and I’m sure she would know why in the world an insanely sexy man who’s single and healthy and clearly physically responds to you does not seize the opportunity to have sex with you.

If I were a little less confident, I’d be experiencing all kinds of complexes right now.

I’m even wondering if my body is no longer attractive with the little fat I’ve gained the past years. Maybe my hair needs a new cut other than the plain length I wear it. I might wear bangs. Or add some highlights?

“Stop staring at yourself, you look amazing in anything you wear,” Diane tells me this morning when she catches me checking out my butt in the full-length mirror at the entry of our room.

I laugh, but it’s not funny.

Remy booked Diane and I in a presidential suite again in LA.

I don’t want a suite. But what I want, he won’t give to me.

I’d never let anyone get to me like this.

I used to feel pretty and whether or not a man agreed with me was beside the point. I liked myself and that was enough.

Now I find myself feeling a little sad during the day, when Diane seems to find me staring at a stupid wall, helplessly wondering what Remington thinks of me.

This is our third night in LA, and he’s still in second place point-wise, but he’s been fighting like a champion. He’s worked out the best I’ve ever seen him, and all this ever since his eyes became electric blue again in Denver.

He trains like an animal. Hours and hours with Coach, and then he still seems as fresh as sunshine when he comes ask me to run with him the evenings. The energy in his muscles explodes like dynamite with every move he makes, and I can almost see his ATP source—the adenosine triphosphate in charge of transporting chemical energy throughout our cells—recycling so fast in his body, it’s like it doesn’t even take him usual eight seconds for turnover. I have never seen him so focused. So strong. Or so magnificent.

Every part of me notices.

Every.

To my despair.

Pete and Riley are stoked. “Brooke!” Pete calls as I enter the Underground in the afternoon. Here in LA, the fighting ring is situated in the basement floor of one of the city’s most frequented nightclubs, and they’re expecting a full house of over a thousand. “Get over here, we need you.” Pete waves me into the locker room.

The whole sexy package of Remington Tate is seated in a bench at the far end while Coach wraps his right hand with tape.

I’ll never get used to the feeling I get when I look at him.

Nor the one I get when he’s about to fight.

I feel wound up like a spring and tighter than a triple knot.

He’s got his Dr. Dre beats on, and I think he does this to get in the fighting mode and zone everything out.

“Come on over, Brooke, loosen up the man.”

Riley and Coach greet me with twin nods, and I notice the instant that Remington spots me, he hooks his thumbs into his earphone chords and yanks them down to drape around his neck. The look we exchange is, in fact, so intent, we don’t smile at each other. The answering smile I’d given to Riley and Coach vanishes from my face as the heavy metal song Remy had been listening to trails into the room.

Quietly, I lean over to pause his iPod, then I go behind him and seize his shoulders, methodically working my thumbs into his muscles.

There are a couple of knots I worked off his posterior deltoids and trapezius back muscles yesterday. They’ve been stubborn and keep returning, so once again, I work on both. He groans the instant my bare skin touches his. God. The low, purr-like sound is like foreplay to me. It steals into every feminine part in my body, especially those that have been run ragged with need. My cheeks start burning as Coach, Pete, and Riley watch us.

I drop my face so they can’t see my blush and resist the urge to draw my hands back. “Deeper.” Remington’s rough command reaches me, and my womb clenches helplessly as I go deeper. A large knot bites into my thumb, so I bring my other thumb to press with both. Remy lets his head hang forward and draws in a deep breath, and when the knot disintegrates under the pressure, his groan vibrates deep inside my core.

“Good luck,” I whisper into his ear, drawing back, my fingers tingling from the contact we’d just made.

He looks at me when he stands, unsmiling as his stare holds mine in a grip so intense, my mind goes blank from everything but the blue in his eyes and the black in his pupils and the length of his dark lashes.

He extends out his arms as Riley slips on his black boxing gloves, a requisite for today, and then he taps them together. An alert from the door tells them “Riptide” is up soon, and he nods.

He rams his arms into his red satin coat and then trots out toward the wide hall that leads to the ring, and an entire farm full of animals awaken in my stomach, not just the butterflies. Dragging in a deep breath, I wait a moment to recover before I slowly wind outside to take my seat with the spectators.

The noise is deafening. Pete told me this morning that his fans are freaking out because Remy’s not leading the championship, and there seems to have been some serious demand for tickets tonight. As the last sixteen contenders unite, this is the first night Remington will fight Scorpion, up to the final. Scorpion is in first place now, and my nerves are killing me.

“Hey,” Pete says, nudging me gently forward as he walks up behind me. “Get the hell up there. The man will be looking for you.”

Somehow I manage the impossible and both laugh and scowl. “He will not!”

His eyebrows shoot upward in apparent disbelief. “He fights his best when you watch him, and even Coach agrees. His testosterone jacks up like crazy in his lab work when he’s in contact with you. Come on.”

Hating the thrill that shoots like lightning through my veins, I quickly scuffle toward the ring and for my seat as I hear Scorpion introduced.

“Benny the Black Scoooooorpion!”

That’s the odious man that goaded Remington at the club, and I loathe him with such force, I instantly glare at everyone who cheers for him. I’m a couple of steps from reaching my seat, where I’m completely prepared to hold on to my pants—for this night is going to be brutal—when I see, across the ring and through Remy’s powerfully built legs, a face among the crowd.

The face is oval shaped, and creamy skinned, and it carries a pair of hazel eyes. Eyes similar, in color, to mine. Eyes that, last I knew, belonged to Nora.

My twenty-one-year-old sister.

Nora.

Nora who only recently sent a postcard from Australia. Nora whose hair has been painted blood red, instead of its normal soft brown. Nora who has a big, black, ugly tattoo of a scorpion on her left cheekbone. Nora who looks lost and sick and the complete opposite of the lively girl I knew. For a moment, I’m standing in the middle of this wide hall, staring at her while telling myself, over and over, that this cannot possibly be Nora.

She looks bad.

She looks really, really bad.

Like the life has been sucked out of her, and all that remains are fake red hair, skin and bones.

She spots me, and my stomach sinks to my toes when I know, without the shadow of a doubt, that it’s her. Recognition flares in her eyes, and her hand flies up to her mouth to cover it. “Nora,” I gasp, and without thinking twice, I charge after her, shoving people aside as the bell for the fight chimes.

The multitude in the room erupts in cheers and screams, and my heart trots frantically inside my chest when Nora twists around and shoves through a throng of people in a sudden startling effort to get away from me. She’s blending through the crowd, into the darkness, and I’m frantic as I scream, “Nora? Wait. Nora!”

I can’t believe she’s running away. From me. I can’t believe that all the traces of youth vanished from her once vibrant face.

My sister.

Whom I shared bedrooms with, until I got my own place.

Who used to watch every version of Pride and Prejudice with me.

Suddenly the big, beefy man who’d been standing to her right grabs me and yanks me aside as I try to pass. “Stay the fuck away from her,” he snarls.

Paralyzed in a mix of surprise and fear, I forget all my self-defense moves except the groin one. I shift my weight and land my knee up. “Let go of me.”

He doubles over, but doesn’t release me. Instead his hands clench convulsively on my arms. “You little bitch, you leave Scorpion’s property alone,” he hisses, and I think the wet splatter that just hit my cheek was his spit.

“She’s not his property!” Fiercely, I struggle to pry free as I simultaneously rub my cheek on the sleeve of my blouse.

A fresh wave of booing and shouting erupts full force across the room as the announcer yells through the speakers, “The victor, Scorpion! Scooooooorpiooooooon! Remington Tate has been disqualified from this round! Dis-qualified!”