Real

“You need to eat, Remy,” Diane says chidingly from the corner.

Smirking, he grabs a gallon of organic milk on the counter and starts downing it until it’s almost all in his stomach, then he slams it down and wipes his lips with the back of his arm, saying, “Thanks for dinner.” He then slants an eyebrow and waits for me to answer. “Brooke?” he prods.

A shiver runs through me.

I don’t like that my name on his lips hits all the right notes.

Like a romance movie.

Scowling at my reaction, I glance at his chest and wonder whether anything except putting him in a tub of ice is a good idea. But somehow I feel testing his limits even more today is not an option. “How do you feel?” I ask, and narrowly study him.

“I feel like running.” His eyes peer intently into me. “Do you?”

The request makes me hesitate. It’s just that no one except runners truly know that running with someone can be a very big deal.

A very. Big. Deal.

Especially when you’re used to working out alone. Like Remington. And, aside from Melanie, I never run with anyone either. My running is my me-time. Thinking time. Centering time. But I nod. I think he really needs it, and I’ve been needing this for hours. “Let me grab my sneakers and put on my brace.”

Ten minutes later, we’re running down the nearest running route to our hotel, which is a winding dirt trail dotted with a couple of trees and thankfully well-lit at night. Remington wears his hood and sweatshirt, and he’s thrusting in the air in true boxer fashion, while I’m just enjoying the cool breeze against my skin as I try to keep up. I settled to wear running shorts and a short sleeve athletic top with my favorite pair of Asics, while Remington has a pair of kick-ass Reeboks for running which are different from the high-top sneakers he uses for boxing.

“So what happened to Pete and Riley?”

“Out looking for whores.”

“For you?”

He thrusts a fist in the air, then the other. “Maybe. Who cares.”

I’m truly disappointed I’ve lost stamina, for half hour into the pace we set, my lungs are straining and I’m seriously sweating despite the cool nightly breeze. I halt and put my hands on my knees, waving for him to continue. “Go on, I’m just gonna catch my breath, I’m getting a cramp.”

He stops with me and bounces on his calves so his body doesn’t cool down, then he withdraws an electrolyte gel pack from his sweatshirt’s center pocket. He extends it to me, and he gets so close that I get a whiff of him. Of soap and sweat and Remington Tate. My head swims a little. Maybe the cramp I thought I was getting in my ovaries might not be a cramp at all, but just my insides almost convulsing every time his shoulder brushes accidentally against mine.

He eases back and keeps on thrusting the air as he watches me open the gel pack at the corner and slide it into my tongue.

The blood pumps wildly in my veins, and there’s something insanely intimate about the way his blue eyes watch me lick the juice off an electrolyte packet that had belonged to him.

He stops bouncing. Breathing hard. “Any left?” he asks.

I immediately pull it out of my mouth and hand it over, and when he wraps his lips around it in the same fashion I did, my nipples harden like diamonds, and I can hardly remember anything except the fact that he’s licking the same thing I just licked. I shudder with the reckless compulsion to run my tongue along the cut on his lip, take that gel pack off his mouth and press my lips to his, so that the only thing he will be licking will be me.

“Are they right? What Pete said? Are you doing it on purpose?”

When he doesn’t answer, I remember about his “button” Diane mentioned, and my worry doubles.

“Remy, sometimes you break something and you never get it back. You never get it back,” I emphasize, then glance out at the distant street and passing cars for a moment, for fear of him catching the emotion in my voice. He just has me on edge, and I need to get a grip of myself.

“I’m sorry about your knee,” he says, softly, then he slam dunks the packet into a nearest trashcan and jabs right and left, and we start up running again.

“It’s not about my knee. It’s about you not taking your body for granted. Don’t ever let anyone hurt you, don’t ever allow it, Remy.”

He shakes his head, his eyebrows drawn low over his eyes as he steals a glance in my direction. “I’m not, Brooke. I just let them get close enough I can fuck them over. Little sacrifices in search of the win. It gives them confidence to get a couple of punches in, then it starts getting to their head, that I’m easy—that I’m not like they’ve heard I am—and when they get drunk on how easy they’re pounding Remington Tate, I go in.”

“All right. I like that so much better.”

We run for over half an hour more, and at five miles, I’m panting like an old dog who’s just delivered twelve little puppies or something. My pride is aching and so is my bad knee. “I think I quit. I’m going to be so sore tomorrow, I’d rather hit the sack now than require you to carry me to the hotel, later.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” he says, with a delicious little chuckle, then he cracks his neck to his left side, then his right, and runs back with me.

In the hotel elevator, several other people board with us, and Remington pulls his hoodie down over his hair and ducks his head, his profile shadowed by the material. I notice he does this to keep from being recognized, and it makes me smile in amusement.

A young couple shouts from the lobby for us to “Hold the elevator!” and I press the “Open Door” button until they hop in. My heart skips when Remington grips my hip and pulls me close to him once they board. And then I’m dying because he ducks his head, keeping it angled toward me, and I can hear the deep inhale he takes. Oh, god, he’s scenting me. My sex muscles clench. The need to turn around and bury my nose in his neck and lick the dampness on his skin burns through me.

“You feel any better?” I ask, turning slightly into him.

“Yeah.” He ducks his head closer, and my temple is bathed by his warm breath. “You?”

His pheromones are like a drug to me, and my throat feels so thick I only nod at him. His hands clench on my hip, and my womb clenches with it so much it’s painful and I almost whimper.

I hit the shower as soon as I’m in my room, and I make it as cold as I can stand it, my teeth chattering but the rest of my body still wound up in knots, over him. Him. Him.

When I hit the bed, Diane murmurs “hello” then continues reading a recipe book, while I just say “goodnight” and close my eyes and try to pretend I’m not roasting inside my skin.

But I ache so bad I’m squirming under the sheets, haunted by what I heard Pete tell Remington. Haunted by his full, sexy mouth with its recent cut on his lower lip, wrapped around that electrolyte pack as his tongue squeezed the last of the gel from it. I think about what it would have been like to be that gel pack, and feel his lips sliding over my tongue, gently suckling, and the thought draws a fresh pool of moisture to gather between my thighs.

I’m desperate to give myself some relief from the continual, exhausting hormonal rampage of being exposed to him. Like radiation, there’s something I should be able to take to protect myself, but I just can’t figure it out. His face, his scent; it makes me crazy. He's my client, but he’s also … like a friend. And I just need to touch him. I know I can’t kiss him full on that sexy mouth, but I can at least stretch him.

He must be warm from our run, and fatigued after his fight, and I crave the contact of his skin like a drug addict. Before I know what I’m doing, I slip into a velour pantsuit, head for his suite, and knock on his door.

I don’t know what I’m going to say. I don’t know anything except I will probably not be sleeping one wink until I see him and at least offer to ice his upper thoracic injuries, or just rub him down with an anti-inflammatory, or I don’t know.

Why did he ask me to run with him?

Why did Pete think he was getting purposely injured so I would touch him?

Did he want my touch so bad?

Riley swings the door open, and past his shoulders, I spot a woman in see-through lingerie dancing sexily in the middle of the living room coffee table, and another female voice in the background speaking. “… birdie told us you wanted to play with us, Remy…”

“Yeah?” Riley asks me, and I just stare like an idiot, my stomach sinking because, of course, these are the whores that … I duck my head and frantically think of something to say. “Did I leave my pho … oh shit, I got it.” I glance at my cell phone in my hand and roll my eyes, like I’m so stupid.

Which I am.

Shit, I really, really am.

“Never mind. Goodnight, Riley.”

I hear Remington’s deep voice. “Who is it?”

And I run to my room and shut the door, feeling numb inside. This time when I slip back into bed, I’m pretty sure every inch of arousal has fled my system, but I still can’t sleep. Because now the woman Remington is kissing in my mind so hungrily with that full, beautiful mouth of his, the woman who gets to lick that scarred cut on his lip that I got to put salve on, is unfortunately, not me.

Remy is sparring today the way Coach thinks he should have fought yesterday.

He’s knocked out two of his sparring partners, though, and now Coach is pissed once more.

“These are sparring partners, Tate. If you’d only stop knocking them down and just have fun and work on your moves, you’d still have someone to train with today … now we’ve run out and you have no one to spar anymore.”

“Then stop giving me little pussies, Coach.” He spits off the ring. “Send Riley up here.”

“Ha. Not even if he were suicidal. I need him conscious tomorrow.”

“Hey, I know how to spar,” I tell Riley from where we watch at one outside corner of the ring.

His blond head swings to mine, and he suddenly looks impressed. “You did not just offer to go up with this guy?”

“Sure I did. I can show the guy moves he hasn’t even seen,” I boast, but frankly, I just want the opportunity to kick the shit out of Remington for being such a womanizing shithead that makes me fantasize day and night. And for licking the electrolyte packet after I did. What a flirting dickwad.

“All right, Rem, I’ve got a little something for you,” Riley calls, clapping to get his attention. “I know for sure he’s not going to knock out this one, Coach,” he calls out to Lupe at the other corner, and he signals laughingly at me.

Remington sees me, and tosses the head gear on the floor as he watches me hop onto the ring, in my tight little black one-piece tracksuit. His eyes rake me, like they always do. He’s such a man, he can’t help checking me out every time I walk toward him. But as I approach, his eyes glint in amusement, and slowly, his smile appears, and it just pricks my irritation.

He’s been moody today, from what I—and his fallen sparring partners—could tell. But my own grumpiness rates about a solid ten too. Not even coffee lifted my spirits this morning, and yet I know this will. Even if I lose, I just want to freaking spar with someone.