“You have no right to me,” she says in breathless anger.
My hold tightens on her, and I growl under my breath, “You gave me rights when you came on my thigh.”
“I’m still not yours,” she shoots back at me, her cheeks red. “Maybe you’re afraid I’m too much of a woman for you?”
“I asked you a question, and I want an answer. Do you fucking like it when other men touch you?” I demand, my temper rising.
“No, you jerkwad, I like it when you touch me!” she cries.
This appeases me.
It appeases me so much, the ice in my gut immediately morphs into lava. Dipping my thumb into the crease of her elbow, I gruffly ask, “How much do you like my touch?”
“More than I want to.”
She’s furious, but I know why she is.
Because we’re fucking killing each other being apart, and I want to end it. “Do you like it enough to let me feel you in bed tonight?” I prod.
“I like it enough to let you make love to me.”
“No. Not make love.” Fuck, she not only makes my cock hard, she makes life hard, period. “Just touching. In bed. Tonight. You and me. I want to make you come again.”
She surveys me in silence, and for a moment I feel her consider my proposal.
I have never before in my life seen a woman come like she comes for me.
Because she’s mine—and she’s as stubborn as they come. Fuck!
“Look, I don’t know what you’re waiting for, but I won’t be your plaything,” she says as she starts to pull herself free of me.
Grabbing her close, my voice is thick with frustration. “You’re not a game. But I need to do this my way. My way.” Before I can help myself, I bury my nose in her neck and scent her, my tongue sliding out to lick a wet path to her ear. A low groan rumbles up my chest before I seize her chin and force her to meet my gaze, silently willing her to understand. “I’m taking it slow for you. Not me.”
She shakes her head as if she doesn’t believe me. “This is growing old. Let’s just stretch you.” She walks to my back, and right now all her touch does is remind me what I want and she won’t fucking give me.
I jerk free and glower. “Don’t fucking bother. Go stretch Pete.” I wipe the sweat off my chest with a nearby towel, then ignore my boxing gloves and take up hitting the speed bag with my knuckles.
Whack, whack, whack.
“He doesn’t want me,” I hear her tell Riley as she stomps away.
I clamp my jaw and hit the bag harder.
THE AUSTIN CROWD loves me a thousand times more than my parents ever did. It’s my city. Where I should’ve been raised. Where I hear people yelling my name, telling me they love me.
But it doesn’t feel real. It doesn’t feel like home. Not even the ring feels like home anymore. I feel fucking homeless lately. I walk around with a hole in my chest, and no matter how hard I punch, how much I train, it won’t go away.
Banners wave all over the arena. Women scream my name. Yet all I want is for Brooke Dumas to scream it. But she never does.
I take down my last opponent with a solid KO, and the screaming that follows is deafening.
“Our victor of the night, Remingtoooooooon Tate, your RIPTIDE!” the announcer yells.
Sweat drips down my chest, my body hot with exertion. My arm raised in victory, I glance at her to see if she’s watching. She is.
My lips curl into a smile as I point a finger at her, and I watch as a line of people start heading in her direction. Holding her gaze with an even wider smile, I point at a girl coming toward her with my red rose. Brooke’s gold eyes widen in disbelief, and my chest swells with happiness as she’s soon crowded by my fans, handing her roses.
She looks stunned, grasping each rose with an expression of consternation.
On our way back to the house, she’s trembling in her seat. I’m wound up too. There’s no way in hell she’ll be able to deny my kisses tonight.
“You were awesome, Rem!” Pete bursts out inside the car. “Man, what a great night.”
“Great fight, son,” Coach adds, his voice deep with pride. “Never broke form. Never dropped guard. Even Brooke felt the love tonight, huh, Brooke?”
Silence.
Brooke is completely silent, not looking at me, her lap filled with roses. My roses. And yet she won’t look at me.
“You totally killed it,” Riley continues.
I’ve stopped listening to the guys. The only thing I hear now is the silence coming from where Brooke sits, tense across the seat from me, with an armful of roses and completely fucking ignoring me. Frustration eats at me. Don’t all women like roses? She’s clenching her jaw and won’t even look at me, and I’m so fucking confused I want to pull my hair out.
My blood boils in my veins as I stalk into my room and step into the shower, open the cold water, and stand there, closing my eyes and reliving the way she stood there, watching the roses come at her. She’d looked surprised. But had she looked excited? Had she looked happy? This just isn’t playing out the way I’d planned. I’d planned to have her in my fucking bed tonight. Where I wanted to watch her look at me the way she does while I rammed into her panties and made her come a couple of times and gasp, Remington . . .
I’m still simmering in frustration and have just stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel when I hear the door of my bedroom slam shut.
Suddenly my senses heighten. Every pore in my body buzzes with the knowledge she’s near.
And there she is. Brooke fucking Dumas.
I drop the towel.
She’s standing inside my bedroom and looking straight at me—even after the cold shower, my cock jumps to attention.
Her gaze drops, and her face flushes red as she stomps forward with gold eyes that flash with anger and hurt. She strikes my chest repeatedly, and the pain in her voice reaches into even deeper, more vulnerable places inside me.
“Why haven’t you touched me? Why don’t you fucking take me? Am I too fat? Too plain? Do you just delight in fucking torturing me senseless or are you just plain damn mean? For your information, I’ve wanted to have sex with you since the day I went into your stupid hotel room and got hired instead!”
I react instinctively and yank her up against me while pinning her arms down. “Why’d you want to have sex with me?” I angrily demand. “To have a fucking adventure? What was I supposed to be? Your one-night fucking stand? I’m every woman’s adventure, damn you, and I don’t want to be yours. I want to be your fucking real. You get that? If I fuck you, I want you to belong to me. To be mine. I want you to give yourself to me—not fucking Riptide!”
“I won’t ever be yours if you don’t take me,” she shoots back at me. “Take me! You son of a bitch, can’t you see how much I want you?”
“You don’t know me. You don’t know the first thing about me.”
“Then tell me! You think I’ll leave if you tell me whatever it is you don’t want me to know?”
“I don’t think it, I know it.” I grab her face, my insides roiling painfully as I look into her hungry, frustrated gold eyes. “You’ll leave me the second it gets too steep, and you’ll leave me with nothing—when I want you like I’ve never wanted anything in my life. You’re all I think about, dream about. I get high and low and it’s all about you now, it’s not even about me anymore. I can’t sleep, can’t think, can’t concentrate worth shit anymore, and it’s all because I want to be the fucking ‘one’ for you, and as soon as you realize what I am, all I’ll be is a fucking mistake!”
“How can you be a mistake? Have you seen you? Have you seen what you do to me? You had me at hello, you fucking asshole! You make me want you until it hurts and then you won’t do shit!”
“Because I’m fucking bipolar! Manic. Violent. Depressive. I’m a fucking, ticking time bomb, and if one of my staff messes up when I get another episode, the next person I hurt can be you. I was trying to break this to you as slowly as possible so I could at least stand a chance with you. This shit has taken everything from me. Everything. My career. My family. My fucking friends. If it takes this chance with you, I don’t fucking even know what I’m going to do, but the depression will hit me so deep, I’ll probably end up killing myself!”
When I notice the shock on her face, I force myself to release her.
Holy god, why’d I just do that? Why’d I say it like that? I sound like a fuckup. I thought she would one day stomp away and slam the door? Hell, all I have to do now is count the seconds. My nerves are run ragged like wires. I haven’t slept, and everything I’ve told her is not even half of the truth. My chest is a mass of tangles as I go grab a pair of pajama bottoms, then I grab a T-shirt from the closet.
I can see her struggling with the word. Bipolar.
Manic-depressive.
Crazy fucking loon.
I give her time to process and clench my hands, the T-shirt still at my side, and I feel like a grenade is about to explode inside my chest as I watch her struggle. I’ve just shot my plan of taking it slow and proving myself to her all to fucking hell. I’d been postponing. Biding my time. Maybe I didn’t want her to know. I wanted to pretend she’d never have to know. And I could be just this normal guy with her. I’ve tried all my life not to let it define me, even when for years that was the only thing I was.
Nobody told me I was a fighter, or that I could be a friend, a son, or a companion. All the medics told me was I was bipolar.
And now she knows. She knows this is me—and I’ve lost her. Before I had her.
I’m still adjusting to the fact that she will want nothing to do with me when, one by one, she slowly flicks open the top buttons of her top. At first I’m sure my brain is fucking with me. One button pops open, then the next, revealing sweet, tanned skin, more and more skin. My pulse jumps and my throat starts closing from the force of my need. Somewhere in the room, someone speaks, and it’s probably me. I’m in denial. I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it and she better get out of here before I do. “I’m take as-is,” I warn her. “I’m not medicating. It makes me feel dead and I intend to live my life alive.”
She nods.
I clench inside, right there, where my fucking heart is, as her fingers keep moving over her buttons.
“Take your clothes off, Remy.”
She flicks open her last button and parts her shirt through the middle, and my fingers spasm so hard at my side that the T-shirt I hold falls to the floor.
She’s so beautiful my eyes devour the parting of her shirt and the smooth skin she just revealed, and I still can’t believe something so beautiful and perfect would want to be with me. “You have no idea what you’re asking for,” I rasp, and I don’t know who I’m angry with. I’m just angry that I’m bipolar, and right now nothing can convince me that I’ll ever be good enough for her.
“I’m asking for you,” she counters.
“I won’t let you fucking leave me.”