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There’s no apology in his stare. In the way he ignores everyone that shouts his name and stares at me with a look that’s so sexual I almost feel taken right here. An awful awareness of the exact way I look to him sweeps over me.
My long, straight hair, the color of mahogany, falls to my shoulders. My button-up white shirt is sleeveless, but it goes up my throat in a lacy mock-neck, and the hem is tucked nicely into a pair of high-waisted, but perfectly presentable, black pants. A small set of gold hoop earrings nicely complement my honeyed whiskey eyes. Despite my conservative choice of clothes, I feel completely naked.
My legs wobble, and I’m left with the distinct impression this man wants to pound me next. With his cock. Please, god, I did not just think that; Melanie would. Another tightening in my womb distresses me.
“REMY! REMY! REMY! REMY!” people chant, growing in intensity.
“You want more Remy?” the man with the microphone asks the crowd, and the noise builds around us. “All right then, people! Let’s bring out a worthier opponent for Remington Riptide Tate tonight!”
Another man steps into the ring, and I can’t bear it anymore. My system is on overload. This is probably why it’s not a good idea to forego sex for so many years. I’m so worked up that I can barely talk right or even make my legs move as I turn to tell Mel I’m going to the restroom.
A voice blares loudly through the speakers as I charge down the wide path between the stands. “And now, to challenge our reigning champion, ladies and gentlemen, is Parker the ‘Terror’ Drake!”
The crowd comes alive, and suddenly, I hear an unmistakably hard slam.
Resisting the urge to look back at what’s causing the commotion, I round the corner and head straight for the bathroom hall as the speakers flare up again. “Holy cow, that was fast! We have a KO! Yes, ladies and gentlemen! A KO! And in record time, our victor once again, I give you, Riptide! Riptide, who’s now jumping off the ring and—where the hell are you going?”
The crowd goes crazy, calling all the way to the lobby, “Riptide! Riptide!” and then they fall completely quiet, as though something unscripted has just happened.
I wonder about the eerie silence when pounding footsteps echo at my back. A warm hand engulfs mine, and the touch frissons through me as I’m spun around with surprising force.
“What the…” I gasp in confusion, and then stare into a sweaty male chest, and up into glowing blue eyes. My senses reel out of control. He’s so close the scent of him tears through me like a shot of adrenaline.
“Your name,” he growls, panting, his eyes wild on mine.
“Uh, Brooke.”
“Brooke what?” he snaps out, his nostrils flaring.
His animal magnetism is so powerful I think he just took my voice. He’s in my personal space, all over it, absorbing it, absorbing me, taking my oxygen, and I can’t understand the way my heart is beating, the way I stand here, shivering with heat, my entire body focused on the exact spot his hand is wrapped around me.
With trembling efforts, I pry my hand free and glance frightfully at Mel, who comes behind him, wide-eyed. “It’s Brooke Dumas,” she says, and then she happily shoots out my cell phone number. To my chagrin.
His lips curl and he meets my gaze. “Brooke Dumas.” He just f**ked my name right in front of me. And right in front of Mel.
And as I feel his tongue twist roughly around those two words, his voice sinfully dark, like things you crave to eat but really shouldn’t, desire swells between my legs. His eyes are hot and almost proprietary when he looks at me. I’ve never been stared at like this before.
He steps forward, and his damp hand slides into the nape of my neck. My pulse skitters as he lowers his dark head to set a small, dry kiss on my lips. It feels like he’s marking me. Like he’s preparing me for something monumental. That could both change and ruin my life.
“Brooke,” he growls softly, meaningfully, against my lips, as he draws back with a smile. “I’m Remington.”
I still feel his hands on the ride home. I feel his lips on mine. The softness of his kiss. God, I can’t even breathe right, and I’m as coiled up as a cobra in a corner of the back seat of a taxi, staring blindly out the window at the passing city lights, desperate to vent from the sensations spinning inside my body. Unfortunately, I have no one to vent with other than Mel.
“That was so intense,” Mel says breathlessly at my side.
I shake my head. “What the hell just happened, Mel? The guy just kissed me in public! Do you realize there were people with their phones trained on us?”
“Brooke, he’s just so hot. Everyone wants a picture of him. Even my insides are buzzing from the way he went after you and I’m not even the one he kissed. I’ve never seen a man go after a woman like that. Holy shit, it’s like p**n with the romance.”
“Shut up, Mel,” I groan. “There’s a reason why he’s banned from his sport. Clearly he’s dangerous or crazy or both.”
My body is wound up with arousal. His eyes, I can feel them on me, so raw and hungry. I feel instantly dirty. My nape pricks where he touched it with his sweaty palm. I rub it and it won’t stop pricking, won’t calm my body, won’t calm me.
“Okay, seriously, you need to get out more. Remington Tate may have a bad rap, but he’s sexier than sin, Brooke. Yes, he was banned for poor conduct because he’s a naughty, wicked boy. Look, who knows what shit went on in his personal life? All I know is it was god-awful and made a couple of headlines, and now nobody even cares. He’s the favorite in the Underground League, and all kinds of fight clubs adore him. They’re packed with girls when he’s on.”
A part of me can’t even believe the way the guy stared at me, honed in on me, from a crowd of screaming women, he just looked at me, and it winds me up even more when I think about it. He looked at me with crazy hot eyes, and I don’t want crazy hot eyes. I don’t want him, or any man, period. What I want is a job. I’ve just finished my internship at a local middle school, and I’ve been interviewed by the best sports rehab company in the city. But it’s been two weeks and no call.
I’m at the point where I’m starting to get into the mental funk where you feel no one will ever call.
I’m beyond frustrated.
“Melanie, look at me,” I demand. “Do I look like a whore to you?”
“No, sweetie. You were easily the classiest lady out there.”
“If I wore a suit to this sort of event, it was precisely to avoid slime like him from noticing me.”
“Maybe you should start dressing more like a slut and blend in?” She smirked, and I instantly scowl.
“I hate you. I’m never coming with you to this type of thing ever again.”
“You don’t hate me. Come get a hug.” I lean into her embrace and hug her lightly before remembering her betrayal.
“How could you give him my number? What do we even know about this man, Mel? Do you want me to end up murdered in some dark alley and my body parts tossed into some trash can?”
“That’s never going to happen to someone who’s taken as many self-defense classes as you.”
I sigh and shake my head at her, but she grins an adorable grin at me. I can never really stay angry for long.
“Come on, Brooke. You’re supposed to be reinventing yourself,” Mel whispers, perfectly reading me. “New and improved Brooke has to have sex now and then. You used to like it when you competed.”
The image of a na**d Remington pops into my head, and it is so disturbingly hot that I squirm in my seat and glance angrily out the window, shaking my head more emphatically this time. What angers me most are the feelings the mere thought of him rouse in me. I feel … fevered.
No, I’m not against ha**ng s*x at all, but relationships are complicated, and I don’t have the emotional equipment right now to deal with any of it. I’m still a little broken from my fall and trying to find my way into a new career. There’s an awful video of me on YouTube.com, titled Dumas, her life is over! which was taped by some amateur during my first Olympic tryouts and has had quite a bit of traffic—like all videos of humiliated people do. This is where the exact moment that my life shattered around me was perfectly immortalized on film and can now be played and replayed, over and over, so the world can watch for their enjoyment. It shows the very second my quads knot up and I stumble, and the instant that my ACL—the anterior cruciate ligament—just tears and my knee gives.
It lasts for over four minutes, this charming little video. In fact, my anonymous paparazzi stalker kept the camera solely on me and on no one else. You could hear her voice, “Shit, her life is over,” in the background. Which obviously inspired the title.
So there I am, in this real-life homemade movie, hopping in miserable pain out of the track, crying my heart out. Crying not because of the pain in my knee, but from the pain of my own failure. And I just want the world to swallow me and I want to die because I know, know, know right this second, that all my training has been for nothing. But instead of the earth opening up and sucking me right in, I get filmed.
The slew of comments under the video are still fresh in my mind. Some people wished me well in other endeavors and said it was a shame. But others laughed and joked about it, like I had somehow begged for this to happen.
