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Inside the hot drawer are two warm plates of parmesan crusted chicken and a spinach and beet salad with a side of red potatoes. I pull them out and get our utensils when I spot Remington already lounging at the dining table, gloriously bare-chested and in a pair of low slung sweat pants.
He’s scooping up peanut butter on a celery stick and munching, but he stops eating when he spots me and immediately swallows whatever he had in his mouth.
His eyes widen, and he drops the remaining celery stick and leans back in his chair, crossing his muscled arms so the ink vines at the top of his biceps look dark and sexy. “Look at you,” he says, the words a growl of pure male pleasure.
The word RIPTIDE burns deliciously into my back as I head over with the plates, grinning. “I’ll return it when we get back to bed.”
He shakes his head and pats his lap. “If it’s mine, it’s yours.”
I set the food on the table, and he cups my h*ps through the satin and draws me to sit on his lap. “I’m so f**king starved.”
He grabs a slice of red potato with his fingers and pops it into his mouth, licking his fingertips.
“You would love my mom’s red potatoes. She adds cayenne pepper and gives them just a little kick,” I tell him as I fork one up and munch, and the taste of rosemary and the perfectly cooked potato melt on my tongue.
“Do you miss home?”
The question makes me look at him as he finishes another potato, and I realize he hasn’t ever really had a home. Has he?
His home has been a fighting ring and tons of hotels. His family has been his team and his fans.
My chest swells to near bursting for him.
The time he locked me with him in his hotel suite, just after I saw Pete sedate him that first time, Remy had been in a depression and I hadn’t even known. He’d been holding onto me to stay sane, but I hadn’t known this either.
All I’d known was that he didn’t want me to leave that room and he didn’t want anyone in. He wanted me there. He wanted my touch as if it grounded him, and my mouth was the only warmth in his cold, the only light in his dark.
Remington is not a man of words. He is a man of gut and actions.
This big, strong man sometimes needs to be taken care of, and I swear I’m dying to be the girl who takes care of him more than I’ve wanted to be anything else.
He, who’s never had a home, wants to know if I miss home?
When I sleep like a queen, in a soft bed, in his arms, and eat the best food there is, and do my job, and spend time with him when he is sometimes cocky, sometimes grumpy, and always adorable?
Setting my fork down, I turn to face him and stroke the scruff of his jaw with my fingertips. “When I’m not with you, I do miss home. But when I’m with you, I don’t miss anything.”
His dimples briefly appear, and I bend to brush my lips over the closest one. He growls softly and rubs his nose against mine. “I’ll tuck you close so you don’t miss it,” he rasps.
“Please do. In fact I’m sure there’s enough space right here.” I wiggle meaningfully on his lap, and he nips my earlobe and hugs me tight, saying, “That’s right!”
We laugh, and we end up eating from the same plate, the same fork, taking turns to feed each other.
When I sense his restlessness, the one that comes with his mania, I realize he seems to want something to do. So I yield while he completely overpowers me and teases my lips with a brush of the fork, and I obediently open up and let him feed me.
I love the way his eyes darken every time he looks at my mouth as it opens for food.
He slides his free hand under the satin sleeve and lovingly caresses my triceps as he turns back to his plate and forks up a bit of everything for himself.
I watch him take a big bite, and then I wait for him to cut up more chicken and bring it to my mouth, along with a bit of everything else.
He watches as I bite, savor, and finally, swallow, his lips curved in a tender smile.
“Who do you belong to?” he asks softly, stroking up and down my spine.
My heart melts as he sets the fork down and slides that hand into the robe through the parted fabric, curving it around my waist. He bends his head and brushes a kiss over my ear, rasping, “Me.”
“Entirely yours.” I maneuver so I’m straddling him, and I bury my nose in his thick, warm neck, sliding my arms around his lean waist. “I’m getting so nervous about the big fight. Are you?”
His chuckle rumbles in his deep chest as he edges back to peer down at me. He looks thoroughly amused. “Why would I be?” He tips my head back by the chin so that his laughing dark eyes capture mine. “Brooke, I’m going to break him.”
The certainty in his voice carries such depth and power, I almost feel pity for Scorpion. Remy is not only going to break him, he’s going to have fun doing it. “Remy, I love the way you fight, but you have no idea how nerve-wracking it is for me.”
“Why, Brooke?”
“Because. You’re…important to me. I wish nothing touched you, and every few nights, you’re just…out there. Even knowing that you will win, it does a number on me.”
“But you’re happy, Brooke? With me?”
His face tenses on that question, and suddenly he looks super intent, very much like the times he asks me “Did you like the fight?”
I see the fierce need in his eyes, and I know my answer matters to him just like what he thinks about me matters to me.
“Deliriously,” I admit, and I hug him and smell his neck, loving how his scent relaxes me. “You make me happy. You make me deliriously happy and delirious, period. I don’t want to be without you for a second. I don’t even want all those women to look at you and shout at you the things they do.”
His voice changes like it does when he talks intimately to me during sex. “I’m yours. You’re the one I bring home with me.” He smells my neck, then buzzes the back of my ear, and whispers into me, “You’re my mate, and I’ve claimed you.”
With that, he readjusts me to the side and resumes feeding me.
He seems to delight watching my lips open and close over what he brings to my mouth.
He likes feeding me, and I think the obsessive male delight he’s deriving from it dates back to his ancestor, the Neanderthal man.
We gobble up all the food, pet and kiss each other, and I tell him about Melanie, how she and Riley slept together one night and now seem to have become great texting friends, and he laughs and encourages me, “Tell me more,” as he keeps eating.
So I tell him about my parents, how Nora used to fall in love with anything that walked, and he smiles and I just love making him smile.
“Do you remember anything nice about your parents?” I ask when we head back to the master bedroom and I climb into bed.
“My mother used to cross me every night.” He locks the door, and I know it’s to keep Riley from bursting in the next morning and seeing us naked. “She crossed me on my forehead, over my mouth, and over my heart.”
“She was religious?”
Remington shrugs his big shoulders, and I see that he stops by his carry-on to pull out his iPad and his headphones.
Honestly, the thought of Remington’s parents is torture to me. How could someone so religious abandon the best most complex and beautiful human being I have ever known? How could they?
Remy carries his stuff to the nightstand, and I realize he’s setting up all his items close by. He’s preparing to hold me the rest of the night because he’s fully aware he won’t sleep.
“Do you miss your family?” I ask as he joins me.
The bed squeaks as Remy settles into bed and immediately reaches for me. “You can’t miss anything you’ve never had.” I don’t expect that reply, and I want to both cry and nurture and protect him from everyone who’s hurt him.
He pulls loose the drawstring of his Riptide robe and eases the satin off my shoulders. He likes me na**d so he can do all his licking lion-like things, and I like pleasing him. So I pull my arms out and toss it aside, loving when he cuddles me up against him, skin to skin.
Suddenly, with all my might, I want to give him all I have. My body, my soul, my heart, my family.
“If I told you something,” I whisper as we find our favorite spot, facing each other, my leg between his thighs, our bodies entwined and touching as much as possible, “would you remember tomorrow?”
He pulls the covers up over us and tucks my face into his neck, his hands wandering up and down my spine. “I hope I do.”
I feel his feet moving restlessly against mine, and I smile and reach up with my arms to stroke his hair to help him relax, and then I get an idea. A brilliant one. One where he will understand what I want to say, and in this way I won’t pressure him into anything he might not feel comfortable with. In fact, he won’t really need to respond to it at all.
I reach over him to the nightstand and grab headphones and his iPod, praying that I will find the song in there. I am crazy about this song and I have never, ever, identified with it until this second when I want to shout each of these lyrics to Remington Tate right now.
“Put these on,” I say excitedly. He grins because I know he loves it when I play him music. He straightens up against the headboard and puts on his headphones and then drags me toward his lap, and I crawl there.
