Real (Real #1)(29)
Author: Katy Evans

My knees threaten to fold, but I somehow manage to shake my head in disagreement.

“This is growing old, and I’m quickly losing interest. Let’s just stretch you.” I go to his back, and he jerks free as if I’d sliced him with a knife.

“Don’t f**king bother. Go stretch Pete.”

He grabs his towel, swipes it over his front, then goes to punch the speed bag with his bare knuckles.

Marching out with a fierce scowl, I tell Riley, “He doesn’t want me.”

“Understatement of the century, girl,” he says, rolling his sad surfer-boy eyes.

An Adventure

The Underground simmers with energy tonight, and for the past hour I’ve quit looking for Nora among the crowd, somehow fearing the sight of me has encouraged her to go into hiding. I’m determined to make her come out, I just don’t know how I’m going to do it yet. But I’m definitely plotting.

For now, I’ve let myself be swept into the magic of the fights, and I find myself watching all the contenders more avidly than I ever have before, if only to try to see their fighting strategies in case they final and have to face Remington.

Some fight extremely dirty, and I realize there’s no one that fights like he does. Remy fights like he loves it. He has a blast up on the ring, and makes it appear like he’s a lion, and his opponent a mouse, and he’s just playing with it. He jumps up and down sometimes, and makes the crowd participate sometimes when he clinches his opponent, and then lets go and points at him as if asking, “Do you all want me to beat this ass**le’s face in?”

Of course the crowd roars, and I’m all wound up, jacked up, and more, exhilarated just watching him.

When he was announced tonight, the Austin crowd went wild, most everyone present standing and hollering, and I watched with a fluttering stomach as he appeared down the pathway and climbed into the ring, and suddenly the room comes alive with him. Now banners keep waving across the room as he pounds his third opponent of the night, and he’s worn the other man so bad, it will probably end in a couple more minutes.

He’s on a roll. He’s taken out anything and everything they bring out. I haven’t really seen any of his opponents able to get a really good hit on him, his face is intact and so is his guard.

Somehow I feel that he’s proving something to this city, where he was born. I feel like he’s telling his parents with every punch that they were wrong. And it makes me privately cheer for him even more. I’m so stunned from what I learned, and I just can’t picture Remington being locked up anywhere, helpless and angry. He’s a man that is strong and primitive, who knows exactly what he wants, and it enrages me to think anyone hurt him when he was younger and more vulnerable. It makes me feel fiercely protective of him, and makes me wish I’d known him sooner, as if I could have even done something to stop it.

I hear the slam of his KO and the screaming that follows, and my heart is already skipping in my chest as the ringmaster grabs Remy’s arms and raises it.

“Our victor of the night, Remingtoooooooon Tate, your RIPTIDE!!”

His arm raised in victory, my breath holds in anticipation as I wait for what comes next. What he always does next.

He seeks me out with those blue eyes.

My body seizes the instant he swings his gaze to mine. His smile flashes, but it has an edge to it today. He’s been fighting with fierce intensity, and his smile is as equally intense, a blast of sex, and suddenly there’s nothing innocent or playful about it. He keeps his gaze trained possessively on me as his breaths continue jerking out of his powerful chest and rivulets of sweat slide down his body, and he looks as perfect as he did the first moment I laid eyes on him in Seattle.

I want him more than ever.

I’m so wet, and so desperate by what he makes me feel, I just stare back at him, not returning his smile, my eyes imploring for him to finish whatever is going on between us, whatever it is that leaps like currents of electricity between us every time we’re close. I’ve put it all out there, telling him I want him, and he continues to be as unattainable to me as a comet.

With glinting blue eyes, he points at me now, then at himself, and then at a figure approaching me in the pathway before my seat. The figure is carrying a bright red rose.

She shoves it in my line of vision. “From Remy,” the smiling young girl whispers.

Another rose follows, and a different voice proudly states, “From Remy.”

A third one falls in my hand. “From Remington.”

A fourth. “From Riptide.”

“From RT. Sorry those jerks egged you…”

“From Remy.”

My pulse is somewhere near the moon while at the same time, my bottom drops from underneath me. I stare in utter disbelief at the line of people forming before me, easily several dozen, all of them handing me red roses from him. He watches, with that dimpled smile that fairly tells me that I belong to him, and my heart aches so much I want to rip it off my chest and throw it somewhere. Word of what he did in Los Angeles must have gone out through Twitter or I don’t know how, all I know is my arms are full of roses, and they’re all from him.

From a man who fights like crazy, arouses me like no other, is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. From the man who plays me sexy music, gives me his t-shirt to sleep in, protects me as fiercely as a lion, and yet won’t take me when I’m na**d and trembling in his arms.

And suddenly I can’t stand it anymore.

I don’t even glance at him when we ride back to the house. His gaze is glued to my profile, every cell in my body aware of it. I know he wants to know if I’m grateful for my roses, but my insides are so wound up, I’m simmering. All my desire for him has not been appeased, and it has morphed into the sort of anger that will probably give me a disease and kill me.

I’m shaking with it. With need. With pain. With fury.

How dare he.

Make me want him like this.

Offer me the job of my dreams, and then become the center of my very existence, until I’m ready to risk everything for him. Even my job. My family. My friends. The city where I grew up.

How dare he touch me in the shower, and kiss me like he wants to eat me for every meal until he dies! How dare he be my living breathing fantasy, come to goddamned life, and only teases and tortures me until I can’t stand it. I used to feel so damned free and happy that I didn’t have any romantic dramas. I used to hear Melanie rant and rave and I’d tell her, “Mel, he’s just a man. Chin up and onto the next.” And now I’m in knots because of one man, and my own advice is worth shit because there is no other man like him to me.

I no longer even feel free. I’m taken and yet the man who’s emotionally taken me won’t have me. If I weren’t so angry and frustrated, I’d throw the biggest damn pity party of my life after the one I threw in the Olympic trial fallout.

“You were awesome, Rem!” Pete tells him in the car, sighing with pure delight. “Man, what a great night.”

“Great fight, son,” Coach says, sounding the happiest I’ve ever heard the somber man speak. “Never broke form. Never dropped guard. Even Brooke felt the love tonight, huh, Brooke?”

Silence follows, and I hold still in my seat and keep my gaze on the lights flickering out the window as though I’m not even hearing their conversation. I absolutely refuse to gush about my roses or compliment him. Yes, his fans showered me with roses and he fought like a true freaking wonderful champion … my pu**y clenches as I remember the powerful plows of his fists, and now I refuse to think more about that either.

“You totally killed it,” Riley says.

I notice Remington doesn’t answer their compliments. His gaze now feels like a scorching brand on my profile and his energy is becoming as tumultuous as mine. He must have wanted a different reaction to his gesture. He must have wanted me to be all gushy and tell him, “Oh my stars, you’re so amazing!” But I won’t. Because I hate what he does to me. I hate that I want him like this, I hate that I feel so volatile, I want to tear his eyes out and then go cry about it. I want to fling all these roses in his lap and tell him to f**k them now because I don’t even want him to f**k me anymore!

So when the roses are set with water in one of the ice buckets in my room and my anger has festered into gargantuan proportions, I storm down the hall and find Pete in the living room outside the master bedroom. “Remington?” I demand.

“Showering.” He points to his door, and I charge forward, slam the door shut, lock it behind me, and spot him across the room, standing in the threshold of the bathroom.

He’s fully naked, dripping wet, fresh out of the shower with a towel in his hand, and instantly he jumps erect.

His stunned gaze fixes on me, and the towel falls at his feet.

I’ve never had this view of him in the nude, and to see his physical perfection and the most beautiful c**k I’ve ever seen, perfectly working, only enrages me further. The blood rushes like burning lava in my veins as I charge forward and slam my fists repeatedly into his chest, as hard as I can without breaking my own bones. “Why haven’t you touched me? Why don’t you f**king take me? Am I too fat? Too plain? Do you just delight in f**king 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!”