Mine (Real, #2)(16)
Dragging in a breath, I add gentle pressure to the cut while I inspect the rest of his face . . . to find the blue of his eyes completely zeroed in on me. Things grip inside me.
He’s sprawled in the seat, angled in my direction, but his stillness makes me hyperaware, for I can feel all the coiled energy in his body as if he’s ready to spring. On me.
My heart kicks up a little more in speed, and I hold my breath as I lean closer, grab another tissue, and whisper in the most level voice I can manage, “Close this eye.”
Keeping the slash above his eyebrow pinched together, I start cleaning the blood that’s dripped to his eyelid. Obeying me, he squints one eye closed and remains watching me with the other as if there’s something in my expression that he craves to see.
His voice suddenly rasps through the dark. “I’m all f*cked up.” The unexpected, guttural whisper prickles across my skin and almost makes me jump. “My right bicep’s f*cked and my shoulder, my left oblique and trap.”
“Dude, that’s insane. How can you f*ck all that up in a night?” Riley asks in bewilderment.
“Brooke, you know what to do,” Coach commands from up front.
Quickly nodding, I look into Remington’s blue, blue eyes, the way they shine in male contentment, and I clamp my jaw when it finally dawns on me what’s going on here.
? ? ?
WHEN WE REACH our hotel suite, I am fuming.
“You let him punch you on purpose.”
He plops down on the bench at the foot of the bed and looks at me, tossing an empty Gatorade bottle aside. “I’m all f*cked up, come fix me.”
“You are f*cked up, all right, but it’s not the bicep that needs some tender loving care!”
“You’re right—it’s not.” His eyes shimmer in the soft lamplight as he watches me. “Are you going to come fix me?”
“Only because you pay me to.” Huffing angrily, I grab my massage oils, specifically my arnica oil and my mustard oil for inflammation, then I go and turn on the shower. “We’re getting you in a cold shower.”
His lips curl as he stands and waves me over, and when I come over in puzzlement, he wraps his big arm around my shoulders. “What? You need help to walk? You were bouncing a few minutes ago,” I tell him.
“Endorphins killed the pain,” he murmurs into my ear as I curl my arm around his waist and lead him to the bathroom. “I told you I was all f*cked up.”
I prop him against the wall and open the shower door, and as I check that the water is ice cold, he sweeps me up in his arms, turns the knob to medium, and carries us inside, clothes and all.
The water rushes over us, and I gasp in surprise and kick in the air while all my clothes get plastered to my skin. “What are you doing?”
He pulls off my shoes and tosses them over the glass partition above the tub, then he sets me on my bare feet and tugs my skirt down my legs. All those pheromones he puts out after fighting suddenly wage a war on my senses, and I start feeling so hot, the only thing keeping me from turning to ashes is the water pounding on my skin. “What are you doing??” I breathlessly demand.
He yanks off my top and it splats to the marble floor with a wet sound. He strips, and I’m so overwhelmed with anger over the way he let himself get punched, and so stimulated by the sight of his muscles flexing as he strips down to his golden, wet skin, I want to hit him and kiss him at the same infuriating time. When his boxing shorts hit—splat!—and he kicks them aside, ohmigod, my eyes hurt.
I have to bite down on my lower lip, trying to quell the instinct to fling myself at him and give him anything he needs. Keeping his eyes leveled on mine, he steps back into the spray, his broad shoulders shielding me from the water, then when I feel the slow scrape of his thumb sliding up my chin and gently tugging my lower lip free of my teeth, I hear his voice thick as he whispers, “That’s mine to bite.”
I’m not breathing. He has this overpowering effect on me. I could fight my reactions to him, but I’d lose. My eyes hold his, and the possessive glimmer in his gaze bullets through me. Rivulets of water slide down his jaw as he grabs my ass and presses me close, his erection biting into my tummy as he stares down at me with relentless intensity.
“You,” he says, his voice terse and commanding as he drags his wet thumb across my lips, “are going to love me until I die. I’m going to make you love me even if it hurts, and when it hurts, I’m going to make it better, Brooke.” He eases his thumb into my mouth and rubs it purposely against the tip of my tongue, the move quietly demanding that I lick it. When I do, my breasts ache and I watch him extract his thumb to brush the wet pad across my bottom lip. “You’re going to f*cking love me if it kills us.”
My lungs ache for breath and the rest of me aches for his hands on me. And when my gaze flicks upward to find those blue eyes pinned on mine, his face hurt and sweaty, all the testosterone in the world courses through him, pulling and enveloping me, so I can barely take living right now I want him so much. He makes me feel this all-consuming, soul-searing, heart-wrenching, painful need for him that’s more than physical, more than emotional.
My sex grips so tight, it takes all my effort not to whimper. My senses are heightened by his nearness. I can’t help but notice how the drop of blood on his lip is the color of his RIPTIDE robe, bright and perfectly oxygenated. How his steady, hot breath bathes my wet face. How, slowly, his fingers spread wider on my ass, and one of his thumbs grazes the skin of my jaw. He destroys me.