Real(21)

My hands feel slightly unsteady and I seize some salve and kneel between his legs to put it on the cut part of his lips. It’s not bleeding anymore, but it cracked right on the fleshy middle of his lower lip. Time fades away as I press my finger in there, his eyes hooded as he watches me.



“You,” I whisper. “I worry about you.”

A sudden awareness of the exact rhythm of his breath overcomes me. I’m so close I think I just inhaled the same air he exhaled, and without warning his scent is inside me. He smells so good, salty and clean as an ocean, and I’m helpless to stop my reactions to him. My head is spinning inside my cranium. I imagine bending my head to his damp neck and running my tongue over each and every drop of sweat I see on his skin.Scowling at my own thoughts, I cover up the salve tin, but remain on my knees, debating if I just start on his legs now that I’m here.



“I messed my right shoulder, Brooke.”

My roughly spoken name stirs the top of my head, and the way he says it affects me, but I cover up with a sigh of mock dreariness. “With a bulldozer like you, I knew it was too much to hope that you’d survive this night with just a cut lip.”

“Are you going to come fix it?”“Of course. Someone has to.” On my feet, I head over to kneel on the end of his bed and grab his shoulders. I’m no longer surprised at the way every cell in my body hones in on the feeling of this man’s body connected, through my hands, with mine. I just close my eyes and allow myself to enjoy it for a moment as I try to loosen him up, but the tension in his body is more unrelenting than ever. I prod deeper into his right shoulder and whisper, “That ugly bastard landed a pretty hard one here. He landed a lot of hard ones. Does it hurt?”

“No.”



I think I heard a hint of amusement in his voice, but I’m not sure. My focus drifts to his muscle, complaining and pushing back into my fingers, and I know for a fact it hurts. It must. “I’ll rub you down with arnica, and we’ll do cold therapy.”He sits perfectly still as he lets me work in some oil into his skin, and when I peek at his dark profile, I notice his eyes are tightly shut. “Does it hurt?” I murmur.



“No.”“You always say no, but I can tell this time it does.”

“There are other parts of me that are hurting more.”

“What the hell?” The door of the suite slams shut, and Pete storms into the master bedroom, as angry as I’ve ever seen this gentle man look. His choirboy features seem sharper and not so angelic today, and even his curls look more pronounced. “What. The. Hell?” he repeats.



Remington’s body becomes a wall of brick under my touch.

“Coach’s in a snit,” Riley adds as he follows inside, and even easy-breezy Riley is scowling today. “What we all want to know is: why the fuck are you letting your ass get kicked?”

A strange tumultuous vibe grabs hold of the room, and my hands instantly stop moving on the back of his shoulders.

“Yes or no, you let him get in on purpose?” Riley shoots him a sinister glare.

Remington doesn’t answer. But his torso is fully erect now, and every muscle seems engaged.

“Do you need to get laid?” Pete demands, signaling at him. “Do you?”

My insides clench, and I know I don’t really want to stay here and listen to these guys make sexual arrangements for Remington, so I mumble, mainly to myself since nobody is paying any attention to me anyway, something about going to help Diane in the kitchen, then I head out of the room.As I go down the hall, I hear Pete again. “Dude, you can’t let them do this to you just so you get her hands all over you. Look, we can arrange some girls. Whatever it is you’re doing, you can’t play these damned games like a normal person. You’re just torturing yourself, Rem, this is a dangerous thing you’re doing with her.”



I’ve slowed down almost to a halt, and I think my lungs just turned to rocks. Are these guys talking about me?“You bet all your money on yourself this year, remember that episode?” Pete adds. “Now you need to defeat Scorpion at the final no matter what. And this includes her, dude.”



Remington’s timbre is lower than the others, but somehow, that soft growl is infinitely more threatening. “Scorpion’s a fucking dead man, so just back off.”

“You pay us to prevent this shit, Remy,” Pete counters, but that only makes Remington lower his voice even more.“I’ve got it. Under. Control.”



The silence that follows the deadly whisper snaps me into movement, and I head to the kitchen to find Diane retrieving a small organic turkey from the oven. The scent of rosemary and lemons makes my mouth water, but it does nothing for my pounding heart.