Real(22)

“What are those guys yelling about?” Diane asks as she arranges her presentation, scowling sweetly at her baby turkey when it refuses to look pretty on the plate she chose.“Remy got hit tonight,” I say. Because that’s what it had been about. Wasn’t it?



Diane shakes her head and clucks to herself.

“I swear that man has the reddest self-destruct button I’ve ever seen…”

She trails off when the door swings open behind me, and a large hand clamps around my elbow and spins me around. “Do you want to run with me?”Remington’s icy blue eyes blaze fiercely into me, and I can feel his frustration all the way to where I’m standing. It circles around him like black whirlwind, and suddenly he seems on edge and more than a little threatening.



“You need to eat, Remy,” Diane says chidingly from the corner.

Smirking, he grabs a gallon of organic milk on the counter and starts downing it until it’s almost all in his stomach, then he slams it down and wipes his lips with the back of his arm, saying, “Thanks for dinner.” He then slants an eyebrow and waits for me to answer. “Brooke?” he prods.A shiver runs through me.

I don’t like that my name on his lips hits all the right notes.

Like a romance movie.

Scowling at my reaction, I glance at his chest and wonder whether anything except putting him in a tub of ice is a good idea. But somehow I feel testing his limits even more today is not an option. “How do you feel?” I ask, and narrowly study him.



“I feel like running.” His eyes peer intently into me. “Do you?”

The request makes me hesitate. It’s just that no one except runners truly know that running with someone can be a very big deal.A very. Big. Deal.



Especially when you’re used to working out alone. Like Remington. And, aside from Melanie, I never run with anyone either. My running is my me-time. Thinking time. Centering time. But I nod. I think he really needs it, and I’ve been needing this for hours. “Let me grab my sneakers and put on my brace.”

Ten minutes later, we’re running down the nearest running route to our hotel, which is a winding dirt trail dotted with a couple of trees and thankfully well-lit at night. Remington wears his hood and sweatshirt, and he’s thrusting in the air in true boxer fashion, while I’m just enjoying the cool breeze against my skin as I try to keep up. I settled to wear running shorts and a short sleeve athletic top with my favorite pair of Asics, while Remington has a pair of kick-ass Reeboks for running which are different from the high-top sneakers he uses for boxing.

“So what happened to Pete and Riley?”“Out looking for whores.”

“For you?”



He thrusts a fist in the air, then the other. “Maybe. Who cares.”I’m truly disappointed I’ve lost stamina, for half hour into the pace we set, my lungs are straining and I’m seriously sweating despite the cool nightly breeze. I halt and put my hands on my knees, waving for him to continue. “Go on, I’m just gonna catch my breath, I’m getting a cramp.”

He stops with me and bounces on his calves so his body doesn’t cool down, then he withdraws an electrolyte gel pack from his sweatshirt’s center pocket. He extends it to me, and he gets so close that I get a whiff of him. Of soap and sweat and Remington Tate. My head swims a little. Maybe the cramp I thought I was getting in my ovaries might not be a cramp at all, but just my insides almost convulsing every time his shoulder brushes accidentally against mine.

He eases back and keeps on thrusting the air as he watches me open the gel pack at the corner and slide it into my tongue.

The blood pumps wildly in my veins, and there’s something insanely intimate about the way his blue eyes watch me lick the juice off an electrolyte packet that had belonged to him.

He stops bouncing. Breathing hard. “Any left?” he asks.



I immediately pull it out of my mouth and hand it over, and when he wraps his lips around it in the same fashion I did, my nipples harden like diamonds, and I can hardly remember anything except the fact that he’s licking the same thing I just licked. I shudder with the reckless compulsion to run my tongue along the cut on his lip, take that gel pack off his mouth and press my lips to his, so that the only thing he will be licking will be me.“Are they right? What Pete said? Are you doing it on purpose?”



When he doesn’t answer, I remember about his “button” Diane mentioned, and my worry doubles.

“Remy, sometimes you break something and you never get it back. You never get it back,” I emphasize, then glance out at the distant street and passing cars for a moment, for fear of him catching the emotion in my voice. He just has me on edge, and I need to get a grip of myself.“I’m sorry about your knee,” he says, softly, then he slam dunks the packet into a nearest trashcan and jabs right and left, and we start up running again.