We arrive at the five star hotel, and the heady combo of anticipation and arousal I’ve been struggling with shoots through the roof when I realize Remy has booked me into the two-bedroom presidential suite with him. As the keys are handed out, everyone else seems to notice too.
“I sincerely hope you know what you’re getting into,” Pete says in a concerned whisper, his brow scrunched worriedly at the corners.
Diane’s eyes are almost tear-filled when she tugs me aside at the lobby. “Oh, Brooke, please reconsider rooming with me again?”Riley comes over and looks at me with all openness, patting my shoulder like I’m going to war. “He’s trying the hardest I’ve ever seen him try for you, B.”
Their attitudes don’t really confound me.
I know they’re worried this will end badly. I’m Remington’s employee and only a temporary one, and he has a bad reputation with tons of evidence behind it. He obviously has a little bit of a temper and can prove to be too hot to handle. But even though he’s so strong, I know instinctively that he’d never hurt me, and he’s never done anything to demonstrate otherwise. The rest doesn’t matter right now. It just doesn’t matter to me at all. I want him. With a force I haven’t felt in over six years. And I’m going to go for it.
Maybe I have a red self-destruct button too?
The nerves about what will happen run me raw as we go up to our rooms to ready for the fight, and suddenly I need Melanie so bad I pull my cell phone out of my purse and immediately text her, since it’s been a couple of days since I have.
Brooke: How’s my BFFFFFFFFFFFF!
Melanie: Miz u! But I forgive u if u tell me you’ve gotten sexy piece of man ass already!
Brooke: Oh, sigh
Melanie: What? You have???
Brooke: Mel
Melanie: What?? What?
Brooke: I think I’m falling in love with him
He took Miami like an avalanche.We’re back from his first fight, and I’m still breathless with exhilaration. Remy barely got grazed by his opponents. He was super charged, his body precise and so powerful he didn’t even have to deliver many punches to knock down his opponents. He swept through every one of them like he was on vacation, and by the end of the evening, people screamed with delight and even the announcer was out of breath. “May these poor men Rest In Peace, my goodness, this man can hit! You go, RIP!!!! Rip their heads off, you bad bastard! Riiiiptide, ladies and gentlemen! Riptiiiiiide!”
Even Riley was so excited from where he watched at the corner that he climbed on the back of Coach and pumped his fists in the air, yelling his head off. Meanwhile Pete seemed to have left his responsible self back in Atlanta, for before we left the Underground, he declared, “We should fucking celebrate!”
Before Remington even knew what happened, there was already a crowd heading with us to the hotel in about a dozen different cars. So now we’re in the presidential suite with what feels like a thousand strangers, but of course, there can’t possibly be so many for real. And actually, Pete says most of these people have previously partied with Remington, so they’re only strangers to me.
The crowd is so vast, people are even littered out in the hall, making so much noise I can’t help thinking what a blessing it is the other two enormous presidential suites at the top hotel floor are empty, or else we’d probably be looking for somewhere else to sleep tonight.I’m disappointed I haven’t even been able to see him since he showered and changed. He’s been flocked by admirers and was brought to the hotel by a group of old Miami friends, who let him drive the Ferrari one of them brought.
Now, as I wind through all the people crammed in what supposedly is my and Remy’s suite, I wonder if I should join the merriment and go all out and get drunk, when applause breaks out by the entry, followed by unmistakable cheers only one man I know can cause. He comes into the room carried on the shoulders of four guys. My heart stutters. He’s got this big smile on his face, cocky Remy to the tenth power, high on his wins, and the women scream, high on him. “Remy! Remyyyy!”“That’s right, who’s the man?” he shouts, and pounds his fists on his chest. I laugh, completely sucked in, mesmerized and enchanted by him. The aura he emanates makes him blaze like a sun tonight. If right now he says he can fly, I think we’d all believe him. Everyone present seems magnetized by him, helplessly gravitating to where he is. He spots me, and his smile softens and his eyes alight with a strange, hungry, and somehow glowing look. “Brooke.”
He hops down to his feet and beckons me forward, and the crowd parts to let me pass. He smiles at me, and his dancing blue eyes hold mine as he slowly walks forward and meets me halfway. He lifts me in his powerful arms and swings me around, and then he kisses me.The instant he takes my lips, fireworks shoot off in my body.