Real(88)

“Who do you belong to?” he asks softly, stroking up and down my spine.

My heart melts as he sets the fork down and slides that hand into the robe through the parted fabric, curving it around my waist. He bends his head and brushes a kiss over my ear, rasping, “Me.”

“Entirely yours.” I maneuver so I’m straddling him, and I bury my nose in his thick, warm neck, sliding my arms around his lean waist. “I’m getting so nervous about the big fight. Are you?”

His chuckle rumbles in his deep chest as he edges back to peer down at me. He looks thoroughly amused. “Why would I be?” He tips my head back by the chin so that his laughing dark eyes capture mine. “Brooke, I’m going to break him.”The certainty in his voice carries such depth and power, I almost feel pity for Scorpion. Remy is not only going to break him, he’s going to have fun doing it. “Remy, I love the way you fight, but you have no idea how nerve-wracking it is for me.”



“Why, Brooke?”“Because. You’re…important to me. I wish nothing touched you, and every few nights, you’re just…out there. Even knowing that you will win, it does a number on me.”

“But you’re happy, Brooke? With me?”



His face tenses on that question, and suddenly he looks super intent, very much like the times he asks me “Did you like the fight?”

I see the fierce need in his eyes, and I know my answer matters to him just like what he thinks about me matters to me.“Deliriously,” I admit, and I hug him and smell his neck, loving how his scent relaxes me. “You make me happy. You make me deliriously happy and delirious, period. I don’t want to be without you for a second. I don’t even want all those women to look at you and shout at you the things they do.”



His voice changes like it does when he talks intimately to me during sex. “I’m yours. You’re the one I bring home with me.” He smells my neck, then buzzes the back of my ear, and whispers into me, “You’re my mate, and I’ve claimed you.”With that, he readjusts me to the side and resumes feeding me.

He seems to delight watching my lips open and close over what he brings to my mouth.

He likes feeding me, and I think the obsessive male delight he’s deriving from it dates back to his ancestor, the Neanderthal man.

We gobble up all the food, pet and kiss each other, and I tell him about Melanie, how she and Riley slept together one night and now seem to have become great texting friends, and he laughs and encourages me, “Tell me more,” as he keeps eating.

So I tell him about my parents, how Nora used to fall in love with anything that walked, and he smiles and I just love making him smile.



“Do you remember anything nice about your parents?” I ask when we head back to the master bedroom and I climb into bed.“My mother used to cross me every night.” He locks the door, and I know it’s to keep Riley from bursting in the next morning and seeing us naked. “She crossed me on my forehead, over my mouth, and over my heart.”

“She was religious?”



Remington shrugs his big shoulders, and I see that he stops by his carry-on to pull out his iPad and his headphones.

Honestly, the thought of Remington’s parents is torture to me. How could someone so religious abandon the best most complex and beautiful human being I have ever known? How could they?

Remy carries his stuff to the nightstand, and I realize he’s setting up all his items close by. He’s preparing to hold me the rest of the night because he’s fully aware he won’t sleep.

“Do you miss your family?” I ask as he joins me.

The bed squeaks as Remy settles into bed and immediately reaches for me. “You can’t miss anything you’ve never had.” I don’t expect that reply, and I want to both cry and nurture and protect him from everyone who’s hurt him.He pulls loose the drawstring of his Riptide robe and eases the satin off my shoulders. He likes me naked so he can do all his licking lion-like things, and I like pleasing him. So I pull my arms out and toss it aside, loving when he cuddles me up against him, skin to skin.

Suddenly, with all my might, I want to give him all I have. My body, my soul, my heart, my family.



“If I told you something,” I whisper as we find our favorite spot, facing each other, my leg between his thighs, our bodies entwined and touching as much as possible, “would you remember tomorrow?”

He pulls the covers up over us and tucks my face into his neck, his hands wandering up and down my spine. “I hope I do.”I feel his feet moving restlessly against mine, and I smile and reach up with my arms to stroke his hair to help him relax, and then I get an idea. A brilliant one. One where he will understand what I want to say, and in this way I won’t pressure him into anything he might not feel comfortable with. In fact, he won’t really need to respond to it at all.