She’s supposed to be a bodyguard, but I don’t know what the hell she is now. She strolls outside with Racer and does some nanny work too. He sticks his fingers into her hair and pulls and she even seems to like it.
After a glance at the kitchen clock, I level my gaze at her. “I want her there in fifteen minutes,” I say, and she nods.
A limo is waiting for my bride, but Riley’s got the keys to Melanie’s convertible, parked just outside without the top down. We all leap inside. I drop down on the front passenger seat and then stare up at the window of our temporary apartment. I can’t understand what the big fuss is about wedding-dress buttons. As far as I’m concerned, I should ride, in the car, with my wife, to the fucking church, where we marry. Period.
“Rem. It’s not like she’s going to leave you standing at the altar, man,” Riley says, laughing.
“Yeah, I know,” I whisper, turning back around. But sometimes I just don’t know. Sometimes all my chest feels knotted and I think about waking one morning to find Brooke and my son gone, and dying is too easy to describe what I want to do.
“Twenty-eight minutes, she’ll be walking up to the altar in white, just for you,” Pete says.
I stare out in silence.
Brooke has been excited about this all month. Wondering if this, if that, if a cake, if not a cake. I’d say yes to anything that made her voice more excited, and she’d kiss me like I like. So now she seems in control, getting dressed, ready for her day, and I feel like a mess because she’d said she didn’t mind us driving together to the church. And then her best friend put stupid-girl ideas in her head. I ride alone. To a church I never go to. To marry my wife. She’s right behind us, but I’m not good. I’m fucking anxious and this is an anxiety that would have been appeased if she’d opened the door and just looked at me with those gold eyes—my mind would have gone still and all the roiling in my chest would have gone quiet.
But it’s not happening.
Now I have twenty-seven infernal minutes to go . . . and my mind is playing tricks on me like it does when it starts swinging like a pendulum, and the only way I can seem to stop it is with her.
Tapping my foot, I stroke the ring in my hand. Then I pull it off and it helps to see her name on its inscription: TO MY REAL, YOUR BROOKE DUMAS.
PAST
THE DAY I SAW HER
The Seattle crowd roars as I come trotting out onto the Underground walkway.
Far at the end and directly in my line of vision, the ring awaits. Twenty-three feet by twenty-three feet, four ropes parallel on each side, four fucking posts, and that’s about it.
That ring is a home to me. When I’m not on it, I miss it. When I train, I think about it.
Every step I take in its direction pumps me up and gets me going. My veins dilate, my heartbeat works to feed my muscles. My mind sharpens and clears. Every inch of me readies to attack, defend, and survive—and give these people the thrill they’re all yelling for.
“Remy! I love you, Remy!” I hear them yell.
“I’ll suck your cock for you, Remy!”
“REMY, POUND ME, REMY!”
“Remington, I want your Riptide!”
Stretching out my fingers, I grab the top rope and jump over it into the ring, taking a look at the people surrounding me. The lights are shining. My name is on everyone’s lips. And all their excitement and anticipation spins around me in a fun little whirlwind. They’re yelling and waving pink shit at me. They want me up here. Right here. Just me, some asshole opponent, and our fists.
I whip off my robe and hand it to Riley, my friend and Coach’s second, while people rise to their feet and scream louder as I turn to acknowledge the crowd. They’re all standing. All looking at me like I’m their God of War and tonight is the night I will give them vengeance.
I fucking love it.
I fucking love those yells, the women screaming about the kind of shit they want me to do to them.
“Remy! Remy!” a crazy-sounding female shouts at the top of her lungs. “You’re so fucking hot, Remy!”
I turn in amusement, and my gaze runs down the crowded aisle and snags on her. The one with long mahogany hair, and amber eyes, and pink, plump lips that immediately part in shock. I feel stupefied.
My instincts kick in, and I take in the stranger with one quick sweep. She’s young, athletic, and dressed demurely, but there’s nothing demure about the way she runs her wide, disbelieving eyes all over me.
Holy god, I feel like she’s just run her tongue all over my cock.
When her eyes lock on mine, I raise a brow in a question, silently asking her, Did you just shout at me or not?
Her cheeks flood a nice shade of pink, and I realize it was her friend who yelled, her friend who pales compared to her. This one doesn’t strike me as the kind to be courting the attentions of someone like me. But she’s got all my hunter buttons engaged, and now I want her and I’m going to have her.