RR&R 01 Real (4 page)

Each room holds benches and rows of lockers, and I spot several fighters at different corners of the room, conversing with their teams. In the third room I peer into, he’s there, and a frisson of nervousness rushes through me.

He’s perfectly relaxed and seated, hunched over, on a long red bench, watching as a man with a shiny bald head bandages one of his hands. His other hand is already bandaged, everything covered with the cream-colored tape, except for his knuckles. His face is pensive and strikingly boyish, and it makes me wonder how old he is. He raises his dark head, as if sensing me, and spots me immediately. A flash of something strange and powerful sparks in his eyes, and it rushes through my body like lightning. I stifle my reaction and see that his coach is busy telling him something.

Remington can’t take his eyes off me. His hand is still out-stretched, but seems forgotten as his coach continues taping him up and issuing instructions.

I see Remington grab the tape from his coach and throw it aside before he stands and slowly winds his way to my side. As he positions himself behind me and slightly to my right, an awareness of his body close to mine seeps into my every pore.

His soft voice by my ear makes me tremble as he faces my admirer. “Just walk off,” he tells the other man softly.

The man I recognize as Hammer is no longer looking at me. Instead, he looks above my head and slightly to the side. I think that next to Remington, he doesn’t look all that big after all.

My thighs go watery when the answering voice slides across the shell of my ear, both velvet and chillingly hard. “I can guarantee you, she’s not
yours
.”

I’m still not recovered from seeing him up close, and my bloodstream already carries all kinds of strange, bubbly, hot little things. The instant he comes trotting down the wide hall between the stands, in that shiny red hooded robe, my pulse jumps, my tummy clenches, and I have the awful desperate urge to flee back to my home.

My stomach drops.

“
Melanie, get a grip!” I hiss, then sit back weakly in my chair, because he’s killing me too. I don’t know what he wants from me, but I’m tied up in knots because I never expected that I would also want something very sexual and very personal from
him
.

They bounce apart, and Remington acts cocky, feinting and pissing Hammer off. He turns to me, points at Hammer, then at me again before ramming him so hard that the guy rebounds on the net behind him, falls to his knees, and shakes his head to stand up again. My sex muscles clench every time he hits his opponent, and my heart grips every time an opponent returns a blow.

During the night, he goes through several fighters in just this way. Every time he’s declared victor, he stares at me with that smug smile, as though he wants me to know he’s the dominating man here. My entire body shakes as I watch his body move, and I’m unable to stop fantasizing. I imagine his hips rolling over me, his body inside mine, those big hands touching me, flesh to flesh. During the last few rounds, he wears an intent look on his face, and his chest heaves with exertion and glistens with sweat.

Suddenly, I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life.

I want to go crazy. Bungee. Sprint again, even if only in a literal sense. All those dates I never had, because I was training for something that never happened. Rides I didn’t take for fear of breaking a bone which eventually broke anyway. Never drinking. Keeping my grades up so I could do track. Remington Tate is everything I’ve never, ever done, and I have a condom tucked in my bag and suddenly I know exactly why I put it there. This guy is a fighter. I want to touch this beautiful chest and I want to kiss those lips. I want to have those hands on me. When I feel those hands on me, I’m probably going to come the second he thrusts inside me.

When he wins for the tenth and final time, I feel his eyes on me again, and I can only stare back at him, willing him to know I want
him. He smiles at me, all sweaty and cocky with blue eyes glinting and dimples showing. Grabbing the cord at the top of the ring, he easily swings his body over it and lands gracefully in the aisle before me.

There is no doubt about his destination.

Holding my breath until I feel like my lungs are going to burst, I stand on wobbly legs because I really don’t know what else to do. The crowd roars and women behind me shout.

“
You don’t deserve him, you bitch!”

“
You go, girl!”

Instead, he bends his dark head to whisper against my temple, and the only thing of his body touching mine is his breath, bathing my skin with heat as his gruff voice rumbles in my ear, “Sit tight. I’ll send someone over for you.”

“
RIPTIDE, PEOPLE!” the announcer screams.

“
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Melanie says, squealing and hugging me. “Brooke, that guy is
hot
for you.”

The woman beside me touches my shoulder with a trembling hand. “Do you
know
him?”

At first, I can’t even register who Mr. Tate is. Then understanding dawns, and a red-hot bolt of lightning streaks through me. He wants
you
in his hotel room. Do you want
him
? Do you want to do
this
? A part of me is already doing him ten ways until Sunday in my mind while another part of me won’t move from this stupid chair.

“
Your friends can come with us,” the blond man adds in an easy voice, and he signals to the stunned trio.

I’m relieved. I think. Sheesh, I don’t even know
what I feel.

“
Brooke, come on, it’s Remington Tate!” Melanie hauls me up by force and urges me to follow the men, and my mind starts racing at full speed, because I don’t know what I’m going to do when I see him. My heart is pumping adrenaline like crazy as we’re led out of the Underground, to the hotel across the street, then up the elevator to the “P.”

A spike of nervousness ripples through me as the elevator pings at the top floor, and I feel exactly the way I used to when I competed. It’s been a rollercoaster ride just imagining this man’s body inside mine, and I’m suddenly close to the peak where it could be a reality. My stomach clenches from the thought of how exhilarating the downhill could be.
One-night stand, here I come…

“
Please tell me you’re not going to do this guy,” Kyle tells me, his face scrunched in worry as the doors roll open. “This is not you, Brooke. You’re far more responsible than this.”

Am I really?

“
I’m just going to talk to him,” I tell my friend, but even I’m not sure of what I’m doing.

As my friends flock to the shiny new bottles of alcohol, an unmistakable squeal escapes Melanie, and Pete motions me to follow him. We cross the suite and go into the master bedroom, and I spot him sitting at the bench at the foot of the bed. His hair is wet, and he holds a gel pack to his jaw. The visual of such a primal male nursing a wound after he repeatedly broke man after man with his fists is somehow fabulously sexy to me.

Two Asian women kneel on the bed behind him, each of them rubbing a shoulder. A white towel is draped around his hips, and rivulets of water still cling to his skin. Three empty bottles of Gatorade have been tossed on the floor, and he has another in his hand. He slaps the gel pack on the table and downs the last of the Gatorade. Blue as his eyes, the liquid drains in one swig, then he tosses it aside.

I’m mesmerized as his ripped muscles clench and relax under the women’s fingers. I know massage is normal after intense exercise, but what I don’t know, and can’t understand, is the way watching him get one affects me.

I know the human form. I revere it. It was my church for six years, when I decided a new career for me was in order, when I realized I wouldn’t be sprinting again. And now, my fingers itch at my sides with wanting to probe his body, push and release, get deep into every muscle.

“
Yes.”