“I told you that man has the reddest self-destruct button I’ve ever seen,” Diane says gently as she presses a cold compress to my arm. She reminds me of my mother, and for the briefest second, I am so homesick I want to cry. But the home I really want to cry for is the man downstairs ready to beat to death the sicko who did this to me.
“Please don’t let him even set eyes on Scorpion,” I say miserably. “If I screw things up for him again—”
“You don’t screw it up for him, Brooke,” Diane assures me. “You love him. You’re the only woman he’s ever loved and the only person who’s loved him and accepted him as is. He wasn’t given love growing up. He was rejected and cast aside. How hard do you think he will defend you?”
My eyes blur, and my voice breaks.
“I want to defend him too and can’t even stand right,” I say, feeling suddenly pitiful and weak.
By the time the guys come back, it’s been almost an hour, and all my nerve endings have been corroded by my anxiety.
I’m lying on my side on the couch with my eyes closed, drunk on the Benadryl, when I hear muffled voices outside the door.
“. . . hold the door . . .”
My heart dies. I swear it dies. Because there’s just no other reason to hold the door except if your arms are busy holding something.
Something big and reckless and beautiful.
I hold my breath as Diane goes over to help with the door, and then I see them. Not them—him. Remy.
Pete and Riley are grunting and huffing as they lug him inside, his feet dragging in the ground, his head facing the floor. His dark hair is all I can see, and the anger and protectiveness I suddenly feel is so overpowering that the only reason I don’t charge over to hit those two is because I still can’t feel one of my feet.
“You ass**les!” I cry.
They look at each other and say nothing when suddenly, unexpectedly, I hear his voice, slurred and still somehow determined. “Need to see Brooke.”
“Hang on, buddy,” Pete breathlessly says as they head to the master bedroom.
“Need her,” Remy repeats in a low, garbled voice.
Diane hastens to help me to my feet and follow them. I swear, my heart feels like a Kleenex in my chest, one that has been used to a tiny pathetic wad. I hate when they shoot that freaking sedative into his throat!
Keeping her arm around me, Diane helps me limp my way into the master bedroom, and we find the guys jerking Remington’s clothes off until he’s in his gray boxers. Then they struggle to get him onto the bed.
“Get the other side,” Pete says, and Riley hauls him up from the bed’s far edge.
“Rem, what the hell are we to do with you? Huh, dude?” Pete chidingly says as he puts him into bed and cleans him up.
“Brooke,” Remington growls angrily.
“She’s coming, dude!” Pete says with a laugh.
They struggle to adjust him on the bed so that he faces me. They plop a pillow behind his head, and I see his eyes are halfway open. They fix on me as Diane helps me to bed, and they’re fully black and almost frantic when he sees me. I still marvel at how fast they can change, those beautiful eyes of his. How his body can completely make this transformation within minutes. His large, tanned hands are idle at his sides, but his finger twitches like he wants to touch me, and suddenly all the fingers of my hands ache with the same urge to touch and comfort him.
“Okay?” he rasps to me, his gaze stormy and dark and vivid with frustration.
I can also feel his frustration. He wanted to go defend me, and they stopped him. I can feel his angry turmoil whirling around us as I clamber into bed with him and cover us to the waist.
“More than okay,” I say gently as I put my arms around his hard shoulders and stroke the top of his head.
I can feel the tension ease from his body as he closes his eyes and suddenly sags. Sinking my face into his hair, I desperately haul his scent into my lungs and hold him tightly as his weight settles against my side, shifting so that his head is pillowed by my br**sts. “I love you so much,” I hiss into his ear. “Wake up soon, okay? I’ve got you now.”
“This is going to be a difficult season,” I hear Pete say.
I nod in understanding, but I can’t take my eyes off him, his beautiful lashes resting on his cheekbones, his lips slightly parted. I stroke my fingers over his boyish face with that sexy scruffy jaw.
Riley says, “Let me go pick up Lupe from the gym and tell him our guy’s not coming.”
Pete watches me as I slowly start rubbing Remy’s scalp, then he brings me some water and another ice pack and sets them on the nightstand while Diane tells me she’ll clean up outside.
“How you doing?” Pete asks me.
I nod. “Better with the pill combo,” I whisper. Then I add, “I’m sorry I called you guys ass**les.”
“I’m sorry we had to . . . but he was there. The motherfucker.” He flattens his lips into an angry line, then keeps staring at me oddly.
“You’re the one thing that calms him, Brooke, but you’re also the one that completely triggers him.” Pete sighs and stares out the window at the little desertlike garden outside our room. “And Scorpion knows there’s something about you that makes Remington lose it. He’s going to keep provoking him. He’s going to try to f**k with his head and lure out every inch of Remington’s beast.”
“We can’t, Pete, we can’t let anybody f**k with his head.” I kiss Remy’s forehead, sending all my love to his beautiful brain and quietly promising, I won’t let anyone f**k with you.
“Remington is as strong as he’s ever been right now,” Pete says. “But you’re a big weakness of his. He’d lose for you, quit for you. Kill for you. Medicate his ass off for you.”
I wipe my tears and pull Remy’s head deeper between my br**sts. “Pete, please don’t sedate him anymore. We have to find another way.”
“Dude, he’s as strong as half a dozen men combined. How do you suggest anyone stop him? Let me tell you, if the Underground organizers decide to make that final match one of full submission . . .” He shakes his head and stands.
“What do you mean? What is that—submission?”
He looks at me drearily, then sighs. “Nothing. But Remington’s got a hankering for Scorpion. He’s a noble man, but he won’t have mercy on that ass**le—and if he gets a chance to kill him up in the ring, let me tell you right now, he will.” He walks to the door. “Now let me go and find us another hotel.”
Nodding at him and whispering, “Thank you,” I turn back to my big lion.
“Let’s get comfortable,” I say to Remy. I pull off my clothes with shaky, clumsy hands, then peel off his underwear because I know he’s always na**d in bed. Then I come back to take his head and press it against my br**sts, caressing his hair. I kiss his temple. “I got you now.” His breathing is slow and even. His finger twitches at his side, and I grab his hand and wrap it around my waist. “Do you like holding me like this?” I ask softly, not really expecting an answer. I snuggle and coil my arms around his shoulders, picturing him the day I left him in the hospital.
Black and confused, manic, and desperate to say something to me.
And I was too afraid to stay . . .
My eyes well up again, and suddenly, not only the stings hurt, but all my body aches on the inside.
Swallowing back the lump in my throat, I tighten my hold and bury my face in his hair, kissing him fiercely several times, anywhere I can. His breathing is slow and even, but mine is still hitched over what happened. All I know is that it stops hurting when I look at him, when I smell him, and when I touch him.
So I run my hands around the hard muscles of his bare shoulders and then lean over and kiss the shell of his ear, then his smooth, warm temple. He smells like him, seducing me, and I duck to smell his neck as I run my fingers down his back, the hard squares of his abs, then buzz my lips across his jaw.
He murmurs something unintelligible, and his finger twitches. I frame his jaw within my hands and place a soft kiss on his lips. “Thank you for defending me, but I won’t let you ruin your dreams for me anymore,” I tell him.
I run my fingers over his muscled chest, his neck, his corded arms, up his thick neck, where I bend to kiss his low, steady pulse point. He makes another noise, and I wonder what he thinks. Does he hear me? I think he does.
I grab his iPod and my earbuds so that we can share, and I look for a song that I’ve wanted to play to him. I place one earbud in his ear and one in mine and play him the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Stay with You.” I take his hand in one of mine and kiss his knuckles, stroking his hair as we listen, the song making me forget that every part where I was stung hurts as if I still have the stingers inside me. I hold him as we listen. My fighter. He fights everything, even himself, but I love that he’s never fought loving me.
HE’S COMPLETELY SPEEDY.
Two days after the Gift—as we now call it—it was all over the news that the Underground fighter known as Scorpion and his team had been apprehended and charged with damages to a motel room due to the explosion of firecrackers inside.
Yes. Firecrackers.