“Don’t let her see.”
“We won’t, Rem.”
I want to lift my head to try to make sure that what she’s seeing is hopefully not me, but I can’t move. It takes the energy it would take me to move a mountain just to strain out the rest of what I need to. “Just don’t let her see.”
“Yeah, man, got it,” Pete assures.
They drag me into the room and start mumbling about me maybe getting strangled in my clothes and they strip me and plop me on the bed. My mind is already tormenting me. If she saw, she’s going to leave. She will f**king leave. She’s mine, but I can’t have her. She’s f**king mine and I can’t tell her that she is, I can’t take what I want, I can’t do anything but lie here and try to stay awake, so that if she leaves, I can stop her.
“There you go, big man.”
“Don’t let her see,” I groan.
Pete grunts and so does Riley as they try centering me on the bed. “She’s all right, she won’t see anything, Rem. Hang tight, we’ll get someone to come and make you feel good,” Riley tells me.
I bury my face in my arm and know it’s not possible. I’ll never feel good.
Brooke saw me. I saw her face for a moment. I saw her wide, scared eyes, f**k me.
I hear the door close quietly after them as the blackness claims me. It’s a familiar place I’ve been in a thousand times. Sometimes I sink to it willingly, but today I ache in all the places inside me that Brooke Dumas touches with her smiles, and all I can think of is clawing my way out of here to stop her from leaving me.
THE SOUND OF clapping wakes me. The sheets rustle at my side, and this is something I don’t understand because I sure as hell am not moving. “Get your lazy asses out of bed, guys, and let’s try hitting the gym,” Riley says from the threshold.
Gym, I tell myself, even when today is one of the days when I don’t give a shit. My body feels about as flexible as a building, but I make the effort to push up on my arms—
And stop short, squinting when I spot Brooke lying next to me.
She jumps to a sit when she sees me, and all the cobwebs in my mind clear in a f**king second as I take her in.
She’s sitting like a fantasy in my bed. No. More than a fantasy. She’s f**king unreal. Gut-wrenching, ball-twisting, chest-punching beautiful. Her dark hair tumbling down her shoulders, her lips pink, her eyelids heavy and sleepy. She’s breathing fast as if she’s got on her fight-or-flight from the mere sight of me, and she wears a Disneyland T-shirt that looks so f**king old it’s screaming at me to tear it off her. The sun touches her skin and reveals a trio of freckles on her temple that I’d never seen before, and if I weren’t so sedated, I’d be tracing them with my fingers while I latched my f**king mouth onto hers.
Struggling within myself, I watch as she takes a deep breath and eases off the bed like she can’t get out of here fast enough. My heart gives a wild, helpless kick as I watch her cross the room and close the door behind her. Fuck.
As I stand to go after her, a wave of dizziness hits me, and I plop back down on the bed with a groan. A wave of grief hits me and I roll flat to my stomach. I slide back into bed and curl my hands into fists like I always do when I can’t assimilate what I’m feeling. My muscles feel leaden and I can barely move from where I dropped. That f**king sedative Pete gives me is meant for a damn rhino and I still can’t unwind my hands. I want them in her hair, at her hips, splayed over her juicy, little bottom.
I groan again. I’m naked. Hard as marble. I don’t even have the energy to jack off, and my balls are in f**king misery.
Sometime later Pete comes in. “How are you doing, Rem?”
“Why was Brooke in my f**king bed?” I demand into the crook of my arm.
“He talks,” Pete croons laughingly at me. “Our boy is doing well then.”
“Where is she now?” I growl, twisting my head with a glare.
“I let her take the day off and relax some.”
“You let her see me like this, dipshit,” I growl, smashing my palm as hard as I can manage into his shoulder, which still jerks him aside.
“Ouch! Watch that, you’re still you, you know! And the entire f**king city saw you like this.” He sighs as he paces to the window. “She signed a contract, dude. She’s not leaving you if she sees you like this or not.” He spins around and levels me a somber stare. “Look, I promise you I won’t let her leave until her term is over and you guys have sorted whatever it is you want to sort out between you.”
The thought of her leaving fills me with anxiety. “What did she see last night?” I push up on my arms.
“She saw you in your famous Destructor mode.”
God, I hate myself. Groaning, I bury my face in the pillow.
“We hired some girls for you last night, Rem,” Pete tells me, like I give a shit.
I roll over to my back with a grunt, cross my arm over my face, and fold it over my eyes. The sun bothers me. Pete bothers me. My f**king life bothers me.
“But Brooke wouldn’t let those hookers in,” Pete adds.
It takes my sedated brain like a whole f**king minute to process what he’s telling me. Then it takes another minute for me to tame the urge to chase after her.
“Ex-plain,” I enunciate.
“All right. She’s into you, Tate. She was pissed last night because I sedated you and she got all protective.”
The thought of Brooke getting protective over me makes me feel doubly as protective of her, and half-crazed with the urge to claim her. But it has to mean something. It has to mean enough to her so that when she finds out I’m not . . . right . . . she’ll still be with me.
“All right, Rem, recover. Text me if you need me. I’ll go ahead and hang the DO NOT DISTURB, ALREADY DISTURBED HUMAN BEING INSIDE sign out the door.”
“Thanks,” I mumble, and roll to my stomach.
Don’t want to eat.
Don’t want to move.
Don’t want to f**king live.
Then I notice the pillow smells of her. I sniff all of Brooke Dumas on the fabric, and my dick jerks in excitement, so I exchange my pillow for hers and fall asleep.
HOURS LATER, I hear movements out the door. Brooke! my brain screams. My c**k jumps to attention. I groan in misery once more.
I force myself to take a shower and come back to bed. The sun is setting in the horizon, but I can’t sleep. Setting my headphones on my head, I click SHUFFLE on my iPod. Song after song plays in my ears, but I don’t listen. I don’t feel them for shit.
I spend exactly two hours lying in bed, replaying the image of her in that Disneyland T-shirt. She was in bed with me like she belonged here, like a part of her already belongs to me.
I spend another hour on Scorpion, and how I can’t lie here like a loser for long. I’m not letting him take what I want from me again, am I? He provoked me and made sure I couldn’t box again—but now he’s got me in his territory, and I’m marking it as mine every single season. Points-wise, I’m on top, as usual, but I can’t allow myself to miss more than a couple of fights, even when the last thing I want to do is fight right now.
I. Want. Her.
Pushing to my feet, I ram myself into a pair of pajama bottoms, then stalk across the suite and open the door to her room. My eyes almost bug out of my head as they run over her silhouette on the bed. With a rustle of bedsheets she sits up and her startled gaze finds me at the door, watching her.
“Are you all right?” Her voice is whisper soft, and for the first time in my life I realize a woman is worried about me. Something twists hard inside my chest.
My voice comes out rougher than I intend, gruff and slightly drugged. “I want to sleep with you. Just sleep.”
For a moment, nothing happens. Brooke just sits there . . . as if waiting. My pupils are adjusted to the dark, and I see every inch of her on that bed. And I want everything I see. I want it so much my frame is tight with barely checked need. Inhaling slowly, I walk over, scoop her up in my arms, and carry her to the master bedroom and to my unmade bed.
She clings to me like I was made to carry her somewhere. She weighs next to nothing, her little muscles tight and tiny compared to mine. I set her down and join her under the covers, pressing her face to my chest and my nose against the top of her head.
We stay like this; she holds me and I hold her. The drug is still in me. If she runs, I couldn’t catch her. My strength is there, but not my speed. But instead of leaving, she nestles closer to me, her body instinctively seeking my heat.
“Just sleep, okay?” she then whispers, her voice thick.
“Just sleep,” I murmur. “And this.”
Curling my hand around her jaw, I start kissing her. Nobody ever told me I needed more than food, air, and water to live. But I do. Holy god, I do. I need this sweet mouth now, just as much. A soft moan escapes her as she sifts her fingers through my hair and arches, and I feel the push of her firm, little tits against my chest. My testosterone shoots through the roof. I want to pull off her T-shirt and tear off whatever she wears underneath until all I can see are her gold eyes, her pink ni**les, and her sweet pu**y. I want to suck her cl*t into my mouth and slide my fingers into her sex, one, then two, then three, until she’s soaked and stretched and my little firecracker is coming for me.