”More than I want to,” I snap back, panting and breathless because of him.
”Do you like it enough to let me caress you in bed tonight?” he asks tersely. My skin tingles, and between my legs, I’m growing incredibly warm. His pupils are completely enlarged with hunger.
“I like it enough to let you make love to me.”
“No. Not make love.” He tightens his jaw and stares at me with tormented blue eyes. “Just touching. In bed. Tonight. You and me. I want to make you come again.” He watches me, a question in his expression. I feel his dark temper roiling underneath the surface in frustration. There’s a need in me that wants to appease it … but I can’t follow it.
I want to touch him so bad, I just can’t understand why he can resist the call and not take me. I can’t stand a night in his arms without going all the way.
Pulling free, I harden my voice. “Look, I don’t know what you’re waiting for, but I won’t be your plaything.”
He grabs me again and brings me close, ducking his head to me. “You’re not a game. But I need to do this my way. My way.” He buries his face in my neck and scents me, and his tongue flashes out to lick my ear. He groans and jerks my chin up so our eyes meet. “I’m taking it slow for you. Not me.”
My knees threaten to fold, but I somehow manage to shake my head in disagreement.
“This is growing old, and I’m quickly losing interest. Let’s just stretch you.” I go to his back, and he jerks free as if I’d sliced him with a knife.
“Don’t f**king bother. Go stretch Pete.”
He grabs his towel, swipes it over his front, then goes to punch the speed bag with his bare knuckles.
Marching out with a fierce scowl, I tell Riley, “He doesn’t want me.”
“Understatement of the century, girl,” he says, rolling his sad surfer-boy eyes.
An Adventure
The Underground simmers with energy tonight, and for the past hour I’ve quit looking for Nora among the crowd, somehow fearing the sight of me has encouraged her to go into hiding. I’m determined to make her come out, I just don’t know how I’m going to do it yet. But I’m definitely plotting.
For now, I’ve let myself be swept into the magic of the fights, and I find myself watching all the contenders more avidly than I ever have before, if only to try to see their fighting strategies in case they final and have to face Remington.
Some fight extremely dirty, and I realize there’s no one that fights like he does. Remy fights like he loves it. He has a blast up on the ring, and makes it appear like he’s a lion, and his opponent a mouse, and he’s just playing with it. He jumps up and down sometimes, and makes the crowd participate sometimes when he clinches his opponent, and then lets go and points at him as if asking, “Do you all want me to beat this ass**le’s face in?”
Of course the crowd roars, and I’m all wound up, jacked up, and more, exhilarated just watching him.
When he was announced tonight, the Austin crowd went wild, most everyone present standing and hollering, and I watched with a fluttering stomach as he appeared down the pathway and climbed into the ring, and suddenly the room comes alive with him. Now banners keep waving across the room as he pounds his third opponent of the night, and he’s worn the other man so bad, it will probably end in a couple more minutes.
He’s on a roll. He’s taken out anything and everything they bring out. I haven’t really seen any of his opponents able to get a really good hit on him, his face is intact and so is his guard.
Somehow I feel that he’s proving something to this city, where he was born. I feel like he’s telling his parents with every punch that they were wrong. And it makes me privately cheer for him even more. I’m so stunned from what I learned, and I just can’t picture Remington being locked up anywhere, helpless and angry. He’s a man that is strong and primitive, who knows exactly what he wants, and it enrages me to think anyone hurt him when he was younger and more vulnerable. It makes me feel fiercely protective of him, and makes me wish I’d known him sooner, as if I could have even done something to stop it.
I hear the slam of his KO and the screaming that follows, and my heart is already skipping in my chest as the ringmaster grabs Remy’s arms and raises it.
“Our victor of the night, Remingtoooooooon Tate, your RIPTIDE!!”
His arm raised in victory, my breath holds in anticipation as I wait for what comes next. What he always does next.
He seeks me out with those blue eyes.
My body seizes the instant he swings his gaze to mine. His smile flashes, but it has an edge to it today. He’s been fighting with fierce intensity, and his smile is as equally intense, a blast of sex, and suddenly there’s nothing innocent or playful about it. He keeps his gaze trained possessively on me as his breaths continue jerking out of his powerful chest and rivulets of sweat slide down his body, and he looks as perfect as he did the first moment I laid eyes on him in Seattle.
I want him more than ever.
I’m so wet, and so desperate by what he makes me feel, I just stare back at him, not returning his smile, my eyes imploring for him to finish whatever is going on between us, whatever it is that leaps like currents of electricity between us every time we’re close. I’ve put it all out there, telling him I want him, and he continues to be as unattainable to me as a comet.
With glinting blue eyes, he points at me now, then at himself, and then at a figure approaching me in the pathway before my seat. The figure is carrying a bright red rose.