I like her so much, my f**king chest hurts looking at her.
I like her eyes, her mouth, her smile, the things she says. I like her white, little teeth, her slim, small, strong hands. Her lean runner’s legs. The shade of her skin, sun-kissed and lovely. I like the ways she wears her hair. I’m attracted to every inch of this woman and every day is a challenge to keep my hands to myself when my gut screams at me to Take. Her.
“Don’t smile like that. I can knock you down with my feet,” she warns me.
She’s so cute, I can’t stop smiling. “It’s not kickboxing. Or are you going to bite too?”
She swings her leg out and I deflect it easily with one arm, lifting one eyebrow. Well, well, well, now. She’s pissed at me?
She kicks again, and I deflect, then watch her circle me and jump up and down as she warms up. Clearly, she’s attempting to weave, and she’s not only pretty good—she looks so damned good doing it. I want to stand here all day and let her weave around me and even punch me if she wants. She tries a test punch. I’m too well trained. My body moves on automatic. My arm flies out to catch her full fist in my palm.
“No,” I softly admonish, and curl my fingers over hers and tell her how to make a good fist. She tries, and I nod. “Now use your other arm to guard.”
Pretty soon she’s playfully attacking, flushed and excited, her eyes sparkling. Brooke can attack all she wants—and in the meantime, I’m watching her perky little br**sts bounce up and down. She wants me to show her a new move? All right then. I do, taking advantage to touch her as much as possible. She’s a fast learner, but something dark and bloodthirsty is in her eyes. They glitter murder as she looks at me. I don’t know what she’s in a twist about, but I know that if she were mine already, I’d kiss her so hard she’d forget about everything but the way I f**k my tongue into her mouth.
She smashes her fist into my abs, and I’m so taken aback by her speed, I blink. “I’m so good,” she taunts.
Fuck, that’s about the hottest thing a woman’s done to me. She’s f**king punching me. I’m too distracted now. Here she is. In my ring. The first woman to ever get up here with me, and I’m sure god made her just this ballsy so she could stand up to me. I’m selfish like that. I think everything about her was made for me. I feel proprietary. Territorial. I want to make a claim. I want to take her down and strip her down and pin her under me.
She swings out with her foot and yelps when her foot strikes my sneakers. Instantly, I catch her by the arms, frowning in confusion. “What was that about?”
She scowls furiously. “You were supposed to fall.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“I’ve toppled men much heavier than you!”
“A f**king tree topples sooner than Remy, Brooke,” Riley shouts.
“Well, I can see that,” she grumbles, then cups her mouth and yells, “Thanks for the heads-up, Riley.”
I’m so annoyed she hurt herself with me, I lead her, as she hops on one foot, to the corner, where I drop down on the chair and haul her on top of me so I can prod her ankle. “You f**ked your ankle, didn’t you?” And she says I’m reckless? That I hurt my body deliberately? Did she think she was better than my ring opponents, or what—the—hell?
“I just seemed to wrongly send all my weight to my ankle,” she admits.
“Why’d you hit me? Are you pissed at me?” I demand.
She scowls. “Why would I be?”
Fuck me, I know she’s angry—I’m no idiot—and I want to know what the hell I f**king did. If she doesn’t like me right now, then I don’t stand a chance when I get manic. Worse. When I get depressed like some loser ass**le. “You tell me.”
She ducks her head as she catches her breath, a sheen of perspiration on her neck.
“Hey, can we get some water over here?” I call.
Riley brings over a Gatorade and a plain bottle of water and sets them by my feet.
“We’re wrapping up,” he informs us, then he peers around to have a good look at her. “You all right, B?”
“Dandy. Call me tomorrow, please. I can’t wait to get back in the ring with this dude.”
As Riley laughs his head off, I test her ankle with my fingers, prodding into the tissue. “That hurt, Brooke?” I ask as gently as possible, and then her fingers join mine around her ankle.
“You weigh a ton,” she tells me. “If you weighed a little less, I’d have toppled you. I even toppled my instructor.”
“What can I say?” I peer, confused, into her face, wishing to know what she’s thinking.
“You’re sorry? For my pride’s sake?”
I shake my head, annoyed that she try such a stunt with me—me. Bending, she grabs the Gatorade and unscrews it as she straightens, and the blood suddenly boils in my veins as she sips. Her neck, the way the sleek, long tendons work as she swallows, f**k me now. My c**k thickens painfully under her bottom, and with a voice thickened with arousal, I can’t help but ask, “Can I get some?”
When I set my lips on the rim, it’s wet from hers, and the way she watches me drink makes my balls hurt. I want to toss this shit aside and drink directly from her mouth. Instead, I return the Gatorade and make sure I brush my fingers over hers at the exchange, because I’m a devil and I need the contact. My eyes stay locked on hers as I steal that touch that shoots like a bolt up my arm, and neither of us is laughing.
She tries standing, and I instantly take the bottle and set it down, then I wrap my arm around her waist. “I’ll help you up so you can ice that.”
She leans on me as I lower her from the ring and help her out of the gym, her arm coming around my waist.
“It’s fine,” she keeps on telling me.
“Stop arguing,” I softly command.
She keeps her arm around me as we board the hotel elevator, then I lock her at my side as we ride upstairs. In profile, her nose is exquisitely dainty, and that smooth, pink mouth is perennially curved in a way that tempts me to kiss it. Her scent tickles my nostrils, and as if with a mind of its own, my nose drops as I try to find the source of that delicious smell. Holy god, I want to lick up all that sexy sweat from her neck.
One of her firm, high-perched tits softly presses into my rib cage, and I can’t pull my brain out of there. I’m painfully aware of the way that sweet little tit brushes against my side as we exit the elevator.
“Hey, man, ready for the fight?” a hotel staff member asks from across the hall, and I offer him a thumbs-up as we reach her room.
“Key,” I whisper to her.
She fumbles, then quietly I take it from her hand, slide it into the slot, and help her inside. The first bed has a ton of family pictures facing the nightstand. I set her down on the second one and I grab the leather bucket. “I’ll get you ice.”
“That’s fine, Remy, I’ll do it later,” she protests.
I pull the lock out to stop the door and go into the hallway to fill the bucket up half with ice. When I return to the room, I add some water.
Her face is pink in embarrassment when I kneel at her feet and set the bucket on the carpet, and the black of her catsuit only heightens the peach hue of her skin. I remove her tennis shoe and her sock, then I curl my hand around her calf muscle and guide her foot into the cold.
“When we get this fixed, I’m going to show you how to knock me down,” I whisper, flicking my eyes up to hers, and, god, I could eat her. Eat. Her. She’s biting down on her lower lip, her eyes wide and almost vulnerable as she lets me guide her foot into what has to equal the freezing waters of Antarctica.
“Cold?” I ask.
She sounds like her lungs are closing. “Yeah.”
Slowly, I sink her foot deeper, and she tenses completely, all the animation gone from her face. I’m torn between the urge to stop torturing her, and fixing her ankle. “More water?”
She shakes her head and then surprises me when she shoves her foot all the way under the water. “Oh, shit,” she gasps. And I know I should hold her foot in no matter what, but my instinct to protect her is so fierce I yank her foot out, flattening her skin against my abs to suck the cold out from it with my body heat. My muscles clench in shock, and her wide, surprised gold eyes lock on my face in startlement. Every one of her tiny, cold toes burns into my flesh, and I’ve been so successful in teaching my body to embrace pain, I want them closer. I curve my hand around her instep and hold her flat against me.
She looks breathless. From the cold. Or from me? She also sounds breathless. “I didn’t know you gave pedicures, Remy.”
“It’s a fetish of mine.”
I smile a lazy smile, then I pull out an ice cube and stroke it gently across her ankle. I make sure that her skin doesn’t burn as I circle around her, and I’m moving slowly enough that I can hear her breathing rhythm quicken. I shift my hold on her foot and rub my thumb along the arch while still caressing her with the ice cube.
Her voice trembles through me, like a feather stroking my insides. “Do you do manicures too?”
I glance up at her, on the bed, looking at me like a woman does when she wants to give herself away, and the hunter in me is so ready I let her know with my tone of voice what I’m thinking, what I truly want, when I say, “Let me do your feet first, then I’ll do the rest of you.”