Katy Evans - Remy

We laugh. We’re laughing when she seems to realize Pete and company have fallen quiet and are watching us.

She pulls something out from her bag, and I glare at Pete, silently telling him, Back off, bozo!

She clears her throat and sets an iPod and headphones on her lap. Curious, I snatch up her iPod and connect my headphones and start going through her music, handing her mine in return. She has tons of recent songs and some earlier older ones I recognize. She drops her headphones and grabs her iPod back, returning mine.

“Who can relax to that?” she protests.

“Who wants to relax?” I taunt.

“I do.”

I give her back my iPod. “I’ve got to have some easy listening for you. Listen to one of mine and I will listen to one of yours.”

I scan my iPod, sure of the song I want. I don’t regularly listen to it, but the times it comes on shuffle, I hear every fucking word, and now the need to play it to her is becoming more intense by the second.

A song plays for me from her library, and it’s sassy, but I’m mostly watching her listen to the one I picked for her.

She ducks her head to cover her profile with her hair. Her hand trembles on the iPod.

I can’t take it and lean forward to catch her expression.

I keep listening to the song she played me. How she won’t write me a love song. That’s okay. She’s still playing me one, really.

My lips twitch and I chuckle, but she ducks her head to her lap as she listens to the rest of the song.

My smile fades, my body tight. Fuck, I want her. I want her to get it. I want her to get me.

She listens quietly to “Iris” from the Goo Goo Dolls, then she slowly removes her headphones and returns my iPod. “I wouldn’t have guessed you had slow songs in there,” she murmurs, talking to my iPod as she returns it.

I keep my voice low so that only she hears. “I have twenty thousand songs—everything is in there.”

“No!” she automatically protests, then checks my iPod and notices it’s true. God, she’s adorable.

“Did you like it?” I quietly ask her.

She nods.

Her cheeks are flushed, and it takes all my effort not to kiss her. Instead I search for another song on my iPod and pass it over to her, playing “Love Bites” to her so she hopefully gets an idea of how very much I want her.

It’s not really fun to ride in a convertible when you’re stuck in traffic,” Pete muses as we hit some traffic and sit there like mannequins in a storefront.

The people inside the cars around us are staring. “You’re breaking a couple hearts just sitting there, Rem,” Riley chuckles from the back and angles his thumb over at a car filled with coeds.

They start squeaking when I look at them, and my guys laugh.

Turning straight ahead, I curl my fingers into my fist and slip my ring back on, then I survey my knuckles. I’m so ready for the season. Brooke is already packing for Racer. Seems like the plane luggage is going to be full of baby stuff, strollers, and everything Racer has invaded us with since he was born. I’m fucking anxious to have Brooke just for me for a night where she doesn’t need to hurry out of my arms and tend to him.

“Hotel suite ready?” I ask Pete as the traffic finally starts easing.

“Yep.”

“My iPod?”

“Yep. Took it this morning, and headphones.”

“Every detail to the T as discussed?”

“ Everything ,” Pete says.

I raise a brow at him, but he starts to drive forward, leaving me musing on the word everything .

I can’t wait to take her in my arms.

I can’t. Fucking. Wait. To marry her again.

The first time I married her, it was in City Hall, now we’ll be in a real church.

I wanted to ask her to marry me with a song after last season’s final, but Racer decided to drop by early, and I ended up proposing with Brooke in the beginning of labor in my arms, breathing in short, panting breaths of pain. “The song was supposed to ask you to marry me, but you’ll have to settle on me doing the asking,” I’d whispered, looking intently into her eyes. “Mind. Body. Soul. All of you for me. All of you mine . . . Marry me, Brooke Dumas.”

“YES!” she’d cried, laughing, and crying. “Yes yes yes,” she’d repeated, and I’m so fucking glad she kept saying yes because I couldn’t hear it enough. I’d wanted to win the championship for her. I wanted to feel worthy of her. Right then and there, with that one word, she made me feel like I was.

And hours later I was half mad with pain watching her give birth, and I barely thought I could take it when I heard the first cry of our— our —baby. I wanted a girl as perfect as Brooke, and instead, she gave me something I never knew I wanted: something perfect that looks like me.

The heavy bag swings. Slam. Wham. It swings, side to side, as I drive my fist into the center and follow with my left, then my right. Slam. Wham. Thunk. Slam.

Coach tells me I’m showing off, and I’m not going to waste my words and explain to him the ways I intend to keep showing off my moves in front of her.

I picture Scorpion, my mortal nemesis’s face, in the center of my bag and wham. Bam. Thunk.

When I boxed with professionals, everyone wanted my ass. I was younger, faster, and stronger—you’re not taught this shit. You have a good fist, or you don’t, and fists were all I had. But when I look at Brooke, I’m aware of another use for my hands, how their palms and the tips of my fingers want to trace every inch of her slim, lean, little body.

“What is Remington having for breakfast?” she asked Diane this morning as she walked into the suite.

I perked up at the table, and when Brooke noticed, she smiled and said, “Good morning, Remington.”

The way she says my name feels like a lick across my body.

“Good morning, Brooke,” I rumbled.

Pete and Diane observed us in noticeable amusement.

Once Brooke had brought her plate over to the table and sat on the opposite side of where I was, I watched her slide the fork into her mouth and suddenly became so thirsty that I jammed a carrot into my mouth. She licked the corner of her lips, and I wanted to go over there and haul her down with me, on my lap, lick up the flavors from her mouth.

I leaned back as Pete told me something, and I wanted to toss all the plates aside and spread her on this table, get her ass in my hands, lick my tongue across her spine and up to her neck while my fingers worked all the soft and wet spots of her. I grunted at the thought.

“What?” Pete says.

She looked up at me.

I scowled at Pete. “What?” I said.

He shook his head and stood while Diane asked Brooke something about how she dealt with all these men. When she laughed at that, my body tightened and I stared. Her throat curved back, her ponytail falling. I wanted to pull it down as I tipped her head back and kissed her.

“You done?” Riley asked from the door. You done ogling her? I could see him think.

Scowling, I grabbed my stuff as we headed off.

Now I’ve been pounding the bags—all of them—as fast and hard as I can, and I still can’t get rid of all this extra energy. Pausing for a moment, I look at her on the sidelines, hot as fuck in her tight exercise gear and ready to put her hands on me. I want them so badly, tonight I want to keep her for hours in my room, working on my body.

On me.

Hours later, I’m prepped and primed by the time I’m in the Underground locker room.

My body engages when the announcer calls, “Remington Tate, Riiiiiptide!”

Screams burst across the arena, rushing through me. I trot outside, and I know exactly what to do when I hit the ring. I draw it out for the crowd tonight, and I take my time tossing my robe aside and making my turn, amused by the screams, the kisses flying at me, the banners.