Katy Evans - Remy

“And now, the famed and acclaimed Owen Wilkes, the ‘Irish Grasshopper’!”

Grasshopper heads for the ring, and while the crowd takes him in, I look at Brooke. She sits with her dark hair down while the corners of her sweet, little mouth are curled upward for me, and for as long as I’ve lived, I’ve never seen something so pretty from up here.

The bell snaps me back to attention.

I head to center. Grasshopper is in my peripherals, jumping side to side like a fucking springboard. He’ll wear out soon. I wait and watch him. I see my opening on his side. I swing, slamming my fist into his gut, knocking him out.

“Remyyyyyyy!” people scream.

The line of opponents keeps building as I fight my way to the Butcher. He’s twice my weight and three times as wide, but nobody cares about that. He draws blood, and so do I.

He takes the ring with the agility of a meatball. Then he looks at me. I look at him.

The bell rings: Ting.

We take positions and eye each other over our knuckles. Butcher is known to wait boxers out, but I’m impatient to get things going. My knuckles knock into his jaw several times; I start with easy, quick hits, then I edge back and Butcher comes at me with a solid punch to the side that rocks me back a step. It takes me a moment to get back in position. I inhale through my nose, then my arms shoot out and I bury my fists, one after the other, into Butcher’s flabby stomach. I back off and watch him swing, and instead of covering, I take the hit. He slams me again.

“Boo! Boohooo!” the crowd shouts. I see his fist coming at me again, and I catch it with my face. My head swings and blood flies from my mouth. That’s better.

Straightening, I lick up the metal taste in my mouth.

He slams me down to one knee.

The screams intensify, and I know the entire arena must be looking at me, but I’m only aware of her eyes on me. I jump back to my feet and wipe my bleeding lips. Endorphins kill the pain. I glance at her, but the look on her face gives me pause. She’s white as paper. Hell, she looks ready to bolt. I’m so damned puzzled by the worry in her face, I take another punch. This one rocks my balance and before I know it, I’m bouncing against the ropes, something I never do.

“REMY . . . REMY . . . REMY!” the crowd starts chanting.

I’m caked with sweat and my mouth is still bleeding when I straighten and notice Brooke is not even watching me fight anymore. She’s dropped her head and stares at her lap.

Fuck.

Yeah, that’s the way to impress her, you fucking dickhead.

Clamping my jaw, I straighten and glance into Butcher’s keen brown eyes. “Playtime’s over,” I growl, and I swing out one of my most powerful punches, feeling the crack of his ribs under my knuckles. He crashes like a dead weight on the mat, and the crowd comes alive with a roar. “Yeah!” I hear the collective yell, then the chant, “REMY! REMY! REMY!”

I stand by as the counting begins, and a knot of frustration and disappointment tightens in my chest when Brooke still doesn’t look at me. Finally, the announcer’s voice bursts through the speaker as the ringmaster comes to raise my arm. “Our victor, ladies and gentlemen! Riptide! Ripppppptiiiiiide! Yes, you hungry ladies out there, scream your hearts out for the baddest bad boy this ring has ever seen! Rippppppptiiiiiide!”

The crowd starts shrieking my name, and I quickly jump off the ring and grab a Gatorade from the bucket at Coach’s feet.

“Remington,” he snarls.

I shake my head and stalk down the walkway. I could tell by his tone that he wanted to have words, and I’m not in the mood to get my head chewed off in front of Brooke.

Back at the hotel, back in my room, I drop down on the bench at the foot of my bed and wait, sipping my Gatorade, replaying the pretty smile she gave me before the fight.

By the time she walks into my room, I’m so impatient, it feels like I’ve waited for this girl all my life. Our eyes lock, and the hunter in me goes wild. Her cheeks are flushed, and her legs long and endless in those jeans she wears. I want those legs and those arms around me, that mouth under mine, whispering my name. Fuck me, when can I have her? I loathe thinking I’m going to make her mine and the day my dark side catches up with me, she’ll be gone, her walls will be up and she won’t let me in, and I will be forever every woman’s adventure. A sex god and a plaything. Nobody’s real. Nobody’s choice. Nobody’s anything.

“Like the fight?” I ask her.

“You broke the last one’s ribs,” she tells me, breathless.

I drain my Gatorade and send the bottle spinning across the floor as I force the knots in my chest to loosen. “Are you worried about him, or me?” I can’t believe I’m fucking jealous of the Butcher.

Her lips pull at the corners. “Him, because he’s the one who won’t be able to stand tomorrow.”

Then—finally!—she comes and does what I secretly wanted her to do. She kneels between my thighs and starts to smear a thick, shiny paste over the cut on my lower lip. I get instantly hard. Her sweet scent teases my nostrils, and I force my body not to move a single muscle so she doesn’t stop what she’s doing.

God, she smells like a fucking angel.

“You,” I hear her suddenly admit to me, her voice a soft whisper. “I worry about you.”

I stare at the top of her head and want to bury my nose in all that dark hair and sniff her until the world ends. She covers up the salve tin and remains on her knees and seems to consider what to do next. I want her hands all over me, so I wrack my brain to find the source of my biggest discomfort, other than my dick.

“I messed up my right shoulder, Brooke.”

A spark of concern flashes in her gaze, and when she notices my smile, she rolls her eyes at me and sighs. “With a bulldozer like you, I knew it was too much to hope you’d survive this night with just a cut lip.”

“Are you going to come fix it?”

She pushes to her feet but huffs as if she doesn’t want to. “Of course. Someone has to.”

I’m amused by her, how she acts tough and sassy with me. I like it.

She heads to the back of the bed and grabs my shoulders in her hands. She prods expertly into my tissue, and when she hits the spot, an annoying pain starts to awaken. I zone out of there and focus on the feel of her cool, little fingers.

“That ugly bastard landed a pretty hard one here. He landed a lot of hard ones. Does it hurt?” she whispers. She eases on her investigations for a second, then she pushes even deeper.

She’s pushing so hard, a fractionally amused part of me wonders if she wants to make me sound like a pussy and say, Yes . “No.”

“I’ll rub you down with arnica, and we’ll do cold therapy.”

She sounds businesslike as she works some nice-smelling oil into my skin. I hear the slick sounds as her touch slides over my skin, and I imagine turning around, lowering her down on my bed, and being the one who drags his hands all over her. Being the one who finds a slick spot that makes noise when I rub my fingers across.

“Does it hurt?” she asks.

“No.”

“You always say no, but I can tell this time it does.”

“There are other parts of me that are hurting more.”

“What the hell?” The door of the suite slams shut, and Pete storms into the master bedroom squealing like a freaking banshee. “What? The hell ?” Pete demands.

A couple of seconds later, Riley joins the party. “Coach’s in a snit!” he rants. “What we all want to know is, why the fuck are you letting your ass get kicked?”

Brooke’s hands stop massaging my shoulders, and I swear to god, I want to pound their faces in for taking those hands away from me.