“I'm just thinking.” Smiling to comfort me, he plants a soft kiss on my lips. “But if I ever get out of hand with you ...” He reaches into his laptop carry case, which is on the nightstand, and retrieves a syringe with a clear liquid. He hands it to me with the cap on.

Wincing, I ease away from it like he’s going to use it on my butt. “No, Remy, don't ask me this.”

“It’s just to make sure I don't hurt you.”

“You’d never hurt me.”

He groans and rakes his free hand through his damp hair, pulling in frustration. “I can. I can very well get crazy over you.”

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know how you make me feel! I…” He snaps his mouth shut and a muscle jumps restlessly in his jaw as he clenches. “I get jealous, Brooke, when I'm normal,” he says, his expression fiercely bleak. “I don’t want to know what I’m going to do when I'm black. I get jealous of Pete, of Riley, of your friend, of anyone who gets to spend time with you. I'm even jealous of me.”

“What?”

“I'm jealous of being with you and not remembering what I did to you. What you said to me.”

My insides diffuse with tenderness. “I’ll tell you, Remy.” Reaching out to turn his sexy dark head to me, I kiss his jaw.

He’s still restless.

“Come here, Rem.” Taking the syringe, I set it carefully on the nightstand on his side, then I pull his head down to my chest and kiss his forehead as I massage the back of his neck with strong, nimble fingers. He groans and plops his face down on my breasts, instantly relaxed.

“Thanks for bringing her up,” I whisper, into his hair.

“I can bring up your parents. Do you want me to?” He sounds sober when he asks, nuzzling my bare puckered nipple.

“No,” I laugh.

He’s so protective and so unexpectedly giving that I just want to crawl into his big, lean body and curl myself in a ball and live inside his big gentle heart, because that’s the only place I’m interested in living in.

“Your sister.” He seems entranced with my nipple, looking at it and rubbing a thumb over it as I keep working on his nape. “I’m going to get her back to you, Brooke.”

My stomach tangles. I definitely, definitely want him to forget I even mentioned Nora. “No, Remy, I think she’s going to be all right and we should just leave her alone, please. Just fight for me and you. All right?”

He stays in my arms for a bit, but when my hands start slacking and I’m dozing off, he gets up.

“Come sleep with me,” I thickly whimper. “Don’t get up.”

He comes back with his iPad and I snuggle to his side as though magnetized. He uses my hip to prop it up and turns off the lamp for me.

“You’re going to hurt your eyes,” I complain.

“Shhh, Mother, I’ve just lowered the glare.”

He licks me, and I lick him back, and we laugh together.

“Did Pete tell you your parents went looking for you?” I ask.

“Yeah. I sent them some money. That’s what they want.”

My eyebrows come down. “They said they wanted to see you.”

“That’s what they say. They never wanted to see me until my face was public.”

“That’s a shame on them.” I feel instantly protective and don’t want him to feel bad, so I tenderly cup his jaw. “It’s such a handsome face.”

He chuckles, the soft vibrations reaching me. Delighting at his closeness, his warmth, the scent of his body, I turn in his arm and bury my face into his neck so the light doesn't bother me, and as I’m dozing off, I hear crunching sound and a fresh, liquid drop of something splatters on my cheek.

I frown. “Remy.”

“Sorry.” He kisses the spot where the drop fell and licks it up, and I groan in unbidden desire.

He playfully nips my mouth and his lips taste of apple. I love it, and suddenly I’m wide awake, feeling hungry and it’s not for apple. I love his smell, the feel of him, his eyes, his touch, I love sleeping with him, showering with him, running with him. I feel crazy. Crazy about him. Okay, I'm going to go to sleep before I break out in song. Instead I hear myself speak.

“Remington…” I murmur in a question, my voice groggy but already thickened with arousal.

He puts the iPad aside and his hand coasts up my curves. He clamps his fingers around my waist and draws me to his length, where I can feel he’s hard and ready. I’m so ready for him, I was born ready.

He ducks to kiss me, murmuring, Hmm, that’s what I was hoping for.

“This is so exciting, top-of-the-line seats. Either you give one hell of a BJ, or the guy’s definitely in love with you,” Melanie decrees as we sit in the first row center seats of the Chicago Underground.

“Well I haven’t gotten to the bee-jay part since the actual penetration is so exciting, you know?” I tell Mel, but suddenly all I have in my mind is BJ. Giving the man I love a delicious, whopping BJ that will make him love me forever.

Mel’s eyebrows sweep up. “Are you actually bragging to me?”

“No! I’m actually honestly—no sarcasm here—admitting to my best friend that I’m eager to give my guy my first ever bee-jay as soon as I can manage to take my mouth off his delicious lips.”

The unbelievable has happened. I think I just managed to make Melanie blush. She’s red-faced as she stares at me like I just confessed to an orgy. “My god. What did you do to my friend? Where the hell is she, you alien? Brooke, you are madly in love with this dude. Since when do you talk BJs to me?”

My smile suddenly fades, and so does my voice. “Please stop saying the L word, it only makes my stomach clench.”

“Love. You love Remington. Remington loves you,” Mel taunts.

“Here, girl.” With a playful glare, I hand her a piece of bubblegum I stole from Pete. “Put that in your mouth, will you? It’s made of glue and it will seal your trap together. Now tell me if you spot Nora anywhere.”

“I see her at three o’clock.”

Surprise siphons the blood off my face. “You do?”

My frame tenses when I see her. It’s Nora. In a deep, innermost part of me, I’d hoped it had been a nightmare, and that the chick with the blood-red hair, the pale face, and the black scorpion tattoo had been someone else. But no.

It is. Nora.

This sad-looking waif of a girl.

And I have to save her from herself.

As Nora takes her seat across the ring from us, I clench Melanie’s arm and shove a little paper I’d been clutching into her palm. “Okay, you need to take her this, very discreetly, so those big types near her don’t really notice the exchange.”

“Gotcha.” Melanie flicks her ponytail and walks around to the other side of the ring. Nora hasn’t seen me, I think, but tenses when she spots Melanie. Mel walks by, all flirty and bimbo-like, when she stumbles with one of the men, then bends to apologize to Nora and pats her hands as if saying there, there, no harm done, and then she’s heading back to her seat beside me.

My insides tighten with tension as my eyes stay trained to Nora. She glances down at her lap and reads the note, and hope and excitement twirl inside me when she seems to read it a second time. So she’s interested?

“Done,” Melanie says, and when Nora lifts her head, she sees me, her hazel eyes flaring slightly, and I exhale a long breathe of gratitude that at least she isn’t running away. When our stares hold for several seconds, I smile at her, just so she knows that I want to see her in “friendly” mode. She smiles back, barely, almost shakily, and then tears her eyes free as the presenter begins. My chest swells with even more determination to save my baby sister, and suddenly I can’t wait for it to be tomorrow. I just pray she’ll come.

“And nooow, ladies and gentlemen…”

“He’s coming out.” Melanie squeezes me.

Just knowing he’s going to come out has me on hyper-excitement mode, and when his name rings across the crowd, my heart has already kicked into overdrive and I’m quaking in my skin. “… Remington Tate, your one and only, RIPTIDE!! RIPTIDE!! Say hello to RIPTIDEEEEE!”

He comes out like a sun after months of night, and the world can’t stop shouting in gratitude. He swings up to the ring and whips off his red robe and, at the center of the ring, there he is. Doing his signature turn as the crowd roars his name, his muscular arms outstretched, chorded with veins, and the screams get louder and louder, for the people love the way he turns, his boyish face and manly body, the wicked glint in his eyes that promises them a good show. He stops right where he always does, and his dancing blue eyes tell me that he knows he’s the bomb and that I want him, and his dimples come out to kill me. Kill. Me.

The fact that I know that man is mine at night won’t even let me breathe.

But I thankfully manage a smile. Boy, I’m so bursting with excitement, I can definitely smile back at him from my seat.

The fight begins, and I sit drooling next to Melanie watching those arms with the vine tattoo where his shoulders and biceps meet flex out to strike his opponents. His strength, his footwork, his speed, mesmerize me.

Melanie shouts to him all the things I want to tell him and more, delighting me. “Kill him, Remington! Yes! Yes! Omigod, you’re a god!”

Laughing with pure joy, I hug her. “Oh, Mel,” I sigh, then I whisper in mischief, “Tell him he’s hot.”

“Why don’t you, little chicken?” She narrows her eyes and shoulders me. “You little nugget, tell him!”

“I can’t. I can never seem to shout in a crowd. I was the one usually shouted at,” I admit, shouldering her back. “And I feel like my voice will distract him. Come on! Tell him from me. Tell him he’s so hot.”

Up on her feet, Melanie cups her mouth and yells. “Brooke thinks you’re the hottest thing ever, Remy! Remy, Brooke loves you, Remy! Every inch and centimeter of you!”

“Melanie!” Shocked, I slap a hand over her mouth and shove her back down to her seat, but the crowd is so noisy today, I’m almost sure he didn’t hear. “Have another gum, Mel,” I say, glaring darkly at her. “And I’ll have your word you’re not saying that again, Melanie.”

“Oh all right, I’ll just tell him he’s so hot and all that.”

Laughing when I stiffly nod, she comes back to her feet and nudges my ribs, calling me a little Chick-fil-a sandwich, because I’m so chicken, and then she keeps on shouting all the things I think and don’t have the courage to scream. That he’s so hot, that he’s a god, that he’s a sexy beast and is so fucking sexy nobody can stand it…

I swear if I could even shout, I’d also shout that he’s mine, that I love you, that he’s my sexy beast … but I can’t even cheer his name alone among the crowd. And I realize maybe I do feel a little fear, after all. Because I’ve never given my heart to anyone until Remington. And he has the strength to pound it down as hard as he’s pounding his opponents.