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.

PAST

ATLANTA

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.

“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.”