He curls his fingers into mine and crushes my mouth with his. This closeness to him—the tangle of our limbs, our tongues, our breaths—activates all the pleasure centers in my brain and all the mating instincts inside me. Fire streaks through my veins as our tongues rush to meet. I moan, he groans, my body tingles on every point of contact with his as he rocks his hips against me. His chest against my nipples. His cock against my sex entry. His thick, powerful leg muscles almost crushing my thighs. Our palms against each other.

My every cell knows this is my mate and prepares me for him. Just him. He lets go of me and palms my ass as we intensify the kiss, his fingers proprietary and firm, bringing me closer until we are perfectly aligned, and I tip my head back so that his tongue reaches every corner in my mouth. “Yes . . .” I gasp.

He draws back, and our eyes meet in the shadows. The need I see in his eyes takes my breath away. He is the most male and mesmerizing thing I’ve ever seen. He ducks once more to set his hot lips on mine. Wet. So, so, hot. I gasp as he slides a hand between my legs. He turns to suckle my earlobe, and I run my tongue over his skin and the stubble of his jaw, anywhere I can taste as he passes his thumb over my sex.

“Oh, that feels so right . . .” A burning rush spreads through my body when his fingers slide between my legs to caress me. My blood starts boiling, and my folds grow damper.

He murmurs my name in that thickened voice that drives me crazy and lowers his lips to my breasts, laving the tips. They feel extra sensitive today, shooting ripples of pleasure to my sex. I gasp and bite his earlobe, saying his name. I can’t say it enough. “Remy . . .”

“Go off for me,” he pleads, plunging his longest finger inside me. I thrash and clutch his shoulders as his fingers burrow into my cleft. I’m soaked, my whimpers of pleasure echoing in the room.

“Shh, baby, loosen up for me.” He slides down my body and bends to lick my belly button. He drags his tongue down my navel and then I feel him trailing it lower. I scream when he traces my clitoris. He pulls me open with his thumbs and licks into me. Pleasure rushes through me as my body tightens for release. Then I come.

I gasp as he licks me all up and am still thrashing in residual waves when he goes up to his knees between my legs, takes his cock in his hand, and feeds it into me. I see his muscles clench, his body working as he pushes himself deep. I moan when he presses my clit down with his thumb and fucks me even deeper with his big, thick cock.

Thrashing as a sound of pleasure escapes me, I tilt my hips up for more. He mutters my name and leans over to brush kisses along my face, cooing down at me, “You’re so fucking tight, baby. . . . You drive me so crazy.”

When he’s buried in me, we stop.

I hear our breaths, my own rapid heartbeat, in this stillness.

The urgency is there, pulsing and shimmering in our bodies. But he’s in me. I have him. I fucking grip him and don’t want to let go.

He doesn’t want to come out of me—he’s in me. Hard and pulsing. Completely possessing me.

We start kissing as he sinks a little farther in, his mouth primal and raw, loving but deliciously rough. I feel that familiar stretch of him inside me and bite his neck, whimpering as I adjust. He stays in place, waiting for me to start moving.

I wait, though, and pant, my eyes close as I relish him, wide and long and alive, inside me. I love his nipples, his skin, him. I rub the tips of my fingers over the dark points. I hear him exhale in pleasure as I raise my head to suck one softly. I love his rumble. He takes my head in his palm and tips it back, kissing me lovingly. I tear free and run my tongue over his other nipple. “Remy . . . I can’t wait. . . .”

He growls and starts moving, whispering as he nuzzles the top of my head and tangles his fingers in my hair. Tight . . . beautiful . . . my Brooke Dumas . . .

His words caress me.

Nobody ever taught him how to love.

He does it instinctively.

Pulling me closer, he suckles, nips, bites, and licks me, drawing out the pleasure until my eyes burn. My body clutches him. I can’t breathe, and all I hear in the room are our combined sexy sounds—and the ones he makes drive me half-crazy.

He thrusts, slamming hard. He’s wound me up by now, and I scream. He fists his fingers in my hair, kissing me as our hips pump fast and violently, with hardly any rhythm now.

I come a second time, and he penetrates completely and holds me tight as he goes utterly still. I feel his warmth and a hot growl followed by a kiss in my ear as he comes in me. Then we ease in relaxation, our breaths calming.

He grabs me and pulls me to his chest as he rolls, our bodies slick with sweat. He wants me naked, and I want him to hold me naked. He eases out as I start relaxing, then he tests my entry and pushes his semen back in, surprising me.

Our instincts suddenly take over. My hips rock to his fingers. The warmth of his breath bathes my throat as he presses his mouth to my skin. I can hear us, the noises we make—my whimpers and his growls of male satisfaction of pleasuring his mate. A bubbling sound tears out of me as I begin shuddering.

He’s not touching my clitoris. It is not receiving any stimulus, but the way he pets my body with his hand, shoves his semen back into my body like he never wants to leave, and licks my skin with slow drags of his tongue, makes my sex grip around him and my nipples bead so that even the air is a stroke that he means to give to me. When he bites the back of my neck, I buck and cry out, “Oh god!”

He pushes me down on the mattress on my stomach and keeps gently biting my neck, marking me as he fucks me doggy style.

By the time we sag onto the bed, it’s a task for me to summon my energy to move. I’m a boneless heap beneath him, still trying to make my lungs work.

Slick with sweat, he rolls to his back and uses one arm to bring me with him, our skins glistening from our workout. My chest is so full of love and my body so well fucked, I feel both dead from exhaustion and as alive as the sun. I spread out over him and cup his hard jaw.

“Do these hurt?” I lightly graze the cuts and the slight purple area on his temple. Before he can answer, I buzz a kiss over each one, and I wonder if he’s ever been kissed where he’s been hurt. So I kiss him there, on every mark, and then I kiss the one on his lips, briefly buzzing it.

I ease back and smile at him, stroking his hard jaw. “Did you think about me before you had me? Did you wonder if I existed? How I would be?”

He tucks a strand behind my ear and studies my face. “No.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever fall in love. Did you?”

“Never,” he says again, those sexy dimples out in full force.

I drag my fingernails up to his temple, teasing them into his hair. “What did you think about when you grew up there?”

“I just took what I had and was satisfied with it.” He brushes my hair back and strokes my earlobe. “But if I’d known you existed, I’d have hunted you, I’d have caught you, and I’d have taken you.”

“But isn’t that what you did?” I ask, smiling.

“Exactly”—he bumps my nose with his, his blue eyes laughing—“what I did.”

Sighing, I rest my head on his shoulder and rub my fingers over his nipples.

He’s the best bed. He’s lying on his back, one arm behind the pillow, the other trailing over my spine, and I’m spread all over him, my tummy to his abs, my breasts on his lower pectorals, my head on his shoulder and perfectly aligned to tuck into his neck. He smells of different soap every time, with so many hotels we go to, and at the same time, he always smells like him.

Quietly, I run my fingers up his bicep and lightly massage it. “That better?” I prod, working deeply into the muscle and realizing it is fucked up. Damn him.

But he says, “Yeah,” like it’s nothing and rolls me to my side. My insides immediately go hyperaware as he starts maneuvering me. He tucks me closer, and I moan softly deep in my throat and my sex swells because I realize what he’s going to do. He rolls me around to my side and adjusts me to spoon me, his big body warm and hard behind mine. He brushes my hair back and licks me, and I shudder as he slowly starts petting one heavy hand down my curves.

He licks me, pets me, drags his hand down my body while he flicks his tongue along the back of my ear, at my nape, the curve of my shoulder, lapping and tasting me.

Remy has thrived without love, even paternal love. He has thrived even when he fights a mood disorder every day of his life. He has thrived and gotten up every time he has fallen. The only times I have truly fallen, in my Olympic tryouts and when he lost last year’s fight, I’ve been permanently marked and have hobbled to get back walking. Yet he instantaneously stands to run.

He is so complicated and unpredictable, I fear that even when I’ve given everything of myself to this man, he will always have me, but he will never really be mine.

“I’m hungry,” he tells me in my ear, then eases out of bed and jumps into his drawstring pajama bottoms.

“Oh, no, I want to sleep . . .” I groan, and clutch my pillow as he grabs my ankles and hauls me down the length of the bed.

“Come eat with me, little firecracker.”

“Noooooo . . .” I clutch the pillow to me as he drags me down the bed and, in my last attempt to remain in bed, I kick into the air. “I’m getting fat because of you!” I laughingly squeak.

With a low, sexy chuckle, he lifts me up as if I were just the pillow, then tosses the pillow aside, only keeping me to kiss. “You’re beautiful.”