Keeping her arm around me, Diane helps me limp my way into the master bedroom, and we find the guys jerking Remington’s clothes off until he’s in his gray boxers. Then they struggle to get him onto the bed.

“Get the other side,” Pete says, and Riley hauls him up from the bed’s far edge.

“Rem, what the hell are we to do with you? Huh, dude?” Pete chidingly says as he puts him into bed and cleans him up.

“Brooke,” Remington growls angrily.

“She’s coming, dude!” Pete says with a laugh.

They struggle to adjust him on the bed so that he faces me. They plop a pillow behind his head, and I see his eyes are halfway open. They fix on me as Diane helps me to bed, and they’re fully black and almost frantic when he sees me. I still marvel at how fast they can change, those beautiful eyes of his. How his body can completely make this transformation within minutes. His large, tanned hands are idle at his sides, but his finger twitches like he wants to touch me, and suddenly all the fingers of my hands ache with the same urge to touch and comfort him.

“Okay?” he rasps to me, his gaze stormy and dark and vivid with frustration.

I can also feel his frustration. He wanted to go defend me, and they stopped him. I can feel his angry turmoil whirling around us as I clamber into bed with him and cover us to the waist.

“More than okay,” I say gently as I put my arms around his hard shoulders and stroke the top of his head.

I can feel the tension ease from his body as he closes his eyes and suddenly sags. Sinking my face into his hair, I desperately haul his scent into my lungs and hold him tightly as his weight settles against my side, shifting so that his head is pillowed by my breasts. “I love you so much,” I hiss into his ear. “Wake up soon, okay? I’ve got you now.”

“This is going to be a difficult season,” I hear Pete say.

I nod in understanding, but I can’t take my eyes off him, his beautiful lashes resting on his cheekbones, his lips slightly parted. I stroke my fingers over his boyish face with that sexy scruffy jaw.

Riley says, “Let me go pick up Lupe from the gym and tell him our guy’s not coming.”

Pete watches me as I slowly start rubbing Remy’s scalp, then he brings me some water and another ice pack and sets them on the nightstand while Diane tells me she’ll clean up outside.

“How you doing?” Pete asks me.

I nod. “Better with the pill combo,” I whisper. Then I add, “I’m sorry I called you guys assholes.”

“I’m sorry we had to . . . but he was there. The motherfucker.” He flattens his lips into an angry line, then keeps staring at me oddly.

“You’re the one thing that calms him, Brooke, but you’re also the one that completely triggers him.” Pete sighs and stares out the window at the little desertlike garden outside our room. “And Scorpion knows there’s something about you that makes Remington lose it. He’s going to keep provoking him. He’s going to try to fuck with his head and lure out every inch of Remington’s beast.”

“We can’t, Pete, we can’t let anybody fuck with his head.” I kiss Remy’s forehead, sending all my love to his beautiful brain and quietly promising, I won’t let anyone fuck with you.

“Remington is as strong as he’s ever been right now,” Pete says. “But you’re a big weakness of his. He’d lose for you, quit for you. Kill for you. Medicate his ass off for you.”

I wipe my tears and pull Remy’s head deeper between my breasts. “Pete, please don’t sedate him anymore. We have to find another way.”

“Dude, he’s as strong as half a dozen men combined. How do you suggest anyone stop him? Let me tell you, if the Underground organizers decide to make that final match one of full submission . . .” He shakes his head and stands.

“What do you mean? What is that—submission?”

He looks at me drearily, then sighs. “Nothing. But Remington’s got a hankering for Scorpion. He’s a noble man, but he won’t have mercy on that asshole—and if he gets a chance to kill him up in the ring, let me tell you right now, he will.” He walks to the door. “Now let me go and find us another hotel.”

Nodding at him and whispering, “Thank you,” I turn back to my big lion.

“Let’s get comfortable,” I say to Remy. I pull off my clothes with shaky, clumsy hands, then peel off his underwear because I know he’s always naked in bed. Then I come back to take his head and press it against my breasts, caressing his hair. I kiss his temple. “I got you now.” His breathing is slow and even. His finger twitches at his side, and I grab his hand and wrap it around my waist. “Do you like holding me like this?” I ask softly, not really expecting an answer. I snuggle and coil my arms around his shoulders, picturing him the day I left him in the hospital.

Black and confused, manic, and desperate to say something to me.

And I was too afraid to stay . . .

My eyes well up again, and suddenly, not only the stings hurt, but all my body aches on the inside.

Swallowing back the lump in my throat, I tighten my hold and bury my face in his hair, kissing him fiercely several times, anywhere I can. His breathing is slow and even, but mine is still hitched over what happened. All I know is that it stops hurting when I look at him, when I smell him, and when I touch him.

So I run my hands around the hard muscles of his bare shoulders and then lean over and kiss the shell of his ear, then his smooth, warm temple. He smells like him, seducing me, and I duck to smell his neck as I run my fingers down his back, the hard squares of his abs, then buzz my lips across his jaw.

He murmurs something unintelligible, and his finger twitches. I frame his jaw within my hands and place a soft kiss on his lips. “Thank you for defending me, but I won’t let you ruin your dreams for me anymore,” I tell him.

I run my fingers over his muscled chest, his neck, his corded arms, up his thick neck, where I bend to kiss his low, steady pulse point. He makes another noise, and I wonder what he thinks. Does he hear me? I think he does.

I grab his iPod and my earbuds so that we can share, and I look for a song that I’ve wanted to play to him. I place one earbud in his ear and one in mine and play him the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Stay with You.” I take his hand in one of mine and kiss his knuckles, stroking his hair as we listen, the song making me forget that every part where I was stung hurts as if I still have the stingers inside me. I hold him as we listen. My fighter. He fights everything, even himself, but I love that he’s never fought loving me.

* * *

HE’S COMPLETELY SPEEDY.

Two days after the Gift—as we now call it—it was all over the news that the Underground fighter known as Scorpion and his team had been apprehended and charged with damages to a motel room due to the explosion of firecrackers inside.

Yes. Firecrackers.

When I asked Pete and Riley what happened, they just said Remington never leaves a message unanswered. “He could’ve tried for something that would’ve gotten Scorpion kicked off the tour, but he clearly wants to end this in the ring.”

Now Pete is getting some sort of device to protect me during the next fight, and I very much hope that I will be carrying one of those devices in case I need to beat the shit out of anything Scorpion related.

The rhythmic sound of Remy punching his speed bag echoes in the large gymnasium, and today, we can all feel the magic.

I can always tell when he’s having a good training day, because his energy takes over the room. He inspires me, he inspires anyone nearby. His fire lights our fires. It’s palpable, like a rope swishing in the air. Remington’s energy is so powerful, I can smell it, taste it.

Coach has been pacing around the area Remington is training in, clearly buzzed with all that energy. Riley has been watching nearby while swinging in the air in shadowboxing style, and I spent two hours running on a treadmill, facing in Remy’s direction and getting all my inspiration from the way he takes on his every athletic task.

Now I stretch on the sidelines, my body, which is still peppered with scorpion marks, spread out on the floor mats as I do some yoga.

I still remember stirring awake the night of the stings, the small garden outside our room completely dark by then. Little pinpricks of pain ran all over my body when suddenly I felt Remington haul me to his hard body and start swiping all my stings with my own salve. God. And his voice, so lazy, a little drunk with the sedative, but oh so tender and concerned as he said, “Look at you.”

I said, completely disbelieving, “Look at me? Look at you!”

And we laughed miserably. Mine was really just a bluff, because, frankly, he looked lazy and relaxed, his speediness not really apparent because of the downer quality of the drug. He didn’t look pitiful in any way, shape, or form, as I felt. Remington oozes strength. Even when he’s asleep. Or down. A lion sleeping is still a fucking lion.

Now he’s killing it at the gym, and I’m up on down-dog pose when suddenly, I hear him stop punching. Unaccustomed to the silence, I lift my head from where it hangs between my arms to the floor, and peer up at him. He’s looking at my ass—up in the air. My insides do something weird, and I straighten and give him a little smile. His dimples peek out at me in return, then he lifts his powerful arms and starts swinging again, hitting his speed bag again and again.

I love the way he trains. Each powerful hit lands hard and dead center, and his beautiful face has that quiet look of concentration I find so sexy. His biceps bulge as he slams the bag repeatedly, and he’s so focused on what he’s doing, I hear him growl at the bag sometimes, low and deep in his throat.