My god.

I can’t believe what he does to me. I can’t even explain this shivering-shuddering-twittering combination inside me, but it’s ridiculous.

“He’s checking up on you, dude, I don’t see the amusement here,” Pete says, in alarm. “His scouts have been asking all around the hotels to know where we’ll be staying next.”

“Just relax and keep watch, Pete,” Remington says, and I just stare for a moment, hearing a catch in my breath.

My blue-eyed lion.

His black hair stands up devilishly. The inky Celtic bands across his muscled arms flex as he slowly sips on an electrolyte drink. I see his glorious tanned torso. Those sweatpants riding low on his narrow hips and revealing just the tip of his star tattoo. His bare feet. He looks hot, strong, and cuddlable, and the pulsing energy that seems to radiate from his very being feels like a magnet to me.

“Brooke, good morning!” Diane Werner, his chef and nutritionist, says from the kitchen.

Almost lazily, Remington turns and slowly, ever so slowly, stands, his muscles rippling with the move. Brilliant blue eyes rake over my body, taking me in in his red robe, which drapes all the way down to my ankles, and a territorial gleam sparks in his gaze in a way that makes every single womanly part of me tighten with wanting.

“Well, hello there, Miss Riptide,” Pete jumps in, his brown eyes glowing in amusement.

I smile. Because I not only want to wear my Riptide’s clothes, I wish he’d ask me to wear his name even when I’d once told my best friend I would never, ever, marry because my career would always come first. Snort!

“Hey, Pete and Diane,” I say in a sleepy voice, but my eyes are on Remington, and my heart won’t stand still.

Will it ever stand still when I’m around him? As I stare at him this morning just like every morning for the past few months, I tell myself I am not dreaming, he’s not a fantasy, he is real. My REAL.

He saved my sister from the claws of a man I can’t even name. Remington threw last season’s championship fight in exchange for her freedom—without even hesitating. Without even telling me. He lost his title, a huge amount of money, and could have lost his life, all to rescue my sister, Nora.

But I didn’t know it was for me.

All I knew was that suddenly he was at the last season’s fight. Losing. Being beaten. Battered. Falling down. Getting up. Spitting at Scorpion.

I wanted to die.

My fighter, always so driven, persistent, passionate, and determined, refused to fight.

God, I was so, so wrong.

He wasn’t punishing me—he was saving my sister for me.

If he hadn’t come back to my hometown of Seattle, with Nora delivered back safely, I’d have made the biggest mistake of my life, and I’d have paid for it for the rest of my life.

I’d have lived the rest of my days loveless, smileless, and, worst of all, Remyless. Like I would have deserved.

As I struggle with the thousand pounds of remorse this memory gives me, his dimples flash, and if I thought I was happy moments ago, nothing compares to this avalanche.

“Hey,” I whisper.

“So my little firecracker lives,” he says with a devilish glint in his eye.

“Only barely after you.”

He bursts out laughing, and Pete coughs. “Guys, I’m kind of still here, and so is Diane.”

My smile fades, but although Remington’s doesn’t, his smile softens, and so does the look in his eyes. Suddenly, he makes me feel shy. Virginal. Like he stripped me naked last night and this morning I am without all my bravado, without any stitch of protection, wearing only something that belongs to him.

Still using those dimples like lethal weapons against me, he comes over.

My body is all over the place as I force myself to walk and meet him halfway, and I bite back a squeak when he reaches out one muscled arm, hooks one finger into the sash of my robe, and pulls me the last distance to him. “Get over here,” he rumbles.

He bends his head and sets a kiss on the back of my ear as he spreads his hand open on the small of my back, stroking up to the RIPTIDE letters on the back, as if to remind me they are there. I’m breathless when he ducks his head to my neck and drags in a long, deep inhale of me. Shit, he kills me when he does that, and between my legs, I feel a painful little clench of need.

“Remington, are you listening to me?” Pete asks.

Remington growls my name softly, low and deep, in the way he does when he fucks. “Good morning, Brooke Dumas.” My tummy clenches in response to that, and with the soft kiss he sets on my ear, my knees going buttery, because he always does this to me, and as Pete’s voice repeats what he just said, I start stepping away, but Remington won’t let me.

He kicks the chair farther out and drops down, hauling me with him. Then he shifts me to one of his thighs so he can grab his sports drink from the table and finally looks at Pete, his voice low but firm. “Double our scouts and follow theirs.”

His fingers trace down my back as he downs the bottle, and Pete is left scratching and shaking his head in complete confusion.

“Rem . . . dude . . . the fucking bastard cheated to win, and he knows he’s going to lose as long as you’re fighting this season. He’s spying on us now, and he’s going to do his best to sabotage you this year. He’s going to try to screw with your head. Provoke the shit out of you!”

I’m barely wrapping my head around the topic, but whatever it is, “provoking” Remington is not a good idea. He’s got a temper, usually. He’s hardheaded and insistent and stubborn, but especially, he is Bipolar 1, and you don’t want to rouse his black side unless you’re prepared to deal with more than two hundred pounds of reckless that doesn’t sleep.

I like my more than two hundred pounds of reckless, but his reckless still worries me even if he doesn’t seem in the slightest perturbed by Pete’s warnings.

Instead of answering his PA, he turns to me and threads his fingers at the hair on my nape. “Do you want breakfast?” he asks me.

Biting the inside of my cheek, I lean over and drop my voice to spare Pete. “You mean aside from the one that walked out of my bed?” He pinches my nose and now leans to me. “Business called your breakfast out of bed today.”

“I actually feel strangely hungover this morning, I’m not hungry at all.”

“Hungover from what? My mouth?” he asks, his eyes dancing.

I look at his mouth and it is so full and perfect. The way he uses it is perfect. Every measured word he speaks is perfect. Sexy bastard. Of course he gives me hangovers, the kind I’d never met until him.

“You know,” Pete interjects, “I’d feel less concerned about him and what he plans to do if he didn’t know your Kryptonite now.” He nods at me.

“He’s not even getting near my Kryptonite. I’ll break him first.” The quiet conviction with which he says this makes gooseflesh jump on my arms, and I think I’m a little nauseous.

Last season’s final match is my worst nightmare.

“Yet I can totally envision him finding ways to reach out to your Kryptonite already,” Pete says. “Finding ways to push your red button, get you all bothered and reckless.”

Remington turns to me, then he shoves my hair aside and tips my head back to study me, like he knows I can barely hear that man’s name—much less hear them talk about it.

The Black Scorpion is my own personal Voldemort. That asshole hurt my sister, then me. And worst of all, he hurt Remington. At that season final. He hurt him because of me. God, I fantasize killing the bastard.

“He’s gonna tease you, torment you . . .” Pete continues in an ominous tone.

Remy watches me in silence, his chest bare, his neck tanned and strong, and when he turns his attention back to Pete, his voice is more somber.

“Pete, he hasn’t even made a play, and you’re losing your shit,” he tells him.

“’Cause I’m the one left to fix things when you lose it.” Pete smoothes a hand down his black tie. “This season could get downright nasty. We want you strong and prepared, dude. We need to head to the airport in a half hour, tops, but I warn you, Phoenix might not be as calm as we anticipated.”

“I’ll keep it together. Just double our scouts,” Remington says, serious now, then he takes one last swig of his sports drink and sets the empty bottle aside.

“All right, let me call in some more. . . .” I watch Pete head over to the kitchen and punch his cell phone pad.

Now Remington’s voice deepens as he gives me his undivided attention. “You overslept,” he murmurs, cupping my face as he smiles down at me. “Wore you out last night?”

His voice oozes all kinds of sex and tenderness. As I nod, I feel myself go warm inside. “I hear sex gods do that,” I tease.

He laughs softly and strokes my lips with his thumb. “That’s right. You ready to go?”

I nip his thumb and smile as I nod.

“I missed you in bed this morning,” I whisper.

“God, me too. I need to be the first thing those pretty eyes see every morning.”

He presses me to him and buries his face in my hair, and all the tension from hearing the word “Scorpion” and the nausea leaves me when I smell him. I tuck my nose into his chest and inhale him as he inhales me, and the room falls, and the world falls, and in this moment nothing matters. Nothing matters but him, his arms around me and my arms around him. I think a part of him still can’t believe I’m in his arms again, because he’s squeezing me so tight I can hardly breathe, but I don’t want to breathe. I’m so affected by his scent, the feel of his powerful arms around me, when just two months ago I’d stupidly given up on him, I can barely take it.