She smashes her fist into my abs, and I’m so taken aback by her speed, I blink. “I’m so good,” she taunts.

Fuck, that’s about the hottest thing a woman’s done to me. She’s fucking punching me. I’m too distracted now. Here she is. In my ring. The first woman to ever get up here with me, and I’m sure god made her just this ballsy so she could stand up to me. I’m selfish like that. I think everything about her was made for me. I feel proprietary. Territorial. I want to make a claim. I want to take her down and strip her down and pin her under me.

She swings out with her foot and yelps when her foot strikes my sneakers. Instantly, I catch her by the arms, frowning in confusion. “What was that about?”

She scowls furiously. “You were supposed to fall.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“I’ve toppled men much heavier than you!”

“A fucking tree topples sooner than Remy, Brooke,” Riley shouts.

“Well, I can see that,” she grumbles, then cups her mouth and yells, “Thanks for the heads-up, Riley.”

I’m so annoyed she hurt herself with me, I lead her, as she hops on one foot, to the corner, where I drop down on the chair and haul her on top of me so I can prod her ankle. “You fucked your ankle, didn’t you?” And she says I’m reckless? That I hurt my body deliberately? Did she think she was better than my ring opponents, or what—the—hell?

“I just seemed to wrongly send all my weight to my ankle,” she admits.

“Why’d you hit me? Are you pissed at me?” I demand.

She scowls. “Why would I be?”

Fuck me, I know she’s angry—I’m no idiot—and I want to know what the hell I fucking did. If she doesn’t like me right now, then I don’t stand a chance when I get manic. Worse. When I get depressed like some loser asshole. “You tell me.”

She ducks her head as she catches her breath, a sheen of perspiration on her neck.

“Hey, can we get some water over here?” I call.

Riley brings over a Gatorade and a plain bottle of water and sets them by my feet.

“We’re wrapping up,” he informs us, then he peers around to have a good look at her. “You all right, B?”

“Dandy. Call me tomorrow, please. I can’t wait to get back in the ring with this dude.”

As Riley laughs his head off, I test her ankle with my fingers, prodding into the tissue. “That hurt, Brooke?” I ask as gently as possible, and then her fingers join mine around her ankle.

“You weigh a ton,” she tells me. “If you weighed a little less, I’d have toppled you. I even toppled my instructor.”

“What can I say?” I peer, confused, into her face, wishing to know what she’s thinking.

“You’re sorry? For my pride’s sake?”

I shake my head, annoyed that she try such a stunt with me—me. Bending, she grabs the Gatorade and unscrews it as she straightens, and the blood suddenly boils in my veins as she sips. Her neck, the way the sleek, long tendons work as she swallows, fuck me now. My cock thickens painfully under her bottom, and with a voice thickened with arousal, I can’t help but ask, “Can I get some?”

When I set my lips on the rim, it’s wet from hers, and the way she watches me drink makes my balls hurt. I want to toss this shit aside and drink directly from her mouth. Instead, I return the Gatorade and make sure I brush my fingers over hers at the exchange, because I’m a devil and I need the contact. My eyes stay locked on hers as I steal that touch that shoots like a bolt up my arm, and neither of us is laughing.

She tries standing, and I instantly take the bottle and set it down, then I wrap my arm around her waist. “I’ll help you up so you can ice that.”

She leans on me as I lower her from the ring and help her out of the gym, her arm coming around my waist.

“It’s fine,” she keeps on telling me.

“Stop arguing,” I softly command.

She keeps her arm around me as we board the hotel elevator, then I lock her at my side as we ride upstairs. In profile, her nose is exquisitely dainty, and that smooth, pink mouth is perennially curved in a way that tempts me to kiss it. Her scent tickles my nostrils, and as if with a mind of its own, my nose drops as I try to find the source of that delicious smell. Holy god, I want to lick up all that sexy sweat from her neck.

One of her firm, high-perched tits softly presses into my rib cage, and I can’t pull my brain out of there. I’m painfully aware of the way that sweet little tit brushes against my side as we exit the elevator.

“Hey, man, ready for the fight?” a hotel staff member asks from across the hall, and I offer him a thumbs-up as we reach her room.

“Key,” I whisper to her.

She fumbles, then quietly I take it from her hand, slide it into the slot, and help her inside. The first bed has a ton of family pictures facing the nightstand. I set her down on the second one and I grab the leather bucket. “I’ll get you ice.”

“That’s fine, Remy, I’ll do it later,” she protests.

I pull the lock out to stop the door and go into the hallway to fill the bucket up half with ice. When I return to the room, I add some water.

Her face is pink in embarrassment when I kneel at her feet and set the bucket on the carpet, and the black of her catsuit only heightens the peach hue of her skin. I remove her tennis shoe and her sock, then I curl my hand around her calf muscle and guide her foot into the cold.

“When we get this fixed, I’m going to show you how to knock me down,” I whisper, flicking my eyes up to hers, and, god, I could eat her. Eat. Her. She’s biting down on her lower lip, her eyes wide and almost vulnerable as she lets me guide her foot into what has to equal the freezing waters of Antarctica.

“Cold?” I ask.

She sounds like her lungs are closing. “Yeah.”

Slowly, I sink her foot deeper, and she tenses completely, all the animation gone from her face. I’m torn between the urge to stop torturing her, and fixing her ankle. “More water?”

She shakes her head and then surprises me when she shoves her foot all the way under the water. “Oh, shit,” she gasps. And I know I should hold her foot in no matter what, but my instinct to protect her is so fierce I yank her foot out, flattening her skin against my abs to suck the cold out from it with my body heat. My muscles clench in shock, and her wide, surprised gold eyes lock on my face in startlement. Every one of her tiny, cold toes burns into my flesh, and I’ve been so successful in teaching my body to embrace pain, I want them closer. I curve my hand around her instep and hold her flat against me.

She looks breathless. From the cold. Or from me? She also sounds breathless. “I didn’t know you gave pedicures, Remy.”

“It’s a fetish of mine.”

I smile a lazy smile, then I pull out an ice cube and stroke it gently across her ankle. I make sure that her skin doesn’t burn as I circle around her, and I’m moving slowly enough that I can hear her breathing rhythm quicken. I shift my hold on her foot and rub my thumb along the arch while still caressing her with the ice cube.

Her voice trembles through me, like a feather stroking my insides. “Do you do manicures too?”

I glance up at her, on the bed, looking at me like a woman does when she wants to give herself away, and the hunter in me is so ready I let her know with my tone of voice what I’m thinking, what I truly want, when I say, “Let me do your feet first, then I’ll do the rest of you.”

I keep going with the ice, and when the slide of her foot across my abs feels like a caress, shocks of electricity course through me.

“Feel better?” I ask gruffly, and my head is screaming at me to kiss her. She looks like she wants it. Her pink mouth is parted. Her eyes shine with heat as she looks down on me. Her feet are on my stomach, caressing the squares of my abs—and not by accident. My hands are cupping her foot, and I crave to bend my head and lick her toes, the arch up her foot, up her leg. I want to peel that catsuit off her body, feel her skin with my lips, my fingers, my knuckles, my palms. I’m drawn to her strength and her sweetness, her bravado that makes me want to push and tease her, that draws me out of my own cave, my own walls, if only just to chase her and bring her back to my cave with me.

I don’t know the name of this, or maybe I do.

It’s the one thing in my life I don’t plan on fighting.

For the first time in my life I’m thinking of things other than fucking and fighting. I want to take care of this girl. I’m thinking about how I want to fuck her hard and kiss her softly, hold her tight and suck her gently, when she abruptly tells me, “It feels perfect now. Thank you.”

We engage in a slight tug-of-war for her foot as she tries to pull free, and I’m not too happy to let her, and then the door swings open and Diane appears. “There you are,” she tells me with a big grin. “I must feed you now so you can recharge for tomorrow!”

I stare at Brooke, confused as hell, and the way she stares at me as if I’d imagined the connection puzzles the shit out of me. What the hell? Right now, I could’ve bet my life that she’d wanted me as much as I’d wanted her. I toss the ice into the bucket and lower her foot. “I am sorry, about your ankle,” I tell her. She wanted my apology, and now she has it. “Don’t worry if you can’t make it to the fight.”

“No. It wasn’t your fault. I’ll be fine,” she hurries to say.

I’m still confused as I push to my feet. “I’ll ask Pete to get you some crutches.”

“I’ll be fine. Serves me right for messing with trees,” she calls out as I head for the door.

I stop and look at her, trying to read her, and for a moment she stares back at me, looking just as confused as I feel.