But I’m nobody’s god.

I’m just a fucking sick fool.

The pain is excruciating. I want to do some damage, but I just don’t want to damage her. My voice is grim with rage, and it’s a miracle I can even speak as I fight to stay in place, to keep my hands down, to try to control myself. “I want to do more than talk to you,” I rigidly tell her.

My nostrils flare, and I don’t want her to look at me in fear, but all I can see is her mouth.

Her beautiful mouth.

On that motherfucker’s face!

“All right, let’s talk. Excuse me, Diane.” She surprises me by saying it almost as calmly as if I’ve just proposed a fucking picnic to her! She pushes her chair back and makes a whole circus about folding back her napkin.

The anger builds inside me and I keep seeing, in my mind’s eye, her mouth puckered and kissing the very man whose fault it is I’m no longer a boxer. I want to grab her. I want to crush her to me and shake her. I flex my hands at my sides to keep them from doing that and more, and I can’t breathe right, I can’t think right. I want to kill Scorpion and carve his motherfucking skin off!

I want to throw something. I want to yell. I want to take her clothes off and fuck her and show her She. IS. MINE! Mine to touch, to hold, to protect.

“I just went to see my sister,” she breathes.

My gut coils in rage that she would not trust me to get her sister back to her like I’d promised.

I reach out, and my hand trembles as I touch her mouth, then I duck and angrily bite it. She gasps at the feel of my teeth, and it gives me pleasure, perverse pleasure, that she is reminded that that mouth is for me.

“You go negotiate with scum like him? Without me knowing?” I scrape my thumb across. I want to drag her up to my room and wash her mouth with soap. I want to lick it clean and then make her tell me that picture does not really exist!

“I went to see my sister, Remy. I couldn’t care less about the scum,” she softly tells me.

I touch her hair, trying to be slow while my insides roil and pull and twist, and I keep rubbing her lips. These are lips I love, lips that move me, that kiss me, the only lips I have ever thought loved me. “Yet you kiss that fucking asshole with the same mouth you kiss me?” I growl.

“Please just count to ten.” She touches my sleeve, and the anger rises in me even more. She thinks that I can count to a fucking million and forget this?

“One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten,” I angrily rush out, then I grab her collar and pull her to me, leaning over her with narrowed eyes. “You kiss that motherfucker with the same mouth I would kill for?”

“My lips hardly touched the tattoo,” she whispers pleadingly. “I did just what you do when you let them get a hit and give them false confidence so I could see my sis.”

I slam my chest. “You’re my fucking girl! You don’t get to give anyone false confidence!”

“Sir, we need you to leave the premises now.”

I swing around to watch some idiot coming over. Pete and Riley stop him and start telling him I’m going to pay for all the shit I do, and, hell, the man has no idea I have done nothing yet. He can stay and watch me break everything in this stinking place, and then I’ll gladly invite him to come over and watch me crack Scorpion’s skull in two.

Shooting him a warning glare, I turn back to Brooke and slide a finger down her pretty jaw, watching the way her breasts rise and fall with her panting breaths. “I’m going to go break that fucker’s face,” I whisper to her, then I lean over and push my tongue into her cruel, delicious little mouth, “and then I’m going to break you into submission.”

“Remy, calm down,” Riley begs me.

“That’s all right, Riley, I don’t break that easy, and he’s sure welcome to try,” Brooke snaps, scowling at me.

Scowling back, I fist her hair in my hand and crush her mouth with mine, giving her a hard, angry kiss meant to punish her. “When I get you in bed, I’m going to scrub you raw with my fucking tongue until there’s nothing anywhere on you from him. Only me. Only me.”

She seemed to like my punishing kiss—goddamn her—now I’m so fucking hard I want to take her right here, right now.

Her pupils are dilated, and her body seems to lean on mine as she breathes, “All right, take me there.”

I want to. Fuck, I almost do. Fuck everything else but me and her.

Jerking back, I look at her narrowly. “I don’t have fucking time to take care of you,” I snap before I head to the door.

“Remy, come back. Don’t get in trouble!” she calls out.

I stop, then I drag a bunch of air into my burning lungs, but it’s impossible to calm down, the anger and the possessiveness, the fucking jealousy in me is so great, greater than me.

I whirl around, then I jab the air with one finger so she fucking understands the situation and where we fucking stand. “Protecting you is my privilege. I will protect you and anything that you value as if it were mine.”

She stares breathlessly at me, and I don’t think she gets it. She loves her sister, but she needs to know that I am her man and she is untouchable by anyone but me. Anyone. But me.

“That sick asshole has just begged me to end his miserable life, and I’m happy to oblige,” I angrily inform her, running my eyes meaningfully over her body, every inch of which belongs to me as completely as mine belongs to her. “He’s just taken something sacred from me and pissed on it!” I storm back at her and push a finger between her breasts. “Understand me. You. Are. Mine!”

“Remington, she’s my sister,” she pleads.

“And the Scorpion will never let go of her. He keeps his women drugged and dependent, their minds in pieces so tiny they can’t even think. He’ll never give her up unless he wants something even more than her. Is it you? Does he want you, Brooke? He could have drugged you. Stripped you. Fucked you—goddamn my life, he could have fucked you!”

“No!”

“Did he touch you?”

“He didn’t! They’re doing this to provoke you, don’t let them! Save it for the ring tomorrow. Please. I want to be with you tonight.”

“I was with her the whole time, buddy, nothing happened,” Riley suddenly intercedes, calmly patting my arm.

When I realize what he’s telling me, I swing around to grab his shirt in my fist, the fury skyrocketing inside me. “You let my girl get in that scumbag’s face, you little shit?” I lift him off the ground.

“Remy, no!” Brooke comes to my side and futilely tugs on my arm.

I shake Riley. “You let her kiss that filthy scum’s ink?”

Pete taps my shoulder. “All right, buddy, let’s put Destroyer to bed now, huh?”

There’s a prick on my neck, and my adrenaline kicks in with a vengeance. Motherfucking shit, I can’t fucking black out now. I drop Riley and yank out the syringe and toss it aside. I go grab Brooke and stare at her. I want to tell her never to doubt me again, never to go behind my back again, and never—ever—believe I won’t protect her and what is hers, but I open my mouth and she looks so scared and so beautiful, panting and worried, that instead I make a low, gruff sound and crush her mouth, punishing myself with her taste, the sweet, wet taste of her, so pure and good, and how I hate that she put her beautiful mouth on that motherfucker because of her love for her sister. I tear free and release her before charging off.

My heart kicks wildly in my chest, fighting the sedative. All I can think of is introducing my knuckles into Scorpion’s face. I’m going to make him eat my fist, and then I’m going to make him go pick up his teeth from where they fall.

I know where he’s staying. We all know where each other is staying, if only to avoid each other. There are usually several hotels close to the designated Underground location, and Pete always finds out where Scorpion is so the only place we meet is in the ring.

He’s four blocks away, in a cheap five-story building littered with groupies at the lobby. When they see me, I hear a collective gasp, and all I have to do is growl, “Scorpion,” and two of them begin moaning excitedly and rubbing up against my sides, sandwiching me as we take the elevator. When we reach Scorpion’s floor, I get them to lead me to his door before I halt their roaming hands and squeeze their wrists so they stand still.

“Get them to open up,” I growl.

One of them rubs my chest while the other knocks. “Willie! Hey, Willie, it’s Trish,” she calls out.

The door opens and I immediately swing out my arm, my fist connecting with Willie’s face. He falls splat on the floor. Two other assholes sit on a flowery sofa watching TV, and they leap to their feet.

I go straight for the nearest one and grab him by the shirt. “Hello, motherfucker,” I tell him as I swing my fist. Bones crack. Blood sputters as I toss him down and grab the next, smashing my knuckles so his nose cracks just as hard. When I let him drop to his knees, I see him—Scorpion—at the door to a bedroom, his eyes slightly wide and as yellow as dog piss.

Clamping my jaw, I angrily stalk over as he lifts his palms up to ward me off. “Now, now, Riptide, you don’t want to do this here.”

“Yes, I do.” I grab his shirt and pound my fist three consecutive times into his face.

He tries to hit me back but I’m pounding him too fast. I shove him down to the ground and spot a girl there, crying, watching us from a chair by the bed. She looks nothing like Brooke. Her stare is empty, her hair is atrocious, and then I see a pencil at the nightstand as Scorpion tries standing. I grab it, and before he can stand, I ram it into the black tattoo he made Brooke kiss, tearing it downward. Blood spurts, and he releases a low, bloodcurdling scream as he tries to pull the pencil out.