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.”

“Every beautiful woman in the world is beautiful because she sleeps,” I protest weakly, at the same time nuzzling his throat.

He grabs one of his T-shirts from his suitcase and hands it to me. I wiggle into it as he carries us out to the living area of the penthouse suite, then he drops me down on a chair and fishes out his food. He brings two plates, one heaping, and the other containing more normal portions. Then he plops down across from me and pats his lap with a meaningful stare.

I lean back in my chair and start eating an asparagus spear from the tip. “We have very bad eating habits. If you take me to a restaurant, I can’t eat perched on your lap like some sort of canary. People will think we have problems.”

He sticks a roasted cauliflower floret into his mouth and munches. “Who cares?”

“Excellent point.” Eating the stalk of asparagus down to the end, I observe him across me, with those tattoo bracelets on his arms, his hair a delicious mess, and his blue eyes twinkling. God. He is all. I want. In this world. Right on that chair. “And this is actually not as comfortable as you, I admit.” I squirm in the chair for emphasis.

He lifts a brow, his eyes sparkling devilishly. “Stop playing hard-to-get, Brooke. I already got you.” He tosses a paper napkin at me. I grab another, wad it, and toss it. He sets the fork down and reaches one long arm out to grab the end of my chair. He hauls it across the floor, and the moment he can wrap his arm around my waist, I squeak as he transfers me over.

“Settle down now. We both want you here.” He cups my face and turns me, his lips curling in a tender smile as he surveys my features with new intensity. “We okay now?”

Linking my fingers at the back of his neck, I meet his gaze. “Mostly I’m just angry at me. I’m hurt and jealous. . . . It makes no sense in my head, but the rest of me doesn’t listen. I just didn’t expect to have so much trouble figuring out how to cope with this.”

“You cope knowing I love you, that’s how you cope. I fucking love you,” he hisses. “I want nothing more than to tell you it didn’t happen,” he continues, looking tortured, “There’s only one woman for me and I’d kill myself for you.” He nuzzles me like he means it, then trains his beseeching blue eyes on me. I swear I don’t think I’ve ever loved him so much as right now, this moment. “Forgive me. I forgave you, little firecracker. I forgave you before you even asked me to forgive you for leaving me. I wasn’t me when you left, baby, whatever pieces of me remained . . . that wasn’t me.”

My heart squeezes when I look at him. I take a roasted cauliflower floret between two fingers as a peace offering and lift it to his lips, feeding it to him.

Eyes glinting, he takes it all in his mouth, including part of my fingers, licking them. He’s still feasting on my fingers when he follows suit and grabs a piece of cauliflower and feeds it to me, and as all the herb flavors and olive oil melt in my mouth, I suck on his fingers too. I love the way his eyes flash when I do that.

“I love you, but don’t ever let them punch you on purpose like you did tonight,” I tell him in a raw, emotional voice, rubbing my wet fingertips over his lips, feeling them move under my touch at his gruff whispered, “I won’t until you make me.”

FIVE

A PRESENT

Sunlight steals through the window. Remington isn’t in bed. I twist to scan our cute little cottage but can’t see him anywhere. I force myself to slide out of bed and hop into my track pants, then my sports bra and top.

After freshening up, I grab my sneakers and pad out barefoot to find Diane in the kitchen. “Good morning, Brooke,” she says merrily. I love how she travels with her aprons and gives every one of our hotel rooms such a cozy ambience.

She even travels with her green ceramic pans—ones that don’t shed aluminum, so Remington’s food is completely pure.

“Hmm, it smells divine,” I say as I wander around in search of breakfast.

“Dive in. The big man asked me to set a ton aside for you.”

I lift a bowl of sweet potato hash and munch. “What time did he leave?”

“Pete came and got him a couple of minutes ago.”

“Pete? Not Riley? What gym did he go to?” There’s a knock on the door, and I lick the coconut oil Diane used to cook the hash from my fingers as I go to open it.

“Brooke Dumas?”

A woman stands holding a medium-size box wrapped in red paper but without a bow. “Yes?”

Her smile widens. “Mr. Tate ordered this for you.” She hands me the huge box, and I stare in disbelief.

“Remington sent me this?” I ask stupidly.

“Yes, miss. Enjoy.” I kick the door shut as she leaves, my hands full of the big box of surprise Remington sent me.

Ohmigod. He’s completely unexpected. He not only seduces me with music, with his blue devil eyes, with his spiky hair, with his dimples and his delicious fucking smell, he gets me presents?

I immediately tear the box open and discard the top, and I see lots of white packing peanuts inside. I stick my hand among the bubblelike shapes and feel a bunch of tickles running up my finger. Frowning, I take my hand out, and three enormous scorpions come out attached to it.

For a moment, everything is in slow motion.

Everything.

I can see the insects perfectly moving up my arm. I can see the long, segmented tails. The claw on the tail’s tip, the two claws up front, and the eight legs moving on my forearm. I also dazedly register three black dots on each of their heads, as if they have three eyes. Do scorpions have three eyes?

Everything, I register.

In half a second.

And then, in the very next second, I register something else. That this is one of the most WHAT-THE-FUCK MOMENTS OF MY LIFE.

I fall back and kick the box. A dozen or more scorpions come crawling out as I try shaking off the ones already on me. My heart has flown up to my throat and now it’s constricting my airway as it flutters and pounds in my pure building hysteria.

“HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! DIANE!”

I have scorpions. Scorpions. Crawling. Up my fucking arm! They are huge, half the size of my palm, each with eight legs. Seriously? Only eight legs? I feel a thousand legs on me. I feel legs on every inch and centimeter of my skin. I start convulsing and shaking like crazy on the floor, screaming when I feel my first sting on my forearm. “OH MY GOD, DIANE!!”

Suddenly I feel a fourth one crawling up my ankle and I notice that all this time, Diane has been screaming hysterically. “Brooke! Oh my god! Somebody do something!”

“GET THEM OFF ME, DIANE!! GET THEM OFF!”

I don’t know why I am yelling frantically as if that will scare them away. Afraid to touch them with my hand, I’m instead twisting and squirming on the floor when a bucket of water crashes upon me. I suck in my breath as I watch Diane rush back to the kitchen, fill another pan full of water, and throw it at me. But the scorpions are hanging on.

I reach for one and try to push it off me, and its tail snaps at me. The stinger hits my thumb. Instant pain shoots into me as the others keep crawling. Crawling. On me. I don’t know if these animals have been drugged or starved or given something to alter them. They are almost crawling on me like spiders, fast and frantic over me. One swings its tail and sticks its stinger into the skin of my forearm. Then it sticks a second stinger into me. Pain shoots through me. I feel another sting up on my arm, and then I stop squirming and freeze. Fight or flight is full force in me. But I can’t run, and I can’t fight, and now I freeze, my body paralyzed in fear while all my organs go wild at the threat these things pose to me. All my fear rushes to the forefront, and I start crying helplessly.