“I told you I loved you with every petal of every rose,” he tells me in a low, husky whisper. Then he scrapes the pad of his thumb over my mouth again, more roughly this time, with more need, as his voice, velvet-edged and strong, sends a ripple of heat through me.
“At the institute one of my female doctors got a rose. She told me it was from her husband, because he loved her and he was away. Isn’t that what you send when you’re not there to tell someone you fucking love them? Brooke, I’ve never done this before, but it fucking hurts to look at you through a fucking screen. It hurts to text. It hurts like no fucking punch hurts.”
He spreads his fingers open at the back of my neck as if he needs to touch as much of me as possible, his eyes glowing to such a fierce degree, it only makes my heart thud harder.
“Didn’t you hear the songs!? They were all for you, Brooke. Didn’t you know I thought of you? Missed the hell out of you? If I haven’t showed you I love you, then tell me in what ways I’m fucking this up!”
“I wanted you to want me at the fight! Like you always do. You’ve always wanted me there before. Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you come see me before?”
“God, I want you there like I want nothing! Do you think I enjoy a second of this hell? If I’d come seen you before the fight, you think I’d have the will to leave you? How can you think this is easy for me, Brooke? How?”
The vivid frustration in his eyes cuts me so deep I drop my head, because, no, I don’t think it’s easy for him at all.
“You think you need me, little firecracker?” The gruff question travels all the way through me, and I have to press my thighs together to stop the tremor in me. “Baby, the way you need me can only barely cover half of the way I need you.” The unexpected sadness in his voice yanks my gaze back to his.
“My game is half of what it used to be. I can’t concentrate. I can’t sleep. I can’t get in the game. I’m like a robot out there. I feel a hole right here—right fucking here.” He places his fist over his chest. “I’m trying to protect my girl. Three doctors, three, said she had to be in bed for the first three months, with no travel. I can’t see her, I can’t make love to her—I am trying to do the right thing when my gut screams that SHE belongs with ME.” He narrows his eyes, exhaling roughly through his nose. “Every second that you and I breathe, you belong with me.”
“Remy, I’m sorry. This is driving me crazy too.” I cover my face and try breathing through my constricted throat, but he grabs my wrists and forces my arms to my sides, seizing my gaze with his own, his eyes vividly blue.
“I love you so much.” He engulfs my face in both big, beautiful callused hands. “So fucking much, Brooke, I still don’t know what to do with myself,” he says, and kisses the bridge of my nose with a low, shuddering breath. “I miss everything about you, from the way you smile to the way you look at me to the way the bed smells when you’re with me. I love you like I love nothing in my life, nothing. It eats me up inside like a disease to want to come get you and bring you back with me.”
I start trembling at the end of the bed, all my emotions, all my raging hormones, all my cells, all my being, buzzing at his words. My entire body throbs with love, lust, and the physical agony of being denied my Remy fix for weeks. Shaking, I reach out and lovingly stroke three fingers down the hard line of his jaw. “This,” I say, the word breaking from my lips, “is what I see in my bedroom. This face. This face is all I see, all I see, Remy.”
“Damn you, take this shit off and let me look at my Brooke.”
He grabs my wig and tosses it aside, then he holds my gaze as our smiles fade. The air between us pulses and leaps like our need is a living, breathing thing between us. “Why would anyone want to cover this hair?” Quietly, he eases the net off the top of my head, and the low rustling sound is all that is audible in the room.
Slow, deliciously expert fingers delve into my bun and work to loosen my hair, and the contact of his fingertips against my scalp sends frissons down my spine.
By the time he frees the mahogany strands so they fall on my shoulders, my thighs have dissolved into a puddle along with the rest of me. A thin sheen of sweat coats his thick throat, and his pecs glisten, too. His torso is so tight and so solid it seems as impenetrable as a steel wall, as if nothing can ever hurt him. His arm muscles bulge as he strokes his hands down my hair, and I’m as unraveled as my bun.
When I speak, my voice is as husky as I’ve ever heard it. “I was supposed to be an old groupie.”
“My,” he says, in a whisper that is so much deeper and rougher than mine.
“What?”
“My sweet . . . disobedient . . . favorite little groupie.”
Being called his again . . .