“Don’t smile like that. I can knock you down with my feet,” I warn him.

“It’s not kickboxing. Or are you going to bite too?”

I swing out my leg high in the air in precisely a kickboxing move, which he deflects, very gently, and cocks a brow.

I try another one, and he deflects, and then I notice he’s standing in the center of the ring while I’m basically circling him. I know I can’t stand a chance in strength, but my plan is to dizzy him and then try to knock him down a peg. Riley calls what I’m going to do “weaving.” Which is just turning and twisting around your opponent so he misses. So I weave a little, and he’s clearly very entertained by me, so I try a test punch. He easily catches it in his full fist, then lowers my arm.

“No,” he chides softly, and curls his hand around mine to teach me how to fist my fingers correctly. “When you punch, you need to align your two lower arm bones—your ulna and radius—on par with your wrist. Your wrist can’t be slack, so hold it perfectly straight. Now start with your arm folded to your face, tighten your knuckles, and as you punch out, twist your arm so that your ulna, radius, and wrist feel like one piece of bone when you hit. Try it.”

I try it, and he nods. “Now use your other arm to guard.”

I keep one arm folded to cover my face, and then attack again, and again, noticing he’s just covering, but not counter-attacking.

Already the adrenaline rushes heady in my body, and I don’t know if it’s the mock fighting, or having those blue eyes so fixed on me, but I feel electrically charged suddenly. “Show me a move I don’t know,” I say breathlessly, liking this more than I anticipated.

He reaches out for both my arms and folds them up to guard my face with my fists. “All right, let’s do a one-two punch. Always cover your face with your hands, and your torso with your arms, even when you’re punching. Swing first with your left—” he pulls my arm toward his jaw “—then you shift your balance on your legs so you can follow with a power-punch with your right. You need good footwork here. Rip the strength from the punch from down here—” he pushes a finger into my core, then drags his hand all the way up my bare arm to my fist “—and send that power all the way to your knuckles.”

He makes a mock double blow that is fluid and perfect and makes little beads of sweat pop along my cleavage, and then I try it. Hitting left, squatting, shifting, and hitting harder with the right.

His eyes spark delightedly. “Try it again. Hit me at a different spot on your second punch.” He gets in position, his hands open to catch my blows.

Following orders, I use the first arm to deliver a quick punch to his left hand, which easily catches my blow, then I power punch the other hand with my right. My punches are delightfully accurate, but I think I need to put more strength into them.

“Double punch on your left,” he says, and moves his hand up to catch my blows.

“On your right,” he says, and on my first hit, I strike his open hand with my fist—poof. Then I decide to surprise him and land my right power-punch into his abs, which contract automatically as I hit and send surprising pain shooting up my knuckles. But even he looks surprised I got that last one in.

“I’m so good,” I taunt him as I ease back, bouncing on my calves like he does, and playfully sticking out my tongue.

He totally misses that, for he’s watching my breast bounce. “Real good,” he says, getting back in position. His eyes have darkened in a way that makes my insides roil with heat, and I decide this moment he’s distracted with my girls is better than any.

I swing out like I learned in self-defense. Legs are the strongest part of a woman’s body, and certainly an ex-sprinter’s. My aim is to strike his Achilles’ tendon with the ball of my foot, and knock both his big body and his ego to the ground.

But he moves the instant I swing, and I hit his tennis shoe instead. Pain screams up my ankle. He quickly catches me by the arm and straightens me up, his eyebrows jerking into a frown. “What was that about?”

I scowl. “You were supposed to fall.”

He just looks at me, his face blank for a moment. “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,” I grumble, and cup my mouth to yell, “Thanks for the heads up, Riley.”

Cursing under his breath, Remy holds my arm as he leads me, hopping, to the corner, where he drops down on a chair and, since there’s only one, hauls me down on top of him so he can test my ankle. “You fucked your ankle, didn’t you?” he asks, and it’s the first time I ever actually hear him sound so … annoyed at me.

“I just seemed to wrongly send all my weight to my ankle,” I grudgingly admit.

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

I scowl. “Why would I be?”

His eyes peer intrusively into mine, and he looks frighteningly solemn and definitely annoyed. “You tell me.”

Ducking my head, I stare down at my ankle and refuse to spill my guts out to anyone but Melanie.

“Hey, can we get some water over here?” he calls out, a sharp note of frustration in his words. Riley brings over a Gatorade and a plain bottle of water and sets them both on the ring floor at my feet.

“We’re wrapping up,” he tells us, and then, sounding concerned, asks me, “You all right, B?”

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

Riley laughs, but Remington doesn’t spare him a glance.

His chest is soaked with sweat and his dark head is ducked low as he inspects my ankle, his thumbs pressing around the bone. “That hurt, Brooke?”

I think he’s worried. The sudden gentleness with which he speaks to me makes my throat ache, and I don’t know why. Like when you fall, and it doesn’t hurt, but you cry because you feel humiliated. But I’ve already fallen worse in front of the world, and I wish I hadn’t cried back then just as fiercely as I wish not to break down in front of the strongest man in the world.

Scowling instead, I reach to try to inspect my ankle, but he doesn’t move his hand away, and suddenly several of our fingers surround my ankle, and all I can feel are his thumbs on my skin.

“You weigh a ton,” I complain, like it’s his fault I’m an idiot. “If you weighed a little less I’d have toppled you. I even toppled my instructor.”

He glances up, scowling. “What can I say?”

“You’re sorry? For my pride’s sake?”

He shakes his head, clearly still annoyed, and I smile sardonically and reach down for the Gatorade, unscrewing the top.

His eyes drop to my lips as I take a sip and I can feel, suddenly, something unmistakable on his lap beneath my bottom. As the cool liquid runs down my throat, it makes me realize the entire rest of my body is feverishly hot and getting hotter.

“Can I get some?” His voice is strangely husky as he signals to my drink.

When I nod, he grabs the bottle in one big hand and tilts it up to his mouth, and my hormones discharge all at once at the sight of his lips pressing against the rim.

Right over the spot mine have just been.

His throat works as he swallows, then he lowers the bottle, his lips now moist, and when he hands the Gatorade back to me, our fingers brush. Lightning shoots up my veins. And I’m entranced by the way his pupils have darkened, and the way he’s staring at my eyes without any laughter in his eyes. When I automatically try to cover my nervousness by taking another swallow, he watches me way too intently, his lips unsmiling. Beautifully pink. The cut on his lip’s still healing. The one I want to lick. A ribbon of longing unfurls deep inside me. And it hurts. I’m on his lap, and I realize one powerful arm is around my waist, and I’ve never been so close. Close enough to touch him, kiss him, wrap all my body around him. I’m suddenly dying and flying. I just can’t pretend this is no big deal anymore. I want him. I want him so badly I can’t think straight. It is a deal. A big deal.

I’ve never felt like this.

I know it’s crazy, and that it’s never going to happen, that it can never happen, but I just can’t help it. He’s like my Olympics, something that I’m never going to have, but which I crave with my entire being. And I absolutely loathe the thought that his arms have been around one, possibly two, women less than twenty-four hours ago, when I wanted it to be me.

Agitated all over again at the memory, I try standing, carefully, and he takes my Gatorade and sets it aside as he grabs two towels from a basket and wraps one around his neck, then drapes the other around mine, all the time holding me up by the waist. “I’ll help you up so you can ice that.”

He lowers me from the ring like I weigh no more than a cloud, and then I have to lean on him, my arm around his narrow waist as we walk out.

“It’s fine,” I keep saying.

“Stop arguing,” he says.

In the elevator, he keeps me close to his side and his head ducked to me, and I can feel his breath near my temple. I’m painfully aware of how big he is, compared to me, and of his five fingers splayed around my waist, and of the exact moment he shifts his nose and lowers it to the back of my ear. It tickles when he exhales, and he’s so close, his lips would brush the back of my ear if he speaks. I hear his deep inhale all of a sudden, and my sex organs throb so fiercely, I ache to turn around and bury my nose in his skin and suck all the air I can into my lungs. But of course I don’t do this.

He walks me to my room, and my body is in such a state, my brain can’t even come up with a topic of conversation to get rid of the tense silence that accompanies us.

“Hey, man, ready for the fight?” A uniformed hotel staff member, who seems to be a fan, asks from across the hall.

Remington gives a thumbs up with a dimpled smile before turning to me, pressing his jaw into the hair at the back of my ear. “Key,” he says in a guttural whisper that elicits goose bumps. He swipes it and brings me inside.

Diane isn’t here, and I know she’s probably making his super luxe dinner right now. He sets me down on the edge of the second queen bed, which I guess he figures is mine because Diane has a picture of her two kids facing the first bed, and he grabs the ice bucket. “I’ll get you ice.”

“That’s fine, Remy, I’ll do it later…”

The door closes before I can finish, and I exhale as I bend to palpate my ankle to assess the damage I caused.

He leaves the lock out so he doesn’t have to knock, and I stiffen when he returns and slams the door shut. He runs the water in the bathroom, and then he’s back, looking enormous and commanding inside my hotel room as he plops the bucket on the carpet.

He kneels at my feet, and at the sight of his powerful body and dark head bending down to tend to me, a rush of wanting ripples through me with such force, I stare down at the ice and want to dip my head in the bucket.