He yanks off my tennis shoe and then my sock, then he holds my leg gently by the calf as he eases my foot inside. “When we get this fixed I’m going to show you how to knock me down,” he whispers. When I can’t answer and am completely undone by his touch, he glances up, and his eyes are both tender and intimate. “Cold?”

Though the rest of me is anything but, my toes start freezing as the water envelops them. “Yeah.”

As he sinks my foot deeper, my entire body tenses from the frigidness, and he pauses midway down. “More water?”

I shake my head and ram it down the rest of the way, thinking, No pain no gain. My lungs seize up as my body absorbs the cold. “Oh, shit.”

He notices my grimace and yanks my foot out, then he shocks me, flattening my icy cold feet against his stomach to warm me. His abs clench under my toes, and his eyes hold mine in a grip so powerful, I’m drowning.

Voltage surges through me. His warm, big, callused hand is curved around my instep, holding my feet to his stomach so firmly it almost feels like he wants me there. I wish my hands were my feet, feeling those washboard abs under my fingers. Every dent perfectly presses against the arch of my foot and my toes, and the numbness has left me completely.

“I didn’t know you gave pedicures, Remy,” I say, and I can’t understand why I sound so breathless.

“It’s a fetish of mine.”

He shoots me a lazy smile that clearly tells me he’s all bullshit, then he reaches into the bucket with his free hand and pulls out a single ice cube. He sets it lightly on my ankle and drags it over the tender flesh, carefully watching what he does. My reaction is swift and violent, seizing my entire body with a complete and total awareness of him.

My heartbeat suddenly roars up in my head. God, this man is more tactile than I am. Then, as if to confirm my thoughts, the hand holding my foot to his stomach shifts slightly, and he rubs his thumb along the arch of my foot while the cool ice cube continues being rubbed across my skin. A tingling begins at the center of my stomach, and I’m afraid within minutes, it will take over my body.

My voice trembles like the rest of me. “Do you do manicures too?”

He glances up at me again, and my heart turns over from the effect his blue eyes have on me.

“Let me do your feet, first, then I’ll do the rest of you.”

My stomach clenches when he finishes that phrase with another smile, this one quite slow. Every muscle in my sex starts to ripple as the ice slowly continues to stoke a gently growing fire in my insides.

I’m entranced as he watches the ice over my creamy white skin, the silence charged with electricity. Helplessly I drag my feet slightly over his stomach, feeling the ridges of his abs under me. He looks up, and the piercing intensity in his eyes draws me right in until I’m breathless and drowning.

“Feel better?” he murmurs, raising his dark brows, and I can’t believe how his voice affects me, how his touch affects me, his scent, how another human can have such power over me. I can’t let it.

I.

Can’t.

Let it.

I remind myself that when you want a man, you’re in control of what you give him. In control of what you let him take. But I can’t block out the images of him, and me, together. Of me tearing his clothes off and of him, crushing me against him. Images of his lips on mine, of us falling recklessly in bed together, throb through me. He makes me feel eighteen. Virginal and wanton. Just thinking of boys … except he only makes me think of one. And he’s very male. Very man. But a little bit playful, like a boy.

A big, bad boy who had fun with his little whores on his coffee table last night …

The sudden, brutal reminder cools me down like a dip in the frigid waters of Alaska. “It feels perfect now. Thank you,” I say, my voice cool as the melting ice as I try wiggling my foot free from his grip.

I’m about to successfully pull free when the door opens with an unlocking noise, and Diane enters. “There you are. I must feed you now so you can recharge for tomorrow!”

Staring at me as though confused about the change in me, Remington frowns slightly as he tosses the thawing ice in the ice bucket and sets my foot back on the carpet as he stands. “I am sorry, about your ankle,” he says to me, softly, as he straightens, his expression confused and almost vulnerable. “Don’t worry if you can’t make it to the fight.”

“No. It wasn’t your fault. I’ll be fine,” I rush out.

“I’ll ask Pete to get you some crutches.”

“I’ll be fine. Serves me right for messing with trees.”

He stops at the entry then glances back at me on the edge of the bed, his face unreadable.

“Good luck, Remy,” I say.

He stares at me, then at Diane, then rakes a hand through his hair, and leaves, looking somehow … agitated.

Diane stares at me in complete puzzlement. “Did I come at a bad time?”

“No.” I shake my head. “You came just in time before I made a total fool of myself.”

Not that trying to knock a man like him off his feet had been a very smart move to begin with.

Dancing to the music

Pete wants me out of backstage. And so do Coach and Riley.

“He needs to zone out, go get your seat, you’re distracting the hell out of him,” Pete tells me, and although he’s the one I consider most gentle among the men in the team, he really sounds frustrated today. Maybe because it’s his birthday number thirty-two and he’d rather be anywhere else. “Here. Take this ticket and go meet the girls next to you. They’re nice people, and they’re here with us. We’re all partying later.”

Minutes later, I discover the girls both look like Miss Universe contenders and like the kind of women who walk around in bikinis at precisely these sorts of events. But their smiles as I head toward them are genuine, and I can’t help but notice how both their gazes rake my little black skirt with short-sleeved glittery top with an approving eye. “Hi. I’m Friday, this is Debbie,” the redhead who’d been dancing atop Remington’s coffee table only recently says, then signals to the blond as Debbie.

“Hi. I’m Brooke.”

“Oh! You’re the girl that went to the suite the other night,” Friday says.

“I didn’t go anywhere,” I say, all huffy over the fact that they knew that I had. So Riley did tell them it was me at the door?

How embarrassing.

Friday bends over and whispers in my ear, “I think Remy wants to fuck you.”

Feeling the wind knocked out of me, I adjust myself in my seat and then the other girl, Debbie, leans to me as well. “Remy really wants to fuck you. He got so hard when you came to the room and spoke to Riley. I felt it when I was on his lap and he just heard your voice and wham. He was up full force.”

“TMI! Seriously!” I cry, shaking my head with a nervous laugh. I’m completely red now, struggling with a thousand and one emotions, all at once.

“I even offered him to take care of it,” Debbie adds, “but he was like, just drop it, I’m fine, and got away, telling us to do his friends, and then he went to his room and locked himself in. Pete wants to make sure that doesn’t happen again tonight.”

I stare down at my lap and an overwhelming feeling of possessiveness I never knew I could even experience flits through me. “Why does he have to get laid every night?” I ask them, unable to hide my annoyance.

“Are you kidding? He’s Remy. He’s like, used to getting a lot of it. Daily.”

Scoffing, I wave my hand and turn to stare at the empty ring, not really wanting to think how much of “that” Remington is used to getting, but a visual of his beautiful body entwined with anyone else’s makes my stomach grip so uncomfortably, if I had eaten anything recently, I’d be in danger of losing it.

Ten minutes later, I hear his name shredding through the speakers, “And noooow, ladies and gentlemen, say helloww to the one, the ONLY, Remington Tate, RIPPPPPTIDEEEEEE!”

A stream of sensations shoots through my body as he comes trotting out, and I instantly feel the liquid heat gushing into my panties. God, I hate how many times during the day I look at him and want to make him mine. I want to touch him, to know him.

He climbs into the ring, with that shiny robe that contrasts completely with his utter manliness, and the instant he bares himself to the crowd, everyone screams. Just like my heart does as I take him in like I need my fix. His dark hair is perfectly recklessly up today, those tanned muscles flexing as he extends out his arms and does his little turn. And here I am, my breath caught between my lungs and my lips as he turns around and scans the crowd. As soon as he spots me, his eyes come alive, as alive as I feel when he smiles at me. He holds my gaze while those dimples flash, and I swear he stares at me in a way that makes me feel that I am the only woman here. Every time he’s in the ring, he’s completely in character. And his eyes just … take me. I know it’s not true. I know I’m seeing only what I want to see.

But for a little second, I just want to sit in this stupid chair and believe there is this sort of magic between two people and I can be this prized someone to this sexy, raw, primitive man who’s so strong, mysterious, and playful to me, he compels me like nothing in my life ever has.

I can’t stop thinking that he didn’t have sex with the girls Pete and Riley had brought him, and that’s all I can think of as I watch him take on his first opponent, delighting not only me, but hundreds of other women with the power and grace of his perfectly trained body.

Breathless, I watch him take his second, and his third, and I feel such a rush of pride for him every time the word “victor” is attached to his. He works so hard, trains so hard, and I now know boxing terms and can see exactly what he does. I see his one-two punches. His jabs. His hooks. And suddenly he blocks a right-handed power punch with his left arm, then steps inside and buries a left hook to his opponent's ribs and follows that with a right cross to the jaw that knocks the man out completely. His opponent tries to get up, and slumps back down, bloodied and exhausted.

The public roars as his name takes over the entire room.

“RRRRRRIIIIIIPTIDEEEEEEEEEEE!”

My god. He fights like a true champion, and he deserves to be the champion at the end of it all. Heart knocking wildly inside me, I watch as the ringmaster heads over to raise his arm, and I wait in a strange mix of anxiety and anticipation for the moment he’s declared victor, for I know that in this instant his gaze will swing to mine, like it has done in every single fight since my first.

“Our victor, ladies and gentlemen. Riptiiiide!!”

By the time those electric blue eyes seek me out in the stands, my heart throbs fiercely in my temples, and my insides bubble with emotion when he spots me. He stares straight into my eyes, and his eyes are only mine, and his smile is only mine, and for this fraction of an instant, nothing else matters but us.

Tonight I really miss Melanie. Melanie who would have been shouting at him at my side, and telling him everything I would like to say but I’m such a coward to say them out loud. But in my mind I hear her and I wish she’d come visit so I could scream to him like she does, and tell Remington Tate he's so fucking hot I can’t stand it.