I hear Riley tell me, “Here, Brooke, let’s exchange so you can tend to him.” Jolting from my seat, I settle down on Remington’s right, and quickly delve into his open duffel bag, extracting my alcohol swab packets, some salve, and strips.

“Let me try to fix you,” I whisper to him, and my voice, oh god, it sounds so intimate even when the entire car is watching. It’s just that I don’t seem to have any other tone except the one that came out: low and sandpapery with emotion.

He turns fully in my direction to let me disinfect the wounds, and his gaze . . . I can feel it, a roaming, curious, palpable thing on my face as I apply the salve to the part of his lips that always gets cut—the fleshy part of his bottom lip. My teeth instinctively bite down on my own as I press some salve into his. God, I loathe when he gets hurt.

“Do the eyebrow one too; it looks a little deep,” Pete instructs.

“Yes, I got it,” I reply, still in that voice I don’t want to use right now but can’t seem to modify. I’m trying to be efficient with my hands, but they’re shaking more than I want them to, and the heat of Remington’s body, which is extra hot after the fight, surrounds me as completely as his arms sometimes do. His fast breath bathes my temple, and it takes everything in me to quell the impulse to lean closer and breathe it inside me just to appease myself with the knowledge that he’s all right. And at least breathing. Still pumped up with adrenaline, I head to the gash above his eye and press the wound closed between two fingers. God. I almost can’t take being this close to him. A hundred little prickles run from my fingers, to my arms, straight to my throbbing little heart.

Dragging in a breath, I add gentle pressure to the cut while I inspect the rest of his face . . . to find the blue of his eyes completely zeroed in on me. Things grip inside me.

He’s sprawled in the seat, angled in my direction, but his stillness makes me hyperaware, for I can feel all the coiled energy in his body as if he’s ready to spring. On me.

My heart kicks up a little more in speed, and I hold my breath as I lean closer, grab another tissue, and whisper in the most level voice I can manage, “Close this eye.”

Keeping the slash above his eyebrow pinched together, I start cleaning the blood that’s dripped to his eyelid. Obeying me, he squints one eye closed and remains watching me with the other as if there’s something in my expression that he craves to see.

His voice suddenly rasps through the dark. “I’m all fucked up.” The unexpected, guttural whisper prickles across my skin and almost makes me jump. “My right bicep’s fucked and my shoulder, my left oblique and trap.”

“Dude, that’s insane. How can you fuck all that up in a night?” Riley asks in bewilderment.

“Brooke, you know what to do,” Coach commands from up front.

Quickly nodding, I look into Remington’s blue, blue eyes, the way they shine in male contentment, and I clamp my jaw when it finally dawns on me what’s going on here.

WHEN WE REACH our hotel suite, I am fuming.

“You let him punch you on purpose.”

He plops down on the bench at the foot of the bed and looks at me, tossing an empty Gatorade bottle aside. “I’m all fucked up, come fix me.”

“You are fucked up, all right, but it’s not the bicep that needs some tender loving care!”

“You’re right—it’s not.” His eyes shimmer in the soft lamplight as he watches me. “Are you going to come fix me?”

“Only because you pay me to.” Huffing angrily, I grab my massage oils, specifically my arnica oil and my mustard oil for inflammation, then I go and turn on the shower. “We’re getting you in a cold shower.”

His lips curl as he stands and waves me over, and when I come over in puzzlement, he wraps his big arm around my shoulders. “What? You need help to walk? You were bouncing a few minutes ago,” I tell him.

“Endorphins killed the pain,” he murmurs into my ear as I curl my arm around his waist and lead him to the bathroom. “I told you I was all fucked up.”

I prop him against the wall and open the shower door, and as I check that the water is ice cold, he sweeps me up in his arms, turns the knob to medium, and carries us inside, clothes and all.

The water rushes over us, and I gasp in surprise and kick in the air while all my clothes get plastered to my skin. “What are you doing?”

He pulls off my shoes and tosses them over the glass partition above the tub, then he sets me on my bare feet and tugs my skirt down my legs. All those pheromones he puts out after fighting suddenly wage a war on my senses, and I start feeling so hot, the only thing keeping me from turning to ashes is the water pounding on my skin. “What are you doing??” I breathlessly demand.

He yanks off my top and it splats to the marble floor with a wet sound. He strips, and I’m so overwhelmed with anger over the way he let himself get punched, and so stimulated by the sight of his muscles flexing as he strips down to his golden, wet skin, I want to hit him and kiss him at the same infuriating time. When his boxing shorts hit—splat!—and he kicks them aside, ohmigod, my eyes hurt.

I have to bite down on my lower lip, trying to quell the instinct to fling myself at him and give him anything he needs. Keeping his eyes leveled on mine, he steps back into the spray, his broad shoulders shielding me from the water, then when I feel the slow scrape of his thumb sliding up my chin and gently tugging my lower lip free of my teeth, I hear his voice thick as he whispers, “That’s mine to bite.”

I’m not breathing. He has this overpowering effect on me. I could fight my reactions to him, but I’d lose. My eyes hold his, and the possessive glimmer in his gaze bullets through me. Rivulets of water slide down his jaw as he grabs my ass and presses me close, his erection biting into my tummy as he stares down at me with relentless intensity.

“You,” he says, his voice terse and commanding as he drags his wet thumb across my lips, “are going to love me until I die. I’m going to make you love me even if it hurts, and when it hurts, I’m going to make it better, Brooke.” He eases his thumb into my mouth and rubs it purposely against the tip of my tongue, the move quietly demanding that I lick it. When I do, my breasts ache and I watch him extract his thumb to brush the wet pad across my bottom lip. “You’re going to fucking love me if it kills us.”

My lungs ache for breath and the rest of me aches for his hands on me. And when my gaze flicks upward to find those blue eyes pinned on mine, his face hurt and sweaty, all the testosterone in the world courses through him, pulling and enveloping me, so I can barely take living right now I want him so much. He makes me feel this all-consuming, soul-searing, heart-wrenching, painful need for him that’s more than physical, more than emotional.

My sex grips so tight, it takes all my effort not to whimper. My senses are heightened by his nearness. I can’t help but notice how the drop of blood on his lip is the color of his RIPTIDE robe, bright and perfectly oxygenated. How his steady, hot breath bathes my wet face. How, slowly, his fingers spread wider on my ass, and one of his thumbs grazes the skin of my jaw. He destroys me.

“Stop hurting yourself,” I say miserably, trying to ease out of his arms only to hit the cold marble behind me.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he rasps, then pulls me close by the ass and nuzzles me. “You. Crying in my fucking arms. Because I fucking hurt you. That hurts. You . . . not touching me. Not looking up at me like you do, with those sweet little happy eyes. Hurts. I’m hurting like a motherfucker and not one piece of me hurts on the outside like it does where you make it hurt.”

Fighting to hold my raw emotions in check, I drop my gaze and furiously blink back the moisture in my eyes.

“I hurt here too.” He guides my hand over to his massive erection. “I hurt all night, watching you come apart for me. This morning. And at the gym.” He presses me close, and I moan softly and drop my forehead to his pecs as I struggle not to fall apart again.

He takes pity on me and lets my hand go, but my fingers burn at my sides, and I don’t know what to do with my hands. My head spins with his nearness. I want to take my fingers up every inch of his muscles and erase the touch of every other hand that has ever been there. I want to—

I don’t even know. I can’t think of anything now except the growing, painful throb inside my body. Inside my heart. My sex. He’s grabbed the soap and starts soaping up my naked flesh. As if doing it for the first time, he watches his hands work between my legs, his fingers curl and lather up my breasts, his thumbs rubbing soap over my nipples.

“Did you like the fight?” he asks in his quiet, deep voice as his powerful hands glide smoothly down the outside of my legs, up the inside of my thighs, rubbing my pussy. He goes around then, soaping and massaging the flesh of my ass cheeks and in between.

The pleasure of his sure, familiar touch is so complete, I bite back a moan as I watch him wash me.

One of his eyes is a little swollen, and the gash above his eyebrow still looks bright red. His plump bottom lip is still cut at the center. He’s hurt, but getting hurt is nothing to him. He wanted my attention and would do anything to get it, and even if I want to hit him for being so reckless, the urge to kiss every cut and gash is stronger than anything.

Remington has been abandoned his whole life. Parents. Teachers. Friends. Even me. Nobody has ever stuck with him long enough to show him he’s worth it. What he did, just to get me to touch him and give him some love, makes me burn to drown him with my love until he never, ever, has to ask for it.

“I refuse,” I whisper in a fervent voice, “to sit there and watch you getting hurt on purpose.”

“I refuse to let you push me away,” he says with equal fervor, filling one large, soapy hand with the weight of my breast.

Shaking my head with a frown, I let my eyes drift shut when he tilts the showerhead to my face. The spritz washes away my shampoo, and when he slides his hands down my hair to help the soap trickle down my body, I can barely keep it together.

Taking action before I lose it, I seize the soap and make lots of bubbles, then I reach out to the slick muscles of his chest and rub my soapy fingers over his hard, smooth flesh. His chest jerks at my unexpected touch, and when my eyes flick up to his, my knees almost give. All of my body clenches as I hold those starved blue eyes, my fingers rubbing wetly up his thick arm, down his chest, across his eight-pack. My voice, thick with emotion, is barely heard above the trickling water. “Is this what you wanted? When you were out there, recklessly letting yourself be hit?”

Gently, he grips my face in one hand, his voice stern and passionate as he enunciates every word. “I want you. I want you to touch me, to put your lips on mine—like before. I want you to love me. Stop fucking punishing me, Brooke. I love you.”

He presses his lips to mine, testing me with a fast, rough kiss, withdrawing to look at me with panting breaths.

His grip tightens on my face. “Is my girl going to let this break her? Is she? She’s stronger than that. . . . I know she is, and I need her to live. I need her to fight for me and I need her to fight with me. As far as I’m concerned, that never happened. Only you happened, Brooke. And you’re still happening, aren’t you, firecracker?”