Now I know that he is really mine. These fingers have been mine from the moment they touched me. This face. These lips. His huge, kind, protective, possessive, and forgiving heart. He’s been mine since I’ve been his, and knowing this makes me feel like I’m being pieced apart, then put back together new and whole and happy.

“I want to sleep with you in me,” I plead, dragging my open mouth along his jaw, my fingers suddenly almost clawing the skin of his shoulder as I breathe in his warm skin and try to get closer with my swollen tummy in between.

He slips his hand between us and starts preparing me with his fingers as he turns his head to slowly, leisurely take my mouth, his tongue slowing me down, licking into me with lazy pleasure. “Are you ready?” he murmurs heatedly.

“Fill me . . .” is all I can say, and a breathless sound bubbles up my throat as he grabs me by the waist and sinks me down on his length, filling me up so I am so full and so penetrated by him, I can hardly talk, or breathe, or think of anything but that Remy is inside me, pulsing and hot, his mouth taking me, slowly, quietly, reassuring me he’s got this. And he’s got me.

* * *

HE’S STILL BLACK the day of the fight, and the atmosphere in the presidential suite is thick with tension as we wait for him to get ready.

Pete, Riley, and Coach hover by the master bedroom door, while I’m being eaten alive by my own sick worry, because I seriously don’t know if he should fight like this.

“Mention that motherfucker’s name!” Coach hisses to Pete. I think he wants to provoke Remington’s turbulent energy into action, but Pete shakes his head.

“We won’t use anger. He’s full of self-hatred when he’s low,” Pete whispers.

But what I’ve personally most felt is his inner struggle. He’s been inside himself, fighting. He doesn’t release a word of self-loathing, but I sense that he thinks the words, he feels them in his soul. The electroshock helped, but he’s still low. It breaks me that he needs to fight like this.

“Try warming up those muscles, Brooke,” Pete suggests.

Coming over to where Remy is tying up his boots in silence, I slip my hands up and down his back and loosen up any muscle that I can, awakening them with slow, deliberate hard presses of my fingers.

“All right, Rem, let’s get pumped up. I know you like this one,” Pete says as he sets Remy’s iPod on my speakers.

“Uprising” by Muse bursts through the room at high volume. The rebellious beat of the music seems to reach Remington’s ears, and his muscles start engaging under my fingers, like he can’t help but respond.

My heart quivers a little. Is he coming into himself?

He’s been so busy fighting inside himself, I just wonder if he has enough fight left for Scorpion.

He jerks on his other boot while I rub his hard muscles and try to transmit every ounce of good and healing energy I have to him. I warm each muscle, one by one, moving up his back, paying extra attention to his rotator cuffs. When I can’t stop myself from bending down to his dark head to ask him how he feels, he swings around and grabs the back of my head, holding it as he locks his mouth to mine and plunders me.

When he pulls back, my mouth burns from the wet heat of his, and his eyes simmer with a dark and fierce desperation. He stares at me like I’m the only hope in the world, the look in his eyes so wild and fierce, he lights the hope inside me that maybe he’ll fight. Maybe he wants it bad enough to push through this. I know how badly he wants this win, and I know how completely he loathes it when his black side fucks with him.

“Remington, dude, this is what you’ve been waiting for.” Pete seizes his shoulders and draws his attention to him with a reassuring squeeze. “Everything you’ve ever wanted is within reach. Everything. You have plans after the championship, I know you do. Winning will make them happen. Brooke, the baby . . .”

At those words, I see him pinch his eyes shut for a quiet moment, then he drags in a long, slow breath. Pete bends to whisper something in his ear, and Remington nods and gruffly tells him, “Thanks.” When he opens his eyes again, he gets up, and the synapses in my brain seem to fire up in excitement.

Draped in his fighting gear already, his ripped, tan body looks every inch the prime-time fighting machine he has built himself to be. When he says, “Come here, Brooke,” I’m so insanely nervous about this fight, I almost stumble forward as I go. He takes me in his arms and hugs me tight, placing a warm kiss on the back of my ear. “I need you in my peripherals, at the very least. At all times. At all times.”

Suddenly, my insides shudder with the knowledge that he will be fighting, and come hell or heaven, I will be watching him. “I won’t move from my seat!” I promise.

He zeroes his attention on me for a second longer, then he kisses the back of my ear once more and pats my bum. That’s all he does. Then he starts jumping in place, twisting his arms up and around himself, and the entire atmosphere shifts dramatically as the team starts breathing again.

“Where’s Jo?” he gruffly asks Pete.

A tingle begins in my middle as I realize he truly is coming back.

“She’s already scouting the area,” Pete says, and there’s a quiver of excitement in his voice as he probably realizes the same.

“Neither you or Jo is to take your eyes off Brooke, do you hear me?” he commands as he cracks his neck to one side, then the other.

“We got you, buddy!” Pete assures him.

“All right, are we ready here?” Coach swings the duffel containing Remy’s clean clothes, Gatorades, and extra headphones over his shoulder.

“Ready,” Remington answers as he retrieves his iPod from the speakers. The music dies instantly, and we all watch him grab his headphones from the nightstand and latch them onto the silver iPod.

“Hell yeah, that’s my boy!” Coach yells out.

Riley woots. “That’s the MAN!”

“Who’s kicking ass?” Coach pounds Remy’s back as they head for the door.

“I am.” I hear Remington’s low growl.

Coach pounds his back with an even harder thud. “What name will they all be screaming tonight?”

“Mine.”

“Say it!”

“Riptide.”

“That’s not how the motherfuckers say it!”

Remington slams a fist to his chest and yells, “RIPTIDE!!”

“THAT’S RIGHT!” Coach yells back.

They knock knuckles, and then Coach leads him out of the room and to the elevators, the rest of us following behind. “Do you have enough for this fight, boy?”

“I got it.”

Coach nods, then prods, “What will we do if he doesn’t submit, boy? You already know what to do?”

“I know what to do.”

As I listen to that last calm statement, my blood pools in my feet, and it feels like every other part of me trembles as I break out in a million goose bumps and then some. A part of me wants to be brave and watch this fight, but I don’t remember ever feeling so lacking in courage in my life.

With a sudden frown, Remington shoves a thick finger into Coach’s chest. “Whatever happens, you don’t throw in the towel. Do you hear me? We NEVER, EVER submit.”

The tension in the air rises dramatically, and a couple of gazes are exchanged. When there’s no immediate reply from Coach, Remington pushes him back a step. “Coach. You do not throw in the towel. We don’t submit. Period.”

Coach’s eyes flick briefly in my direction—briefly, yes, but not briefly enough for me to miss the hesitation in his gaze before he nods. Exhaling beside me, Pete takes my hand when we hear a ting.

“Let’s go,” he murmurs.

We board the elevator, but I’m so freaking nervous, my fiercely pounding heart is going to break a couple of my ribs by the time we get to the Underground. Remington quietly fiddles with his iPod, his black headphones in one hand. He’s trying to get into the zone. With all the love I have for him in my heart, I watch him duck his head, place his headphones on, and play his music.

“Why’d you promise?” Riley confronts Coach while Remy listens to his music, his tone accusatory. “If things get butt ugly, we’re not letting him die out there today!”

“His eyes are coming blue! If someone’s going to die tonight, it isn’t our boy!” Coach contests.

All right, this is all crazy talk! My stomach is coiled like a poised venomous rattlesnake, and I just can’t take standing here like a mute for a second longer. “Pete, what are they talking about? I’m starting to freak the hell out here.”

“There have been rumors about this being the match of the decade,” he answers under his breath. “They’re both stubborn as heck, and one needs to submit for the win, Brooke. It could get bad. Like you said . . . more than shit happening.”

A little flash of last season’s final plays in my head, unbidden and unwanted. I remember Remy’s fallen body on the bloodied canvas floor. The crowd screaming his name. And then the silence when they realized their Riptide—fierce, passionate, beautiful Riptide—was down.

While all my insides twist and tangle like pretzels at the memory, we start shuffling out of the elevator, but Remington grabs my hand and holds me back. He whispers in my ear, “In my peripherals.”

His eyes bore into me, and I pray, pray, pray that he doesn’t see the fear in my eyes, but he pulls his headphones down to his neck, and I hear the music streaming between us. Crazy and fast.

“In your seat at all times, Brooke,” he tells me, and he slides his hands into my hair and slams his mouth to mine, stealing a taste of me while giving me a taste of him that leaves me drugged and dazed. He sets his forehead on mine, his gaze incandescent as he looks at me. “I adore you with every breath I take—in every ounce of me, I adore you.” With another fast and hard kiss, he slaps my ass. “Watch me break him!”

As we ride to the Underground, he keeps an arm stretched on the back of my seat while he listens to his music. The rest of the car is dead quiet. I can taste the violence in the air as he walks away into the locker rooms, and I want to shout a thousand “I love yous,” but he’s with his iPod now, getting into his zone.

“Pete, is he really ready for this?” I whisper uncertainly.

“I sure hope so, Brooke. I’d hate for this episode to take another one of his dreams. Come on,” he says as we jostle through the crowd toward our seats.

At least two thousand people fill the arena tonight. The Underground has been teasing its public the entire season, and now they’re bloodthirsty to watch Scorpion versus Riptide. Faces are streaked with red, simulating blood. Bright red Rs adorn women’s cheeks and the top rises of some of their breasts.

I see red, Riptide’s red, streaked across the seats and way in the back, with the standing crowd, where there’s also a little bit of black too. Scorpion black.

Settling down in my seat next to Pete, I notice that Remington has once again secured two more empty seats to our sides, and it seems like we wait for a lifetime. Staring at the emptiness of the center ring only seems to makes the crowd scream louder as they wait for Remington and Scorpion to fill the 23 x 23’ square space they see.

“Riiiptiiiiide!” a group of friends scream in unison across the ring from me.

Behind me, a chant begins: “Bring them out! OUT! OUT! OUT!”

The speakers crackle as if the microphone has been turned on, and an announcer appears up onstage. I almost leap out of my skin.

“Ladies and gentlemen, hello!” People roar their greeting before the announcer continues. “Well, here we are this evening with you all! Are you people ready? Are you all READY for a fight unlike any other? Unlike ANY OTHER, people! Ringmaster?”

The ringmaster by the corner of the ring turns all his attention to the announcer.

“Sir, we won’t need your services tonight,” the announcer gallantly says, adding a dramatic bow that causes a thundering roar to blast around the arena as the crowd stands and screams its approval.

“That’s right!” the announcer yells in a booming voice back at the crowd. “Tonight, there are NO rules, NO ringmaster. Anything goes. ANYTHING GOES, PEOPLE! No knockouts—this is a fight of submission. Submit!”

“Or die!!” people excitedly yell.

“Ladies and gentlemen! Yes! It’s a submission fight here tonight in the Underground! Now, let’s call your worst nightmare into the ring! The man your daughters cry about. The man you want to run from. The man you certainly don’t want to be up in the ring with. Our defending champion, Benny, the Blaaaack, Scorpionnnnnn!”