* * *

I FEEL LIKE a million fucking bucks.

Who the hell wants to sleep? I feel like climbing a mountain with Brooke on my back, taking her to the top, then flying down on a damn fucking parachute.

I prowl the kitchen and peer into the cupboards. I not only feel like a million bucks, my body feels like a million bucks. My fucking cock feels like a million fucking bucks and I want to give them all to Brooke Dumas.

I stick a granola into my mouth, orange juice, a spoonful of peanut butter. I pound in some more so Brooke can rest, but I am so fucking wired and so fucking hard just knowing she’s in my bed. . . .

I want to feed her and then fuck her and then feed her and then fuck her again and make her feel like a million bucks too, all in that order.

I start with the food and bring a huge bowl of cherries and granola to our room.

She’s there, lying in bed with the sheets at her waist, her tits pressed into the mattress. Fuck I want those tits squished against me.

Setting the food aside, I jump on the bed, and as I run my hands all over her satin skin, I growl, “You look especially good, Brooke Dumas. Good, and warm, and wet, and I wouldn’t mind having you on my breakfast platter.”

Nudging my face in between the mattress and her chest, I drag my tongue up between her breasts, then lick her collarbone, and her sweet taste seeps into me and drives me wild. “All that’s missing is a cherry on top, but I’m sure we have some.”

I grab a cherry and rub it against her clit.

Groaning with a half smile, she rolls to her back, her legs spread open, her pussy all wet and mine, her eyes all melted for me.

“Who’s your man?” I kiss her, rubbing the cherry around her clit. “Who’s your man, baby?”

“You,” she moans.

“Who do you love?” I prod as I roll her clit under the pad of my thumb and ease my middle finger into her pussy. She stares up at me with half-mast gold eyes, liquid with wanting.

“You drive me crazy, Remy,” she whispers as she wraps her fingers around my cock and pulls me closer.

“If that’s a lie, I’m going to make it true,” I think it fair to warn her.

I grab her hips and shove myself in between her thighs to rub my cock against her sex. I bend down the length of her body because I want to eat her. Lick up from her tiny toes, up the arch of her foot, her delicious calf, her precious knee—where I will linger and give it some love—then up her lean, toned thigh, up to her sweet pussy—which I hope will be soaked like a raining heaven by the time I get there.

Getting down to business, I go forward and nibble my way up the inside of her thigh. She starts laughing and kicks me on the shoulder, but I catch her leg to still it.

“Remy! That tickles.” She’s laughing, trying to pry her leg off my grip.

I cock a brow and run my finger up the arch of her foot, then up the inside of her leg. “This?”

She laughs and kicks again, twisting to get free.

So I swiftly change plans, grasping her wrists and pinning them above her head as I spread my big body over hers. I know she loves it when I hold her down. She can’t move unless I let her, and her eyes are darkening and she’s panting softly beneath me.

“Remy . . .” she says, sobering, her gold eyes both playful and caring as she looks up at me. “Are you speedy?”

I smile wickedly and drag a finger along the inside of her arm. “What do you think, little girl?”

“I think you’re very speedy.” She tugs free and runs her fingers over my hair as she looks into my eyes. My, probably, black eyes.

I bite her thumb gently and then lick it before I let it go. “So what are you going to do about it? Do you want me to lift the bed with you on it? Or do you want me to take you on it?”

She laughs and rolls over, flinging a pillow in my direction. I shove it aside and I grab her by the ankle, pulling her back easily to me. “Get over here.”

She laughs and fights to get free and I watch as she edges to the side of the bed, a peek of her pink pussy teasing me, driving me insane with want. I’m crackling with energy. I think I can fly her out of here if she wants me to.

She drives me so crazy, my every muscle is clenched and poised for me to make her mine. My blood storms through my body like fire rushing through my veins. Right now I want nothing more than to take her to heaven. I feel all-powerful, all-feared. I am Remington Tate “Riptide” and this girl is Mine.

I reach over the bed and she squeals and tries to stay free, attempting to crawl off the bed. I laugh when I catch her ankle and drag her back to me. “Where do you think you’re going? You’re mine. You get over here and let yourself be taken.”

“No, I need to pee!” she cries, flinging the other pillow at me, then she hurries to the bathroom and closes the door.

“Gah. Come the fuck here,” I growl, knocking on the door. She’s started brushing her teeth, from the sounds of it. Finally, the water stops and I hear her unlock the door. I open it and find her toweling off her hands. I go to her, scoop her up, and she nuzzles my neck as I carry her to the bed.

She sighs. Because she knows I want her. She’s being playful, making me chase.

“What am I going to do with you?” she groans tenderly, her fingers linked on my nape. She’s smiling up at me like I’m some long-lost prince. And what she doesn’t know is that this long-lost prince is going to fuck her into oblivion.

I fling her to the bed, and she squeals delightedly. I drop down on her and ram her legs apart.

I kiss one naked thigh first, then the other, then I kiss her pussy. “This is mine.” I lick it.

Her head falls back and she moans as my thumb steals between the swollen sex lips and dips inside her. My mouth waters and I growl softly as I use my thumb to enter her while I rub my tongue across her clit.

She parts her thighs and releases a mew that drives the hunter in me wild with the need to conquer. She starts thrashing and I grab her and hold her still. “Give me what I want, Brooke.”

Tossing her head side to side in pleasure, she whimpers and bites her lips and pumps her hips up to my face. “I’m all yours.”

“That’s right.” I tenderly urge her thighs apart as I come to my knees. “That’s right. Now open up. Let me in.” She does, and I sink between her legs, grip her hips, and my body tightens as I enter. “Yeah,” I say when she moans, tossing her head back. “Who do you love?” I drop my voice, undone by her, and then crush her mouth when she can’t answer me. “Who do you love?”

She moans and buries her lips in my neck, biting me. She murmurs something into my skin, clawing my back.

I moan back and hiss out, “Say my name, Brooke.”

“Remington.” She kisses my ear and tugs on my earlobe with her lips, breathing in my ear, excited. She’s gasping my name in lust, but I pretend she’s answering my question.

She’s wet and hot, and she loves me, and she’s all I’ve ever wanted. Stronger than I imagined, more female than I ever imagined. Funny and nurturing, vulnerable and sassy.

I love her so much my chest hurts as I watch her arch her spine and take me inside. I groan and duck my head as she clutches me to her. I clutch her back and try to slow down, and she rubs my skin with her fingers. She knows I need it and she gives it up to me with no protest. When she’s tired, asleep. When she’s busy, when she’s sweaty, when she’s hungry. She gives it up to me whenever I want, whenever I ask for it, because I’m speedy. Because I’m me. Because I know, deep in my gut, where it sometimes hurts to look at her, Brooke Dumas loves me.

* * *

I’VE BEEN AWAKE for eighteen hours and twenty-eight minutes. My heart is pounding thirty-nine beats a minute. Brooke has been in my arms for exactly nine hours and twenty-eight, now twenty-nine, minutes. I’m jacked up and I can’t sleep.

She’s cuddled like a little kitten against me; I want to pet and lick from the top of her head to the soles of her little feet.

I’ve cataloged the room in my head. I know where everything is. I could run in it in the darkness without bumping into anything. I could carry her in my arms without danger. Everything’s in my head—perfectly visualized.

But nothing as perfectly as her face.

Her lips are parted and they shudder on each breath. Shaped like a heart, the bottom one just as juicy as the top. Her cheekbones are high and her eyelashes rest over them, soft-tipped crescents.

I just want to lie here in this bed in this darkened hotel room and drink her in all over again until I’m drunk and high on her.

I am a fucking pendulum.

Any disturbance to my balance, and I swing.

The doctors taught me this.

Once I swing high, nothing on earth will stop me from crashing back down. I fall by gravity. Natural urge of the body to restore balance.

But that’s the thing. A pendulum always seeks its balance.

She’s my balance. I need her more than air.

Ducking my head to her neck, I breathe her in and growl.

* * *

AND IT’S A fucking crappy week.

I don’t like the way Brooke looks at Pete and Riley with a smile and talks to them. We’re flying to New York and I can’t help thinking how much I don’t fucking like that Coach treats me like I’m a goddamn pussy and need to fucking rest, and that Diane is giving me the same fucking food, over and over. But Brooke. I’m onto Pete and Riley, by god, I am. If they so much as give one look at her—they are done with.

I glare at them from the bench. They tried to help her with her suitcase; the dickwads think I don’t know they’re crushing on her?

I pull her closer to me and set a kiss on her forehead.

“Who are all these people here for?” she asks. A huge crowd is at the FBO where my jet parks when we arrive at New York, and security has cords holding them back. She’s so puzzled, it’s adorable.

“For me, who else,” I tell her.

Pete laughs. “Get off it, Remy.”

I swear they are all staring at her. I pull her to me. “Come here, baby. I want these good folks to know you’re with me.” I squeeze her ass to mark my property.

“Remington!”

I usher her into the limo before the rest come in, then I grab her to me and kiss her. I’m so fucking starved for her, I need to feel her heat, her warmth, her tongue.

My hunger is wild and unleashed, completely crazy. “I want to take you somewhere tonight,” I rasp into her mouth. “Let’s go to Paris.”

“Why Paris?”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because you have a fight in three days!” She laughs delightedly, and I want to take her to Paris, I don’t care about the rest, but she whispers, “Let’s go anywhere with a bed.”

I immediately fuck her in my mind on a bed, and then I imagine— “Let’s do it on a swing.”

“Remington!”

“Let’s do it in an elevator,” I propose. I am fucking her in an elevator, standing, my tongue hot and hard and pushing into her while I plunge my cock inside her, over and over.

Laughing, she shakes her finger at me, and I grin. “I’m never, ever, doing it in an elevator so you’re going to have to find someone else.”

“I want you. In an elevator.” Standing in that elevator, my tongue in her.

“And I want you. In a bed. Like normal people.”

My eyes dip to her cleavage, then down her body, to her pussy tightly hugged in the most delicious pants I have ever seen. I want to write a fucking letter to the makers and praise them for a job well done. Thanks to their jeans I have a good view of my woman all the time. “I want you in those pants you’re wearing.”

She nods and grins, then twines her fingers through mine and lifts my hand to kiss my knuckles.

I’m curious to see what she’s doing because I don’t remember her kissing my knuckles like this. She crawls closer and cups my jaw, sets a kiss on my cheek, and runs her hands through my hair, and my entire body homes in on her touch and the tenderness in her eyes as she looks at me.

Car doors open.

Coach rides up front with the driver, and everyone else slides onto the bench across from us. Brooke tries wiggling free but I tighten her fingers in mine and make her stay put. I don’t want her to stop touching me, all my body craves it. My mind is not thinking any shit anymore. Who cares what Coach does, Riley . . . I just look at her. And feel . . . good. Calm. Calmer. I want to rest my head on her and I slide down—fuck me for being so large—then I pull her closer and set my head on her chest. I can hear her heart pounding under my ear. She went very still, and I want her to relax. I pull her closer and shift so she’s comfortable, and I feel her melt with me.