“Remy, calm down,” Riley says.
“That’s all right, Riley, I don’t break that easy, and he’s sure welcome to try,” I snap, finally giving Remington the big black scowl he seems to be begging for.
He scowls back and ducks his dark head, breathing hard into my face as he grabs my hair in his fists and crushes my mouth with brutal possession, swiping my lips with punishing flicks of his tongue. “When I get you in bed, I’m going to scrub you raw with my f**king tongue until there’s nothing anywhere on you from him. Only me. Only me.”
His erection bites into my stomach, and I realize he’s gone completely territorial, claim-my-mate, prove-to-her-my-ownership crazy on me. My thighs go liquid, and I gasp and strain closer. “All right, take me there,” I plead, weak with the urge to ease the both of us.
He jerks back and narrows his eyes. “I don’t have f**king time to take care of you,” he snaps as he starts for the door, and I cry out in breathless panic.
“Remy, come back. Don’t get in trouble!”
He spins around, and my stomach knots as I see the look of determined murder on his face, his fists shaking at his sides as he jabs a finger in the air and points at me. “Protecting you is my privilege. I will protect you and anything that you value as if it were mine.”
My breath catches at the way he stares at me.
“That sick ass**le has just begged me to end his miserable life, and I’m happy to oblige,” he snarls, his eyes raking me angrily from the door. “He’s just taken something sacred for me and pissed on it!” He storms back, pushing his finger in between my br**sts as he points. “Understand me. You. Are. Mine!”
“Remington, she’s my sister.”
“And the Scorpion will never let go of her. He keeps his women drugged and dependent, their minds in pieces so tiny they can’t even think. He’ll never give her up unless he wants something even more than her. Is it you? Does he want you, Brooke? He could have drugged you. Stripped you. Fucked you—goddamn my life, he could have f**ked you!”
“No!”
“Did he touch you?”
“He didn't! They’re doing this to provoke you, don’t let them! Save it for the ring tomorrow. Please. I want to be with you tonight.”
“I was with her the whole time, buddy, nothing happened,” Riley intercedes, patting his arm and trying to back him off a bit.
I see the look of betrayal settle in his eyes when he hears Riley speak, and before I can stop him, he swings around to grab Riley’s shirt in his fist. “You let my girl get in that scumbag’s face, you little shit?”
Panic seizes me when he lifts Riley off the ground. “Remy, no!” I come to his side, tugging futilely at his arm.
He shakes him in the air, and Riley is getting purple. “You let her kiss that filthy scum’s ink?”
Pete looks at me. “I’m sorry,” he mouths, and then to Remy, “All right, buddy, let’s put Destroyer to bed now, huh?” and he rams a syringe into his neck, and Remington drops Riley to the floor and yanks the syringe out of his skin, tossing it empty aside.
I hold my breath when he comes and grabs me. He stares at me, his eyes blazing, and opens his mouth, hesitates, then makes a low, pained noise as he crushes my mouth and delivers a kiss that both claims and punishes me, and then he lets go of my arm and stomps to the door, leaving me licking my raw, swollen lips and staring after him.
Riley coughs as he pushes himself to his feet, rubbing his throat as we all realize Remington is gone.
“What the hell?” Pete blinks in complete disbelief at the open door from where Remy just walked out.
“It’s supposed to put down an elephant, no?” Riley glumly asks Pete.
“Supposed being the operative word.”
Shaking his head, Riley dusts off the glass from his jeans. “Must be all the adrenaline in him. Shit.”
“Pete, get your shit straight, both of you! You just shot him with a sedative! He can drop down in an alley for all we know, be robbed and … oh god.” I cover my face as I think of all the things he can do wrong, or can happen to him.
“Calm down, Brooke, we’ve got it. Riley, you get another two of these tranquilizers, I’ll meet you in the car,” Pete says, then he turns to the manager and signals at the check he still holds between his grasp. “So if you could send the bill to the presidential suite? I guarantee we’ll be moving out by morning.”
“I want to help!”
“Damn, you’ve helped enough, Brooke,” Riley tells me, looking at me like I just unleashed the apocalypse. “Just go upstairs and wait for him. You’ve got your work cut out for you when he gets back.”
I’m pacing like crazy as I wait to hear something. Anything.
I see all of his things across our suite, his iPad and laptop, his toothbrush in the sink, his clothes still in his suitcase, some hanging in the closet, and a horrible anxiety works its way down my nerve endings.
Remington just went out there and could throw everything away for me. My lips are sore from the torture of my teeth as I go back to the past and wonder what would have happened if I’d said I wouldn’t kiss that stupid tattoo. I might never have talked to Nora. She’d never have a chance to break free like I offered her.
At the moment, it felt relatively harmless, considering, and also it had felt like I had no choice, but how I sorely wish Remington would never have found about it. Even angry, I could feel his hurt, and now I’m worried sick about it. Even if he has his fists in Scorpion’s jaw right now, his Underground victory would be shot to hell, and I can’t even wonder what that awful reptilian sick-dick might do to Nora as retribution if Remy hurts him tonight.