He presses me close, and I ache so much, I’m scared. By him, by this, this need to claw into his skin, press my lips to the hard line of his jaw, touch his thick, silky hair.

“Let me watch my movie, let go,” I protest feebly.

When he chuckles, his breath moves a couple of tendrils of loose hair at my temple. “If you want me to let you go, you need to stop pressing your pretty ni**les against my chest as you say so, stop getting closer when you ask me to let you go,” he murmurs, rubbing his nose against mine, and his closeness, his scent of forest, his warm breath, his lips so close I can almost taste them, trigger a flood of need between my thighs and a hot, aching ripple in my sex.

I gasp as we almost kiss, and he groans and gives me space to breathe. He lifts his head, and I see him appraise me like a connoisseur would appraise a jewel or some antiquity. Why does he look at me like this? Why like THIS? Like he wants inside me as much as I want him. Like he wants more than my body, like he wants to suck the blood out of me, eat my soul up, and then pray to me.

Quietly, I close my eyes, trying to pretend we’re just dating, have never had sex, are just watching a movie. I force my muscles to relax and watch the TV, and I sense him relax gradually too. He stretches his big body suddenly down the length of the couch and pulls me up against him. Oh my. I hate how he assumes control of things that pertain to me, but I love it too.

I feel his gaze on the top of my head. Pretending to watch the movie, I weave my fingers in his hair and bring his arm around me, complaining, “Your elbow’s digging into my rib cage.”

His chuckle—I can’t even explain how much I love the sound of his chuckle—tells me he knows I just want to get more comfortable. And I do.

“Better?” he asks, shifting that lean, hard, long body of his underneath me.

“Shh. I like it when he fights with the Spaniard.”

I’m pretending to watch, but really, I’m struggling with how much I want to give him a second chance. But what if I fall? What if it gets out of control, and not only do I fall, but plunge into him?

That night with him?

It was incredible. He was incredible. He still feels, smells, sounds incredible.

His muscles flex and I fear he will pull away, but he doesn’t. He tucks me closer, cocooning me in his arms. I breathe softly in a nearly overwhelming sense of contentment, engulfed by the feeling of security he gives me, and I finally succumb to the urge to set my cheek on his chest. “This feels good,” I murmur. Beyond good.

Suddenly nothing feels righter than this. On my couch. With this man. His spicy, comforting scent is like a drug, and I can’t help but take deeper, more conscious breaths of him.

“Princess,” he says in my ear, conspiratorially.

A shiver runs through me as I close my eyes. “What?”

“I wasn’t going to call.”

“I know, douche bag. Why did you?”

Westley and my Spaniard are at it with swords but it feels like the real action is in my ear, in his whisper: “You need me.”

I scoff and sit up to glare at him. “I don’t need you.”

He sits up too and his eyes flash in challenge. “Maybe I need you.”

When I only stare, he shoots me an adorable grin that’s cocky but also sad. “Do you know what it feels like to carry the weight of a dead heart with you your whole life, like you’re just looking for your grave?” He waits for me to answer, but I’m speechless. “I live the moments I’m with you. I live a lie, but this isn’t a lie, watching this stupid movie with you.”

“Stupid!” I gasp.

He laughs and stands, and says, “When I go out, lock up. I’ll be back with food.”

“If I fall asleep, I’ll be too tired to come open it again,” I warn, but the truth is, I just don’t want him to leave!

“I can open your lock without you so much as waking,” he says easily, then he comes back and slides his gloved hand under my camisole. “But lock up anyway.”

“You’re bossy.”

“And you’re f**king sexy in what you’re wearing right now.” His thumb traces the underside of my breast and my breath snags when our eyes meet, and there’s no shutter in his eyes, no filter. What I see galvanizes me, the roiling tumult in the very depths of his gaze taking me for a spin.

“I’ve been told I have a photographic memory. That some images just stick with me with extreme clarity . . . but that night, Melanie, I remember everything about that night more clearly than any other moment in my life.” He grasps the back of my neck in a big, square hand and gives a little squeeze. “Your red thong. Your perky little ni**les. The way you looked at me like a princess and told me your name was Melanie. I remember it too well.”

I’m transported there for a moment. It’s all a haze of passion and desire and teeth, tongues, hands. I ache, but I don’t want to be his toy. I don’t want to be his booty call. My throat hurts when I take his hand, pry it off my neck, and start guiding him to the front door.

“I think . . . Greyson, I think you should leave. I can’t think when you’re around. I don’t know what you want from me but I can’t play these games with you . . . not with you . . .”

He looks at me when we reach the door, almost as if he wants me to kick him out. Almost as if he wants ME to be the one to tell him I never want to see him again. Will he feel relieved? Well, he won’t be! I can’t even begin to explain what that touch of gold tan does for his looks. How I can’t stop admiring the intriguing angles and planes of his face. How long I’ve waited in my life to feel something, a sparkle, a tingle, like this.

“My best friend gets married in two weeks,” I whisper, then I tell him the church as I start pushing him out, all the while holding his gaze. It’s hot, hungry. THE LOOK. “If you want one more chance, if you’re serious about this, you can come to church,” I tell him, then I lean over and kiss his lips, very softly, hearing his low, rumbling groan, then I step back and close the door.

I lean on it, squeezing my eyes shut as I struggle to breathe. God that kiss was nothing and yet it made every inch of my body shudder.

After a minute, I hear him growl “Fuck” on the other side of the door. Did it take him that long to recover from that kiss too? Then I swear I can feel him lean on the door. I close my eyes and breathe slowly. When he whispers, “Melanie,” it’s right where I have my cheek pressed against the door. I tremble down to my toes, struggling to get my voice level.

“Yes?” I say.

“I’ll be there.”

I hear the elevator a good while later. I lift my fingers and touch the door, and for the first time in my life, I’m terribly afraid about meeting him, the one man I’ve been waiting for.

Suddenly every fiber in my body, my sober body, tells me he is the one.

He is the one.

The one who’s going to wreck me. Hurt me. Demolish me. The one who is going to remove every inch of the girl in me. He will be the memory I will never forget, and good or bad, he will be THE one I dream of.

Except he’s all wrong.

There’s something exciting and alarming about him.

The dark in his hazel eyes, the brilliant gleam that makes him so attractive to me, the way he smells of leather and metal and forest and danger to me.

I think of my mother and I always thought I’d do her proud. I remember my best friend, concerned that a Riptide would sweep her away. Greyson won’t be a riptide. I don’t know what he’ll be, but I’m thinking tsunami, hurricane, something natural and unstoppable.

I wonder if he will show up at the wedding. If he is as helpless to this pull as I am.

I plop back down with my movie and curl into a couch pillow, my thoughts no longer with the most beautiful fairy tale ever written. I whisper into the emptiness of the room, “Please, if you’re just going to hurt me, please, please, don’t come to Brooke’s wedding.”

NINE

RESTLESS

Greyson

What in the f**k am I doing?

The surveillance camera screens flare bright when I get home after days of nonstop working, of chasing my marks, city to city, home to home. The house is asleep. Father, the guys, everyone in the rental. I bite off one glove, then do the same with the other while I bring a loaf of bread, a jar of PB, and a steak knife over.

We’ve set up the surveillance cameras that watch the entries, exits, windows of the home. Pounds of computers weigh down several tables, lights flickering among tangles of wire. I spread the PB onto a slice of bread, slap another one on it, and gobble it down as I search the boxes of recordings and pull out a card from last year, labeled with the date of the fight. I’ve been thinking about her. Every second of the day, I remember her.

Wet and vulnerable, in the rain.

Wet and warm, in my arms.

Telling me her name is Melanie.

Inviting me to her best friend’s wedding.

She triggers every synapse in my brain until she’s alive in my mind, laughing a laugh I’ve only ever heard her laugh . . . cuddling with me as she watches her movie . . . pushing me out the door like she can’t stand the sight of me, then pulling me back and kissing the bejezus out of me.

I stood there like a moron leaning on her door, my heart slamming in my chest as I waited for her to open it. Hell, I was ready to kick it open.

Instead, I left and went to rent a tuxedo and then I started looking at apartments nearby.

I’m dangerous to her; hell, she’s dangerous to me. I can’t let myself get distracted for this shit.

So what the f**k am I doing?

I slide the recording into a card reader and play it, my eyes straining for the glimpse of her, my daily dose of Melanie I need to see.

“And nooow, ladies and gentlemen . . .” the announcer begins with his usual flair, “Remington Tate, your one and only, RIPTIDE!! RIPTIDE!! Say hello to RIPTIDEEEEE!” he yells.

One of our fighters trots toward the ring, into the screen. It’s Riptide.

He’s not good; he’s the best I’ve ever seen. The most lucrative fighter my father has ever sponsored in the Underground—and one we all hope to continue to sponsor, thanks to his reckless streak.

“Riptide, Riptide . . .” I hear the crowd through the speakers.

I drink my soda as I keep watching the screen, waiting to spot the blonde on the sidelines. Melanie. She’s about to appear, jumping up and down as usual, and I’m tensing with anticipation when the image freezes, blacks out, then cuts to the next fight.

I smash a fist down to get the computer going. Nothing. I scowl, rewind, play. Same shit happens. Draining the last of my soda, I toss the can in the trash can and roughly scrub a frustrated palm over my face, then I stalk to Wyatt’s room and flick the light on. “Who the f**k messed with the tapes?”

“What?”

“You tampered with them, Wyatt?”

“They’re from f**king last year. What’s so important about it? What do you see nobody else does, huh? What does my father think you can do nobody else can’t?”

“He wants to break me. That’s all there is. You’re f**king lucky he didn’t try the same with you. Tomorrow I want the full footage, I don’t care what you need to do.”

I flip the switch back off and go to my room and stare at my phone.

What the f**k am I doing? I grab a knife and feel its weight, somehow satisfying me. I set my SIG aside, pull out several knives, slide them into my slacks’ back pockets, six inside each, then I start sending them flying, over and over, rapidly twirling them a dozen times in the air, so fast you don’t realize the blade is turning until it slams into the wall. I pull them out of each pocket, one every second. One. Two. Three. Four . . . five, six, seven, eight, nine, teneleventwelve.

I’ve got a rental tux. I’ve got a place in Seattle, a ticket to Seattle. I’ve got an itch in me and her name’s Melanie.

My phone rings. “Yeah?”

“She’s home now. Safe and sound.”

My eyes flick to the clock. 11:34 p.m. So late? “C.C.’s coming to relieve you tomorrow. I’m working a mark and then flying in. Why’s she out so late?”

“ ’Kay, boss.”

“She alone?”

I wait for Derek’s answer. “Alone. She had dinner with the friend and the blond guy who hangs out with them. And no, he didn’t sit close to her.”

“What’s—”

“She’s f**king wearing some sort of dress. Floral.”

“And what—”

“It’s pink, boss. With yellow tennis shoes and her hair loose and lots of bracelets.”

I see her in my mind and breathe out through my nostrils while a strange sensation of peace and longing flow through my muscles, tensing then relaxing me.