Legend (Real, #6)(42)

“So you and Remy are getting along, huh?” I ask.

He clenches his jaw and frowns. “We’re competitors, not buds.” He lowers himself down on the edge of my bed and leans forward, elbows to his knees, and the towel parts to reveal his thigh.

“But here you are,” I say. “Remy brought you here and you let yourself be brought.”

He turns to look at me with a new twinkle in his eye, and then looks down meaningfully at the bed we’re, as of this second, now both sitting on. “Here I am.”

In. My. Room.

“The boys say that Riptide wants his last fight to be worth it,” I say, pretending to be busy now studying the massage oil labels.

He frowns thoughtfully, and I lift my eyebrows.

“You didn’t know it’s his last season?” I ask.

“No.” He flexes his fingers, frowning. “All the more reason I’ll be the challenger at the final this year.”

I roll my eyes, but god, he’s amusing sometimes. I love that he speaks without a hint of boastfulness, only fact. There’s a slight frown on his face, and I can almost hear his brain working thoughtfully in the silence. “So pick one.” I show him both oils.

“I don’t need that.”

“Yes, you do,” I counter.

“I don’t.” He gets to his feet, keeps his back to me as he flips open the towel and lets it drop. My eyes widen at the glimpse of his perfectly muscled ass and long, muscled legs as he jumps into a pair of jeans. Then he grabs the T-shirt and slips his arms inside and jerks it over his head, his tattoo rippling with the move. The gray T-shirt falls to cover his abs as he turns.

And I lift my eyes to his.

“You don’t want me to touch you,” I murmur, heartbroken. “That’s why you don’t want these. Isn’t it?”

“I only want your touch if I can touch you back.”

We stare at each other, his eyes challenging me.

I inhale deeply, then blurt out, “If you give me one minute to get this on your shoulders and torso, I’ll give you a minute too, if you keep it G rated.”

He laughs softly. “G rated is not half of what you’ll be doing to me; you’ll be touching my chest.”

“So?”

He raises his brows.

“I’ll even let you go first. Come on, let me patch you up,” I continue.

He suddenly nods. “I go first?”

I clutch the oils convulsively in my fists as my world starts to spin.

Maverick approaches.

Oh god.

I’m holding my breath when Maverick raises his hand to my hair.

It’s just hair, I tell myself, but the way he rubs a few strands of my hair between two fingertips, looking at them as if they’re gold threads, makes my knees weak.

And I realize I always wear it back, except for rare occasions. Or bedtime. Like now.

He strokes the strands, from the roots to the tips, sliding his two fingers downward, and I feel the touch in the marrow of my bones. His eyes flick upward, and he looks into my eyes, penetratingly so, as he raises his hand to stroke his fingers gently down my face. As his three longest fingers feather down my cheek, his curled pinky finger traces the shell of my ear.

My body becomes lava.

He cups my cheeks gently in his palms, and his thumbs brush my cheekbones and eyelids.

Raw need. That’s what I see in his eyes.

That’s what I feel.

And I see something tender and warm. In those platinum eyes. For me?

“You have the world’s prettiest face,” he says. “On the prettiest body. With the prettiest smile. And a voice I think of when it’s all quiet.”

He flexes his jaw and eases back, then he rips off his T-shirt and sits down on the edge of the bed, inhaling deeply. When Maverick whispers, like he just did, that dark-thunder voice of his ripples through me as if he speaks from somewhere deep inside me.

God. I’m patching him up, and he’s wrecking me.

Trembling, I uncurl my fingers from around the oil bottles. Which I’d seemed to be grasping like my life depended on it. I try to keep things businesslike as I pour a little mustard oil into my palm and then I set my fingers on his shoulders.

His tattoo stares back at me.

The phoenix is so close I can almost breathe it in. I am breathing it in. Because the phoenix is him. And he smells like the shampoo in my bathroom and the very soap on my skin, but warmer and earthier.

I stroke my fingertip over the phoenix head. I want to kiss it.

I do kiss it.

I lean over, my lips brushing over the head so lovingly I hardly touch his skin.

He hisses out a breath, turns around, grabs my head as if to bring me close for a kiss, then lets go and stands, exhaling. “You’re playing with me.”

“No! No. I’m sorry.” I’m so embarrassed, I clutch my stomach and get oil on my shirt, then I pull my arms away and curl my fingers into my palms, struggling not to bury my face in my hands. “I don’t know why I feel the way I do when I’m with you.”

He narrows his eyes. “You have no idea what you do to me.”

The silence is everywhere.

He exhales and comes back to sit again, his broad back to me. He curls his hands over his knees and turns to look at me, shoulders tense.

I look at him and although my brain understands why, my body can’t seem to grasp why he’s not closer to me.