by HELEN HARDT
He looked away. “Shit. No. Forget it.”
“No way, Hawkins.” She clung to his arm like it was a parachute rip cord. “Spill it, or I’ll call Josie myself for a little girls’ chat.”
He swung a hot glare at her. She jabbed her chin out, not surrendering even a blink.
“You’re not kidding, are you?”
“I’ve had to eat bugs to survive, Sergeant. Do you think I’m kidding?”
His head fell against the cushions. He dragged his hand down his face. “He had a riding crop, okay? And he was striking her ass with it. Repeatedly. And hard.”
“Okay,” Sage answered evenly. “And was she liking it?”
“Hell, Sage. I wasn’t in a position to take a survey.”
“You remember a hell of a lot of details already. You want to tell me that you didn’t notice whether Josie was begging, ‘Get me out of here now’ or ‘Get inside me now?’”
“Did you really just ask me that?”
“Are you really still avoiding the answer?”
He threw her another glower. “Fine. Okay, she was…enjoying things…I suppose.”
He lurched off the couch and stormed to the hearth. Sage rose, too. He didn’t turn when she did. She lifted a hand, yearning to touch him, to make sure he knew she hadn’t suddenly turned to dust at his illicit revelation. Truthfully, she felt the opposite. For the first time since they’d returned from Thailand, she felt clear about her connection to him. This was them, tearing down walls together. This was them, forging into new territory together.
Together.
It felt wonderful to hear that word ringing in her consciousness. Better than wonderful.
“I’ve never told that to anyone.” Garrett dropped his hands as he muttered the confession. “I was afraid of it. Afraid…of what it had done to me.”
“What did it do to you?”
“You’ve been the firsthand witness of that, sugar. A couple of times now.”
She took a tentative step toward him. Stopped. Conflict sat on her shoulders as she carefully considered her next words.
Who was she kidding? There was no careful to be had here. He was either going to understand, once and for all, that his burgeoning Dominant was one of the best things that had happened to their relationship, or he’d choose to dive back in to his self-condemnation. She refused to stick around for that sight anymore.
“I don’t think you turned out so bad, Garrett.”
“Really?” As she half expected, he wheeled back around. His shoulders were stiff and his face was gaunt. “You don’t think so, huh? Well, isn’t that special.”
Had she been tempted to hold him a second ago? “It should be special,” she snapped. “I’m your fiancée. Does that count for anything anymore?”
He snorted. “Don’t you get it? After so many years of swearing I wouldn’t be like Wyatt, that I wouldn’t become him, that I’d be better than him at handling my shit…and yet I’ve tromped down the same damn path as him.” His lips twisted. “The only thing I didn’t fuck up was letting some starry-eyed kid get obsessed with me, only to have their hero fall and crumble as they watched.”
Sage dug her nails into her palms. Gazing at him was torment. It was worse than watching him get beat up, because he was the one doing the damage. And nothing she said could make him stop.
“You’re right,” she rasped. “On one thing. There’s no kid this time. But there is someone here who calls you hero.”
He blinked, clearly understanding her. And clearly not happy with that. Tough beans, Hawkins. You’re going to listen to this.
“You think it’s just a cute catch phrase for me, Garrett? You think it’s something I don’t believe with all my heart? Still?” She couldn’t stand the distance anymore. In two steps, she pressed herself against him. She looked up and spread a hand to the side of his head. “And no, you haven’t crumbled. Dear God, in this moment, you’re more strong and amazing to me than ever. You’re my hero in a million more senses. Confronting your truth takes as much guts as facing insurgent fire or an enemy grenade.” She smiled. “Or a slimebag in a jungle, selling women into slavery.”
His eyes went stunningly wide. In their blue fire, Sage caught the intensity of real horror. “Shit, Sage!”
He tried to turn away. She grabbed him harder. “No,” she pleaded. “Don’t close me out, damn it! Don’t run from this, Garrett. Don’t run from us.”
He curled his hands around the backs of her elbows. His fingertips pumped against her skin, keeping time to the hard breaths attacking his chest. “Sage.” He dipped his face, every cliff and valley of his features etched in the agony of a new creature bursting from its chrysalis. “I love you so much.”
“And I love you.” She flattened her hands to the ridges that defined his lower torso. “But right now, I also need you.” Using his body for balance, she slid downward. Then down even more. She didn’t speak again until she was in a full kneel, her head dropped between her upstretched arms. Just getting to that position made her mind shift into another place, where peace and power mixed together in a beautiful ambrosia. The elixir spread through her body, igniting her nerve endings, feeding the pulsing need in the deepest tissues of her sex. “I need to give it all to you, my hero. My body. My heart. My power. Take them. Use them to transport me. To transport you. You have all of me, Garrett. Everything.”
She was hyperaware of every part of his reaction. The tremors in his thighs shaking like the tree he’d pinned her to this afternoon. The breath entering and exiting his body like whooshes of a wind storm. The sound that vibrated up his throat, rough and tortured, as he stroked the top of her head.
“You really want this?” His growl was part savoring predator, part intent lover. Oh God, that voice. If that was what the devil sounded like when he’d approached Faust, she didn’t blame the guy for inking the deal on his soul.
“Yes.” She got the word out on a dry whisper.
His grip on her head changed. By slow degrees, he tightened and twisted until he had her more by the hair instead of her scalp. “Tell me again, sweet sugar.”
Oh, God. The growl that took over his voice… It belonged to the same beautiful, dark creature he’d untethered that first night back in Bangkok. Between that tone and the increasing torque of his hold, her skin began to tingle and her heart began to soar.
“Yes, Sir. I want this.”
Another rough sound rolled across his chest. The creature in him was assessing her. Mentally prowling around her. Approving her.
Sage sighed in bliss. To know she was doing this for him, giving him this dynamic that his soul and his body had craved for so long…she was joyous—floating.
He jerked harder on her hair. Her sigh turned into a sharp cry. She held nothing back from him, and it felt amazing. After a year of checking every move she made and controlling every sound she emitted, this freedom was a miracle. A gift. No more editing herself. No more worrying if anything was right or wrong, or too loud or too needy…
Garrett brought his other hand up to her head. When he had her braced in his dual grip, he pressed her face into the apex of his thighs. Sage bit hungrily at the fabric, reveling in how the ridge beneath his khakis jumped and surged for her. As his hold coiled tighter, she whimpered higher.
Until the next second, when he pulled back with a harsh grunt. He wheeled away and spat the F-word like it was going to get pulled from the world’s lexicon forever.
Her heart dove back into her stomach. Searing heat invaded the back of her eyes. She fell back to her heels, shaky and unsteady.
Dead end.
Again.
Garrett locked white knuckles to the mantle. Sage curled similar fists into her lap. They remained that way through interminable minutes, frozen at opposite ends of the rug that might as well have turned into a chasm, in a silence just as deep and divisive.
The doorbell rang.
Garrett threw a questioning glance to her. Sage shook her head. Neither of the
m was expecting anyone. She rose, wiping her cheeks as she did, and joined Garrett as he went to the door.
“Surprise!”
The couple on the front stoop exclaimed in unison when Garrett opened the door. The woman’s pixie-like features were enhanced by a cute contemporary style of her black hair. The man was at least a foot-and-a-half taller than her and looked so much like a bearded version of Garrett that an outsider would’ve taken him as Garrett’s dad. But he wasn’t.
The tension in Garrett’s body tripled inside ten seconds. Sage was proud of him for forcing a smile and extending his hand in greeting.
“Uncle Wyatt.”
Chapter Thirteen
The last time Garrett had been this uncomfortable, the squad was on recon in an alley in Aleppo, and they’d spent the night getting silently sized up by a group of local kids. They’d had to consider every damn move they made, turned into star specimens on one of life’s stranger petri dishes, whether they liked it or not.
Wyatt was giving him the same spare-no-details scrutiny.
The man hid it better than the Syrian kids, but Garrett felt every turn of the man’s mental focus knob just as acutely. To anyone else, he simply appeared a proud uncle shooting the shit with his nephew in front of the backyard fire pit, sipping on a beer, enjoying the sunset. It was a façade and they both knew it. Garrett was pretty damn sure that if he asked, the man could tell him exactly how many egrets were out on the water, as well as which ones were there for food and which ones were trolling for a hump.
God only knew what specifics Wyatt had gathered about him in the moments he’d been too stunned to watch his composure. After the initial shock of their greeting, Sage had welcomed the couple inside. The second the door was shut, Wyatt pulled him into a gruff guy hug—the first heartfelt contact he’d had from the man in ten years. The move shaved off that much time from his spirit too. For a few awesome minutes, he was a Wyatt-worshipping puppy again, showing the man around their place, bragging about the new grill he’d put in himself, which was filled with cobwebs because he hadn’t used the thing in the last year. What would’ve been the point?
Sage instantly decided that the webs wouldn’t do. She’d declared a family barbecue was in order, and it was happening tonight. Garrett, still giddy, had grinned and agreed—until his fiancée hooked arms with Aunt Josie and started making lists for their food-shopping trip. That was when the ten years slammed back in again, along with the shit that made those one hundred twenty months feel like twice that much. The memory of King’s shrewd leer at Sea-Tac. The regular updates from Zeke, confirming that the girls remained a hot ticket on every bounty hunter’s list, despite King’s solitary confinement status at FDC. And damn it, that too-close-for-comfort house call made at the base this morning by King’s minions.
Garrett snatched the list from Sage inside of five seconds. When she gave him a glare poured of solid sass, he’d been ready with arched brows, along with the command that he and Wyatt would do the shopping. She’d nicked the list back, declaring that her house arrest didn’t have jurisdiction over a food run chaperoned by his own aunt—and further, how their dinner had to be something more than cold cereal, frozen pizza, and peanut butter sandwiches. He’d been busy trying not to be an overprotective asshole to formulate a decent zinger.
So here he was, faking his way through the guy-bonding commercial, trying to numb his anxiety with the beer in his hand while pondering Wyatt’s purpose here. He didn’t buy the excuse Josie had spouted—that they’d seen the news coverage about Sage’s miracle rescue and couldn’t sit still about it—but the conversation wasn’t exactly lending itself to the Wyatt and Garrett Open ‘n’ Honest Hour. So far, they’d talked sports, smartphones, and the newest Michael Bay movie, executing a perfect waltz around their emotional bear trap. Now, the safe subjects were thinning out, and the silences stretching longer.
And the man who sat four feet from him seemed a more distant stranger than ever before.
Maybe, he mused, it was time to kick their conversation inside. The numbing savior of ESPN was just a dozen steps away.
His cell danced across the redwood table with an incoming call. The peppy dance song blaring from the device told him it was Sage. As he reached for the phone, Wyatt flashed him a sympathetic smirk. Seemed Josie programmed her own ring tone into his cell too.
“Hey, sugar.”
She stopped herself in the middle of a laugh. A smile tugged at his lips despite the status of his nerves. Letting her out of his sight might be playing havoc with his stress levels, but it was damn good to hear real joy in her voice again.
“Hi there, Sir Hero!”
He chuckled. “Right.”
“It’s true. You are my hero.” She let out a long sigh. “You always will be.”
His laughter slipped. The second sense he’d been honing on Wyatt launched a redirect at her—more specifically, her mushy words and slurred pronunciation. “Sage, are you a little juiced?”
A spluttering giggle came through the line. “Maybe. Just a little.”
“At the base commissary?”
“Ummm…maybe we’re not at the commissary anymore.”
“What?” It shot out of him like a twenty-five-millimeter bullet. “Sage, I told you this trip was fine as long as you and Josie went to the commissary.” After the incident with King’s goons this morning, both Ethan and Zeke had confirmed the base was beefing up security patrols, credential checks, and license plate scans. Adding all that up, he’d finally relented to Sage’s enthusiasm, figuring an hour’s trip to the commissary would be the safest solo trip she could make. Now, she’d just tossed safe to the roadside. Damn it!
“Don’t yell at me,” she blurted back.
“I’m not—” He lurched to his feet, trying to get in a deep breath. “I’m not yelling. So where are you?”
“The seafood at the commissary sucked,” she babbled on. “I should’ve known. They never have good prawns. God, I can’t wait to have these prawns tonight, baby. They’re huge! Really amazing! Wait’ll you see—”
“Sage. Where. Are. You?”
“The Market, silly. Where else would we get great prawns?”
“The Market.” He muttered it as his chilly unease turned into the ice of dread. “Pike Place Market?”
“Now you’re yelling.”
“Damn straight! I told you to go to the base, only the base, and now you’re downtown, shopping with half the goddamn world?”
Her answering laugh dug into him like razor blades. “Yeah. I’ve been naughty. You’ll probably have to spank me.”
“Not. Funny.”
“Well, Josie thought it was. So did Rayna.” There was scraping on the line, as if she turned her head. “Didn’t you, Ray?”
He sank back into his chair, frowning in confusion. “Rayna? She’s there too?”
“Yeah! Isn’t that great? We just bumped into them! They’re gonna come for dinner too, okay?”
“Them?” The air slowly returned to his lungs. That didn’t mean it still wasn’t painful to breathe, but the extra oxygen to his head helped with clarity. “Who’s with her?”
He prayed for one specific word in answer. At last, God heard him.
“Zeke.”
“Thank fuck.” He pinched his nose. “Baby, let me talk to him.”
More rasps grated in his ear. Then the throb of heavy wind. At last, a heavy grunt he’d never been happier to hear. “Yo, Hawk.”
“Christ,” he muttered. “I ordered her to hit the commissary and then get her ass straight home.”
“I see how that worked out.”
The implication in Z’s voice was plain as a fly on a trap strip. “Look, after this morning, she started calling me the prison warden. There isn’t a Broadway cast of brothers around to help me with this shit, either.”
“I feel you,” Z replied. “But it’s all good, okay? Fortune owed us one and decided to pay up. There’s a Seattle PD officer nearby, and I’ve filled him i
n on King’s witch hunt for the girls. He’s adding his eyeballs to the cause. It’s handled.”
Garrett snorted, his shorthand version of a thank-you. “So why are you two there?”
His friend let out a low grouse. “Rayna started calling me the warden too.”
He couldn’t help a sharp laugh. No wonder Z was being Mr. Understanding about his frustration. “And the story on the tipsy status?” Another jolt of alarm hit him. “Hell. If Sage drove there from the base in that condition—”
“Relax, man. There’s a bunch of Yakima Valley wineries here having a tasting thing in the restaurants. Your Aunt Josie has grabbed Sage’s keys already. She can follow me back to your place. It seems we’ve been invited to dinner.”
“Seems so.”
“We’ll be buggin’ soon, Hawk. I promise.”
“Thanks, Z.”
“Peace out.”
He settled the phone back on the table and released a weighted whoosh. Though he’d been aware of Wyatt’s watchful silence through the whole conversation, Garrett’s brain officially jumped back into the symbolic petri dish. He had a couple of choices now. Try to hide the relief on his face, or simply wait for the question he was certain Master Sergeant Wyatt Hawkins was about to lob his way.
“The troops aren’t cooperating today, eh?”
There was enough of Wyatt’s old bravado in that to make Garrett smile. “You could say that.”
His uncle stared over the water again, rubbing a finger across his lip. Added to his beard and the sunglasses he wore, the motion made it impossible for Garrett to read what he was thinking. It was likely by design.
“And how’s Zeke? Still getting you into some crazy-ass Charlie-Foxtrot missions?”
“Well, he’s still crazy.” Garrett tossed back some more beer. “And he’s still an ass sometimes. But as you know, I get hard for the clusterfucks.”
“Yeah.” Wyatt’s murmur was low and tight. “So did I.”
Garrett didn’t say anything. Words would have diluted what his silence said louder and better. That he understood. That his addiction for the tough missions, the batshit bullet fights, and the tore-up-from-the-floor-up adventures had been prewritten into his blood from the first battle story Wyatt had ever told him—and that he wouldn’t have changed a damn thing about it, either. Like he could have.