Saved by His Submissive (10 page)

Sage turned to look more directly at him. “So you concentrated on doing your job better. And it sounds like you did.”

He didn’t return her scrutiny. In his profile, she watched a hundred feelings launch emotional grenades at each other before they all exploded through his fist. A few splinters flew off the wood of the window frame before he said anything again.

“Do you understand what I’m saying? I concentrated on getting revenge for
your
life by taking as many as I legally could.” He rotated his head back toward her. His lips were a tormented twist, his nostrils puffed like a bull with his hard breaths. “My soul took a swan dive into despair, and I dragged as many others into the ocean as I could. And now, even though you’re back, I can’t figure out how to climb out.” He shoved back from the window. “Shit!”

Sage scrambled across the bed but stopped when her surge made him jerk back. “It’s okay.” Fresh tears stung her dry lips. “I understand. It’s okay. Let me help.”

“You
can’t
help!” The boom of it visibly shook the thin curtains. “Don’t you fucking see? I tried it, Sage. Just getting near you—I tried. I wanted to just love you, and I ended up—” He searched the room, his gaze desperate and agonized. “I ended up doing what I did.”

Sage sat back on her heels. “Oh, hell. Do you think I’m nine, Garrett? I guarantee you, I’m not. And I’m very aware of what it was.”

“That doesn’t change—”

“Sexual domination.”

She couldn’t think of any other way to get through to him. From the jump of his brows and the tighter tension in his body, it looked like she’d succeeded. With the subtlety of a sledge hammer.

“Look,” she stammered on, twisting her hands in her lap, “I know we’ve never discussed it before, but—”

“Damn straight we’ve never discussed it.” He stomped back to the window.

“Maybe we should.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t
.
” His shoulders tested the limits of his T-shirt again. “Maybe we absolutely won’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not that guy, okay?”

She lifted a tiny smile. “Maybe now you are. Hmm.
Sir Garrett.
It has a nice—”

“Stop.” He spun back toward her. Despair no longer filled his stare. In every inch of his eyes was the deep, unblinking blue of a very pissed-off animal. “There’s nothing remotely nice about it. Don’t say it again.
Ever.
”

She spread her hands, supplicating to him. “Garrett—”

“I’m not doing this, Sage. Not now, and not with you. That part of me
isn’t
for you.”

She rose to her knees. Fine. He wanted to play king of the damn jungle? She could do jungle. She had been for a year. “Not good enough, Sergeant.
Why,
damn it?”

His glower intensified. “Are you fucking kidding me? Fine. Because I happen to love you, remember? Men don’t do shit like that to the women they love!”

“Even if the woman likes it?”

He halted as if he’d walked into a sword. His eyebrows plummeted. The anger and confusion on his face declared war on each other. “I’m throwing the bullshit flag on your ass, Sage Weston. No sane woman can actually admit to—”

“What?” The sword had climbed into his gaze and she met it head-on, molding it into the steel resolution beneath her own posture. “To what, Garrett? To letting you take charge of me? To letting you command me, control me and—gasp!—be stronger than me, after I endured a whole damn year of having to do that for myself every damn day?” When he did nothing but park himself into a stubborn pose, she thrust her chin out in rebellious fury. “Yeah, I guess that makes me insane.”

A minute of thick silence passed. Neither of them moved. At last, Garrett closed the two steps back to the bed. He paused another moment, before sitting again. Sage kept still, consciously ordering herself not to dive for his lap, curl herself around him, and not move for hours. Couldn’t he feel it too? Couldn’t he sense how much she needed him? Could he really have stopped caring completely?

The question finished invading her mind about the moment he reached for her hands again.

“Sage, my heart…we could’ve gone into that shithole last night, found bags of diamonds, and I’d have been less knocked on my ass. You are the gift I never expected to find again. This…you, here…it’s the fulfillment of my craziest, wildest dreams. And yet I got you back here, and I treated you like—” Beneath his breath, he gave himself a filthy verbal flogging. “Don’t you understand?” he finally growled. “Damn it, you should be wrapped in satin, and sleeping on fine linen, and treated like a queen. And all you’ve gotten is—”

 “No.” She smashed her hand over his mouth. “I should be wrapped in
you.
Sleeping next to
you.
” When his throat constricted on a swallow, the backs of her eyes pricked yet again. When would these stupid tears stop? “You obstinate dork. I don’t want to be your stupid queen under glass, okay? I just want…”

“I know.” He said it after pulling her hand away, though he kept her fingers curled inside his. “And I’m here.” He pulled her knuckles against his lips. “I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere. You have me here, Sage. Always.”

He released her hand. But the look on his face made Sage push it right back, looping her grip around his neck. She twisted her fingers into his hair, a silent command to keep his gaze locked on her. To the man’s credit, he endured her scrutiny. He smiled, if that’s what the look could be called. Both edges of his mouth wavered as if stabbed into place by dull thumbtacks. It reminded her of the event posters in the mess back on base. Lame messages proclaimed in half-peeling tempura paint.

Her stomach coiled into a tighter knot. Dread needled her whole body.

Damn it.
Damn it.
Yep, lame message was definitely the case this time.

“I have you,” she echoed, “always. But…not in
all
ways.” When Garrett rushed his stare back toward the window, she persisted, “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Sage.” He sighed heavily. “This isn’t up for discussion.”

“Of course it isn’t. You’ve already made up your own ass-backward mind, haven’t you? You still think you’re going to turn into some kind of sadistic beast and hurt me, so you’re just not going to let me in. You’re still going to slink off into your shadows, and fuck another by-the-hour tart because you think I can’t handle your damn ‘shadows.’”

 He whipped his stare back. It had morphed into a glare. “This is for the better.”

“Really?” she flung back. “This
what,
Garrett? Tell me, what the hell am I to you now?” She grabbed his ring again then held it up between them. “Is this going to just become an expensive little amulet?”

A pulse rammed in his jaw. “That’s not fair.”

“That’s truth! This ring is supposed to stand for sharing our lives, Garrett. For sharing, not for running from each other!”

The accusation ignited him.
Thank God.
He surged toward her, his face curled with ferocious intent. It thrilled her. At she could still get to him. There was hope.

“So what now?” She knew it was a push. But desperate times called for having girl balls. “Well, Garrett? Do you have the answer for
this
one? What do we do? Do we define what we have left over? What am I going to be now? Your roommate? Your responsibility? Your precious ‘mission package?’ Do I get to be ‘turned over’ once we’re back, so I’m not your damn concern anymore?”

He yanked back with a violent jerk. His whole body coiled. There was no way she couldn’t feel it. His thick thighs shook the bed as he prepared his body to act on the bail-out his mind had clearly commanded. Sage’s body went taut, preparing for the Arctic cold that would take over as soon as he bolted.

But he didn’t leave. As he’d truly promised, he stayed. He lifted his hand to engulf hers, surrounding her fingers plus the ring inside a grip that bordered on crushing. The sight of him consumed Sage’s senses with equal effect. She was swept away anew by his rugged beauty, suffocated in the fire of his powerful, unmerciful focus.

“You’re mine.”

The words rumbled from the depths of his chest. She was left with no doubt about their intent. They were vows, not just syllables.

“You’re
mine,
Sage. Call in any deity or god or spirit you want; I’ll swear by their names and all their fucking saints and angels, too. As far as I’m concerned, it took them all working together to bring you back to me, anyway.”

She parted her lips, wanting to say something but choked by a maddening desire to kiss
and
wring his neck at once. He didn’t make things easier by sliding to the floor next to her, taking a knee as he continued gripping her hand. “You’re not a gift I’m going to waste. I swear by this ring and everything it still means to me, you will be safe. I’ll protect you from any animal, asshole, criminal, or deviant who thinks they can lay so much as a fingernail of harm against you. And yeah,” –he finally rose to his feet, let her go, and crossed back to the window— “that includes protecting you from me too.”

Sage didn’t shift. At last, she let out a hard sigh. The hard hunch of his shoulders told her he was ready to keep sparring with her, but what good was it going to do? The damn bear had made up his mind and taken his position. If the poles of the whole damn earth flipped and told him that position wasn’t right any more, he’d fight to the death for it. Fate had stripped him of getting to do it for over a year, and now the man wasn’t just making up for lost time, but doubling his efforts. To him, the stance made sense—because to him, her number one enemy was only a breath away. His own.

Fine. If that’s the way he wanted to look at things, that’s what she’d work with.

All she had to do now was give him bigger enemies to fight.

You want to keep me safe, Sergeant Hawkins? That’s just peachy by me, baby. Let’s rumble.

Chapter Seven

Ironically, perhaps even thankfully, the embassy made the decision to send Sage and Rayna home on a commercial flight instead of a military transport. The news came down early the next morning, and Garrett was packed and ready to head to Suvarnabhumi Airport by three that afternoon.

On one hand, he was glad they’d be enjoying the marathon-length journey in civilian comfort; on the much larger other hand, he already sensed that Sage wasn’t going to let him relax much during the next twenty-four hours. She boarded the van with a serene smile and a graceful glide that didn’t match the fuming woman who’d turned her back on him in bed last night, unwilling to hear his explanation about had happened—more accurately,
hadn’t
happened—at the hotel. Thinking back on all that now only reconfirmed his suspicion. Sometime between giving him that cold shoulder and this afternoon’s warm smile, she’d hatched a plan of some kind—and something told him he wasn’t going to be happy he couldn’t pound a few irritated fists into the fuselage of a pretty 747.

The departure from protocol was explained as necessary due to the media frenzy that had developed stateside for the girls’ story. Every major news station wanted their shot of the “miracle nurses’ return to the living,” and the Army, knowing a prize PR op when they had one, sure as hell wanted to supply it. The circus began even at Suvarnabhumi, with CNN, Fox News, BBC and a few of the other major networks on hand, cameras and microphones recording every step they took to the plane. Garrett, Zeke and six other guys from the squad were there, dutifully surrounding Sage and Rayna in a sea of US Army dress blue, as they’d been instructed.

Orders or not, Garrett didn’t leave Sage’s side, not even when she stopped to buy flowers from local children, or when she veered off their path to take up CNN’s offer for a wave to Heidi on their live feed. When she paused
again
and said she needed to use the bathroom, he didn’t break stride, forcing her along by the crook of her elbow.

“We’re twenty yards from the plane,” he said into her ear from locked teeth. “You’ll get your chance there.”

With a deft wrench, she broke free from him. She tilted her head, eyes flashing like a confident little cat. Garrett knew that look. It always made him yearn to slam her into a wall and fuck the breath out of her. Not a damn thing had changed.

“I have to pee
now,
Sergeant Hawkins. If you’re worried about ‘protecting’ me in the ladies toilet, you’re more than welcome to join me.”

 For a second, he thought of calling her bluff. But the next moment, he looked down at his dress blues, followed by a glance at the news crews. The last thing he needed was some cameraman revved on three Red Bulls, catching a secret shot of him pulling a pissing match with their “darling” of the moment. He bit out the
f
word beneath his breath, let her go, and leaned against the wall. She smiled and sashayed into the bathroom.

She had him by the balls, and they both knew it.

Three hours later, the scheming little minx didn’t seem inclined to loosen that grip any time soon. Shockingly, Garrett hadn’t punched any holes into the 747 yet—though that trend might change any second now.