Saved by His Submissive (18 page)

Garrett’s shrug was a maddening display of male evasion. “As long as it takes.”

Sage dropped her hand from him. Fury eclipsed even her urge to leave a good scratch behind. “To quote someone near and dear to me, Sergeant Hawkins,
that’s
the line you’re going with?”

That got him to pin his stare directly into hers. Nothing had changed about the dark cobalt edges in his eyes. “Were you listening to me today at all? You know there’s information I’m entrusted with, Sage. Information that can’t be—”

“And
you
know that’s not what I’m talking about!” She shoved past him, storming into the living room, where there was more room to fling out her arms in frustration. “Keep all your classified secrets, Garrett. I get your job. I always have. But you’re not getting off that easy. You’re not going to hide behind your security clearance to avoid talking to me at all. Uncool, Hawkins. And completely unacceptable.”

She watched a deep breath fill his chest. “You’re talking about what happened this afternoon.” He didn’t look at her as he said it, his tone even as his gaze. “
After
the jump.”

She swallowed hard. “I’m not letting you pretend it didn’t happen, Garrett.” Her chest tightened as the memories, hot and sweet, flooded her mind’s eye. “I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen.”

She dropped her arms. Held her breath. For a moment, she let hope bloom in her heart and gut again. She openly offered that longing to him, letting it paint every inch of her face.

Garrett’s shoulders heaved as if she’d dragged home one of the trees from their forest and dropped it on him. His lips twisted. Conflict roared across his features. Still she waited. She prayed for that dark haze in his eyes to give way to the brilliant cyan stare of the lover who’d revealed himself to her beneath the pines today. Maybe if she envisioned him that way again, trapping her, consuming her, taking her in whatever way he could get her…

“I liked it, Garrett.”

Her voice quavered. The words were dangerous. The last time she’d spoken them, he’d been marked with scratches from another woman, and they’d fought like hellcats. That night, they’d slept back-to-back for the first time in their relationship—“slept” being a really loose term for those fitful hours.

This time, his reaction was different. Really different. Garrett didn’t bellow or growl back at her. By this point, he barely moved. He’d either shoved the invisible tree free, or decided to die under it. By the way his eyes slowly squeezed shut, Sage guessed the latter.

Damn it.

Fine. She knew how to light fires. Spark by excruciating spark.

“I liked it…Sir.”

She had nothing to lose anymore. If he was going to slip away from her, if he was going to let her rot in sexual and emotional frustration on the pedestal of his “protection,” she wasn’t going to let him go without knowing she’d risked it all, including his ridiculous misconceptions of her. If he stomped out of here now, she’d at least know she’d thrown every stick of emotional dynamite that she could at his stubborn, beautiful soul.

He finally moved again. He went nowhere near the door, thank God. He pivoted back into the kitchen, grabbing his water glass on the way. He set the tumbler into the sink then braced his hands on both sides of the basin. The pose made her ache. It was only a slight modification of how he’d spread himself across the window of their room in Bangkok. As he gazed out the window, she only saw the spread muscles of his back, but imagined his face was stamped in a similar grimace to that day. His glare likely probed the horizon, reflecting a mind lost in a conflict she couldn’t comprehend.

 “I know you liked it, Sage.”

She tamped her lips together to keep them from shaking . His tone was still shadowed, but the words were a caress instead of an accusation. Maybe this was a bit of progress.

“If I remember things correctly, you did, too.”

Tension invaded his stance again. “What happened this afternoon …” His head sank. “Look, between the adrenalin from the jump, and watching your own excitement about the experience, and having you against me again—” He finally turned around, but made no move to leave the kitchen. “I should’ve controlled all that better, okay?”

Had the word “progress” actually crossed her mind a minute ago? Sage folded her arms, trying to muster a composed nod but feeling more like a bobble head doll on the dashboard of a lurching VW. “You should’ve—” Her lips stopped wobbling. She locked them together instead, hoping the action helped her clamp back a horridly familiar sting behind her eyes. “Right. Sure. I understand. Because God help your sorry ass if you lose control with your fiancé, of all people. Oh yeah, her. The one who’s
supposed
to make you feel like taking her hard and fast and dirty against a tree.”

His eyes slid shut again. “Hell, Sage.”

“Nice choice of comeback, Hawkins. Is that where you think you’re headed now, because we did what we did?” She watched two waves of awareness crash across his face. The first was raw arousal. The second was unfiltered shame. Nothing like that juicy combo to tempt her into playing with fire again. “Or is it because of what you were thinking about while we did it?”

“I
wasn’t
thinking,” he bit back. “Don’t you get it? We were in that forest. Everything felt so surreal. Finally, everything just…went away. I lost rationality.”

“Why? Because nobody who’s ‘rational’ would have half a kinky thought about their woman?”

He surged forward, stabbing a finger at her. “
Not
about the woman they love. Damn it, Sage. We’ve been over this!”

“No.
You’ve
been over this.” She uncurled her arms and planted her stance. Every step of his approach brought dual bites of anger and fear. Good Lord, he really had gotten huge over the last twelve months. But he wouldn’t hurt her. Shit, they were here like this because he was spooked about touching her at all. Her fear stemmed from the very real possibility that they’d leave this room standing on the exact same game board squares, separate pawns at the mercy of
his
dice. Do not pass
Go.
Do not collect two hundred dollars. Stay in Jail. Stay in Jail. Stay in Jail.

No way. Not this time.

“What the hell?” He fired it back at her with what looked like confusion—on the surface. But they’d always been able to stab through each other’s one-liners, whether they were joking or fighting. The fact that this was the biggest skirmish of their relationship didn’t change a thing. Garrett knew it, too. One look up at the blue flames in his eyes told Sage that.

“You heard me,” she retorted. “I said
you’ve
been through this. That wasn’t a two-way conversation we had in Bangkok. It was the Garrett Hawkins sermon hour, concluded when you decided the gospel had gotten pounded into me enough, and it was time to ram your close-minded brain back into the quicksand of denial.”

He stopped in front of her, eclipsing with the force of his presence. “I’m not in denial about a damn thing here.”

Sage sneered. “Is that so, Preacher Boy?”

With no warning, he clutched her by the shoulders. The move was so sudden, her head snapped back. That was a good thing, since the searing intent on his face said far more than the gravel in his reply.

“You don’t think I know what I’m talking about, Sage? My best friend is a hardcore Dominant. Half the unit practices the dynamic too. I’ve trusted these men with my life, and I’ll do it again. You think I’d toss a single one of them into hell?” He pulled her an inch closer. Both their chests clutched. His jaw tensed as if her body was a stem of Belladonna, breathtaking but deadly. “I don’t damn anyone for enjoying Power Exchange, okay?”

“Just yourself,” Sage whispered. When his hold tightened, she persisted, “I’m right about that, and don’t you dare deny it.” She pressed her fingers to his sternum. His heart thundered against the taut skin. “Why am I right, Garrett? Why are you denying yourself? Why are you denying both of us something we clearly want to explore?”

He curled his fingers harder against her skin. His touch turned into scrapes of rough possession, marking her along the backs of her arms. A shiver coursed through her. She wondered—oh God, she hoped—that her words would unlock the chains so clearly weighing his gaze too. But as she searched for that freedom in his eyes, she saw devastating truth to the contrary. His mind was barely here anymore. He looked at her, but didn’t see her.

Sage endured another tremor. This vibration wasn’t singing a sunny Beach Boys tune.
Where are you, Garrett?
Where had he sent his thoughts? Had he taken a mental vacation back to Bangkok, maybe? If so, to where…or damn it, to whom? When he’d come back to the embassy drenched in perfume and marked with fingernail scratches, Sage had assumed he’d gone to see a call girl. What if that “stranger” hadn’t been such a stranger?

His heavy swallow tossed icebergs into the freezing lake of her fear. The way he let her go, as if she were a treasure he didn’t deserve, added more.

He skirted around her and walked to the window.

Shit.

Sage stumbled in a semi-circle, forcing herself to turn toward him. He stood with his legs parted, his arms at rigid angles to his sides. The sun was setting over the lake, casting a deep bronze glow that turned his honed torso and long legs into a silhouette that resembled a demi-god rising from a pool of fire. Damn it, if this was the moment he was going to break her heart, could he look a little less magnificent doing it?

After a minute of torturous silence, she forced three words out.

“What is it?”

Her ragged rasp seemed to impact him harder than any shriek she could have mustered. That was a good thing, because Sage barely had the strength to stand, let alone speak.

“What is it.” He repeated it as a statement instead of a question. “I think the proper phrasing query here, sugar, is
who,
not what.”

Sage gripped the back of the couch. Okay, this
really
wasn’t boding well. “All right,” she said tightly, “if you say so.”

Garrett dragged a hand through his hair.

“Fuck.”

The word was horridly ironic, a jut of breath into the air, but carrying the weight of so much more beneath the surface. Sage did fight back the urge to scream now. “Garrett, damn it! Just spit it out, okay? I’ve pulled on the big girl panties. Who the hell is she?”

He laughed. The sound didn’t possess a single note of mirth, but yeah, the bastard actually laughed at her. As Sage battled the urge to tackle him out the window, he closed the distance back to her and yanked the option from possibility. Suddenly, he had her wrapped against his chest with her cheek between his pecs and the top of her head locked by his lips. “Is that what you think?” he whispered.

She couldn’t stop shaking. “I don’t know what the hell to think anymore.”

“I know.” His breath heated her scalp. “And I’m sorry.”

She squirmed. This contact would’ve been a glimpse of Heaven, if he wasn’t using it to evade the obvious. “Stop stalling, Garrett, and just give me the damn name. If you’re going to let me go, let’s get—”

“Wyatt.”

Sage froze in the middle of trying to shove against his shoulder. With her fingers locked on his collarbone, she tipped her head up, openly bewildered. “What?”

Garrett’s face was still a study in concrete control. Only one part of his regard went soft by any degree. His gaze.

“You wanted a name.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Command granted, Sergeant. There’s your name.”

“Wyatt?”

“Yep.”

“As in…your uncle? The one back in Iowa?”

“Yep.”

“Funny,” she snapped. “Ha ha. Way to pluck that one out at random.” She started pushing from him again, but for the second time in the last minute, her instinctual bullshit meter for him registered at zero. Sage straightened her head now, directing a deeper scrutiny into him. “Wait. That wasn’t so random at all, was it?”

Garrett dropped his head as he descended his hold. He grabbed both her hands into his then looked at the union of their fingers as if it were the first time he’d done this with her. His resigned energy turned Sage’s heartbeat into turmoil against her ribs. Hell. Why did she feel like Oprah Winfrey, about to have a celebrity spill their darkest secret?

Garrett didn’t ease her trepidation by pulling her to sit on the couch with him. Her toes sank into the thick shag of the chocolate brown area rug that stretched to the hearth. She loved this rug. The memories Garrett and she had created on it had carried her through a shitload of dismal nights, especially after she and Ray had gotten free from the pirates and had no idea what country they were in or who they could trust. She spent thousands of long nights replaying the way Garrett had teased her, touched her, thrilled her in this room.

She had no idea how he was going to change those memories now, but his continued demeanor, too damn composed for “normal” Garrett mode, confirmed this wasn’t going to be some cozy fireside chat. Sage struggled to borrow his calmness as he wove their fingers tighter together. More silence stretched while he stared into the grate where so many logs had burned into ash while they loved the night away.

“How much do you know about my relationship with him?” Garrett finally asked.

“With Wyatt?” At his short nod, she tilted her head and continued. “Well, I’ve only met him once. He seems like a generous man, though there are parts of him that are closed off, that’s for sure. He seems proud of you, but he’s afraid to show it somehow.”

Garrett emitted a rough snort. “Afraid to? How about just won’t?”

Sage peered harder at him. “I’m officially lost here.”

He stabbed his free hand into his hair. As he lowered it, he balled it into a fist. “Guess I never told you how I used to idolize him more than Dad.”

Sage felt her eyebrows jump. “You certainly didn’t.”

He nodded. “Yyyeahhh, I tend to leave that part out of the life story most of the time.”

Sage searched her memory for a recollection of Wyatt Hawkins. When she’d met him during their trip to Iowa just before Garrett proposed, it had been during a big family barbecue at the home in which Garrett grew up. Wyatt and his wife, Josie, hadn’t traveled far. They lived next door. Like Garrett, his dad, and his two brothers, the man was tall, tawny-haired and all muscle, even for a guy closing in on his late thirties. Josie seemed completely smitten with him. Wyatt clearly returned the sentiment, always kissing his wife, or pulling her onto his lap. But around the rest of the family, the man was guarded, even a little aloof.