by HELEN HARDT
She gasped, and he marveled at the sight of her pulse beating in her neck. He tossed the crop aside in order to lean over and slide two fingers along that hammering artery. Her heartbeat sped up. Heat surged through him. Goddamn. This was what pure power felt like. No wonder the high could corrupt men. But he didn’t feel corrupted. He was floored. Humbled. Grateful.
“Mine,” he whispered. “You’re mine, Sage, and I’m never letting you go again.” He moved his whole hand across her neck, stroking the cream of her perfect skin, savoring the strength of her strong, aroused pulse. “Say it, Sage. Tell me you belong to me…forever.”
Her lips parted.
But no sound came out.
Her throat constricted, as if choking off a sob. “I…love you,” she finally rasped. “So much…so much…”
As her voice curled through him, her body dissolved beneath him. Turned into blackness…just like the long, empty months he’d just been through without her…
“No.” His head reared back as the sound grated out of him. “No!” he roared.
He reached for her. Ripped the blindfold off, seeking the brilliant life in her huge green eyes.
But they weren’t green.
They were black. And viscous.
Their sockets began to writhe. Worms, taking over her lifeless body…fading back into the mud of a dark velvet jungle…
* * *
He jerked back to consciousness. Back to reality. To the revelation it brought, slicing straight into his gut, searing with nauseating force.
I’m not a fucking Dominant.
And I’m the Prince of Persia. He dragged a bleary stare up at Zeke and belched.
“Lovely,” Z drawled.
“Thanks, Your Highness.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.” His head throbbed, but strong instinct dictated it was only the start. The throbbing music in the air only made shit worse. Katy Perry crooned about the pitfalls of playing with dark magic. Well, no fucking shit. “Damn. Why are they blasting that crap so early?”
“It’s almost lunch time,” Z replied. “And it’s only the radio.”
He didn’t know what to give back but a stunned grunt.
As if the sound had pulled her magic bell, Gia reappeared. She smiled with the serenity of a Madonna, leaning over to wipe his face with a warm wet towel. Garrett yanked it from her, finishing the job himself. The last damn thing he wanted right now was sympathy or tenderness.
The last damn person he wanted to be right now was the monster living in his skin.
Way to pull down the impressive stats, Hawk. One fucked-up vodka haze. One disgusted best friend. One abandoned woman, waiting in your bed at the base. And oh yeah, one cock that can still drill through the side of a tank.
And zero points in the decent human being department.
“Gia?”
The woman stepped back over with the grace of a duchess. “Yes, Sir?”
“No,” he growled. “Not ‘sir.’ Just Garrett.” He steeled himself, forcing his gaze to stay focused on her while the room spun. “Garrett…who badly needs a shower. You have one of those around here?”
“Of course—though I must warn you, the ‘hot’ is only given when the gods feel very generous.”
He snorted. “That’s fine. Right now, I’m not interested in the ‘hot.’”
Chapter Six
Sage gave as many details as she could to Rayna, though she deliberately glossed over the grittier stuff. How did one talk to their friend, even after what they’d been through together, about feeling the way she did from Garrett’s behavior? Hey, Ray, I know you were pinned in that cave and had your body altered against your will, but can I tell you about how wet I got when my fiancé held me down and smacked my pussy? Did I mention how it made me think of nothing but begging him to tie me up and then fuck me until thinking became impossible?
God help her, it still sounded like heaven. She’d done more thinking in one year than most people could handle in a lifetime.
She still stuck to the basics with Rayna—which still got weird when arriving at the part about Garrett’s invasion-of-the-body-snatchers exit. Luckily, Rayna wasn’t able to ask too many questions by that point, because everything turned back into a mess of sobs. True to form, her friend held her through every tear. It was easy to feel the trembles in Ray’s own frame too. Both of them needed only one hand to count how many times they’d allowed themselves emotions like this over the last twelve months. When survival was more important than feelings, breaking down simply wasn’t an option. Maybe they needed to make up for lost time now.
Lost time.
The words jolted her like sunlight breaking through clouds.
Lost time.
She gasped from the revelation. Damn it, why hadn’t she seen it? Garrett had gone through a year of hell too. He’d endured her funeral, for God’s sake. While she’d assumed he was alive—no, somehow she’d known it—and clutched to the hope of that to keep herself going every day, he’d been learning to live without her. No wonder he’d gawked like she’d turned into a zombie. Maybe to him, she still was.
Oddly, that thought gave her a surge of hope as Rayna walked her back to the room. It was almost lunchtime, but she declined her friend’s invitation to the cafeteria. Her eyes were swollen from crying and heavy as bricks with exhaustion. The second her head hit the pillow, she plummeted into sleep.
Though a bomb could’ve hit the embassy and not roused her, she felt Garrett’s presence the second he got back. Her senses were instantly alert to his every sound—not that he made a lot of those. She listened to the rasps of his boot laces, the clunks of the dog tags tied to them, the thuds of the shoes hitting the floor. After a few seconds, she expected to hear the sough of his pants coming off. He always stripped them off after his boots. At least a year ago, he did. And hell, had she loved it.
Against the backs of her eyelids, she hit the play button on a beautiful scene of him peeling off his bottoms after a day at the base. She stood at the door like she always did, openly ogling as his powerful thighs and calves got bared, breaking into a grin as he turned, erection a bold silhouette against his briefs. Many times, he’d follow that by crooking his finger, beckoning her to come to him. Or sometimes he’d pace over and get her for himself, gaze filled with blue flames while exposing his intent for her evening’s “appetizer.”
A light touch at her forehead jerked her from the fantasy.
She popped open her eyes. He was just a breath away, on his haunches, gazing at her. His hand hovered near her temple, his fingers wrapped in a strand of her hair.
Wow. He’d gotten really good at the sneaky thing. Fantasy or not, he hadn’t made a single noise in crossing the whole room.
After getting over her initial shock, she gazed at him. The sight…was heaven.
Or maybe not.
“Hey.”
His rasp matched his appearance. Rough. Tangled. Tired. And something else, weird and intangible, making her hitch up on an elbow in confusion.
Especially when he dashed his gaze away from her as fast as he’d given it.
What the hell?
Where had he been?
His case of cagey deepened, digging into the creases at the corners of his eyes. Sage stared harder, as if that would peel back his walls and reveal…
What?
She hauled in a deep breath—as if that would help.
Let the air clutch in her throat…and when it did…
Oh, God.
Sweat. Booze. Cheap soap.
And cheaper perfume.
She lowered to her back and squeezed her eyes shut. Like that was going to cut out the humiliation and agony. Nausea assaulted her thankfully empty stomach—though her brain made up for the reprieve. Her stupid imagination was stuck on the freeze-frame of him from the bedroom back home, still beckoning to her. Still wanting her.
She shook her head, setting free a bitter laugh. The embassy honchos who’d greeted them had t
alked about medals waiting stateside for Rayna and her. She had a good idea of what they could put on hers. We award this medal to Captain Weston for bravery, valor, persistence of will, and enduring a fatal strike to her heart after her rescue…
“Idiot.” She slammed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “I’m such a damn idiot.”
“Sage.”
“Don’t. Can’t you leave me with a shred of dignity here?”
“Sage.”
“I get it, okay? My body isn’t what it once was. I don’t fire your chamber anymore. Done. Let’s move on.”
“Sage, damn it!” The bed sagged with his weight. He leaned over her. Hell, even in her fury, her body woke up to his nearness, his heat, the spiritual zipper that refastened every cell inside her to him again. God, she really hated that connection right now. “Look at me. Fuck…please. It’s not what you th—”
“Seriously? You’re going with that one? I’ve been on the run in Africa for the last year, and that’s old even for me, buddy.”
He pressed closer. “I’m sorry that you think—”
“Shit. That one, too?”
“Are you going to listen to me?”
“No,” she snapped. “There’s nothing for you to say. There’s nothing you have to explain, all right? You thought I was dead. You moved on, to whoever—whatever—it is that you do now. I understand. So at least you tried, and thank you, but—”
Suddenly, he’d plunged his hand into her hair, clawing her scalp, forcing her head toward him. “The fuck I moved on!” It seethed from his locked teeth. “My life stopped the second I walked into your parents’ living room and saw the chaplain sitting there.” He stopped, his chest pressing against the confines of his T-shirt with his hard breaths. “I couldn’t move, Sage. I didn’t move.” He shook his head. “I could only move again when the rage set in. It sucked, but at least it filled the goddamn crater inside after they told me you were—” He cleared his throat with a ragged cough. “After they told me you were gone. But at least I could function again. At least I could think again—if that’s what you could call it.
“I started with Franz first. Yeah, I woke up my commanding officer in the middle of the night at his house, demanding that we scramble a team and head for Botswana to try to find you. Maybe I knew even then that you really weren’t dead. I just felt like we had to try.” He dropped his hand, pulling hers into it. “He let me bawl like an infant on his couch, but he still told me no. All those fuckers shut me down at every turn.”
“Shit.” As it came out beneath her breath, fresh tears brimmed. She wrapped her other hand over his, loving him with new depths of her soul. “Baby, I’m sorry.”
He lifted his face again. His lips twitched, as if a smile brewed there. It never materialized. The cobalt smoke had returned to his gaze, thicker than she’d ever seen it. “Well, I wasn’t sorry.” He said it with leaden determination. “I left sorry behind when I left Franz’s house that night. Something took the place of it, for good.”
“Something like what?” she asked softly.
He stiffened. “I don’t know.” His lips compressed. In the silence of his contemplation, a breeze fluttered the curtains across the room, throwing a shaft of afternoon sun at him. For a moment, the anguish of his face was edged with light. The glow kissed the moisture at the ends of his hair, fringed his tawny lashes. The sight made her want to stop time, though her soul filled with crushing sorrow. Even the light from the galaxy’s most powerful fireball couldn’t penetrate the shadows in his eyes.
And she doubted she ever could again, either.
“Sage, it was something…dark, okay? Something hard and savage and vicious.” He jutted his jaw, and his free hand fisted tight. “But it kept me going, at least. It kept me alive.”
She looked away, trying to let his words sink in completely. Something on the nightstand glinted in the late afternoon sunlight. It hadn’t been there when she’d taken a drink of water prior to falling asleep. Somehow, she already knew what it was. The gold band was as magical as the day they’d picked it up from the jeweler. She held up the ring at an angle in order to check the inside. As she hoped, the inscription was there. She read it through a haze of tears.
My hero.
Even engraved on the inside of his wedding ring, the words had always been a lighthearted tease between them, a fun reminder of what he’d done to get her attention that first night in Tacoma. Okay, “fun” probably wasn’t the best phrasing on that. He’d come out of the brawl with a busted lip, a black eye, and nasty cuts on his knuckles, though the bawling-out she gave him in the tavern’s kitchen afterward was certainly as painful. At the end of the night, they’d exchanged phone numbers. Along with his digits, he’d written, Garrett Hawkins: Your on-call hero.
She’d given him the words just ten hours ago, in King’s Quonset hut. When she had, the meaning of the syllables changed forever. They weren’t just stamped on her heart. They were branded in her soul.
“Whatever that force was,” she murmured to him now, “I’m thankful for it.”
Garrett pushed her hand away. Heaved to his feet again. “No,” he snapped. “Not whatever it was. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Sage. This shit, it hasn’t left me. Finding you didn’t dynamite my mental warehouse on it.” He went to the window. With a violent whoosh, he shoved aside the drapes and locked his hands against both sides of the frame. “If anything, it’s worse. After you—well, after you were gone, I used it like coffee, just to get up in the morning. After I returned to action, it helped shut off everything except for the missions.” He grunted, and his shoulders slumped. “Fuck. Franz was never happier. I turned into a perfect machine, became his number-one go-to guy besides Z. We were pretty much the dynamic duo of the First SF Group, turnin’ and burnin’ the bad guys as fast as we could find them.”
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 exploded through his fist. Beneath his blow, splinters flew off the wooden window frame.
“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 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 sledgehammer.
“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. “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. 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. “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. After a moment, he sat 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? Damn it, you should be wrapped in satin, sleeping on fine linen, and treated like a queen. And all you’ve gotten is—”
