by Fiona Quinn
She made little mewling noises as she steadied herself on the wall, then pushed her bottom back into him, her signal that she wanted it harder. Deeper.
Thank God. Gage wrapped his hands around her hips, happy to comply.
Gage’s legs were rubbery underneath him. He couldn’t remember ever having an orgasm that wild. Every nerve in his body lit up as heat spread through him like wildfire. He wrapped Zoe in his arm and held both of them up with his other hand on the toiletry shelf. She was like a rag doll draped over him, reaching one arm up to hook around his neck.
When he bent to kiss her, her eyes were shut and her mouth was bowed into a perfect pink smile of satisfaction. Gage couldn’t have loved her more than he did in that moment. With that thought, his dick hardened again. Gage wasn’t sure he could survive another orgasm like that. He moved them out of the tub, wrapped Zoe in a towel and together they made their way to the bedroom to collapse on the king-sized bed.
“I love you, Zoe,” Gage said for the very first time.
She didn’t answer.
He looked down to see her smile fall away and her eyes flash open. Her breath went shallow. What did that mean? Didn’t she feel the same? That would be a hell of a thing. “I’m crazy about you.” He pushed the wet hair from her face.
She shook her head.
Gage flipped onto his side and propped his head on his bent arm, resting his other hand on her stomach. “You don’t feel the same?”
“That’s not what our relationship’s been about.” She pulled the towel tighter. “We agreed that we were going to enjoy each other’s company. Have sex. We talked about no commitments. You were very clear about no commitments. You could be sent off at any time. Attachments could be problematic. Let’s enjoy the here and now. Does this sound familiar?”
“Yes.” That was exactly what he’d said. He’d laid out his parameters from the start. It was his go-to beginning of a relationship discussion. “I’ve moved on from there,” Gage said.
She flipped on her side, mirroring his position. Once again tucking the towel tightly around her like a shield. “What does that look like to you?”
What did that look like to him? If she was this shocked with an ‘I love you,’ he wasn’t willing to test the waters with the rest of it. Gage combed his fingers through the damp ropes of her hair.
“A committed relationship?” she asked, refocusing him on her words.
Gage was silent, trying to weigh what he wanted to say. A life. A family. Those seemed too big of an ask. Too much of a leap. “Yes, actually,” was what he finally offered.
She blinked like he had blown dust into her eyes, and she was trying to clear her vision. “What does committed look like to you?” She put her hand on her chest as if she felt pain. “Moving in together? Marriage?”
“Well, yes. Both,” Gage said softly.
“Gage, no.” She rolled off the bed and moved to her suitcase. “I’m sorry. But no.”
Gage tensed his muscles like she was delivering body blows. No. He felt like he’d been kicked in the guts, his lungs deflated. He held perfectly still, praying the feeling would go away.
With the towel as a screen, she pulled on a pair of panties and then the oversized t-shirt she slept in. Dressed, she turned back to look at him. “I grew up as a military brat.” Her voice was whisper-soft, and she looked like a praying angel as she hugged the towel to her chest. “Every time my roots took hold, my parents yanked me up and stuck me in some new plot of earth. I’m over that lifestyle. I’ve established a career and friendships. I learned from my mom’s experience that not only do I need to be able to stand strong on my own, I also have to live my own life, not dictated to by the whims of my husband’s employer. I’m not marrying into the military. I’m not falling in love with a Marine. I won’t let it happen.”
Gage swallowed. “But it has, just a little bit, hasn’t it?” The words caught in his throat and he had to clear them before he could say, “You love me at least a little.” As soon as the words slipped past his lips, Gage knew it was a mistake. Zoe completely slammed the doors down and turned her face to the wall.
“What if I weren’t in the military? Would you feel differently then?”
“I don’t do hypotheticals with relationships,” she told the wall.
“You might have missed it in all of the hullabaloo today, but I signed a contract to work with Iniquus. I won’t be re-upping with the Marines. Iniquus, they’re headquartered right here in Washington DC. I’ll have overseas assignments, but DC would always be my jumping off block.”
She turned turbulent eyes on him and pursed her lips as she studied him. “I hope that that didn’t have anything to do with me. I’m not getting involved in your career. Don’t add me and our relationship to any scale you’re using to weigh your decisions.”
“That’s kinda cold, Zoe.” Gage moved to the top of the bed where he sat completely naked with his back to the headboard.
Zoe came and sat on the corner of the bed, facing him. “You have to be you. You have to be your own tree with your own root system.”
“Hah! I know where you got that from.”
Zoe canted her head.
“Kahlil—”
“Gibran, right. I think it’s one of the wisest things I’ve ever read when it comes to relationships.”
“Agreed. We’re of the same mind on that.” That they both knew the same poem and both used it as a means of defining a perfect relationship only served to deepen Gage’s trust in their connection. They belonged together. “So here are the facts. As soon as my contract is up with Uncle Sam next month, I’ll be the newest member of Panther Force. I’ll be working under Titus Kane. These next few weeks, I’ll still be at Quantico.” He paused. “Now that the military change of address is off the table…”
Zoe pursed her lips and let her breath out slowly.
Gage stopped. She hadn’t said no. She didn’t say yes. But that gave him room to try. “What are you thinking, Zoe?”
She did it again, a deep breath in, then the slow release through her beautiful pink lips. All he wanted to do was grab her up and kiss her. Hard.
She held up her hand. “You threw me off balance with that one, Gage. I need some time to process. Can we please take one crisis at a time?”
“Our relationship is a crisis?” For some reason, that amused him, and he offered up a grin.
“No. No.” She crawled up the bed and scooted under the covers, rolling until she was resting in his arms. “I didn’t mean that. I simply meant that I need brain space to process what you’re saying and right now my brain is busy.”
“Gotcha.” He bent to kiss her and moved Zoe so he could better hold her. “So first we save you and the world as we know it.” He reached back to click off the light. “And once the apocalypse is averted, we can figure out who we are to each other.”
Chapter
Thirty-Eight
GAGE
The smell of coffee pulled him to a sitting position. Gage rubbed his eyes and reached out to yank open the blackout curtains that hid the morning light. The clock read zero eight hundred hours. He could probably sleep a few more hours and be the better for it.
Zoe, of course, wasn’t in bed. He reached over and the warmth was gone from her side. She must have been up for a while. Gage decided to shower and brush his teeth before he went down to see her. The noise would give her time to adjust to someone else being around, interrupting her thoughts. He scratched his hand through his two-day-old beard. He’d probably feel better after a shave too.
Titus had brought in Zoe’s overnight bag, and he had a sports bag for Gage. When Gage opened it, he found an Iniquus uniform, a new set of socks and briefs, and a Dopp Kit with all the needed toiletries. That would do. He brought them with him into the bathroom for a quick clean up.
Now revived, he was ready for a cup of joe. He headed down the steps to find Zoe sitting at the breakfast bar with papers spread in front of her and her hands wrapped ar
ound an oversized, green coffee mug.
He moved toward her. “Did you sleep at all last night?” He dropped a kiss onto her forehead as he wandered into the kitchen.
“No.” She sighed. “My brain was on overdrive.”
Gage picked up one of the papers scattered across the counter. One was covered in doodles and had his name framed in squiggly lines. The other looked like a math formula on steroids. At the bottom, it said Colonel Guthrie, and that too was surrounded by squiggly lines. “What’s this all about?” He laid the papers back in front of her.
“Two different ways of thinking things through. This is my emotional thought process and nonlinear thinking.” She put her finger on the page with his name. “And these are my logic formulas.”
“You can take the girl out of the lab,” he said, snagging a coffee mug from the shelf. “But you can’t take the lab out of the girl.” He moved back and pointed to the doodle page. “Obviously, this is the one that interests me the most.” He poured the coffee and moved to the stool next to Zoe’s. “What do these squiggles around my name represent?”
“Conclusion drawn.”
His heart stumbled, then raced forward. He scanned over the page to see if he could pull any information from it. Was this a conclusion that was in his favor or not? “An ice cream cone. That’s when we met?”
“Yes.” Zoe wasn’t giving anything up for free. Her eyes looked troubled, angst-filled.
He looked at the upper right hand corner that took up a sizeable portion of the page. “And this symbol? Is that a bomb going off?”
“It’s an explosion.”
Gage had felt this way one other time in his life. He’d been doing field training. Coming under simulated firepower, he dove head first into the icy Mississippi river. Pain flooded his system as he immersed himself. He had to battle his inner demons as much as the current to get his boots safely underneath him.
She rolled her lips in and looked into her mug, then her lashes flew up as she caught him with her gaze. “It represents our sex life.”
Maybe that was the solid footing he needed. “That’s good then?”
“It’s excellent. Don’t you think?” Her brows went up.
He held her gaze for a long moment. He saw that really was a question. She wasn’t being flip. She never was. He hadn’t quite gotten used to the fact that Zoe spoke in facts, not sarcasm. He shouldn’t layer in the times from his past when he’d had relationship conversations with other women and had to be wary of all the trip wires laid across the path. Zoe was Zoe, and different. “Yeah, I think.”
He stared at the paper and started recognizing symbols of thing they done together, the canoe trip, the book fair, the lecture on Zika, for christsake. Not what he normally thought of as dating scene stuff. Interesting stuff though. He’d liked it, anyway. “And here at the bottom, these leaves?”
“The oak and the cypress.”
“Kahlil Gibran’s poem. What conclusion did you come to, Zoe?”
She pulled the paper in front of her. “That I fell in love with you here.” Zoe put her finger on the ice cream cone. Then she traced her finger over the other images. “And all of these things are reasons that that love became solid.”
“That huge suitcase is baggage though?” Gage asked. “Yours or mine?”
“Not baggage, per se. It’s the reason that I wouldn’t allow myself to do anything but hold you at arm’s-length. To protect my heart, because eventually you’d be at a new base—back at Lejeune, or wherever—and I’d be saying goodbye to you…to us.”
Gage wouldn’t consider that last sentence. That wasn’t something he was prepared to do, say goodbye and never see Zoe again. He turned his attention to something more hopeful. “These, then?” He pointed to the bottom of the page under his name.
“The leaves are the reason I would be willing to dedicate my heart to you. I know you’ll appreciate me for who I am and not try to make me into something I’m not because it suits you better. Not that I’m not willing to bend. If we’re together, the gales that blow against you will be the same winds that buffet me.”
Something inside him grew big and broad. Fierce. Zoe wasn’t playing coy. She was simply unfolding her thought process for him. But he felt like storming the barricade and capturing the flag. He wanted his yes. “I need a clearer answer than that.”
She looked straight into his eyes, then tilted her head. “I think committing myself to our relationship is what I want to do.”
“You think or you know?” Gage asked. She still sounded like the answer was a maybe. And that wasn’t good enough. He needed that solid ground under him. He needed to know where he stood. “Because I know. If these last few days have taught me anything, it’s how deeply I love you and how much I want you in my life, always.”
“Please don’t say that.” She reached out and wrapped her hands around his forearm, the look in her eyes a little wild. “Crisis emotions are temporary.”
Gage realized he was combat focused, his face and his body had taken on a hard-muscled stance. He was in self-protection mode and that was the wrong place for his head to be right now. He stepped even closer to her and gently lifted her chin to look her in the eye. He kissed her softly and rested his forehead against hers until he felt himself letting down his guard. Only then did he say, “No, Zoe, I thought those thoughts on the drive to your place before any of this started.”
He stood up and reached for her hands and pulled them to his heart. “I got your text after a shit day and everything was suddenly better. I’m happy when I’m with you.” He watched her eyes to gauge her reaction. “I look forward to your smile. I look forward to you in my arms. I look forward to us talking about life’s complexities and your unique way of seeing simple beauty.” There, that was what he was hoping to see shine back at him. Belief. “You are the bright spot in my life. I’ve loved you since you leaned under the hood of that car. And I want to love you that way for the rest of my life.”
This was the time he wanted to pull a ring from his pocket and take a knee. But the pockets he was wearing belonged to Iniquus. Besides, he wanted to make that moment special for both of them. Not a conversation on the run from the devil, hiding in a safe house.
Zoe heaved a sigh.
He needed to lighten this for her. This shouldn’t feel so heavy. “You know, Zoe, when I look into the depths of your eyes, I can actually see the machinations of your brain like a giant clock with the gears moving.”
“Robot-like?”
“Mmm. As a member of the US military’s elite forces, I think maybe I’d better give you a thorough onceover to make sure you’re human in nature.”
“Onceover?”
“You sound disappointed.”
“Well, twice might be more fun.”
“I could definitely use that right now.” But he knew this was banter, and they weren’t headed back up the stairs.
As if she could read his thoughts, she said, “This is important. We’re important, and I want to be able to focus on that conversation. Right now, I’m distracted and my thoughts are cluttered. I’m conflicted—not about you. Not about us. About this mess I’m in.” She glanced down at a page of formulas. “I can’t see a way out of it. The “us” discussion needs to wait until there’s some kind of conclusion. If they end up putting me in some kind of protective program, then those life choices may not work for you. And if you say, ‘I don’t care; I’ll follow you anywhere,’ then I know that you’re not an oak, and I’m not a cypress. I’ll know you’ve bent your life to mine. So don’t.”
He shook his head. Of course, he could find a way to make his life work no matter where she went. But he’d never seen her eyes so fierce. This meant everything to them—that Zoe was Zoe and that he stood strong as an individual too.
He forced his gaze onto the other piece of paper. “Tell me about these formulas.”
She twisted around on her stool until she faced the counter. “Once I realized that I wanted our relat
ionship to evolve into being your life partner—”
“Wife,” Gage corrected with no wiggle room.
“Once I decided that I wanted to be your wife, I needed to resolve the problem that is keeping us from moving forward in our lives.”
“And the conclusion was Colonel Guthrie? You think he’s the answer to our problem? That he can do something to help?”
“I think he is our problem.”
“What?” Gage sat on the stool beside Zoe.
“I was thinking about what you said. The solution is a formula, the chemicals, and their combination. If I could figure out the formula of how this came to be, then I could reverse engineer the end result, me in a safe house and Lily dead.”
Gage leaned against the backrest and crossed his arms over his chest. His brow knit with concentration. And he waited.
“The colonel is the common denominator. He’s the one who asked me to work for DARPA. He’s the one who suggested that Montrim do the data collection with a humanitarian front. He’s the one who brought BIOMIST to the CIA’s attention to help find Osama. He’s the one who sent me to set up my labs on the Montrim campus after I got my doctorate.”
“He’s the one who knew that Billings was going after Montrim long before it became public,” Gage said. “He’s the one who said Lily might be a spy either for the CIA or Montrim. He’s the one who suggested she be followed and gave the senator the card for the private investigator, Levi Schultz, who is really an Israeli former special op on the run.”
“Exactly.” Zoe nodded her head vigorously.
“Colonel Guthrie’s the one who we assume planted one of the trackers on me in the hospital. And most likely the one who called Christopher Bilik.”
“There are other ways Bilik could have known.” Zoe tucked her hair behind her ears.
