Saved by His Submissive (20 page)

His hand 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.

He 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 from her, spitting the
f
word like it was about 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 in a shaky heap.

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 looked to her. Sage shook her head. Neither of them 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 it unison when Garrett opened to them. 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 ring, 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 now 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 fiancé 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 the pair of 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 both arched brows, along with the command that he and Wyatt would do the shopping. The long giggle she’d joined to Josie’s didn’t affect her own reflexes. She nicked the list back before he recovered from seeing her in a full laugh again, declaring that her house arrest didn’t have jurisdiction over a food run chaperoned by his own aunt. She’d gone on about how their dinner needed to be something more than cold cereal, frozen pizza, and peanut butter from the jar, but he’d been busy trying not to look like an overprotective asshole to formulate a decent zinger back to that.

So here he was, faking his way through the guy bonding commercial, trying to numb some of his anxiety with the dark ale in his hand while keeping part of his brain heightened to what Wyatt’s purpose was here. He and Josie had spouted the ideal excuse for their surprise drop-in: they’d seen the news coverage about Sage’s miracle rescue, and couldn’t sit still about it. Garrett had riveted his gaze to the floor after that, not having the luxury of sunglasses to hide his bullshit meter. But the current conversation wasn’t lending itself to the Wyatt and Garrett Open ‘n’ Honest hour. So far, they’d talked sports, smart phones, and the newest Michael Bay movie, executing a perfect verbal waltz around the emotional bear trap neither of them wanted to set off first. Now the safe subjects were thinning out, the silences stretching longer. And the man sitting four feet from him seemed a more distant stranger than ever before.

Maybe, he mused, it was time to kick their “conversation” inside. He could click on the TV. 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 that blared from the device told him it was Sage. It wasn’t as lasting a fix as ESPN, but he’d take it. 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 inflection. “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, and tried 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. “The 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.”

Every syllable of his retort came gritted from between his teeth. “Not funny, sugar.”

“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. The throb of heavy wind. At last, a heavy grunt he’d never been more happy to hear. “Yo, Hawk.”

“Christ,” he muttered. “I ordered her to hit the commissary 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, dude,” 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 in 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 slow 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 cluster fucks.”

“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 pre-written 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 even could have.

As if Wyatt read that exact thought, he cocked his head toward Garrett. “Guess everyone in Adel was right when they called us two of a kind.”

The reaction for that didn’t come so easy. There was a time when the words would’ve had Garrett beaming. That time was pretty damn long ago—and seemed even more distant after this last year. After this last
month.

“I guess so.” He hated himself for sounding as thrilled as a grounded teenager. But faking the happy-happy-joy-joy with Wyatt was like trying the effort with Zeke. That’s what sucked about hanging out with guys who’d been trained to spot a lie on your face more clear than a wart.

“Yeah,” Wyatt muttered. “Just as I thought.”

Garrett glowered. “Just as you thought
what
?”

“You really are my goddamn Mini Me.”

“All right,” Garrett snapped, “now that we’ve established the obvious, what the fuck is your point?” He grabbed his empty beer bottle by its neck and flung it into the trash can next to the barbecue. Glass shattered in the can with satisfying violence as he uncapped his second brew. “For that matter, why have you even come here, Wyatt? I’m not buying the excuse that you and Josie volunteered to be Sage’s welcome wagon back to life on behalf of the family.”