Saved by His Submissive (19 page)

Like a man who had to keep a lot of secrets.

Comprehension hit her like a tidal wave. “Damn,” she murmured. “He’s ex Special Forces, isn’t he?”

Garrett preceded his confirmation of that with a resolute jut of his jaw. “When I was a kid, Wyatt was larger than life. I didn’t watch the Transformers or the Ninja Turtles or fucking G.I. Joe; I had a real-life version of them rolled together in my uncle. He upped when he was nineteen and was damn-near plucked out of Basic for the Special Forces track. A lot of folks said they’d never seen anyone like him. The guy loved being a soldier. He was stationed with the fifth SF group, down in Kentucky, before getting sent up to Ranger School and graduating top of his battalion.”

A grin peeked through his lips, turning back the clock on his face by at least five years in two seconds. Sage smiled back as he shook his head wistfully. “They threw this wild-ass party for him when he made Triple Canopy in record time.” He broke out in a full chuckle. “Not every day a town had a guy who kicked ass in Jump School, the Special Forces funnel,
and
the Ranger course, right? The bash went on for days, and they used a cleared field on the west side of the farm for what was quite possibly the biggest mud football game ever played. I was only eleven, but I could’ve died that day thinking I’d hit Heaven.”

Sage laughed softly. “I can imagine you had.”

The faraway haze in his eyes got a little thicker. “For a bunch of years, we didn’t see him a lot. His deployments were long. But man, when he got a chance to make it home…it was better than Christmas. I’d beg Mom to let me skip school. I’d spend the days at Wyatt’s heels, worse than a damn puppy, drinking up his charisma, letting him kick my ass in mock ‘training battles.’”

“Oh boy,” Sage murmured. “The dynamic duo, Hawkins style.”

“Yeah.” Garret laughed. “Yeah, it was…well, it was awesome.”

Before she spoke again, she repositioned one of her hands so she could run her fingers over the hills of his coiled knuckles. With the same care, she studied his face. His rugged features had never snagged her breath more. Finally, he was letting her see everything, a fast-shifting landscape of emotion as years of memories bombarded him at once.

“So what happened?” she asked at last. When he gave her only a tighter scowl, she pressed, “Garrett,
what happened
?”

He captured her hand beneath his again. The hot, dark haze in his gaze went thick as grenade smoke. “Iraq happened.”

Sage nodded. “And he was likely in the thick of it.”

“No ‘likely’ about it.”

She winced. “How bad?”

Garrett took in a heavy, shaking breath. “I’m not sure. He never talked about it in full. From what I can logically snap together, he survived at least three roadside attacks. The one that sent him home for good took out everybody in his unit but him.”

She leaned heavily against the cushions. “Wow.”

His face, now in profile to her, settled on a strangely serene expression. It was almost like he prepared to bow his head and pray—and it scared her. She knew that look. It happened when someone went on agony overload and had to detach from what they talked about in order to remain halfway sane. She’d never seen it on Garrett’s face before, not even after he returned from missions that had been brutal to his body, his uniform, his energy. But right now, recalling how the war had taken his beloved hero from him, the grief gouged too deeply.

She squeezed his fingers harder. She let him know she was still there with everything she was worth.

“By then, it was no secret to any of us that the war was carving bigger and bigger pieces out of him. But I was thirteen and filled with all the never-surrender bullshit the man himself had filled me with. I thought that as soon as Wyatt was home for good, I’d single-handedly rehabilitate him back into Soldier-God Hawkins. Only this time, it would be better. There’d be no deployment to take Wyatt away from me. We could just—” He halted as the church-worthy expression dissolved off his face. His lips curled, his nose flared, and he huffed heavily, closing his eyes to reveal the sheen of tears on his lashes. “Well, we didn’t. Wyatt decided that the National Geographic channel and Jeopardy marathons were more exciting than hanging out with the kid who still remembered the night he’d scored five touchdowns in the mud.

“Slowly, he realized he was pretty much being a brokedick. He started helping Dad run the farm, but he picked all the one-man jobs that didn’t require him to speak to anyone. He also told Mom not to let me play hooky anymore, because by that time, I’d made it damn clear to anyone who’d listen that I wanted to make SF when I grew up.”

Sage unhooked a hand long enough to give a reassuring stroke down his arm. “I’ll bet he was really proud when you did.”

Garrett shrugged on shoulders taut with bitterness. “I have no idea if he was or not. Frankly, I stopped caring—especially after one pretty memorable summer night.”

Until now, the conversation had clearly been uncomfortable for him. But his uneasiness took on a new strand of tension with that statement. Sage had the distinct impression that the Oprah confession was about to get an R rating. Or worse.

“Memorable…how?”

For the first time since they’d sat down, Garrett looked like the words in his mouth were chunks of something vile.

Oh, yeah. This was going to get awkward.

“We all pitched in and got Wyatt a new Nintendo console for his birthday. He’d play on it at night when the flashbacks from Iraq kept him up, which was pretty much every night. When I couldn’t sleep myself, I’d sneak down the rain gutter and go join him for an hour or so. It was barely a connection, but I clung to it. I hoped we’d work our way back to at least a friendship.”

“Of course you did,” Sage assured.

“Well, that night…I only got as far as the barn.”

She accessed more memories. “The big brown storage one, between the two houses, right?”

“Roger,” he confirmed.

Sage’s instinct started kicking in. There was no way it couldn’t. The nervous flicks of his gaze, the color climbing his neck, the finger he drummed on a knee… Oh, yeah. This wasn’t just uncomfortable for him. It was torture.

She tried to ease things for him with an thoughtful tone. “You only got to the barn…because Wyatt was inside?”

He took a prolonged second before answering. “Yeah.”

“Was he alone?”

He rolled his head, looking like she’d punched him. “No. Josie was in there with him.”

She could’ve filled in that blank too. Moreover, with that new slice of the image, she started filling in details for herself. But she didn’t voice them aloud. Garrett needed to tell her himself. The words needed to come out of him, if his perception of them were ever going to change. If he was ever going to heal.  

“What were they doing?” She rubbed his knuckles again in a gentle coax.

“They—he—
fuck.
”

“It’s me, Garrett. I’m not going anywhere. Tell me.”

He pulled in another hard breath. “Josie was kneeling over a hay bale. Her wrists were hooked together, locked in leather cuffs. She was dressed in this corset outfit, also black leather…with panties that might as well have not been there, and a—a collar that was attached to a chain.” He twisted his hand against her, and shoved a foot so hard that the rug bunched up. “Wyatt had his
wife
on a goddamn leash! And he was—”

“He was what?”

He looked away. “Shit. No. Forget it.”

Sage hung on to his arm like it was a damn parachute rip cord. “No way, Hawkins. Spill it or I’ll just pick up the phone and call Josie myself for a little girls’ chat.”

He swung a hot glare at her. She jabbed her chin out and met that cobalt blaze without blinking.

“You’re not kidding, are you?”

“I’ve had to eat bugs to survive, Sergeant. Do you think I’m kidding?”

His head fell against the cushions. A hard gulp rolled down his throat. He dragged his hand down his face. “He had a riding crop, okay? And he was striking her ass with it. Repeatedly. And hard.”

“Okay,” Sage answered evenly. “And was she liking it?”

“Hell, Sage. I wasn’t in a position to take a fucking survey!”

“You remember a hell of a lot of details already. You want to tell me that you didn’t notice whether Josie was begging, ‘Get me out of here now’ or ‘Get inside me now?’”

“Did you really just ask me that?”

“Are you really still avoiding the answer?”

He threw her another glower. “Fine. Okay, she was—enjoying things—I suppose.” He lurched off the couch, slamming his hands to his hips as he stormed to the hearth. “I didn’t stick around to write a full report.”

Sage rose, too. He didn’t turn when she did. She lifted a hand, yearning to touch him, to make sure he knew she hadn’t suddenly turned to dust at his illicit revelation. Truthfully, she felt the opposite. For the first time since they’d gotten back from Thailand, she felt clear about her connection to him. This was them, tearing down walls together. This was them, forging into new territory together.
Together.
God, it felt wonderful to hear that word ringing in her conscious.

“I’ve never told that to anyone.” Garrett dropped his hands as he muttered the confession. “I was afraid of it. Afraid…of what it had done to me.”

“What
did
it do to you?”

“You’ve been the firsthand witness of that, sugar. A couple of times now.”

She took a tentative step toward him but stopped. Conflict sat on her shoulders as she carefully considered her next words.

Who was she kidding? There was no “careful” to be had here. He was either going to understand, once and for all, that his burgeoning Dominant was one of the best things that had happened to their relationship, or he’d choose to dive back in to his sludge of self-condemnation. She refused to stick around for that sight anymore.

 “I don’t think you turned out so bad, Garrett.”

“Really?” As she half expected, he wheeled back around. His shoulders were stiff and his face was gaunt. “You don’t think so, huh? Well, isn’t that special.”

Had she been tempted to hold him a second ago? “It should be special,” she snapped. “I’m your
fiancé.
Does that count for anything anymore?”

He snorted at her like a pissed-off bull. “Don’t you get it? After so many years of swearing I wouldn’t be like Wyatt, that I wouldn’t become him, that I’d be
better
than him at handling my shit…and yet I’ve tromped down the same damn path as him.” His lips twisted. “The only thing I didn’t fuck up was letting some starry-eyed kid get obsessed with me, only to have their hero fall and crumble as they watched.”

Sage dug her nails into her palms. Gazing at him was torment. It was worse than watching him get beat up, because he was the one doing the damage. And nothing she said could make him stop.

“You’re right,” she rasped. “On
one
thing. There’s no kid this time. But there
is
someone here who calls you hero.”

He blinked, clearly understanding her. And clearly not happy with that.
Tough beans, Sergeant Hawkins. You’re going to listen to this.

“You think it’s just a cute catch phrase for me, Garrett? You think it’s something I don’t believe with all my heart?
Still
?” She couldn’t stand the distance anymore. In two steps, she was pressed against him. She looked up and spread a hand to the side of his head. “And no, you haven’t crumbled. Dear God, in this moment, you’re more strong and amazing to me than ever. You’re my hero in a million more senses. Confronting your truth takes as much guts as facing insurgent fire or an enemy grenade.” She smiled. “Or a slime bag in a jungle, selling women into slavery.”

His eyes went stunningly wide. In their blue fire, Sage caught the intensity of real horror. “Shit, Sage!”

He tried to turn away. She grabbed him harder. “No!” she pleaded. “Don’t close me out, damn it! Don’t run from this, Garrett. Don’t run from
us.
”

He curled his hands around the backs of her elbows. His fingers quivered, keeping time to the hard breaths pumping beneath his chest. “Sage.” He dipped his face, every cliff and valley of his features etched in the agony of a new creature bursting from its chrysalis. “Sage, I love you so much.”

“And I love you.” She flattened her hands to the ridges that defined his lower torso. “But right now, I also need you.” Using his body for balance, she slid downward. Then down even more. She didn’t speak again until she kneeled fully, her head dropped between her upstretched arms. Just achieving that position made her mind shift into another place, where peace and power mixed together in a beautiful ambrosia. The elixir started spreading through her body, igniting her nerve endings, feeding the pulsing need in the deepest tissues of her sex.  “I need to give it all to you, my hero. My body. My heart. My power. Take them. Use them to transport me. To transport you. You have all of me, Garrett. Everything.”

She felt and listened to every part of his reaction. The tremors in his thighs, shaking like the tree he’d pinned her to this afternoon. The breath entering and exiting his body like whooshes of a wind storm. The sound that vibrated up his throat, rough and tortured, as he stroked the top of her head.

“You really want this?” His growl was part savoring predator, part intent lover. Oh
God,
that voice. If that’s what the devil sounded like when he’d approached Faust, she didn’t blame the guy for inking the deal on his soul. 

“Yes.” She finally got the word out on a dry whisper.

His grip on her head changed. By slow degrees, he tightened and twisted until he had her more by the hair instead of her scalp. “Tell me again, sweet sugar.”

Oh, God.
The growl that took over his voice…it belonged to the same beautiful, dark creature he’d untethered that first night back in Bangkok. Between that tone and the increasing torque of his hold, her skin began to tingle, her heart began to soar.

“Yes, Sir. I want this.”

Another rough sound reverberated from his chest. The creature in him was prowling, assessing, approving. Sage sighed in bliss. To know she was doing this for him, giving him this dynamic that his soul and his body had craved for so long…she was joyous, floating.