“Is she doing okay?” Garrett asked.

Sage nodded. “Yeah. Just stunned, I guess.” She shook her head, bemusement touching her features. “Suppose I’ll get that reaction from a lot of people.”

He put the phone down on the utilitarian bureau and then scooted around to the foot of the bed. After he sat down, he braced his elbows on his knees. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “You should prepare yourself.”

About a minute passed. It felt like an hour. He tilted his head in order to steal peeks at her, watching her shred her bottom lip as she stared at the far wall. He could practically see the thoughts tumbling through her head, a mental gymnastics team on crack. It was just as hard to follow in terms of what she was thinking.

Patience.

“Did you…have a service?” she finally asked.

During the drive in from the jungle, he’d tried to explain what he’d said about welcoming her back to life. He’d followed it with the flyover version of what had happened after she and Rayna had disappeared. He’d tried to smooth over the rougher parts, as semi-impossible as that was. There was no way of sugarcoating the visit from the CNO, the papers Heidi had been asked to sign, the medals that were promised, the condolences imparted. He’d told her about the army’s certainty they weren’t still alive and the dictate from sources much higher than him that a search wasn’t feasible, hopeful, or possible.

To his perplexity, Sage had merely nodded and said they’d done the right thing. When Garrett questioned that ludicrous shit, she’d turned and gazed into the night, her eyes matching the darkness.

Darkness he’d never seen in her gaze before.

What the hell had happened to her in the last twelve months?

He jammed the thought into a mental side pocket. There was an answer to that and he’d damn well get it, but right now, she needed hers more.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “We had a service. We did it on a Navy cutter, out on the Sound.” He lifted one side of his mouth at her. “You would’ve liked it, sugar—except for the being dead part.” When she returned his smile with a tentative smirk, his ribs turned into mush, baring his heart to the warmth of her regard. It gave him the courage to continue. “We tossed yellow and pink roses onto the water, along with your—well, what I assumed were your ashes. And we served grilled cheddar cheese sandwiches while listening to classic disco.”

She laughed in full. “Okay, you’re right. I really would have loved it—except for the being dead thing.”

He joined her in a chuckle, but it was all he could manage before his next words came out, shaking as they did. “Damn it, Sage. I’m so glad you’re not.”

The air thickened back into awkwardness again. He kept his stare threaded into the thin bed blanket, suddenly unable to meet her gaze.

“Are you?”

It was only two words, but they asked so much more. He knew it, and he knew she did too. She inched one foot toward him and then nudged him with her big toe. “Then why don’t you show me?”

He curled his hand around her foot. The sensation of touching her, really touching her, and of caressing her warm, soft skin… It turned the crumbles of his ribs into dust and dissolved his senses into a chaos of confusion, need, heat.

“Garrett.” Now she leaned over and grabbed his wrist in one of her tiny but iron-strong hands. “Please. I need this. I need…”

She drew his hand up to her cheek.

“I need you.”

He took a shaking breath as she leaned her face into his palm. Then another as she turned and kissed his wrist. Goddamn, her lips were so warm and soft and succulent. Don’t think about that. Think about the Mariners’ chances for the playoffs this year. Or getting the oil changed in the truck when you get home. Or—

Shit.

She pulled his middle finger down. Wrapped her mouth around it. Her gaze, now green and clear as spring itself again, opened to him in blatant need.

He was done with breathing. With patience. With the goddamn Mariners. With anything else except needing her in return.

“Oh, fuck me, sugar.”

He groaned it as he surged at her. He grinded their bodies together, mashing his mouth onto hers. When he pulled up to give them both a gasp of air, she curled a breathtaking smile up at him.

“Isn’t that my line, soldier?”

He didn’t have the self-control to return her grin. His blood burst into fire, raced through his system, and then gathered force in his balls. He didn’t waste a single moment to let her know it, either. Shoving her thighs wide with his knees, he fit the khaki-clad ridge between his legs against the cotton-covered groove of her own and rocked with slow, teasing thrusts until Sage’s mouth parted on high, breathy cries. He stared in fascination at the locked edges of her teeth beneath. Damn, he’d forgotten how breathtaking her mouth was.

He lifted a finger to her lower lip and pressed down. “Open up,” he said with guttural demand. “I’m going to taste you, Sage.”

With a gorgeous little mewl, she complied. He rose up, bracketing her jaw with one hand, holding her still for his descent. He dove in, ramming his tongue deep, exploring the cavern of her mouth with two overriding intents. The first was to claim her again, filling her with the taste and heat and feel of him alone. And the second? To make damn sure she knew exactly what he was going to do to her body next.

Beneath him, she didn’t just open. She blossomed. Piercing sighs erupted up her throat, soaking him with her essence in return. She wrapped her arms around him, jerked his T-shirt up, and dragged her fingers up his back, making him vibrate with a million electric tremors of arousal.

“Garrett!” Her plea was strident in his ear. “Oh, please!”

He ran a hand downward, tucking it beneath the band of the panties, his lust roaring hotter when her body drenched his fingers in creamy heat. He couldn’t control himself from going farther, inching a finger up her secret channel. They moaned together when her vagina clamped on him like a long-lost lover, sweet and tight in its desperate bliss.

Damn. What was it going to be like when he slid his cock into her?

He couldn’t wait to find out.

His breath came in harsh spurts as he shoved the panties down to her thighs. In seconds, he returned his fingers to the curls a few inches higher, spreading her again, coaxing the ridge of flesh where she was most sensitive, stroking her desire into a blaze to match his.

“My heart,” he murmured against her lips.

“My hero.” She gasped and arched into his fingers, stunning in her hot, panting desire.

He hovered his face an inch above hers, breathing in the sweet natural essence of her, a mix of spring mist, wildflowers, and complete woman. “Now I know why I couldn’t let go. Everyone told me to move on. They said I could make a fresh start with a civvie girl, that life wouldn’t be filled with so much red tape. But I told them all to fuck off. Told them I was in love with your red tape and always would be. I refused to buy their simplicity pie. Part of me knew…knew my brave, proud woman wouldn’t have given up that easily. And now”—he sank his lips deep into hers—“I’m not ever going to let you go again.”

“I love you, Garrett.”

She smiled again at him, her eyes dreamy. Her lips were stung from his kisses, her face aglow in the radiance of expecting him to return the words. His heart rang with them, and his soul clamored with the need to bellow them from the fucking rooftops if he had to…but in the pit of his throat, the consonants were a gob of mud, the vowels were a tangle of nails. Even thinking of dissolving the mess made him shake with pain and loss.

What the hell is wrong with you?

That was the ten-million-dollar question, wasn’t it? His lack of an answer was agony. He’d dreamed of seeing her like this again, open and ready and beautiful for him. He’d clung to this memory for what felt like forever.

This memory.

This memory.

Holy fuck. This was how she’d looked the night before she left for Botswana. The night he’d lost her forever.

“Garrett?”

He dropped his head, breathing hard. He couldn’t take her this way. Not like this.

He craved the Sage who’d shared his dream this morning. The squirming, writhing Sage…in his captivity, under his control. Holy God, he needed her.

“Garrett? Baby?”

He lifted his face again, curling a slow grin at her as he did. “I’m here, sugar.” With slow, gentle circles, he started another kiss. As he skated a hand up beneath her shirt, he tilted his head and trailed tiny bites on her lips. She rolled her mouth against his, trying to give back as good as he gave, but he stopped her, increasing his pressure, always bringing her under his rule again—until, with a frustrated cry, she nipped at him and captured his upper lip with a giggle of triumph.

Garrett growled low, raised his hand to her erect nipple, and tugged it hard.