“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—”

“No.” She smashed her hand over his mouth. “I should be wrapped in you. Sleeping next to you.” When his throat constricted on a swallow, the backs of her eyes pricked again. “You obstinate dork. I don’t want to be your queen under glass, okay? I just want…”

“I know.” He said it after pulling her hand away, though he kept her fingers curled inside his. “And I’m here.” He pulled her knuckles against his lips. “I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere. You have me here, Sage. Always.”

He released her hand. But the look on his face made Sage push it right back, looping her grip around his neck. She twisted her fingers into his hair, a silent command to keep his gaze locked on her. To the man’s credit, he endured her scrutiny. He smiled, if that was what the look could be called. Both edges of his mouth wavered as if stabbed into place by dull thumbtacks. It reminded her of the event posters in the mess back on base. Lame messages proclaimed in half-peeling tempura paint.

Her stomach coiled into a tighter knot. Dread needled her whole body.

Damn it. Damn it. Yep, lame message was definitely the case this time.

“I have you,” she echoed, “always. But…not in all ways.” When Garrett rushed his stare back toward the window, she persisted, “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Sage.” He sighed heavily. “This isn’t up for discussion.”

“Of course it isn’t. You’ve already made up your own ass-backward mind, haven’t you? You still think you’re going to turn into some kind of sadistic beast and hurt me, so you’re just not going to let me in. You’re still going to slink off into your shadows and fuck another by-the-hour tart because you think—”

“I didn’t fuck anyone.”

“And that’s why you can’t look at me as you say it?”

He wheeled back around. “I fucked you, okay?” And stabbed his hands through his hair. “I drank too much. Passed out. And I dreamed about you.”

She narrowed her eyes. “And the tarts simply let you, yeah? Just sat there and rubbed your feet while you slept it off, and their perfume clung to you by magical osmosis?”

He exhaled in shaky spurts. “We had a hostess. She helped clean me up. At least until I stumbled to the shower.”

“Ah.” Another bitter laugh tumbled out. She folded her arms. “‘Helped clean you up.’ So that’s what they call it now.”

Garrett straightened. Dipped a small nod…as his eyes filled once more with that weird something. Only now, it wasn’t so elusive. Now, Sage knew exactly what it was.

Regret.

He shuffled backward. Jammed hands into his back pockets. “Maybe this is for the better.”

She swallowed down a sob. Bastard. You beautiful, fucked-up bastard.

“For the better,” she uttered. “Really, Garrett? This is for the fucking better? This what, damn you. Tell me, what the hell am I to you now?” She grabbed the ring again. Held it up between them. “Is this going to just become an expensive little amulet?”

A pulse rammed in his jaw. “That’s not fair.”

“That’s truth. This ring is supposed to stand for sharing our lives, Garrett. For sharing, not for running from each other!”

The accusation ignited him. Thank God. He surged toward her, his face curled with ferocious intent. Weirdly, his rage thrilled her. She could still get to him. There was hope.