This wasn’t sane. This wasn’t rational. Why did people do this? Couldn’t they find an easier way to get troops places? Somebody seriously needed to talk to armed forces leadership about this. Somebody needed to talk to the president about this.

Garrett’s voice was back in her ear. But it wasn’t an intimate growl this time. Now, he yelled at her in full, commanding throttle.

“Go!”

She wanted to die. Instead, she stepped into thin air, and the breath-robbing force of freefall whomped every cell in her body. Her heart rate was a rocket. She was pure electricity. She was raw energy. She felt everything yet nothing at once, all thoughts of past or future gone. There was only right here, right now, and in this insane moment, she was only certain of one thing.

Yeah. She was going to die.

Chapter Eleven

Garrett had long ago lost track of how many jumps he’d completed, but like the best thrill ride, it never got old.

The exhilaration was even better this time, though. It wasn’t every day that a guy got to take the woman of his soul on the world’s most incredible adrenaline rush. Getting to experience the jump through Sage’s eyes, even down to her terror, actually made him feel better than he had all week. He wished he could tell her that here, at ten thousand feet over the earth, she was the safest she’d been in seven days. In more than a year. He’d never been more aware or thankful for the hand of irony. Up in the plane, he’d actually relaxed. He’d gotten so sarcastic with Sage, she’d laughed and called him a dork. For a few incredible seconds, they were just a guy and a girl again, flirting with each other, falling in love.

But that thirteen-hundred-foot bonus dwindled fast.

He let the freefall go on for a few thousand more feet before he finally yanked the pud handle that deployed the drogue parachute, preparing them for deployment of the main chute. The bigger canopy flowed out next, yanking them into the wild swoop of shock when it opened. As they swung forward again and he started to guide them toward the landing pit, Sage let out a long, gleeful shriek—her first sound since they’d left the plane. A bunch more followed as they rode the wind together, and Garrett couldn’t help but laugh. He tried to remember that an hour ago, he’d been in the Taj Mahal of royally pissed at her. He struggled to dredge up what it felt like to see King’s gutter dogs in that hangar, sniffing at her with their hungry eyes, looking at her as nothing more than a means to a fat payback. He fought to recall how the Otter couldn’t take off fast enough and how he’d breathed easier with every foot they’d ascended.

He struggled to remember all of it, yet the only thing that seemed to matter now was now. This moment. This pure, soaring joy. For a few precious seconds, time was flung backward. The only thing that mattered in the world was just the two of them. Lost in each other. Wrapped around each other. Flying once again as one.

Muscle memory took over while his hands pulled at the steering and brake lines, aligning their descent with the landing pit. The perfect jump conditions didn’t preclude him from taking care with the task. The pit was a little sloped because it was bordered on one side by a dense forest—a challenge the army had created during the years units were being deployed right and left to the Afghan mountains and needed training on terrain like this. He slowed the chute down by intervals, bringing them down for what was going to be a textbook landing.

“Legs up, Captain,” he instructed Sage.

“Yes, sir.” A tiny giggle in her voice drained the respect from the words. His brain, already untethered from a number of its usual restraints, kicked in with a reaction that sent his senses on another freefall. He imagined disciplining that sass out of her—right on her tawny, smooth ass. Then he’d force an apology from her with his cock head, refusing to let her pussy have him until she said those two words with breathy, needing reverence…

Thank God he had the landing to worry about.

They hit the gravel at perfect velocity, making Sage squeal with victory. As Garrett unclipped them both from the rigging, she was a ball of pure, squirming energy. T-Bomb and Kell were doing the same about twenty yards away. They exchanged upturned thumbs with each other, indicating everyone had gotten in a good jump. Kell, as the unit’s rigger, came jogging over to collect his chute and rig.

“The penguins will be here in about twenty with the van,” he stated.

“Got it.”

Garrett confirmed, reckoned it might be the longest twenty minutes of his life. He knew Archer would be riding with the ground crew and ready with an update about the assholes who’d snuck into the hangar. With any luck, the MPs would be able to detain the men long enough to discern how they’d tailed Sage onto the base.

Tension jabbed its way back into his muscles. He grunted at the invasion, wistfully saying goodbye to those blissful moments up in the sky.

He looked over in time to see Kell crack one side of his mouth up at Sage while he sorted through the lines and deflated canopy on the ground. “So, Sage Mouse, what’d you think?”

If it were possible, Sage’s glow got a little brighter. Kell was one of the guys who’d been around long enough to remember the unit’s endearment for her, given instantly after Garrett had fallen for her. “For once, the prey caught the hawk,” they’d joke. They got away with it because they knew it was true.

Thank fuck none of them had a door to his brain, allowing them to see how the woman proved it glaringly true right now. Damn, she captivated him. She was even more stunning than before the flight, bouncing around like one of those dancers from the Irish fast-step troupes, even humming a silly tune as accompaniment. The brilliance in her eyes was a breath-stopper. Her dazzling grin hadn’t faltered since they’d touched down.

“I…I didn’t think!” she exclaimed. “I couldn’t! And that’s what made it so…so…”

Kell chuckled. “Yeah. Pretty good, huh?”

“Pretty good?” She gaped like Kell had just grown horns. She spun around, pumping her fists skyward. “Wow! Fucking wow!” When her pirouette placed Garrett back in her field of sight, she stopped. Her smile dropped a little, but the change was good. Very good. It was the way only Sage could look at him, shoving past those doors inside him that said No Admittance, diving over the bullshit he gave everyone else and seeing him as nobody else could.

Holy fuck, he loved that look. And hated it.

And right now, he had no idea what to do about it.

Sage didn’t abandon him to the dilemma. Before he could form another thought, she threw herself against him. “Thank you, baby!”

She clearly intended the embrace to be over as soon as it started, but Garrett’s instincts, still on overdrive, forced another plan. He held her in return. He didn’t want a damn hug. He needed an embrace. As he wrapped his arms around her, he ducked his head against the side of her head. She felt so tiny. She felt so warm. She felt so right.

“You’re welcome.”

He knew how rough those words came off his lips, and he saw the recognition of it in Sage’s gaze when they pulled apart. He also saw what she wanted to do about it—if her lingering touch on his ribcage still meant what it had a year ago. On top of that, the celadon of her gaze deepened to a shade that matched her name, and her tongue snuck out in a tentative slide between her lips.

Damn.

He wanted to send his tongue in after hers.

And if he was interpreting her stare right…

She yearned for the exact same thing.

His blood fired with new heat, spiking his heart rate. It became an anaerobic fun zone as his mind took things from there, turning the image into a fantasy that ended with both of them naked, gasping, and drained. Damn it, this was getting messy.

And impossible to deny any longer.

Somehow, he managed to let Sage step back. But even those two feet were intolerable. His body gunned like a dragster at the start line, the key in the ignition and all cylinders ready to fire. If he didn’t get to open the throttle soon, the engine was going to explode.

“Kell,” he called without ungluing his stare from Sage. “We’ll be right back.”

“Okay. Where you going?”

“Yeah.” Sage frowned in confusion as he dipped his head toward the woods, indicating for her to follow. “Where are we going?”

He willed his voice and his gait into feigned ease. “Maybe we can find that—er—house key. Yeah, your house key. You said it fell loose just before we dipped in over the trees.”

“Oh.” Suddenly she quickened her own pace. “Right! Yeah, that’s right. Damn. I can’t believe that happened. Hopefully we’ll see it. Be right ba—”

He literally snatched the rest of the word out of her, pulling her through the underbrush at damn near a run.