The second they were out of eyesight and earshot from Kell, he whirled Sage around. The spot he’d picked was perfect, with plenty of bush cover and a wide tree right behind her. With one solid slam, he had her pinned between the trunk and him. Her mouth popped open in surprise and provided the perfect beacon for his. He didn’t waste a second, smashing a deep, hungering kiss on her.

A high cry swept up her throat. The vibrations of it filled his mouth, pulling his tongue deeper inside her. Perfect. So fucking perfect. She set him afire with her open, incredible surrender and fanned the blaze higher by stabbing her arms under his top, fisting his T-shirt, and pulling hard on the sweat-soaked cotton.

“Garrett!” She pleaded it against his jaw when he dragged away to let her breathe. “Oh yes…”

He stopped her with another kiss, though he wasn’t sure this still qualified as kissing. Conquering her mouth, controlling it completely, was a rushing, consuming exigency. He needed this. Fuck, he couldn’t get enough of her.

He bracketed her face with one hand, holding her in place while he plunged, plowed, and explored with his tongue and teeth. His imagination went into hyperdrive again. It taunted him with the fantasy of her creamy and nude against the leaves and mud. Ditch the dream, Hawk. Isn’t going to happen here. But the creative imagery exercise left its mark in his blood, torching him from head to toe so even the act of pulling down her jumpsuit zipper was a pure carnal pleasure. Her answering moan urged him on. In seconds, he found his way under her T-shirt and bra, landing his eager fingers on one of her erect nipples.

He finally pulled away from her lips but didn’t go very far. The soft column of her neck beckoned. He marked the skin there with his teeth while he continued to tease her breast. “Damn it, Sage,” he growled against her jugular, “I should still be furious with you.”

“I know.” Her voice was a rasp, but her hands gave him a different message. She tore at his back with her fingernails, her touch almost bestial with need. “I know, and I’m sorry…”

Garrett went at her mouth again, and she dug at his back even harder. He grunted from the new pressure but followed with a rough moan. If his endorphins weren’t turbo-charging everything in his body, he imagined her ploughs would be painful, but the only sensation he cared about was the hotter, harder heaviness between his thighs.

Hell. They needed to stop. The most dangerous prisoner in his psyche began stirring again. The dark beast paced the cage of his soul, demanding a little exercise. Okay, a lot of exercise. And his brain had run a goddamn mental obstacle course for the last two hours, depleting his strength to fight the monster.

He needed to push away. He needed to leave her the hell alone, or the cage was going to snap. This animal he didn’t know, much less control, was going to break free. Seeing her like this, with her hair half-down and her eyes half-wild, didn’t help. Not one fucking bit.

“Sorry,” she offered again, lifting her lips to his chin, his neck. “Garrett, I really am—”

“No.” The mix of the beast’s voice and her plea was a double whammy on his dwindling restraint. He moved his hand into her hair and yanked her head to one side. As he sank his teeth again to her neck, he slid his hand to her other breast. “No,” he repeated in a seductive snarl, “I don’t think you really are.” Her peak came alive under his squeezing fingers. Her sharp gasp was exactly the reaction he sought. He could feel her hammering pulse through his questing tongue. “But if we were anywhere else, I’d make sure you were truly sorry.”

A deep swallow undulated down her throat. “You…you would?”

“Damn straight.”

Her head tipped deeper to the side, sending her hot, panting breaths into his shoulder. She nipped at the skin there and dipped her head, as if trying to determine how to crawl inside him. “How?”

Her question shot lighter fluid into his cock. It had been four hundred forty-five days since he’d last been inside her—not that he was counting. He let out a harsh breath as his BVDs chafed with a familiar wetness. Hello, precome.

“I’d have this jumpsuit down past your knees.” Acting on at least part of that fantasy, he unzipped the jumpsuit farther. Her body had warmed the inside of it, forming a perfect welcome for his wind-chilled hands. She let loose a gorgeous sigh as he swept his grip around, cupping her ass with voracious force. “Then this bra would be gone too. You’d be naked for me. Exposed. At my mercy.”

He felt her thighs tremble. She scored his spine with her nails. “But I still wouldn’t be sorry.”

“No,” he said, “you probably wouldn’t be.”

As he gripped her tighter, fitting the apex of her body against the center of his, he angled his gaze to lock into hers. Damn it, here came the animal again. It charged the disintegrating cage of his control, completely taking over his next words.

“That’s why I’d have to get you over my knees.”

Sage’s lips parted. Her eyes glimmered like a tigress in heat. Feral. Magical. Thoroughly aroused. “Oh,” she murmured. “Over your—”

“Knees.” He nodded as she shivered again. Though he hated the animal, he adored the creature it set free in her. He was transfixed by the new softness in her face, living there right beside her wildcat. He was helpless against her sensuality, drowning in it. “Yeah, that’s what I said. Over my knees. With your head against my calf, and your ass high and proud…waiting for me.”

“W-Waiting?”

“Yes.” He curled his fingers deeper against her ass, scraping the flesh inside her cheeks with his nails. “What do you think it would be waiting for, Sage?”

She closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them again, the sun kissed her tawny lashes and highlighted her deep arousal. Holy hell, she was gorgeous, wildness and tenderness together, a creature all but begging for his claim. Garrett had never remembered her so beautiful, and the realization that he’d caused it was better than ten shots of Patrón.

She was even more mesmerizing as she answered his query. “Your punishment,” she whispered. “It…it would be waiting for your punishment.”

“Damn right, sugar. It would be waiting for my punishment. For me to spank it hard, as many times as I wanted.”

He ground his bulging ridge along her crotch, letting her feel what this forbidden fantasy was doing to him.

Her head fell back against the tree as he pressed close, her heartbeat slamming at the base of her throat. “Garrett. Oh, hell!”

“Uh-uh,” he commanded. “None of that, Sage. No words during your punishment. You’d take every blow in silence, to ensure me that you were thinking about how insane you’d made me today. When I got out of the shower, and you weren’t there…” The memory of his terror twisted with the fever of his lust, making him thrust against her harder. “Fuck, Sage!”

“I am sorry.” A couple of tears tangled on her cheek. “I never thought you’d be—”

“Hush.” He slammed his mouth to hers again, reddening it like he craved to darken her ass. With his gaze planted on her face, he ordered, “Give me your hands.”

She frowned, clearly confused. “What?”

“Your hands.” He gave it harder emphasis. “Off my back, against the tree, over your head. Now.” After Sage complied, he pulled one of his hands off her ass and raised it to her wrists, pinning them together under his grip. “I’d bind you like this too, Sage. Yeah, definitely. You’d be helpless, the same way I felt this morning, not knowing where you’d gone, not knowing who you’d gone with.”

For the first time, the tigress in her struck out. “And if I’d told you, would you have let me go?”

“Damn it,” he snarled. “It’s my responsibility to—”

“Protect me. I know. Though from what, I don’t know. But protection is different than house arrest, Sergeant Hawk—”

She interrupted herself with her own high, aching cry. It exploded from her as he widened his stance in order to mash their bodies with more ferocious force. Oh, damn. Her yelp… He instantly craved to hear it again. He hated himself for the admission, but it resonated as deep as his fucking DNA. He’d never wanted to go balls-out fighting with a woman at the same time he had balls in other places too. This… Fuck, this was as new for him.

That’s not quite the truth, is it, Hawk?

He raged at the reminder note, courtesy of his past. At the same time, he couldn’t ignore the truth that was in front of him, very much in his present. There was no denying the effect of this new thing, whatever it was, on both of them. Sage was an image of writhing, breathtaking beauty as she started to match his thrusts, her eyes closed, her lips gasping, her body trembling. His anger from this morning stirred with this week’s nonstop apprehension and flipped his desire for her into pure need. It wasn’t just his body that told him to conquer her now. It was his mind, his heart. He craved her surrender in every way he could get it.

The comprehension spurred his retort, flung with no apology. “‘House arrest?’ That’s the line you’re going with, huh? Seems you really do want me to paint your ass red.”

Sage chuffed, matching him snark for snark. “It’s your punishment fantasy, baby.”