Again, he battled the simultaneous urges to spank her and screw her.

The former wasn’t happening here, but they were doing a damn fine job of dress rehearsing the latter.

“Well, maybe I’m not fantasy-punishing your ass good enough.” He crushed her even tighter against the tree, shaking the thing so hard that a flurry of pine needles scattered on them. “You’re still spitting that sass at me worse than a thirteen-year-old on restriction. Maybe that means you’ve got to have the punishment fucked directly into you.”

He didn’t give her a second to try interpreting that. Instead, he showed her exactly what he meant—with his body. As he rammed more forcefully against her, he freed his other hand from her jumpsuit and grabbed her leg. Inside a second, he forced her thigh around his waist. His other arm remained raised, his hand still a shackle to her wrists, leaving her upper body open for his gaze and his lips. He took advantage of that opportunity, taking her collarbone, sternum, and neck with his open, wet mouth. Every shiver she gave him in return was a gift better than gold. No matter what, he didn’t stop rocking against her, pseudo-fucking her into the high gasp she finally erupted at him.

“Y-Yes! Oh…yes, Garrett. Maybe that is what I need…”

He intensified the pace. The friction of their clothes was an agonizing, erotic surrogate for the bond their bodies couldn’t have. “Tell me again,” he commanded. “Call me ‘Sir’ this time.”

“Yes, Sir. Yes, you know exactly what I need.”

He clenched his thighs, counteracting the flame his dick had become. He kept his gaze twined with the verdant glory of hers, watching her arousal spiral higher. Her legs shook. Her breathing quickened. Her energy intensified, enveloping every corner of his senses. “What, Sage? Tell me. Use the words to make my cock harder so I can give you exactly what you need.”

“I…I need you to punish me. To…to fuck the discipline into me.”

“Yes,” he growled. “That’s beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

He took her mouth so violently, he lifted her head from the force. He added a rolling motion to his thrusts, drawing out an exquisite little whimper from deep in her chest. He spread his knees a little more in order to drive harder at her.

“Oh!” She gasped and bit his lip, too lost in lust to realize what she’d done. That was all right by him. Her fire fed his, blazing into the corners of him that had been freezing for so long, fusing the driftwood of his desire back into a searing rod of need. “Oh, Garrett! Please!”

He grunted in chastisement. “Rephrase, Miss Weston?”

“Oh, Sir!” she amended. “Please, oh please. I need to—”

“I know what you need. And I’m going to give it to you. The explosion’s on its way, Sage. Your sweet pussy will have its satisfaction, I promise.”

She whimpered and trembled beneath him. “Now,” she pleaded. “God, please…I don’t know how much more of this I can—ahhhh! Please! Now!”

“Don’t think so, sugar.”

“Garrett! Damn it!”

He sped up their tempo, eliciting her into a harder moan. His own voice started coming in low, tight growls between his labored breaths.

“The punishment might have been a fantasy, Sage, but the lesson wasn’t. Tell me what lesson I’m fucking into you. Then you can come apart for me, with me.”

“Are you freaking kidding me? I…I can’t even think straight!”

As much as it killed him to do it, he screeched his body to a full stop. All he moved was his top hand, twisting it harder against her wrists. “Does this feel like kidding?”

She clipped his ass with her heel, making him clutch her tighter. “All right!” she finally cried. “All right, fine! Uh—errm—the lesson was—”

“The lesson is.”

“The—the lesson is—” She gaped as he started the cadence between their bodies again. She learned, at the same time he did, that the thirty-second break made their new grind a hundred times more intense. “Oh, Garrett!”

He gritted out a harsh redirect. “Sage? The lesson?”

“I know, I know! The—the lesson—uh—” She licked her lips with delectable desperation. “Don’t—don’t leave the house again without telling you. There. We good now?”

She lurched her hips, blatantly fighting to get him closer—the adjustment working exactly the right way to stroke his aching cockhead. He shuddered from it but found the will to demand, “Why? Why don’t you leave the house without telling me?”

“Garrett! Please!”

“Tell me why, damn it!”

“B-Because—it makes you feel—uh—”

“Like tearing the fucking neighborhood apart.” The renewed viciousness in his tone wasn’t just because of the bonfire in his dick. His passion was intertwined with the other shit she needed to hear from him, to see in him. She needed to know how his heart seized and his blood became ice this morning when finding her note. How he’d wondered if she’d been forced to write it at gunpoint by one of King’s wanksters. How he’d barely held the truck to the speed limit when driving to the base after finding the papers in the driveway. She needed to feel what had driven him to pin her here and act like this. “It makes me feel like I’ve been cuffed in steel and can’t get out, Sage. Like I’ve lost you all over again. Can you understand that? Can you understand what that does to me?”

Her face contorted. More tears slipped down her cheeks. Damn it, this hadn’t been his intention when hauling her out here. He’d hoped for some fast necking and a grope or two to help take the edge off her sexual frustration, if not his. If a crystal ball had floated ahead of them through the brush and shown they’d be dry-humping each other through a mini psychotherapy session, he would’ve hurled the thing into the woods and told it to go back to the cheap toy store it came from.

“I’m not lost anymore.”

She spoke it with the conviction of a courtroom oath. The solemn words resounded into the depths of his heart and chiseled at every aspect of his control.

“I’m right here, stronger for what I’ve been through, and you are, too. You came and found me, and now we’ve left the hell behind. We’ve left that bastard King behind…right?”

He heard the deliberate pause she inserted before that final question. When he didn’t say or do anything to fill that gap, Sage fell into contemplative stillness. When she moved again, it was to test his grip on her wrists. Garrett let her slip free. She extended her hands straight to him, threading her fingers through his hair. “Garrett? Look at me. I’m here. I’m here. Do you get it?” Her grasp tightened. “Or is there something I’m not getting?”

The flames in his body turned to icicles. He went stiff from the impact, and not in the great way this time. The wind rustled through the pines, a sound so peaceful it turned into a taunt at his soul. He couldn’t hide it from Sage anymore, either. He raised his eyes to meet hers. Her gaze, as deep and lush as the boughs over their heads, didn’t let him go. He witnessed every nuance of the conversion that took over her face, the lust dissolving, the dark bafflement taking over.

“Goddamnit,” she whispered. “Tell me, Garrett. You don’t get to walk back up the dock this time. What the hell is it?”

He stroked a steady thumb along her cheek. “What do I do for a living, Sage? You know I have to hide lots of things.”

She ditched the confused frown for an outright glower. He’d backed her into an impasse, and they both knew it. Nobody had more reverence for his SF secrets than Sage, and he loved her for that integrity. To push him would be taking a hammer to that foundation between them. But her eyes revealed her insight. She knew this had nothing to do with work.

A bellow came from the landing zone. Kell had unknowingly perfect timing. “Are you two done sucking face? The van’s here. We’d all like to get back to base and enjoy some of that yummy-ass brunch.”

Garrett pulled Sage’s zipper back up and readjusted the painful weight beneath his thighs. Despite having to walk with a modified gait from unfulfilled need, he thanked fate for smiling on him this time. All right, it sucked that he wasn’t sure when he’d see a smile on his fiancée’s lips again—but for now, he’d yanked her from King’s tentacles once more, and she was technically none the wiser.

He had no idea how much longer he could keep up this ruse, even if the cause at hand was her ultimate safety and security.

The sooner they put the asshole away for life, the better.

Chapter Twelve