Sage sighed heavily as she stood in the kitchen, watching him from the wide window over the sink. Garrett paced the lawn, side patio, and back of the condo with careful steps and a vigilant gaze. All he needed was a brain bucket and an M16 and she’d swear he was out on patrol. The strain didn’t leave his body even as he sat at one of the chairs around the fire pit to strip off his T-shirt and get out of his boots. Every rope of muscle in his torso was still wound in tension.

None of it came as a surprise. Or a difference. He’d reinstated his mental smokescreen the second they’d climbed in the van with the guys. Tait and Kell had led the general chatter, adding their embellishments about what their own first jumps were like, as well as their most harrowing adventures since then. Sage was glad some of their stories pushed believability, since she’d needed the distraction from the mysterious silence wrapped around the man who’d just brought her such ecstasy. Garrett’s restraint got no better during their drive home, when he feigned interest in the entertainment-news update on the radio. Since when had Hollywood’s latest hook-ups been so crucial to a man who couldn’t give two shits beyond his aunt and uncle back home, as well as the extended family he had here in Seattle?

Either an alien had taken over her man, or the bastard was hiding something from her. If that something has to do with this new energy between them, she had a right to know about it. She’d burn through his whole damn forest to do it.

Let’s do this, Smokey the Bear.

She poured a couple of glasses of water as he came back inside. “Hell yeah,” he murmured when she offered him the drink. “That’s good. Thanks, sugar.”

She watched him guzzle the liquid and gleaned a shot of courage from the moment of silence. There hadn’t been too many like this, where he’d poked through the smoke to let her glimpse the brash, wild mustang of a man who’d captured her heart two summers ago.

She had to keep fighting for that man. To keep fighting for them.

The mantra compelled her forward, next to him. As she expected, Garrett stiffened. She didn’t back off, lifting a hand and resting it against his chest, above the V formed by his dog tags.

He didn’t retreat.

That was a good sign, right?

Sage slid her touch toward his neck.

He grabbed her wrist with the speed of a cobra.

“Garrett—”

“Sage—”

“You’re not going to firebomb me out this time.” Though he swung away, she hooked a hand into the crook of his elbow and dug in, at least as much as she could against his coiled bicep. “I’m not going to let you. Damn it, won’t you even look at me?”

With slow resignation, he swiveled completely around. He hitched his grip backward, palms against the counter. He raised his head, though his gaze only lifted as far as her nose. His lips parted as if he were going to say something, but he just scissored his jaw at her.

“Damn it.” Her rasp was more serrated than the knife stuck in the sourdough loaf she’d baked last night. “How long are we going to continue like this?”

Garrett’s shrug was a maddening display of male evasion. “As long as it takes.”

Sage dropped her hand from him. Fury eclipsed even her urge to leave a good scratch behind. “To quote someone near and dear to me, Sergeant Hawkins, that’s the line you’re going with?”

That got him to pin his stare directly to hers. Nothing had changed about the dark cobalt edges in his eyes. “Were you listening to me today at all? You know there’s information I’m entrusted with, Sage. Information that can’t be—”

“And you know that’s not what I’m talking about!” She shoved past him, storming into the living room, where there was more room to fling out her arms in frustration. “Keep all your classified secrets, Garrett. I get your job. I always have. But you’re not getting off that easy. You’re not going to hide behind your security clearance to avoid talking to me at all. Uncool, Hawkins. And completely unacceptable.”

She watched a deep breath fill his chest. “You’re talking about what happened this afternoon.” He didn’t look at her as he said it, his tone even as his gaze. “After the jump.”

She swallowed hard. “I’m not letting you pretend it didn’t happen, Garrett.” Her chest tightened as the memories, hot and sweet, flooded her mind’s eye. “I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen.”

She dropped her arms. Held her breath. For a moment, she let hope bloom in her heart and gut again. She openly offered that longing to him, letting it paint every inch of her face.

Garrett’s shoulders heaved as if she’d dragged home one of the trees from their forest and dropped it on him. His lips twisted. Conflict roared across his features. Still, she waited. She prayed for that dark haze in his eyes to give way to the brilliant stare of the lover who’d revealed himself to her beneath the pines today. Maybe if she envisioned him that way again, trapping her, consuming her, taking her in whatever way he could get her…

“I liked it, Garrett.”

Her voice quavered. The words were dangerous. The last time she’d spoken them, he’d been marked with scratches from another woman, and they’d fought like hellcats. That night, they’d slept back-to-back for the first time in their relationship—slept being a loose term for those fitful hours.

This time, his reaction was different. Really different. Garrett didn’t bellow or growl back at her. By this point, he barely moved. He’d either shoved the invisible tree free or decided to die under it. By the way his eyes slowly squeezed shut, Sage guessed the latter.

Damn it.

Fine. She knew how to light fires.

Spark by excruciating spark.

“I liked it…Sir.”

She had nothing to lose anymore. If he was going to slip away from her and let her rot in sexual and emotional frustration on the pedestal of his protection, she sure as hell wasn’t going to let it happen before she’d tried everything. Risked it all. Upended every damn stone, including his crazy misconceptions of the defeated woman she’d come home as, not the survivor who truly lived inside her skin now. That was the woman who brought her A game to the battlefield now—who had to be assured that if he stomped out of here, she’d have thrown every stick of emotional dynamite that she could at his stubborn, beautiful soul.

He finally moved again—though went nowhere near the door, thank God. He pivoted back into the kitchen, grabbing his water glass on the way. He set the tumbler into the sink and then braced his hands on both sides of the basin. The pose made her ache. It was only a slight modification of how he’d spread himself across the window of their room in Bangkok. As he gazed out the window, she only saw the spread muscles of his back but imagined his face was stamped in a similar grimace as that day. His glare likely probed the horizon, reflecting a mind lost in a conflict she couldn’t comprehend.

“I know you liked it, Sage.”

She tamped her lips together to keep them from shaking. His tone was still shadowed, but the words were a caress instead of an accusation. Was this progress? Maybe a little?

“If I remember things correctly, you did, too.”

Tension reinvaded his stance. “What happened this afternoon …” His head sank. “Look, between the adrenaline from the jump, and watching your own excitement about the experience, and having you against me again…” He finally turned around but made no move to leave the kitchen. “I should’ve controlled all that better, okay?”

Had the word progress actually crossed her mind a minute ago? Sage folded her arms, trying to muster a composed nod but feeling more like a bobblehead doll on the dashboard of a lurching VW. “You should’ve—” Her lips stopped wobbling. She locked them together instead, hoping the action helped her clamp back a horridly familiar sting behind her eyes. “Right. Sure. I understand. Because God help your sorry ass if you lose control with your fiancée, of all people. Oh yeah, her. The one who’s supposed to make you feel like taking her hard and fast and dirty against a tree.”

His eyes slid shut again. “Sage. Hell.”

“Nice choice of comeback, Hawkins. Is that where you think you’re headed now, because we did what we did?” She watched two waves of awareness crash across his face. The first was raw arousal. The second was unfiltered shame. Nothing like that juicy combo to tempt her into playing with fire again. “Or is it because of what you were thinking about while we did it?”

“I wasn’t thinking,” he bit back. “Don’t you get it? We were in that forest. Everything felt so surreal. Finally, everything just…went away. I lost rationality.”

“Why? Because nobody who’s ‘rational’ would have half a kinky thought about their woman?”

He surged forward, stabbing a finger at her. “Not about the woman they love. Damn it, Sage. We’ve been over this!”

“No. You’ve been over this.” She uncurled her arms and planted her stance. Every step of his approach brought dual bites of anger and fear. Good Lord, he really had gotten huge over the last twelve months. But he wouldn’t hurt her. Shit, they were here like this because he was spooked about touching her at all. Her fear stemmed from the very real possibility that they’d leave this room standing on the exact same game-board squares, separate pawns at the mercy of his dice. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. Stay in Jail. Stay in Jail. Stay in Jail.