No way. Not this time.

“What the hell?” He fired it back at her with what looked like confusion—on the surface. But they’d always been able to stab through each other’s one-liners, whether they were joking or fighting. The fact that this was the biggest skirmish of their relationship didn’t change a thing. Garrett knew it, too. One look into the blue flames in his eyes told Sage that.

“You heard me,” she retorted. “I said you’ve been through this. That wasn’t a two-way conversation we had in Bangkok. It was the Garrett Hawkins sermon hour, concluded when you decided the gospel had gotten pounded into me enough and it was time to ram your closed-minded brain back into the quicksand of denial.”

He stopped in front of her, eclipsing her with the force of his presence. “I’m not in denial about a damn thing here.”

Sage sneered. “That so, Preacher Boy?”

With no warning, he clutched her by the shoulders. The move was so sudden, her head snapped back. That was a good thing, since the searing intent on his face said far more than the gravel in his reply.

“You don’t think I know what I’m talking about, Sage? My best friend is a hardcore Dominant. Most of the unit practices the dynamic too. I’ve trusted these men with my life, and I’ll do it again. You think I’d toss a single one of them into hell?” He pulled her an inch closer. Both their chests clutched. His jaw tensed as if her body was a stem of belladonna, breathtaking but deadly. “I don’t damn anyone for enjoying Total Power Exchange, okay?”

“Just yourself,” Sage whispered. When his hold tightened, she persisted. “I’m right about that, and don’t you dare deny it.” She pressed her fingers to his sternum. His heart thundered against the taut skin. “Why am I right, Garrett? Why are you denying yourself? Why are you denying both of us something we clearly want to explore?”

He curled his fingers harder against her skin. His touch turned into scrapes of rough possession, marking her along the backs of her arms. A shiver coursed through her. She wondered—oh God, she hoped—that her words would unlock the chains clearly weighing his gaze too. But as she searched for that freedom in his eyes, she saw devastating truth to the contrary. His mind was barely here anymore. He looked at her but didn’t see her.

Sage endured another tremor. This vibration wasn’t singing a sunny Beach Boys tune.

Where are you, Garrett?

Where had he sent his thoughts? Had he taken a mental vacation back to Bangkok, maybe? If so, to where…or, damn it, to whom? When he’d come back to the embassy drenched in perfume and marked with fingernail scratches, Sage had assumed he’d gone to see a call girl. What if that stranger hadn’t been such a stranger?

His swallow tossed icebergs into the freezing lake of her fear. The way he let her go, as if she were a treasure he didn’t deserve, added more.

He skirted around her and walked to the window.

Shit.

Sage stumbled in a semicircle, forcing herself to turn toward him. He stood with his legs parted, his arms at rigid angles to his sides. The sun was setting over the lake, casting a deep bronze glow that turned his honed torso and long legs into a silhouette that resembled a demigod rising from a pool of fire. Damn it, if this was the moment he was going to break her heart, could he look a little less magnificent doing it?

After a minute of torturous silence, she forced three words out.

“What is it?”

Her ragged rasp seemed to impact him harder than any shriek she could have mustered. That was a good thing, because Sage barely had the strength to stand, let alone speak.

“What is it.” He repeated it as a statement instead of a question. “I think the properly phrased query here, sugar, is who, not what.”

Sage gripped the back of the couch. Okay, this really wasn’t boding well. “All right,” she said tightly, “if you say so.”

Garrett dragged a hand through his hair.

“Fuck.”

The word was horridly ironic—a jut of breath into the air but carrying the weight of so much more beneath the surface. Sage did fight back the urge to scream now. “Garrett, damn it! Just spit it out, okay? I’ve pulled on the big-girl panties. Who the hell is she?”

He laughed. The sound didn’t possess a single note of mirth, but yeah, the bastard laughed. As Sage battled the urge to tackle him out the window, he closed the distance back to her and yanked the option from possibility. Suddenly, he had her wrapped against his chest with her cheek between his pecs and the top of her head locked by his lips.

“Is that really what you think?” he whispered.

She couldn’t stop shaking. “I don’t know what the hell to think anymore.”

“I know.” His breath heated her scalp. “And I’m sorry.”

She squirmed. This contact would’ve been a glimpse of heaven, if he wasn’t using it to evade the obvious. “Stop stalling, Garrett, and just give me the damn name. If you’re going to let me go, let’s get—”

“Wyatt.”

Sage froze in the middle of trying to shove against his shoulder. With her fingers locked on his collarbone, she tipped her head up, openly bewildered. “What?”

Garrett’s face was still a study in concrete control. Only one part of his regard went soft by any degree. His gaze.

“You wanted a name.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Command granted, woman. There’s your name.”

“Wyatt?”

“Yep.”

“As in…your uncle? The one back in Iowa?”

“Yep.”

“Funny,” she snapped. “Ha-ha. Way to pluck that one out at random.” She started pushing from him again, but for the second time in the last minute, her instinctual bullshit meter for him registered at zero. Sage straightened her head now, directing a deeper scrutiny into him. “Wait. That wasn’t so random at all, was it?”

Garrett dropped his head as he lowered his hold. He grabbed both her hands into his and then looked at the union of their fingers as if it were the first time he’d done this with her. His resigned energy turned Sage’s heartbeat into turmoil against her ribs. Hell. Why did she feel like some intrepid reporter, about to break through with a celebrity spilling their darkest secret?

Garrett didn’t ease her trepidation by pulling her to sit on the couch with him. Her toes sank into the thick shag of the chocolate-brown area rug that stretched to the hearth. She loved this rug. The memories Garrett and she had created on it had carried her through a shitload of dismal nights, especially after she and Ray had gotten free from the pirates and had no idea what country they were in or who they could trust. She’d spent hundreds of long nights replaying the way Garrett had teased her, touched her, thrilled her in this room.

She had no idea how he was going to change those memories now, but his continued demeanor, too damn composed for normal Garrett mode, confirmed this wasn’t going to be some cozy fireside chat. Sage struggled to borrow his calmness as he wove their fingers tighter together. More silence stretched while he stared into the grate where so many logs had burned into ash while they loved the night away.

“How much do you know about my relationship with him?” Garrett finally asked.

“With Wyatt?” At his short nod, she tilted her head and continued. “Well, I’ve only met him once. He seems like a generous man, though there are parts of him that are closed off, that’s for sure. He seems proud of you, but he’s afraid to show it somehow.”

Garrett snorted. “Afraid to? How about just won’t?”

Sage peered harder. “I’m officially lost here.”

He stabbed his free hand into his hair. As he lowered it, he balled it into a fist. “Guess I never told you how I used to idolize him more than Dad.”

Sage felt her eyebrows jump. “You didn’t.”

He nodded. “I tend to leave that part out of the life story most of the time.”

Sage searched her memory for a recollection of Wyatt Hawkins. When she’d met him during their trip to Iowa just before Garrett proposed, it had been during a big family barbecue at the home in which Garrett grew up. Wyatt and his wife, Josie, hadn’t traveled far. They lived next door. Like Garrett, his dad, and his two brothers, the man was tall, tawny-haired, and all muscle, even for a guy closing in on his late thirties. Josie seemed completely smitten with him. Wyatt clearly returned the sentiment, always kissing his wife or pulling her onto his lap. But around the rest of the family, the man was guarded, even a little aloof.

Like a man who had to keep a lot of secrets.