Her eyes widened, ablaze with bright peridot shock. She pushed out her chin and tacked on a smirk. “Is that so, Sergeant?” She stepped into a little white thong trimmed in sexy-as-hell pink lace and then tugged a white tank over the bra he hadn’t gotten the chance to get off yet. “Why don’t you watch me?”
He laughed, though the sound was made of anger, not mirth. Thanks to the countless sessions with Shrink Sally, as he’d affectionately come to call the poor woman assigned to “fix” him a year ago, he also recognized that the rage was directed at the guy in the mirror across the room, not the woman in front of him. That only tripled the resolve for his next action.
Without giving her any warning, Garrett hooked two fingers into the lace at her hip and pulled hard. The surge of her body returning to his side matched the rush of joy in his blood and the roar of arousal in his cock. This was where she belonged. This was so fucking right.
With a grunt, he twisted the panties tighter. The fabric gave way in his grip. It fell away, exposing her incredible golden hips. Sage gaped at him, though he took that from her too, ramming their lips together while he pulled her and flattened her to the bed again.
“I’ve got a better idea,” he growled, rolling his hips so she felt every pounding inch of his erection. “Why don’t you watch me, sugar?”
She did just that, jerking her brilliant green eyes wide as he jammed both her arms over her head and lashed them together using a bungee cord off his mission pack. For a second he wondered why his pack made it to heaven with him, but he was too grateful to question the issue for long. It was just as weird that her old bed had made it too, a wrought-iron thing he’d never liked much, thanks to its headboard full of fancy curlicues that tangled with each other like a damn tumbleweed. But right now he was really grateful for the thing. The two bungee hooks fit perfectly around a couple of whorls in the headboard.
With a frustrated whimper, Sage wrenched her arms. “Wh-What are you doing?” She craned her neck, exposing the nervous drum of her carotid artery. “Garrett, why—”
“I told you.” He stated it with steeled calm. “I’m not letting you leave. It was a mistake to do that the first time. It was a mistake not to go after you. So now I’m keeping you right here, safe with me. Just trust me, my heart. You’re going to be very happy.” Without preamble, he tore her tank top down the middle. “And very satisfied.”
Her breath caught on a sexy-as-hell hitch. “My hero.” The sigh changed her voice, too. Her tone transformed from incensed to breathless but climbed into a strained cry when he took care of her front bra clasp with one deft snap. “Oh…mmmm!” she moaned, arching into the fingers he trailed around her dark berry nipples, pushing her puckered fruit up at him. He gave into the craving to sample one with deeper intent, pinching the nub and then pulling. Hard.
“Shit! Ohhh, Garrett!”
Damn. Her startled cry made him want to try it on the other nipple, and he did. Both her areolas were red and irritated now, their tiny bumps standing in attention around the distended peaks at their centers.
To his perplexity—to his shame—he got painfully hard.
That didn’t stop him from getting greedy. With both his hands on her tits now, he couldn’t resist tugging on both her beautiful nipples at the same time.
“Damn it!” she screamed. “Garrett, th-that hurts! Oh God! Oh…mmmmm…”
She fell into an enraptured moan as he made up for the man-pig behavior, soothing each breast with long, tender licks. That wasn’t a huge help to his aching body. His cock had gotten harder and hotter, throbbing between their stomachs. He shifted a little so he could dip his hand between her thighs, intending to continue his gratitude by giving her pussy a nice little rubdown—but what he discovered had him grinning in delighted shock. Her tunnel was gushing, warm, and creamy for him. She took one finger, then two, then three, her walls secreting more tangy juices all over his skin. Her arousal revved his mouth again. He pulled his tongue back from her nipple and bit into the stiff nub.
Her whole body bucked off the mattress. “Garrett! Hell! Why are you doing that?”
“Because you like it,” he said while working a fourth finger into her. With one of his thighs, he shoved hard on the knee he’d just been worshipping, opening her legs wider. “Because the pain makes you wet for me.”
He dragged his mouth against hers again, but this time she didn’t let him into her wet heat. She opened her lips only enough to get her teeth into his bottom lip.
“Damn you to Hades,” she whispered, her teeth still anchored in his flesh. He yanked back, licking at the flesh she’d torn open, though he did it on a dark smile.
“Too late, sugar. I think my passport’s already got that stamp.”
She looked adorable as she rolled her eyes. “Which is why you’re in heaven with me?”
Before he answered that, he did kiss her. He did it thoroughly and desperately, possessing her tongue in bold sweeps, permanently tangling his essence with hers.
“We’ve always lived on borrowed time, my heart. We both know it.” He gripped her leg, hooking her knee around his shoulder. “Which is why I’m going to fuck you hard now. Which is why you’re going to let me. Which is why you’re going to love it.”
Her eyes shimmered with tears. Her lips lifted in a misty smile. “Okay.”
His penis surged against his fingers as he guided himself to her tight, glistening entrance. “Tell me you want it.”
“I want it, baby.” Her obedience didn’t land him in heaven again. It made his whole heart and soul turn into paradise. “I want your hot cock, Garrett. Please. Now. Deep inside me.”
“Yeah.” He swirled the searing precome around his bulging head and then pushed himself into the first inch of her channel. “Oh yeah, sugar.”
“Garrett.” Her strident gasp filled him. “Garrett…Garrett…”
“Soon, my heart. Soon.”
“Garrett! Fuck, man. Open the door!”
What the hell?
His fiancée suddenly sounded like his best friend. Correction—his demanding, door-pounding, subtle-as-a-linebacker ex-best friend.
“Hawkins! Get your ass out of bed and answer the door!”
Garrett slammed his eyes open. Squeezed them shut again. “No.” His voice was a croak, absorbed by the grimy walls of the room in this no-name Bangkok hotel he’d checked into last night. He looked down, trying to piece together this new truth. The precome was real. One of his hands was still wet with the stuff. His fingers were also really wrapped around his aching boner as he lay beneath a mound of cheap, cloying sheets.
Sage was nowhere to be found.
Of course not.
Because she was dead. For a year, two months, sixteen days, and almost twenty-four hours now.
The knives of grief, all ten million of them, reburied in his chest. As he gulped through the resulting dearth of air, he raised his clean hand to his chest, scrabbling for his dog tags. More accurately, he searched for the gold band that hung on the chain between them.
Though his head ordered him not to do it, he slipped his ring finger back through the band. For one wonderful extra moment, the knives went away, and he relived the day he and Sage had picked out the jewelry… The day when he’d thought it would soon become a part of his wardrobe for good.
He remembered every detail of how beautiful she’d looked. It had been a brilliant late-spring day. Her hair was a cascade of light-brown sugar that earned her his favorite nickname, falling against the freckled shoulders that peeked from her pink sundress. But her smile… Ah, he remembered that the best. Her lips had glistened with her joyous tears and quavered with her soft whisper.