“I need you.”
He took a shaking breath as she leaned her face into his palm. Then another as she turned and kissed his wrist. Goddamn, her lips were so warm and soft and succulent. Don’t think about that. Think about the Mariners’ chances for the playoffs this year. Or getting the oil changed in the truck when you get home. Or—
Shit.
She pulled his middle finger down. Wrapped her mouth around it. Her gaze, now green and clear as spring itself again, opened to him in blatant need.
He was done with breathing. With patience. With the goddamn Mariners. With anything else except needing her in return.
“Oh, fuck me, sugar.”
He groaned it as he surged at her. He grinded their bodies together, mashing his mouth onto hers. When he pulled up to give them both a gasp of air, she curled a breathtaking smile up at him.
“Isn’t that my line, soldier?”
He didn’t have the self-control to return her grin. His blood burst into fire, raced through his system, and then gathered force in his balls. He didn’t waste a single moment to let her know it, either. Shoving her thighs wide with his knees, he fit the khaki-clad ridge between his legs against the cotton-covered groove of her own and rocked with slow, teasing thrusts until Sage’s mouth parted on high, breathy cries. He stared in fascination at the locked edges of her teeth beneath. Damn, he’d forgotten how breathtaking her mouth was.
He lifted a finger to her lower lip and pressed down. “Open up,” he said with guttural demand. “I’m going to taste you, Sage.”
With a gorgeous little mewl, she complied. He rose up, bracketing her jaw with one hand, holding her still for his descent. He dove in, ramming his tongue deep, exploring the cavern of her mouth with two overriding intents. The first was to claim her again, filling her with the taste and heat and feel of him alone. And the second? To make damn sure she knew exactly what he was going to do to her body next.
Beneath him, she didn’t just open. She blossomed. Piercing sighs erupted up her throat, soaking him with her essence in return. She wrapped her arms around him, jerked his T-shirt up, and dragged her fingers up his back, making him vibrate with a million electric tremors of arousal.
“Garrett!” Her plea was strident in his ear. “Oh, please!”
He ran a hand downward, tucking it beneath the band of the panties, his lust roaring hotter when her body drenched his fingers in creamy heat. He couldn’t control himself from going farther, inching a finger up her secret channel. They moaned together when her vagina clamped on him like a long-lost lover, sweet and tight in its desperate bliss.
Damn. What was it going to be like when he slid his cock into her?
He couldn’t wait to find out.
His breath came in harsh spurts as he shoved the panties down to her thighs. In seconds, he returned his fingers to the curls a few inches higher, spreading her again, coaxing the ridge of flesh where she was most sensitive, stroking her desire into a blaze to match his.
“My heart,” he murmured against her lips.
“My hero.” She gasped and arched into his fingers, stunning in her hot, panting desire.
He hovered his face an inch above hers, breathing in the sweet natural essence of her, a mix of spring mist, wildflowers, and complete woman. “Now I know why I couldn’t let go. Everyone told me to move on. They said I could make a fresh start with a civvie girl, that life wouldn’t be filled with so much red tape. But I told them all to fuck off. Told them I was in love with your red tape and always would be. I refused to buy their simplicity pie. Part of me knew…knew my brave, proud woman wouldn’t have given up that easily. And now”—he sank his lips deep into hers—“I’m not ever going to let you go again.”
“I love you, Garrett.”
She smiled again at him, her eyes dreamy. Her lips were stung from his kisses, her face aglow in the radiance of expecting him to return the words. His heart rang with them, and his soul clamored with the need to bellow them from the fucking rooftops if he had to…but in the pit of his throat, the consonants were a gob of mud, the vowels were a tangle of nails. Even thinking of dissolving the mess made him shake with pain and loss.
What the hell is wrong with you?
That was the ten-million-dollar question, wasn’t it? His lack of an answer was agony. He’d dreamed of seeing her like this again, open and ready and beautiful for him. He’d clung to this memory for what felt like forever.
This memory.
This memory.
Holy fuck. This was how she’d looked the night before she left for Botswana. The night he’d lost her forever.
“Garrett?”
He dropped his head, breathing hard. He couldn’t take her this way. Not like this.
He craved the Sage who’d shared his dream this morning. The squirming, writhing Sage…in his captivity, under his control. Holy God, he needed her.
“Garrett? Baby?”
He lifted his face again, curling a slow grin at her as he did. “I’m here, sugar.” With slow, gentle circles, he started another kiss. As he skated a hand up beneath her shirt, he tilted his head and trailed tiny bites on her lips. She rolled her mouth against his, trying to give back as good as he gave, but he stopped her, increasing his pressure, always bringing her under his rule again—until, with a frustrated cry, she nipped at him and captured his upper lip with a giggle of triumph.
Garrett growled low, raised his hand to her erect nipple, and tugged it hard.
“Ahhh! Garrett, what the—”
Before she could finish, he’d lifted her shirt all the way off, hurled it to the floor, and returned his mouth to the peak he’d just pinched, licking the irritated skin with the flat of his tongue.
“Oh.” It left her on a startled breath. The sound turned into another tiny keen when he pulled again at that distended nub, using his teeth this time. She tunneled both her hands into his hair, digging at his scalp with her nails. “Ohhh! Shit!”
She began to writhe now. And God help him, his dick throbbed harder.
She gasped as he took both her hands and pinned them over her head. He snarled low, yanking down his fly with his other hand.
She twisted and trembled. He grunted and gritted his jaw. His precome alone was a geyser. Looking at her like this, completely his, tamed for him at last, his cock was screaming to seal his claim on her.
“Kick the underwear free.” He gave her the order on a harsh, hot rush of sound. “Then you’ll spread wide for me, sugar. I’m gonna claim every inch of you, Sage. Every fucking inch.”
He watched her breath hitch once and then speed up into a wild gallop beneath her trembling breasts. “I love you,” she said again. “I need you. Please, Ga—”
“Hush.” It left him on a monotone, which was an odd contrast to his curt, commanding actions. The second she got the panties free, he pushed back one leg and then the other, letting out a hungry rumble at the sight of her spread and glistening pussy. When he reached and plunged two fingers into her quivering entrance, Sage screamed and then, remarkably, laughed.
“Oh, Garrett! God, yes!”
He lunged over her then, drilling a stare of dark intent into her. Laughing wasn’t part of this. She’d laughed the night before she’d left him, even through her orgasm, drowning him in her joy, her beauty…her love. She’d laughed, filling the condo with it so that the memories of it haunted him for that horrid, dismal week before he was able to get back into the mission rotation on the squad. No. Laughing wouldn’t be a part of things tonight.
“I said hush.”
That was when he flipped her over and brought his hand down on her ass in a resounding smack.
Chapter Four
Wow.