Saved by His Submissive (14 page)

“How nice. I don’t negotiate.”

“You don’t say.”

His friend’s knowing mutter got phased out as Garrett activated the skills he
was
good at. Z often joked about it being good his family name invoked a bird that saw the world ten times sharper than a human, complete with invisible feathers that stood up when an enemy was near. That was the part that worried him now. His feathers were suddenly at full ceremony salute, as if something wasn’t right about the air around here. About the people around here.

Keeping Z on the line, he tucked his head around the corner. After docking his sunglasses atop his head, he swept his gaze through every nook and crevice in the cavernous building. A crew was working on the Chinook chopper that served as the workhorse for the Reserve Aviation unit in supporting local ranger troops in search-and-rescue operations. Everyone seemed to know their role. Plenty of smack talk flew while an iPod screamed a Nine Inch Nails song. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. In spite of the way NIN always relaxed him, a frustrated snort peeled loose from his throat.

Wait.

Bastard. There he was!

A machinist lingered near one of the work benches, only that was all he seemed to be doing. Garrett watched the guy rearrange a tray of wrenches three times in a row. The soldier’s uniform looked three sizes too big, and his boots didn’t match the regulation eight-inchers worn by the other techs. He was plenty alert, however. His constant glances around the area, made furtively from beneath his cap, were long enough to qualify as sneaky stares. Or outright infiltration.

The intuition became certainty when Garrett observed the biggest object of the guy’s attention.

Sage stood just outside the hangar, laughing at another joke made by Ethan Archer.

Jealousy screamed at his brain for entrance, but Garrett shoved the feeling aside. There was no time to be chums with the hulking green emotional monster. Protecting Sage was more important than kicking someone’s face in for charming her, though this didn’t mean he deleted Archer off his To-Do list. Not by a screaming long shot.

“Zeke.”

“What?”

His friend’s voice, weighted with a quarry of stony meaning, conveyed that he’d heard the change in Garrett’s tone. Not for the first time today, Garrett was deeply grateful that the man knew him so well.

“There’s a face in this place that isn’t saying Go Army to me, man.”

“What
is
it saying?”

“All the King’s men.”

“Fuck. I had a feeling, when you didn’t speak up for a few seconds…”

“Damn glad you’re turning part hawk too.”

“He’s none of the minions we got in Thailand, though.”

“He wouldn’t be. Only King was extradited, and the bastard’s in solitary now at FDC, thank fuck.”

“Well, someone’s still taking orders from him. Every instinct I’ve got doesn’t trust this guy, especially the way he’s sizing up Sage.”

 “Can you get a shot of the asshole’s face on your cell?”

“Working on it.” He scooted around the perimeter of the hangar, hanging in shadows whenever he could. “Stand by.”

He caught a lucky break when one of the machinists called to the “soldier” from his perch on a ladder next to the copter’s rear rotor. The tech needed a special wrench from the tray right in front of the guy. Sneaky Boy was forced to come out of his corner. As he lifted the tool to the tech, Garrett captured three decent shots of his features. Though the asshat didn’t get the wardrobe right, he was spot-on with the guise from the neck up. He was clean-shaven, and beneath his work cap, his haircut looked like a flawless high-and-tight.

“Got ‘em,” Zeke confirmed less than two minutes later. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Thanks,” Garrett answered. His gaze swung outside again. Sage was still there and laughing with Archer. Six other guys from the team ambled over to join them. She greeted them with that stunning, wide smile of hers, bouncing a little on her toes, adorable and impish even in her one-piece, yellow and black jump suit. Archer must’ve scrounged that up from somewhere as a cute little “gift,” damn him.  

She was beautiful. Golden. Glowing. Happy. She hadn’t looked like that since the moment he’d cut off her gag in the jungle, half a world away. The realization twisted through him like a poison vine from that jungle, turning his heart just as deep and deadly a shade of green.

“What are you going to do now?” asked Z.

Garrett fought to cut back the vine. He battled hard, damn it. He told himself this wasn’t the time or the place to be a mindless caveman.

None of that seemed to matter when he spat his response to Zeke.

“I’m going to negotiate.”

He clicked the call off before his friend could utter a single swear word of repercussion.

Chapter Ten

“Oh, hell.”

Before she even turned, Sage sensed what Ethan’s tight utterance referenced. More accurately, to
whom
it referred.

Just moments ago, she’d sensed a change in the air itself, a surge of strength that jolted the depths of her stomach and made her nerve endings burst open in awareness. When she’d gotten the same rush ten nights ago in Thailand, she’d written it off to her terror as well as the gun battle fireworks outside King’s hut. No terror now. No guns going off now. There was only one common factor to both situations. One person. Only now, his entrance carried one distinct change.

Garrett was a more magnificent sight this time around.

She struggled to keep in mind that his conqueror’s stride and his granite-hard glower were likely—probably—results of his wrath with her. Major failure on that front. All she could fixate on were how long his legs looked even in his baggy camouflage pants, and how incredible that black T-shirt defined the perfect male V of his torso. She didn’t dare let her gaze travel along his biceps… Another major flop. God, how she looked, enduring another attack of oh-my-God-he-isn’t-real because of it. And of course, Hades take him, he’d slipped on his all-man, battle-toughened work boots before chasing after her, too.

Yeah, chasing after you, remember? Not here to pick you up for lunch, not here to bring you some flowers. He looks like a gladiator, but he’s pissed as a lion, girl—and his claws are aimed
your
direction.

She suddenly craved some cat scratch fever, lion style.

The sunlight hit the top of his head as he stepped clear of the hangar. His hair, still damp from his shower, literally glittered in the sunlight. Before he jerked his sunglasses back over his eyes, the blue flames in them licked out, incinerating what was left of her logic.

She was in deep shit. On a bunch of crazy levels.

She opened her mouth to say something but not a peep spilled out. She sure as hell wasn’t going to feed his misplaced rage with an apology. They were barely still engaged, if that’s what they were calling it anymore. But a “hey, how’s it hangin’” sure wasn’t going to help the situation, either.

Garrett took care of the dilemma for her. Sort of. From the inside of his jacket, he pulled out a sheaf of papers. “I think you dropped something.”

Her heart thudded in her throat as he extended the pile. The Jump School insignia practically lifted off the page like a magical curse, searing into her conscious. “Thanks.”

His only reply was to glance back into the hangar, as if he’d left something behind himself. Sage gulped and kicked the ground. Were they actually enduring something like awkward silence, when engines, trucks, and repair machines ripped up the air around them?

Ethan got noble about trying to smooth things out. “Sage, is everything okay?”

“Yeah.”

“No.” Garrett’s interjection sounded like a simple comment on the weather, which meant the opposite. He added the hint of a smile as he added, “No, it’s not, Corporal Archer, so I’ll thank you to step the fuck back.”

Ethan pivoted to Garrett and actually saluted him, which rammed Sage’s heart to her stomach. Guys on a Special Forces team didn’t have the time to stand on ceremony, and everyone here knew it. Ethan’s move, while wrapped in the ribbons of military respect, might as well have been a knee in Garrett’s crotch. No longer were they brothers at arms but subordinate and superior. It was a Special Forces version of the Unfriend button.

“With respect, Sergeant Hawkins, the training flight has been cleared.”

“I’m aware of that, Harper,” Garrett retorted. “I was the one who heard the Otter would be here for hiking season support and requested it for you guys. Or did you think I just tracked Sergeant Weston here with my keen spidey sense and a desire to mosey onto base for some tasty brunch in the mess?”

Sage empathized with the tension behind Ethan’s silent glower. The guy dipped his head of thick chestnut hair, unable to argue with a word of Garrett’s statement. The respect memo somehow hadn’t gotten through to the smartass just behind him, though. Sage barely held back a groan as Tait Bommer, all mischievous eyes, silken smirk, and surfing idol looks, ambled into the conversation with a smooth chuckle.

“‘Tasty brunch in the mess.’ Ha; good one! Hey, we’ll come join you, Hawk. I’ll save some mud off my boots, and we can have it for dessert. It’ll be better than the mush they’re trying to pass off as pudding, and there’s that cute little mashed potatoes server girl I’ve meaning to talk to again.”

“Hey, Tait?” The query was issued by the next guy who came over, the dark-eyed counterpart to Bommer’s beach god gilt. Kellan Rush was Tait’s polar opposite in looks, temperament, and dating tastes, which made him T-Bomm’s perfect flank, both on and off duty. “I’d suggest you shut up.”

“Good suggestion.” Garrett growled it as he tilted his head at her again. Sage still couldn’t see his eyes behind the glasses, but she didn’t need to. His scrutiny bathed her from head to toe in uncomfortable, incredible heat. “So you’re still thinking of going airborne, huh?”

“Yeah.” She lifted a tiny smile. So he also remembered the important things. He didn’t look too comfortable about that fact right now, however. His mouth was taut, his face grim.

“You that hot to get to Fort Benning for sixteen weeks?”

He dug a toe at the ground. So did she. They’d always laughed about how they shared the habit, though she always nearly fell over when she did it in heels. Today, neither of them chuckled. Sage felt her smile faltering.

“Maybe I am.”

She couldn’t filter out the wistful threads in the assertion. Oh, screw wistful. Her tone planted itself right over the line into needy, and she didn’t care. If she had to go invisible Whack-a-Mole hammer on his damn stubborn head, so be it.
You don’t want me to go, Garrett? Then give me a reason to stay. Give me a reason to look at our home as something more than house arrest now!
“The airborne squads need medics right now.” She nearly stammered it out, but the silence he left needed filling. Bad. “And…so…”

“So you found out about this little field trip,” – he cocked a condemning brow at Ethan —“and got yourself added to the flight roster somehow, despite that on most of the paperwork, your ashes are still at the bottom of Puget Sound.”

Sage jammed her toe down harder the next time and left it stuck that way. She was certain if she lifted it again, she’d drive it into Sergeant Hawkins’ right shin. So much for trying to maintain her smile—or any shred of the fantasy she’d been entertaining about getting her hands underneath his T-shirt. “And
I
see your head is still wedged in the bottom of the funeral urn,” she flung. As she forced herself to step closer to him, a now-familiar heat threatened the backs of her eyes. Damn it, was she now destined to cry every time they spent more than five minutes near each other? “I hope it’s nice and dirty and dark down there too, you shithead.”

“Sage!” Ethan’s panicked burst layered atop the other guys’ gasps. “Maybe a
little
restraint would be—”

“It’s okay, Ethan. According to him, I’m still a ghost.” She lifted her gaze, facing her reflection in those sun-drenched panels that sealed off his eyes from her. Guess he’d just pulled up a few of the extra barriers out of his heart for the job. The man had plenty of personal walls to go around these days. “So I could call him a paranoid, close-minded, overprotective bastard right now and still be perfectly fine.”

She was more right about that than she wanted to be. Besides not reacting to her insult, Garrett didn’t even seem to hear it. Instead, he jerked his head right then left, like a combat dog picking up a strong scent. “Fuck,” he muttered, his gaze probing back into the hangar. “
Fuck
.” Hot on the heels of his cuss fest, his cell buzzed. He slammed a finger to his earpiece. “Talk to me, Z.”

Boots crunched on the ground next to Sage. Ethan moved up again, his
GQ-
ready features compressing with a bloodhound concern of their own. “Guys.” It was a reprimand at Tait and Kellan, who’d started exchanging Angry Birds strategies, complete with screeching sound effects. “Guys, stuff it!” He leaned closer to Garrett, listening carefully. As Sage watched his stance tighten, tiny hairs along her nape stood on end.