Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
SAGE
Dawson stops me at our own front door with his hand flat against the wood, and I realize he has no intention of opening it until I say something he hasn’t earned yet.
“Say it,” he says.
“Say what? It’s two in the morning and I’ve been in this dress for eleven hours.”
“Tell me it’s yours.” His voice has gone rough at the edges from a whole night of toasts and dancing and whiskey. “Wife. I want to hear you claim it before I carry you over this threshold, because I am not doing this twice.”
“You already married me twice, Dawson. Courthouse, then four hundred witnesses. I think the word’s been mine for a while.”
“Say it anyway.”
I look at him standing there in the porch light, tie long gone, top three buttons undone, sleeves shoved up, like the whole reception was one long fight against stripping down to nothing and he finally lost. Two years of watching this man ration himself out to me in careful, measured doses, and tonight he’s standing on our own porch refusing to move until I hand him the one word he’s apparently decided matters more than the ring.
“I’m your wife,” I whisper it slowly. “My decision. Not our fathers’. Not the county’s. Mine.”
His face breaks open, the last of the composure he’s worn since the altar finally giving out, and he sweeps me up off my feet so fast my bare shoulder catches the doorframe on the way through, and neither of us slows down enough to care.
“I love you,” he says, carrying me over the threshold with his face an inch from mine, no performance left in it at all, nothing built for an audience. “I’ve loved you since I was twenty-four and too much of a coward to say it. I’m saying it now. I love you, Sage Sullivan.”
He gets the door locked behind us one-handed without ever looking away from me, his eyes flicking to the tree line through the window for one beat, the habit that doesn’t fully switch off even tonight, before they come straight back to mine like nothing interrupted them at all.
“I love you too.” It comes out steadier than I expect, the truest sentence I’ve ever handed anyone. “I’ve loved you the whole time, Dawson. Every single year I told myself otherwise.”
“You told yourself a lot of things.”
“So did you. Twenty-four and too much of a coward, remember?” I say it against his mouth, no heat in it at all, just an old wound finally safe enough to tease.
He doesn’t set me down. He carries me straight through the kitchen and up the stairs, and Cricket, curled on the landing rug, lifts her head once, decides we’re not worth the effort tonight, and goes back to sleep.
The only light in our room comes from the one lamp on the dresser, low and gold, and he sets me on my feet in front of it instead of the bed, like he wants to see every second of what he’s about to do.
“You danced with me for four hours,” he says, turning me by the shoulders until my back’s to him, “and I spent every single one of them thinking about this tiny hook holding all of this silk together. Such easy access.”
“It’s one tough hook, but you’ve handled harder negotiations.”
“Not with this much riding on it.” His fingers find the small hook at my nape and he works it open, taking his time in a way that has nothing to do with the whiskey and everything to do with a man who’s finally decided he has all the time in the world to take.
The dress loosens degree by degree, his mouth finding the back of my neck at the same pace, pressing against each new inch of skin as it clears the silk.
The dress pools at my feet.
He goes still behind me.
“Turn around,” he says, and I do, and I watch his whole face come undone at the sight of the white lace stick-on bra, garters, the whole deliberate architecture I picked out weeks ago in a shop in Missoula and never told him about.
“You planned this,” he says, like an accusation, like a gift. “White.”
“I plan everything, Dawson. You married a woman who brings a folder to her own kidnapping. White, well, you know why.”
“Sage, I love you.” The words come out like a sacred prayer, like he’s been holding them back one second too long already. “You’re the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life, and I have seen you in a lot of states of undress. This one might actually kill me.”
“Don’t die yet. I’m not finished with you.”
I breathe him in first, cedar and whiskey and the warmth of a man who’s been holding himself in check all night.
I take my time with every button after that, working down his chest, letting myself have every second of watching him open up in front of me, scars and ink and muscle he’s built into a weapon and somehow still lets me touch like it’s just skin.
His arms, his stomach, I drag my hands over every inch of it like I’m memorizing him for the first time instead of the hundredth.
My fingers graze his waistband and go for his belt next, opening it up and push his slacks down until he’s bare from the waist down, and I let my hands linger on the thick, powerful line of his thighs before I let myself have the rest of him. He sucks in a sharp breath.
“You’re staring,” he says, echoing my own line back at me.
“I’ve earned it. Years of not looking.” I push the shirt off his shoulders and drag my palms down the dark ink on both arms, from shoulders to wrists, over the sagebrush hidden at his right wrist, and this time I don’t let him deflect it.
“Tell me. You said you’d earn the right eventually. I think a wedding qualifies.”
He catches my hand and holds it flat against the ink, over the small green sprig hidden at his wrist.
“It’s you,” he says, simple, no armor left in it at all.
“Sagebrush grows wild on every fence line either family owns. You can’t kill it, can’t fence it out, can’t stop it from coming back no matter how hard you try to root it up.
I got it the year I came home, because I finally admitted to myself I’d spent years trying to root you out of my life, and instead you just kept growing into my heart more every day. ”
I don’t have words for that. I lick his bottom lip instead, and he lets his hands find my hair, pulling the pins free one at a time until it falls loose down my back and over my breasts, dark against white lace.
“There she is,” his voice like fine whiskey.
His hands stop at the white lace bra, hovering over each cup, not certain what to do.
I place my hands over his and help him peel it off and drop it to the floor between us.
Satisfaction lingers on his lips as he moistens them and places his mouth over my nipple.
My pulse is already quickening, heat building low and delicious between my thighs.
Then he picks me up again, one arm banding under my knees, and lays me down on our bed like I’m something worth being careful with.
“I plan on worshipping every inch of you tonight,” he says, kneeling over me. “Starting now.”
And I let him.
He starts at my ankle, working up the inside of my calf, over the garter still clipped to my stocking, taking his time unhooking each one before he peels the silk down each leg, his mouth following the bare skin it leaves behind.
By the time he reaches my hip I’m already writhing under a mouth that hasn’t even found the part of me screaming for it yet.
“Dawson.”
“Patience,” he says, against my stomach now, tongue circling my navel before he drags lower. “I’ve waited years for this. You can wait a few more minutes.”
I don’t last a few more minutes. He hooks two fingers into the lace at my hip and drags it down my legs, and when it’s free he brings the scrap of white to his face and breathes me in like he’s memorizing it, eyes locked on mine the whole time.
“Fuck, Sage, your scent is intoxicating.”
His mouth finds me bare, hot and soaking, and I arch clean off the mattress, both hands fisting in his thick hair, my hips already chasing a rhythm he refuses to give me faster than he’s decided to.
“Wider,” he says, hands pressing my thighs open. “Let me have all of you.”
I do. I spread for him shamelessly, moaning something incoherent, and he rewards it by sliding two fingers into me while his tongue stays right where I need it, curling deep and rhythmic until the pressure building in me finally breaks loose in one long, shaking wave that has my whole body trembling under his hands.
He comes up with my slickness on his mouth, his eyes gone dark and hungry in the lamplight, and he doesn’t wipe it away. He just looks at me like a man who’s finally gotten the one thing he’s spent years convincing himself he didn’t deserve.
He doesn’t climb back up my body this time. He flips me onto my stomach instead, one hand pressing flat between my shoulder blades, and kisses a slow line down my spine, over the small of my back, to the curve of my hip, before he hauls me up onto my knees in front of him.
“Different view tonight,” he says, rough, his hand splaying possessive across my lower back. “I want to feel you shake from this angle too.”
His palm lands sharp against my ass, just enough sting to make me gasp, and before the heat of it even fades he smooths his hand over the same spot in slow, soothing circles, until I feel myself go slicker for him just from that alone.
“That’s very ambitious talk for a man who’s about to lose every bit of his composure.”
“Working on it.” His hand fists gently in my hair, tipping my head just enough that I feel his breath against my ear. “Tell me what you want tonight, wife.”
My heart pounds so hard I feel it slam in my throat, my hips already rolling back against nothing, desperate for him to fill me up. His hand stays fisted in my hair, waiting.
“Please, Dawson.”
“Please what?”
“Please fuck me, husband.” I say it too fast, too needy, barely recognizing my own voice.
He notches the head of his cock at my entrance, barely inside, and holds there, one hand still flat against my spine like he needs to feel exactly what that first inch does to my whole body.
“How do you want it?” he asks, his voice gone dangerous and rough, the rasp of it vibrating straight to my core.
I’m pleading now, “Slow first. So I feel every inch of you.”
“And then what, Sage?” He’s making me paint the whole dream I’ve imagined for my wedding night.
“Then hard and deep. Deeper than ever before.” I swallow, all walls I ever erected now crumbled to the ground in dust. “I want to forget where I start and you begin. I want you to make me forget my own name.”
I feel him tremble with barely contained lust and my hips push back for more of him.
He sinks into me one inch at a time, giving me exactly that, filling me slow enough that I feel every ridge of him, every second of it a promise, like he’s making sure neither of us ever forgets this first time as husband and wife.
“More,” I say, when he’s fully seated, my back arching to take him deeper. “Don’t hold back from me tonight.”
He doesn’t.
He drives into me hard, what I asked for, his hips slapping against mine, his hand fisting tighter in my hair, his other gripping my hip and pulling me back into every thrust until there’s no space left between us at all. I clench around him and he groans my name like it’s being torn out of him.
I feel the tremor start low in my spine, building, cresting, until it breaks loose and drags him over with me, both of us shouting into the dark at the exact same second, slick with sweat and shaking.
He doesn’t pull out right away. He gathers me back against his chest instead, both of us kneeling on the mattress, his forehead against my shoulder, hands wrapped around my breasts, heaving like we ran the whole mountain trail instead of just made love.
“Mine,” he says, quiet, reverent.
“Yours,” I say back. “Always.”
He lays us both down after, still tangled, and doesn’t let go, one hand possessively placed over my swollen, deliciously satisfied pussy. My eyes go heavy against his chest, the whole valley finally, blessedly quiet around us.
Morning comes late and full of sun, and I wake up laughing before I even know why, Dawson’s mouth already at my ticklish neck and Cricket scratching at the door.
“Good morning, Mrs. Sullivan,” he carefully places kisses down my arm until he’s got my hand in his. He plants the last kiss on the sage-colored gem.
“Good morning, Mr. Sullivan. What a lovely night sleep.” I smile.
Dawson makes eggs, sausage, and sourdough toast, and we eat at the kitchen table, his phone buzzing with a group text from Finn that just says PROOF OF LIFE REQUIRED, WERE YOU BOTH EATEN BY THE HONEYMOON, and a string of photos from West that somehow already has more likes than either of us can count before either of us is dressed.
It’s easy, domestic, the kind of ordinary morning I’d stopped believing either of us was allowed to have.
Mackenzie shows up a little after noon, and I know before she’s fully through the door that the bill’s finally come due.
“The camera pull,” she says, not sitting down.
“I had Tate run the full forensic package overnight instead of waiting for Monday. It’s worse than an anomaly, Sage.
Whoever accessed that feed didn’t just watch the vows.
They used the same access window to plant transaction metadata inside Sullivan Transport’s federal filing system.
Timestamped during the ceremony, while four hundred witnesses can vouch Dawson never left the altar. ”
Dawson goes very still beside me.
“Vouch for what,” he says.
“For an alibi you’re going to need.” Mackenzie doesn’t soften it, though something genuinely sorry moves behind her eyes before she buries it and keeps going.
“The Bureau’s federal division is treating the new filing as evidence, not fabrication, until somebody proves otherwise.
You’ve got days, not weeks, before this turns into an indictment with your name on it. ”
I set my coffee down harder than I mean to.
“I need Dawson’s laptop charger,” I say, mostly to have something to do with my hands that isn’t reaching for a man who’s gone completely rigid beside me. “Mine’s dead and still in the truck.”
“Top drawer,” he says, distracted, already turning to Mackenzie with a dozen questions stacking up behind his eyes.
I cross to his desk, the one I spent a month photographing for my own father, the one he’s never once locked against me since the day he decided to stop hiding what was on it. I pull the top drawer open expecting a tangle of cords.
I find a folder instead, plain, unmarked, sitting where a charger should be.
I shouldn’t open it. I open it anyway, because years of training myself to read every room I walk into doesn’t switch off just because I got married yesterday.
Sole liability. Full and irrevocable surrender of Sullivan Transport leadership, transferring every operational and legal exposure to Dawson personally, severing the company, Declan, Maren, all of it, from whatever’s coming.
Signed. Notarized.
Dated the day before our wedding.