Broken Justice (Justice Brothers) (7 page)

Not having any experience whatsoever in what a real, live, fully-grown man looked like in his underwear, Lacey couldn’t help but indulge her curiosity as she took in the full measure of the man before her. She’d seen a famous sports celebrity hawking the type of boxers he had on in an ad. Even passed out with sickness, he looked better than the guy had in the magazine she’d seen. Clearly he wasn’t a tighty whities kind of guy and considering what was staring her in the face, she was unexpectedly glad.

The elastic band of the snug, grey cotton boxer briefs slung low beneath his navel revealing v-shaped lower abs that disappeared behind the soft fabric. Naturally slim-hipped, the boxers clung to the tops of his bulging, muscular thighs in a way that made Lacey’s mind go blank. It was the pouch where his private parts were that almost made her stop breathing. The snug cotton clung to his manhood leaving very little to the imagination, even for an inexperienced and slightly naïve imagination.

Feeling like a naughty voyeur, she cleared her throat while staring shamelessly. The rounded spheres of his balls supported the outline of a penis that she could clearly make out where it lay against his groin, almost topping out of the waistband. Even passed out, his virility screamed loud and clear as she mapped the impressive length and fat head of his staff. Yeah, there was no denying it - he was devastatingly gorgeous.

What the hell was she doing?
Lacey’s mind screamed as her conscience tapped on her shoulder with a snappy reminder that she was ogling an unconscious man. Well, she was only human after all and her dark knight was one mouth-watering sight capable of drenching the panties of a nun, if truth were told.

Yanking her messy ponytail over her shoulder, she cleared her throat yet again and tried unsuccessfully to pull her wayward thoughts back in to line. Fantasizing about some hot guy was a luxury Lacey hadn’t had time for in her daily struggle to survive. She’d been fierce in her determination to get past the limitations visited upon her life by those who should have been taking care of a young and growing child. All the normal teenage things like having girlfriends, make-up, boys, dating, clothes, pop culture, going to prom, and even graduating from high school had been totally absent and left unfulfilled.

With a self-conscious grimace, she admitted that something as simple and innocent as enjoying the sight of a good-looking guy was an extravagance she’d never indulged in. Keeping herself together and safe was a tall order that dominated every waking hour and seeped into her dreams. While young women her age were daydreaming about careers, weddings, a house in the suburbs with a mini-van in the driveway, and a hunky husband mowing the lawn, Lacey’s fanciful musings were more basic like having a real bed to sleep in, enough to eat and some money in her pocket. Cameron’s passed out form shot right past all those basics and struck her emotionally in a place she didn’t know existed.

Looking around the room, she spied a shallow plastic container that could be filled with water so she could get a cold compress on his head to help lower his body temperature. The bathroom was a disaster but he managed not to vomit all over the place, a small blessing that allowed Lacey to focus on other things like the sick man she felt compelled to help.

Several hours passed with no improvement in Cameron’s condition. In fact, the fever and shaking only seemed to increase. Lacey’s anxiety spiked higher and higher as she struggled to stay ahead of the escalating problems. Biting her lip and frowning with concentration, she tried pressing a cold washcloth to his forehead but the fever seemed to be raging out of control. When that didn’t get the desired results she went one step further, running the cooling cloth over his impressive torso.

He certainly was something to behold. His body was so hard and uncompromising that saying he had abs of steel seemed like an understatement. As she swiped the cool wet cloth across his torso and down his massive, muscled arms, she studied the dark tribal looking tattoo that wrapped around one bicep. Even the ink marking him seemed dark and dangerous.

She kept up the slow languid strokes of the cooling cloth across his fevered skin, telling herself all the while that she was simply doing what anyone in her position would.
Liar
, her conscience screamed as she tried desperately not to enjoy the way his skin felt under her fingers. Laying the palm of her hand against his temple once more to gauge his temperature, she couldn’t help but brush the long hair back from his forehead while enjoying the softness she discovered when her fingers swept through his black mane.

He moaned at her touch, turning his face toward her hand as if seeking comfort. She highly doubted that was something he would do if not for the fever. He very much struck her as a man who didn’t look outside himself for anything.
Seems familiar,
she snorted wryly to no one but herself.

Lacey glanced at the clock and then back at a severely weakened Cameron, whose temperature was showing no signs of abating. Sitting by his side on the double bed, she considered her options, trying to decide what she should do next. She spied the first aid kit he’d brought out earlier.

“Oh, thank God,” she muttered upon finding a package of liquid fever reducer in handy single dose packets. She wondered why he travelled with a complete first aid kit that was something of a mini-triage set-up. Deciding it was none of her business, she set about ripping the top off of one of the packets and carefully dribbling the gooey liquid into his mouth. She followed that with a slow, thin stream of cold water to flush the fever reducer down his throat. Relieved to have accomplished this task so easily, Lacey crossed her fingers and prayed that the medication worked quickly.

The next hour passed with his body still shivering even though he was under several blankets. In his delirium Cameron was mumbling and thrashing about the bed, obviously running from whatever demons his fever produced.

“Drae, Drae,” he muttered in an anguished groan. “Find Alex. Oh my God! Oh my God! Everyone is dead,” he cried out as his body shook and shuddered. “No, nooooo!” he choked out as the fevered nightmare took over. Lacey looked around the room, wondering what she could do. He couldn’t continue on like this without possibly hurting himself and as big as he was she seriously doubted her ability to restrain him should he get out of control.

“Oh, pooh,” she muttered tersely as she came to a hasty decision. Quickly peeling off her jeans and Cameron’s old sweatshirt, she slipped under the covers and pulled his sweat covered, cold, quaking body close to hers, wrapping him in her arms as she willed her own body heat to ease his suffering. He seemed to relax almost immediately while Lacey, in nothing but an old stretchy camisole and plain cotton undies, wrapped herself around him as best she could.

She whispered to him quietly and calmly in his fevered restlessness so he would know she was there and trying to do all she could to help him. Cooing to him as a mother would to a sick child, she spoke in hushed tones trying to ease his pain. “It’s alright Cameron. I’ve got you. Relax. Relax.” Cuddling his body close while stroking fingers gently across his fevered brow, she noticed that he responded to the sound of her voice, going still and turning toward her.

It wasn’t all that unpleasant to have the huge, muscular man in her arms. They seemed to fit together in some odd way. As she soothed him with inane words he calmed even more, eventually curling into her body with his head on her shoulder and a knee thrown over her leg, effectively trapping her in place. The crooked leg pressing between her thighs made her pulse race.

While her heart thumped wildly, Lacey cooed on, telling him random details of her life and at one point, desperate for words, even reading the community messages she found flashing on the local cable channel. She told him all about recycling dates and an arts festival coming to town. She read telephone numbers for animal control and recited the names of everyone in the school district’s administration, just to keep him still. Whenever she paused he moaned and became restless. It struck her someplace deep inside that the sound of her voice was bringing him comfort from his fevered demons.

Time passed as his temperature continued to rage but Lacey never stopped her soft words and gentle touches. At some point he snuggled deep into her neck. She could feel his hot breath against her skin while he gently cupped her breast in the hand that had flung across her. She had to bite back a groan of her own when his sturdy fingers wrapped around the soft mound, causing her nipple to harden and ache from the contact. To add to her already off-the-chart physical awareness of him, when he shifted his thigh over hers she could feel the unmistakable presence of the part of him that made him so masculine; the part she had been ogling and curious about earlier.

She adjusted her hips to make the contact more direct and flushed with embarrassment at the realization that she was enjoying their tangled limbs. Biting back a string of graphic swear words that she would never dream of uttering out loud, Lacey kept up the running dialogue that was soothing the dark knight.

They stayed like that for long hours with Lacey wide-awake and conscious of his every move. At one point in his delirium, he mumbled what sounded like military talk as he fought off the nightmares. She caught words like
ambush
and
IED
and shuddered knowing he’d been through some sort of soldier’s hell. She thought that explained a lot.

Trying to ease his anguish, she stroked the muscled arm crossing her chest and much to her horror, allowed her leg to move along his thigh while his manhood pressed intimately against her female core. He seemed to like that and nestled deeper into her, relaxing and murmuring hushed sounds that she couldn’t make out. She thought she heard him mutter “ponytail,” and went completely still.

When he shimmied slightly causing his thigh to rub sensuously between her legs, Lacey didn’t even try to bite back the moan of awareness and full body shudder that rolled through her. He was killing her with a flash of fire she’d never experienced before. That he was unaware of what he was doing brought pangs of regret to her confused mind.

Seconds later she distinctly heard, “Mmmm, Ponytail. Been waiting for you.” Her world shuddered to a screeching halt.
Was he talking about her?
Fevers didn’t lie and couldn’t play mind games.
Was he dreaming about her?
A girl with a shaky past and no future who he’d only met this morning?

Leaning into him she whispered, “I’m here, Cameron. You’re with me and everything is gonna be alright.” His answering groan and the heavy, relaxing sigh that followed sliced through her composure like a hot knife cutting through soft butter. Lacey was undone. She never, ever allowed anyone to get close so she didn’t understand what was happening.
How could she, who rarely relaxed or felt safe, suddenly feel as though she’d found a place that was hers and hers alone; wrapped up in an embrace with a man she didn’t really know?

Left alone with her thoughts, there was nothing to do but wait. Wait and see where this strange encounter led. Dawn had long since passed when she felt his fever finally break. Waves of relief flooded through her now that the crisis had passed. Satisfied that she’d done all she could, Lacey slipped from the bed, pulled on his old sweatshirt once again, and collapsed in a thankful heap on the sofa before eventually drifting off into a deep sleep.

The all-too familiar dream turned nightmare had him in its deadly grip as Cam burned through a fever that shut down his body and ignited his brain. As each flickering scene danced in his mind’s eye, building toward the black oblivion that waited, his body tensed just a little bit more until stiff and unyielding he was thrust backwards in time to that awful day.

As always, the unremarkable parts of what had started off as just another sand and dust choked day played out in rapid fire fashion; a game of horseshoes with Drae, the way a bottle of water he’d been guzzling had warmed in the relentless heat, the muffled sound overhead when the occasional breeze of hot, dry air rustled the American flag that was raised each day just yards from where he stood. Nothing remarkable stood out because those were the moments of a soldier’s life that played on an endless loop. Then there were the scenes of horror and fear, reliving moments of physically demanding effort when, weighed down by Kevlar and firearms, each man’s mettle was tested over and over.

He knew, even in the throes of the fever that had overtaken him, what was coming next. All these years later the sensation of apprehension racing through his nervous system and the way his senses switched from neutral to high alert in a flash never failed to get his heartbeat racing. He remembered with crystal clarity the way his weapon felt in his grip and the sound of gravel and sand being crunched underfoot as he and Drae raced toward the danger with no thought of their own safety. A warrior’s salvation was found in forward motion, only on this day that deliverance was framed in black smoke and surrounded by death and an anger that burned deep in his gut, even to this day.