Redeeming Justice (44 page)

After flying into D.C. and getting settled, he’d calmed down considerably following
weeks of escalating tension at home that threatened to explode in epic fashion if
he didn’t get his shit together. Just knowing he was on the same coast as Meghan gave
him a few moments to breathe calmly again. When the symposium got underway he kind
of paid attention during the meet and greet and orientation because, despite his disdain
for the proceedings, some of the folks present were of value to the agency and vice
versa. Though he gave a
back the fuck off
vibe, most of the others present had beat a hasty path in his direction early on.
Clearly, his reputation preceded him.

By day two however, he fell so deep into his thoughts that he’d barely connected more
than a handful of times the entire day with whatever was going on. All he could focus
on was Meghan and figuring out what step two should be in his attempt to re-establish
some sort of connection. Running a loop of never ending options in his head he picked
apart everything. No hair-brained idea was too crazy to consider.

The notion of flying to Boston and flat-out catching her off-guard with his appearance
was carefully vetted. He considered every conceivable scenario about how it would
play out and in the final analysis decided the surprise frontal assault was a very
bad idea. After the way he’d behaved the last time he saw her, she’d rip his balls
off for what he put her through.

Texting seemed like a viable alternative. Sort of like a foot in the door. A simple,
‘Yoo hoo, I’m over here’. Maybe combining a text with something like a big floral
delivery was worth considering. Somehow, though, he doubted it.

This was what I’d been reduced to
. Conscious of his unsettled state, Alex sighed heavily. What the hell was he doing;
pretending to be professionally interested in something he had no taste for then quite
literally checking out mentally so he could engage in this endless internal emotional
hand wringing?
Some bad ass
, he snickered silently. All it took was a fistful of red curls, a set of mouth-watering
tits, and the type of fleshy curves that make you want to grab on tight. He was toast.

By the days’ end he’d decided to just man the fuck up and call her. He was being a
total pussy. His whole world tilted slightly the day she walked through his door.
Whatever the hell he thought about his future had been blown to smithereens when a
bewitching pair of wicked green eyes locked on his. It took those same eyes glaring
at him with a mixture of hurt and disappointment when he pushed her away to wake him
the hell up and eventually force him to tackle the landmines in his past. He still
wasn’t quite there, but did that ever really happen? He somehow doubted with all the
fucked-up shit that goes on in the world that every good guy like him got to tie up
brutal realities with a nice neat bow.

The minute he was free, Alex had hurried to his hotel with the simpleminded focus
of getting Meghan on the damn phone.
Enough.
She belonged to him dammit, and he wanted what was his. Groveling would take place
if he had to. Hell, even thinking about her sultry voice got him so emotional he’d
gladly cry if it would make a difference. Whatever it took—he was going to get her
back.

Fifteen minutes later, he’d crashed and burned in spectacular fashion. Running on
adrenaline and the upside of a wild emotional swing, it took thee taps on his phone
to connect with Meghan. It wasn’t until he heard the call ringing through that he
realized he didn’t have a clue what to say. With panic starting to zing through his
nerves it took a good long moment to comprehend that she wasn’t picking up.

What the fuck? He hadn’t considered that as a possibility. Uncertainty, swift and
uncompromising, stole his breath. Had she seen his name on her caller ID and chosen
not to answer? Assailed with doubt, he was in no way prepared when the call went to
voicemail. Remembering that Tori had told him not to expect too much at first, an
icy chill of fear ran the length of his spine.

He hated voicemail, and being caught off-guard this way made it even worse. He wanted
to talk to Meghan, goddammit, not leave some lame fucking message. He needed to hear
her voice so he would know how she was. When the beep signaled to start the message,
it sounded like a gunshot aimed directly at his head.

“Uh, hi.”
Shit
. “It’s uh, me. Um, Alex.”

Why did every silent, tongue-tied second feel like an eternity? Pinching the bridge
of his nose as if the sharp twinge would magically make him smoothly eloquent, he
searched for something to say. This was not how he thought a simple call would unfold.

Clearing his throat he choked out some more inane words. “Yeah, so I’m here. I mean….well,
actually by
here
I mean D.C.”

Oh my God.
This was going in the shitter pretty damn fast. Could he sound any more like a mindless
lunatic?

“Uh, anyway. Since we’re in the same time zone I thought…um.” Alex was mentally loading
bullets into a gun to blow his stupid head off when this ridiculous call ended. When
exactly did
um, yeah,
and
uh
become such a big part of his vocabulary? Rolling his eyes he thought,
‘and I’ve been a commanding officer?’
Jesus. Wonders never ceased.

Since clearly there weren’t two available coherent thoughts to string together in
his message he threw in the towel. “Meghan. It’s Alex.” And then he pressed the disconnect
button to terminate the call.

“Well, that went well,” he’d sneered as he poured himself several fingers of whiskey.
Two hours later, when he didn’t immediately hear back from her, he’d been well on
his way to a righteous hangover. No wonder he felt like shit today. His entire evening
had become one monumental pity party. She hated him or at the very least didn’t feel
like speaking to him.

Having Meghan turn away from him was like being gutted. Feeling like a fraud and a
wimp, he thought about his pathetic lifelong insistence on being the one in control.
What a joke. Who the hell was he kidding? At this moment, he was powerless, impotent,
barely able to crawl - so undone by how things were turning out. It was his naughty
Irish fuck goddess who was the one with all the power. Didn’t help that he’d been
a day late and a dollar short in figuring that out. By giving herself over to his
powerful desires and letting him have his control fantasy, she’d turned his emotional
life on its head. And now that she was gone, he had nothing.
I am so fucked
, he thought.

The idea of calling Tori and crying like a little girl crossed his mind. So too did
contacting Drae directly and asking for his help. He could use 007’s cool, analytical
presence right about now.

No wonder he felt a hundred years old. Too much stress. Definitely more alcohol and
less real food than was wise. A raging guilty conscience. The sudden and unfamiliar
loss of confidence. The absence of his normal support team. Oh yeah, and a tightening
in his groin that refused to settle down.
Fucked
didn’t actually cover how he felt.

Rubbing his hand absently across his chest, as he narrowed his gaze on the cast of
characters sharing his space, Alex wondered whether he should even bother continuing
with this farce. He wasn’t the man these folks imagined he was. Not in his current
state, anyway.

Toughing it out for another two days was less than appealing. So was waiting around
like a lovesick fool for some glimmer of hope from Boston. But when all was said and
done, he didn’t have much choice but to let things play out as they were meant to.

That didn’t mean that he had to endure alone. It would be wrong to isolate from the
people closest to him when ultimately, they too would be affected by whatever happened
with him and Meghan. They’d be pissed to find out he needed them but hadn’t let them
know. Remembering how each of his Justice Brothers had needed help at critical points
in their relationships with their women, Alex gave in and admitted that this time
around he was the one needing back-up. An odd predicament for a bad-tempered, know-it-all
who built a life carefully structured to keep any and all emotions at bay.

His need for Meghan had broken down those walls. He was overcome with the deluge of
feelings her presence in his life invited. It was heart-pounding, kiss-me-till-I’m-dying
passion wrapped in a perfect cloud of love. He couldn’t breathe without her in his
life. It sounded so simple when he put it like that.

Meghan knew the toll being sucked from her body from the anxiety, lack of sleep, and
almost total absence of food had gone off the charts when by Monday morning she felt
like she’d been dragged through a knothole backwards. Her throat was sore, it was
hard to swallow, and she was on fire but freezing cold. In addition to the thumping
in her head, every inch of her body ached.

Shaking from the fever, she huddled under a mound of blankets and tried to sleep off
her symptoms as if they’d magically disappear. It was now Wednesday night, and she
was slowly making her way back to the land of the living.

For days a fever cocoon had wrapped tight around her that seemed to be fueled by the
memories of her time in Arizona. They were like montages. Sometimes gritty. Sometimes
focused and clear. All with a pulsing thrum of want, like a heartbeat. She recalled
the sound of Alex’s voice when he was in absent-minded professor mode and how quickly
she could get it to change into something deeper, darker, tinged with reminders of
the man’s potent masculinity, by doing nothing more than being close to him.

As illness wracked her body, her mind replayed each intimate moment down to the smallest
detail. How it felt to be pulled onto his lap. The wonder she always experienced each
time it happened because being a big girl, she’d always thought lap-sitting was for
the tiny and petite. Discovering that her brawny lover got off by having her lush
ass sitting on his groin had freed her so much that wiggling about and squirming against
his Herculean body had become her go-to move.

It was all there in her fevered thoughts, playing out like an erotic movie on the
backs of her closed eyelids. His scent. How she loved using his spicy shower gel because
it made her feel like a part of him was clinging to her skin. In the confines of a
steamy shower, even without him present, that scent had a way of grabbing onto her
senses and not letting go. She couldn’t remember how many times she leaned against
the smooth tile wall as a heavy mist of steam and condensation gathered in the enclosure
infused with the essence of his scent – turning her inside out with need. There was
something mystical and otherworldly about feeling as though Alex’s essence was always
with her. In desperate want she would snake her hand through the showering water down
across her stomach through the dripping red ringlets guarding the puffy folds of her
sex.

One time she’d even acted it out while he watched with eyes so hot they scorched her
skin. She’d felt sexy and wanton standing naked with water sluicing off the curves
of her voluptuous body, one hand holding a mounded breast and the other between her
legs, head back, eyes glazed with arousal as deep shudders rocked her from head to
toe. She could hear him breathing heavily in the confined space, reveled in each excited
hiss as she fondled herself for his pleasure and absorbed his earthy grunt of male
satisfaction that filled her senses at the moment of her climax. He did that to her.
Knowing his desires and wants, she found it beyond exciting to have him watching as
she writhed against a wall while bringing herself to orgasm.

There were hundreds of fever-driven flashes just like that playing out in her dreams,
most ending in a morphed image – a specific moment from their first time in his truck,
something that was seared on her soul. He’d seemed stunned by her desperate need when
she’d rode him like a bull, legs pressed against his sides absorbing the movement
of his heaving chest as she lowered her greedy body onto his, inch by agonizing inch.
The look of absolute wonder on his face once she had taken all of him and the momentary
flash of vulnerability she found in his eyes kept replaying over and over in her thoughts.
It was the moment that changed everything.

What was left after the fever finished burning through her system was a body tortured
with an achy tension and a mind struggling to contain the aftermath of uncovering
all those memories. It had all felt so real. Waking to realize it was just her dreams,
Meghan curled into a tight ball and felt her heart break all over again. He pushed
her away. He didn’t want her, at least not enough to fight for her. It was agony in
her soul.

God, she yearned for him so damn much. No wonder she’d gotten sick. The missing and
the blunt, visceral depth of her need were killing her. So was the horror of the rejection
she felt because he hadn’t come after her. Deep in her heart of hearts Meghan had
to admit that was what she’d been hoping for. That he’d see that while life could
certainly suck sometimes and be difficult and messy, without her it was going to be
even suckier and a thousand times more difficult and messy. She needed him to believe
that they were better together than apart; that two halves really do make a whole;
that the end result was worth the fight to get there. When he didn’t – her heart quietly
shattered into a million pieces, all sharp and deadly, pressing into her soul.