Healing Pleasure (9 page)

Trent looked away from her first, his gaze lifting over her head. “You got this?”

“Yeah, I’ve it,” Trey answered behind her.

“Lena, you come get us if he doesn’t,” Bobby told her.

She nodded as Brit’s next cry split the air in the hallway. She turned her back on the other men, bolting into action and reaching the door to Brit’s room at the same time as Trey.

“It’s a nightmare.” Trey’s rusty voice was thick with sympathy. “He’s reliving the op.”

“Does this happen often?” The pained expression on his handsome face told her it did.

“Almost every damn night.”

She eased the door open to find Brit sitting up in his bed, his eyes huge in his face and seemingly unseeing. Like Trey, he wasn’t wearing a shirt and a layer of sweat had collected on his flesh, glistening in the moonlight spilling in through his window. His long, dark hair was matted around his face and his chest rose and fell in rapidly heavy breaths.

“You fucking cocksucking tango!”

She jolted at the shout, at the vehemence in his voice, and winced when he jerked and slammed a hand on his injured knee. The sound that left his lips was one of pure agony and, yet, even the real pain wasn’t enough to draw him out of the horror show in his mind.

Needing to do something, though she didn’t have a clue what, she started toward the bed.

Trey stopped her with a firm, but gentle hand on her forearm. “Let me. He might lash out at you, not realizing who you are.”

Lena nodded wordlessly and hung back, letting Trey take the lead. She folded her arms beneath her breasts as she watched Trey ease closer to Brit’s bedside.

“Brit, snap out of it.” Trey’s words were clipped and firm. “We’re on the ranch, man. We’re not there anymore.”

Brit’s head turned Trey’s direction, but his eyes still held that wild, horrified look. “Take cover, damn it! Bravo Team, where the fuck are you?”

“Not there, man.” Trey’s limps trembled on the words. “You ordered us to hold back.” He shook his head, as if attempting to jar the memory from his mind, and reached out to give Brit’s shoulder a hard shake.

Lena gasped, her hand flying over her mouth as Brit’s balled fist caught Trey square across the jaw.

Trey’s head jerked to one side from the force of the blow, but he didn’t step away. “Brit, come back, man. It’s over. You did what you could.”

“We’ve got to get the fuck—”

“You did what you could,” Trey repeated, his tone softening. Lena swore she saw his eyes glisten as he started repeating the words over and over until Brit’s eyes slowly cleared. “Welcome back, buddy.”

It took several moments for Brit’s facial features to start to relax, for his breathing to return to normal, and his stiff posture to loosen. “You’re bleeding,” he muttered, his voice scratchy as if his shouts had made his throat hurt.

Trey gingerly touched his forefinger and thumb to the sides of his jaw. “That’s the second time today you’ve cold cocked me.”

“You shouldn’t have touched me.”

Trey shot a pointed glance Lena’s way. “Better me than her.”

Brit’s gaze snapped to her and a new horror filled his eyes. “Fuck.” The oath left him on a whisper laced with equal parts anger and embarrassment. “You shouldn’t be in here.”

“Why?” Lena let her hands fall to her sides as she eased closer to the bed. “Are you afraid the sight of you naked is going to make me swoon?”

She hadn’t allowed herself to acknowledge the fact that he was indeed naked until now. In his thrashing, the sheet had fallen low until it barely covered his legs to his upper thighs, leaving everything else, his fully hard, magnificently long cock included, exposed. She knew the adrenaline and fear of the nightmare had caused his erection. She’d meant it as a joke, hoping it would lighten the intense tension blanketing the room, even if the sight of his cock had left her feeling lightheaded. The look of sheer vulnerability that moved though his eyes made a lump form in her throat.

He fell back on the bed, covered his face with his hands, and growled. “It used to work on women before.”

The swift wave of jealousy that rushed through her system surprised her. She didn’t want to know how often it had worked before. “Should I go get that ice pack now? You hit your knee pretty hard when you were—”

“No. It hurts like hell right now, but I’ll live. Go back to bed.”

She knew that was one command she should follow and she did, even if it wasn’t in the way he likely intended.

He stiffened, his hand fell from his face, and his head jerked off the pillow beneath it as she crawled into bed next to him. “What are you doing?”

It was a good question and one she didn’t stop to think about giving a true answer. “Going back to bed.” She settled on her side, drawing the sheet up to cover them both, and rested the weight of her upper body on one elbow. “Just like you told me to do.”

His eyes flashed with something akin to anger. “I meant
your
bed.”

Though her heart was suddenly pounding a million beats a second, she didn’t back down. “Yeah, see, there seems to be a problem with that. The bed in the room I where I was assigned is too hard.” She lay on her back and stretched languidly, allowing herself a soft moan. “Yours is so much softer.”

He sat up, turned his upper body toward her, and leaned over her, bracing his weight on one hand on the mattress next to her shoulder. “Darlin’, I don’t know what the hell kind of game you’re playing, but now is not the time. My dick is harder than a rock, but I’d hurt you in ways you damn sure wouldn’t enjoy if I fucked you right now.”

The look in his eyes as he stared down at her was intense, full of heat and restraint and an authority that brought the dark and dirty dream she’d been having back to the forefront of her mind. Wanting to touch him, needing to take away the pain that lingered behind the flames in his eyes, she dared to put her hands on his shoulders. The heat of his flesh seeped into her palms and she felt the slight quiver of his muscles, as if holding himself off of her was taking all the restraint he could muster.

“No games, Brit.” She licked her lips and saw the flames in his eyes rise higher. “And no sex.”

This is what I was training you for.

Mark’s words from her dream reverberated through her mind. They couldn’t be true. They were merely a wacked up part of a fantasy world she’d created in her head. She pushed it all away, realizing she suddenly felt more alone than she had in years. She wound her arms around Brit’s thick neck and buried her fingers in the back of his hair. “Just sleep.”

He closed his eyes briefly and bowed his head, turning his face away from her. He sighed and his eyes opened, but he didn’t look back at her. She realized his gaze had locked with Trey’s who hadn’t moved from the bedside.

God, for those few brief moment, she’d actually forgotten he was in the room, too. She met his gaze and the torment, sadness, and pain she saw in his eyes brought tears to her own. She dragged her hands back to Brit’s shoulders and gave him a soft nudge. “Make room for Trey.”

Brit glanced down at her, one brow lifted.

“His bed is too soft.”

Brit’s other brow rose to join the first and she caught the first sign of amusement move through his expression. “You’ve got the wrong color hair to be Goldilocks, sweet thing.”

Lena gave him a shrug and a smile. “Humor me. I’m working with what I’ve got here.”

He snorted, which was close enough to a laugh for her, and pushed himself off her. He turned to Trey as he scooted over and gave his head a jerk to beckon the man to the other side of the bed.

Lena scooted, too, making room for Trey on her opposite side. She didn’t allow herself to think about what she was doing. There would be time enough for that later. Tonight, for the first time in so very long, she’d found herself needing to be close to someone as badly as she suspected both of these men needed to be, too.

Brit pinned Trey with a steely gaze as Trey crawled into the bed. “If I do fall asleep and I start doing that shit again, you get her out of this bed ASAP.”

Trey nodded. “I won’t let you down.”

It might have been an odd response, but Lena understood it held more meaning than Trey simply agreeing to protect her. She’d been wrong about Trey. Well, not completely. She still felt he was afraid he couldn’t cut it in the SEAL teams without Brit, but the demon eating at him was far bigger than that. She’d realized it in something he’d said when he’d been trying to bring Brit back.

Not there, man. You ordered us to hold back.

Trey believed he’d let Brit down. He was blaming himself for following an order he’d been given and, by the look in Brit’s eyes, his friend knew it, too.

Brit sighed as he lay down next to her. “You never have.”

He said the words so softly, Lena wasn’t sure Trey heard them. She hoped he did. They were words he definitely needed to hear. She vowed to make sure Brit said them again, louder next time.

“Turn toward Brit, sugar,” Trey drawled. “That way I can spoon against your back.”

Lena lifted her head as she rolled onto her side. Brit’s arm stretched over the pillow, hooked around her, and pulled her down to lay on his shoulder. Trey lined his front with her back. His hand slid over her side and down to flatten on her belly as he settled his groin against her ass.

Her hand was on Brit’s chest and she didn’t realize she’d started drawing lazy circles with her fingertip in his chest hairs until his free hand covered hers. He dragged her hand down, over the ridged planes of his abdomen and the solid smoothness of his stomach to his cock.

She tried to pull her hand away when his cockhead brushed the edge of her pinky, but he turned his head into her hair and made a soft “Shush” sound. Then he was guiding her hand to his shaft, closing her fingers around it, and applying a tad bit of pressure to her fist.

“Just like that, darlin’.” The words were equal parts whisper and moan. “Just hold it for me like that. That’s all I want.”

She forced herself to relax, only to feel her body slither on its own accord when Trey’s hand started to skim from her belly up to her breast. He covered her breast with his large palm, gave it a gentle squeeze, and relaxed.

“Trey?” she whispered his name questioningly.

“I’m just holding on, sugar. That’s all I want.”

Lena smiled as she closed her eyes. In seconds, she drifted off to sleep.

Brit woke up alone. It wasn’t unusual. He hadn’t awoken with a woman in his bed since before he and Trey had gone through BUD/S. Oh, they’d had women, and plenty of them, before and after they’d become SEALs, but they lived by one hard and fast rule. They never spent the night.

He looked around as he carefully crawled out of bed. He definitely hadn’t spent the night anywhere but the ranch. That was good. He’d gone to bed alone. But he hadn’t stayed that way.

The realization came to him along with bits and pieces of memory as he made his way out of the room and down the hall to the bathroom shared by everyone who stayed on the third floor. He remembered the episode first. He refused to think of them as nightmares. Those were the kinds of things brought on by watching a scary movie or fearing vampires or the zombie apocalypse. What he had since the op were episodes brought about by memories he wished to God he could forget. Trey had come into his room, but he hadn’t been alone. He’d brought Lena with him.

And she’d stayed. They’d both stayed, and slept with him through the night.

He closed the bathroom door behind him, stopped in front of the mirror over the sink, and rested his hands on the wall on either side. Christ, he’d actually slept. After the episode, in any case. He’d pulled Lena into his arm, put her delicate hand around his throbbing cock, and fell asleep.

As he stared at the reflection glaring back at him, he realized for the first time in months, the guy didn’t have bags under his eyes. He still looked like shit, though. His hair had gotten too long and the beard and moustache had to go. He straightened, lifted his arm to open the medicine cabinet, and caught a whiff of his pits. The stench damn near knocked him on his ass. And he’d actually held an amazingly beautiful, sexy, sensual woman like Lena in that arm? Jesus, no wonder she didn’t want to ride him. How could he expect her to want to have sex with a stinky wooly mammoth?

Twenty minutes later, he’d taken care of everything except the hair on his head. He’d have to wrangle May into giving him a haircut, but at least it was clean now. Satisfied, he wrapped a towel around his waist and returned to his bedroom where he changed into a clean pair of cargo shorts, a muscle shirt, and tennis shoes. Not yet ready to face Lena after the episode last night, he decided to alter his schedule. He’d exercise, then find breakfast.

No, scratch that. He’d exercise, shower again, and then find breakfast.

Figuring his equipment was still in the front yard, he headed that way, noting the only voices he heard in the house as he made his way through it sounded like they were coming from the kitchen. He heard Lena’s melodic laughter, Trey’s gruff timbre—why the hell was he inside?—and May’s unmistakable motherly tone.

Ignoring them, he walked out the front door only to turn right back around and head for the kitchen after all. He found them sitting around the kitchen table sipping coffee with a plate of cinnamon buns between them.