The Palpable Prosecutor

by Lubrican

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Chapter Four

As part of her "rehabilitation" Bob commented on the fact that all she seemed to have was work clothes.  His next suggestion changed their relationship a little more.

"Lacey?"

"Hmmm?"  She was sitting in a chair in the living room, wearing her new green robe.  Her knees were bent and her feet tucked into the corner of the chair.

"I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but I think you could benefit from some new clothes."

"Clothes?"

"Don't get me wrong.  I like the way you look in your new robes and all.  And I want you to be comfortable.  But all I've ever seen you in other than your robe are your work clothes.  Don't you have some jeans and T shirts?  Something to lounge around in like you're doing now, except also things you can go outside in?"

"I never felt the need to have that kind of clothing," she said.

"It's none of my business," said Bob.  "Forget I said anything."

"I had clothes like that in college," she said, thinking back to those days.  "When I started clerking I felt like they were too casual, so I stopped wearing them."

"Do you still have them?" asked Bob.

"Oh, no.  I gave them to The Salvation Army years ago.  They probably wouldn't fit me anymore anyway."

"You must have been as skinny as a rail back then," said Bob.

"I have gained a lot of weight," she said.

"Well it looks good on you."

"Why do you say things like that?" she blurted.

"Because they're true?"  He shrugged.  "I'll stop if it bothers you.  I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable."

"Before I met you I'd have told you to mind your own business," she said, softly.  "Now ... I don't know.  I just feel different."

"I think you've mellowed a little since I met you."

"Are you saying I was a stick in the mud when we first met?"

"I'm saying you were a lot more formal," he said, gently.

"Aren't I supposed to be formal?  Isn't that what a high profile prosecutor is supposed to be?"

"Maybe as a high profile prosecutor, sure.  But you're not a prosecutor every second of the day.  There's no reason you shouldn't be able to wear jeans and go bowling, or get a hot dog, or wear fingernail polish.  You're a prosecutor, that's true.  But you're also a woman."

"I don't really know how to be a woman," she almost whispered.  "The way I was brought up, I wasn't supposed to think about that."

"Sounds harsh," he said.

"It was all I knew."

"Well, you're all grown up now.  This is America.  You have the right to pursue happiness.  The Declaration of Independence says so, right there in black and white. I spent twenty-five years securing that right, and I didn't even know you then."

"Are you saying I should put myself in your hands?"

He laughed.

"No, I don't think you're quite ready for that, yet."

"Why not?"

"Because when I think of you as a woman, I think of things you wouldn't appreciate."

"What kind of things?"

"I just told you, you wouldn't appreciate them," he said.  "Let's go out and get you some jeans.  Come on.  You need to get out and get a little exercise."

"You know how easily I still get tired," she said.

"If you get tired we'll come back home."

"What about Tom and Lenny?"

"They'll come with us," he said.  "You'll be well guarded.  Plus nobody will know we're going out until we get there.  You can wear sunglasses and a hat.  Like a movie star."

"I don't own any sunglasses," she said. "Or a hat."

"I'll loan you mine," he said.

Suddenly restless, the urge to accede to his demands became overpowering.

"All right.  I'll go get changed."

While she was in her bedroom, Bob coordinated with deputies Jenkins and Thomas, who had stayed with her after protecting her in the hospital.  It was determined that Thomas would stay at the residence, to ensure no one tampered with it.

Bob knew that meant ... plant a bomb.

Bob didn't actually have a hat or sunglasses, but he borrowed a pair of sunglasses from Lenny and she put them on happily. She left her hair down which, in her mind, made her unrecognizable to the general public. Again, Lacey's little girl came out in her.  She couldn't remember the last time she'd just gone window shopping. That was frivolous, and frivolity invited the Devil's attention. Now, though, with two armed men escorting her, she felt like the Devil might be scared away.  So, even though they were supposedly looking for jeans and tops, she went into stores with other things too, just to see what was in them.  Bob talked her into buying a packet of beef jerky, something she'd never tried.  As she gnawed at a piece, her face lit up.

"This is good!" she gushed.  Bob grinned.

"Told you so."

"Make sure you offer a piece to Tom," said Bob.

She did, and Tom was happy to accept.

The two men walked behind her as she went on up the street.

"What's this all about?" asked Deputy Jenkins.

"All she has in her closet are work clothes."

"So?"

"I think she could benefit from loosening up a little," said Bob.

"She could benefit ... or you could benefit?"  Tom was unapologetic.

"Let me ask you this," said Bob.  "When you first met her, did you think she had a stick up her butt?"

"Not really.  She was too sick to move, if you'll remember."

"Well, trust me.  When I met her she was like that.  No sense of humor.  No urge to blow off steam. All she did was work, work, work."

"There's nothing wrong with that," said Tom. "Maybe she's trying to climb the prosecutorial ladder.  Maybe she has dreams of being an AG at some time in the future."

"So you feel exactly the same way about her now as you did when you first met her?"

"I didn't say that," said Jenkins.  "I admit I like her."

"I do too," said Bob.  "I'm not looking for anything other than a good relationship with my boss.  At the same time, I know what constant stress can do to you.  It would be a shame for us to spend so much time and energy protecting her only to have her keel over of a stress-induced heart attack."

"So you don't want to ride her like a well-trained cutting horse?"  Tom smiled slightly.

"In the words of one of the few US Marshals I respect, I didn't say that."  Bob returned his crooked smile.

"You know it's never good to mix business with pleasure," said Jenkins.

"I know.  But she's so provincial I can't help feeling like bringing her into the twenty-first century would help her on a professional basis."

"Officially, all I care about is her safety," said Tom.  "As long as you don't jeopardize that, then it's none of my business."

"I'm not going to jeopardize that. She hired me to ensure her safety, too," said Bob.

They might have overdone it a tad for her first day out and about, not quite a week since getting out of the hospital.  She did buy two pair of jeans, and three T shirts.  She also got a sweat shirt and two blouses to wear with either her new jeans or the black skirts she already owned.  She lingered, looking around wistfully in the lingerie section of one store, but was too embarrassed to make any purchases.  Just looking at the pretty, colorful bras and panties made her feel wicked, especially with the men standing off to one side, watching her.

By the time they got her home, though, she was so tired that she had no energy to change into one of her new outfits.

"I'm just going to take a bath and go to bed," she said, weakly.

"That's probably best," said Bob. "You can always try going casual tomorrow."

It was two hours later when Bob saw the medicine they'd given her when she left the hospital, sitting on the bookcase.  She was supposed to take that medication every four hours and Bob was pretty sure she'd missed a dose while they were out shopping for clothes.

He went to her door and tapped.  Hearing no response, he opened the door and stepped in, expecting to see her under the covers.  His intent was to wake her long enough to get a dose of medicine in her and then let her go back to sleep.

But she wasn't in bed.

He looked around.  She couldn't have gotten out of the room without him seeing her, and there wasn't really anyplace in the house she could go where she wouldn't be seen, sooner or later.

He looked at her bathroom door, which was firmly closed.  Maybe she woke up and went to the bathroom?

He looked at the bed.  It hadn't been slept in.

Worry bloomed in his gut and he went to the bathroom door.  He tapped gently.

"Lacey?  Are you in there?"

Nothing.

Fear caused him to open the door without knocking again.  She was still in the tub, leaning back, her eyes closed. The water was up to her throat.  Through the faint remains of soap on the surface of the water he could see her breasts.  They weren't moving very much.  Somehow water had gotten splashed out onto the floor.  The bathmat was soaked.

Thinking she had fallen asleep in the tub, he was in a quandary about what to do.  He knew if he woke her up she would be mortified that she was naked, and that he could see her.  But there was nothing for it.  He couldn't leave her in the water.  Cold water could induce hypothermia. 

Suddenly electrified at that thought, he crossed to the tub and stuck his hand in the water.  It was room temperature, which meant it was somewhere near seventy degrees.  That could suck heat out of her body in killing amounts if that body was submerged long enough. 

He shook her.  Her eyes opened, but only halfway.

"Lacey?  You have to get out of the water, Lacey.  It's making you too cold.  You have to get out now."

"I can't," she whispered.  "I tried. Too weak."

He imagined her lowering her body into hot water and soaking in it.  He'd done that before, and knew how weak that could make a person as their muscles relaxed completely.  Then, as that water slowly cooled and started to suck the heat out of her body, the effects of mild hypothermia disabled her in different ways.  She was probably going to be okay.  The water had only been this cool for half an hour, if she was lucky. But she was going to need help getting out and dry and into bed.

"I'm going to have to help you," he told her. "I'm sorry, but I'll have to touch you.  I can do it by myself if you try to help me a little bit."

"Cold," she whispered.

Reaching to push the lever that opened the drain, he started to remove her from the water.  Then he realized he wasn't ready yet.  He didn't have towels laid out.  Her bed wasn't turned down.  When he got her out of the water he'd need to get her dry and warm as soon as possible.  Leaving her there, he stood and looked around.  There were two towels on the towel bar beside the commode.  He snatched them and returned to her bedroom, where he gripped the covers and pulled them down.  Leaving the towels there, he returned for her.

He knew she would suffer horrible embarrassment from what was about to happen, but there was nothing else he could do.  She'd probably be so embarrassed by his view of her nudity that she'd fire him. But that was okay, as long as she recovered from yet another blow to her health.  Even with all that on his mind, he wasn't really prepared for what he saw when he went back into the bathroom.  The water had drained to her hips, and her whole body was visible.

He'd observed her most frequently with her breasts bound in the ace bandages that had replaced the cloth strips her mother had taught her how to use.  Her mother had insisted that large breasts attracted wicked and unwanted attention from males, and that they had to be controlled.  Her method of doing that was to encase them in a bra and then wrap them tightly with long strips of cloth.  The end could either be safety-pinned, or simply tucked into a previous wrap.  In college, Lacey had discovered Ace bandage wraps, and had invested in a number of them.  By then the practice was habit, and even though she couldn't afford to buy new bras at that point, since men didn't pant after her in sinful lust, she assumed the ace bandages were all she needed. Even now she didn't own a single bra, though Bob didn't know that. 

He knew she muted the size of her breasts in some fashion, but had assumed she wore a tight sports bra, or something like that.  As he looked at her globes now, naked before his eyes, he couldn't imagine a sports bra that could possibly tame them into the condition they appeared to be in when she wore her work clothes.  It was as if she had small breasts that had somehow soaked up the water in the tub, inflating as that happened.

The tips were covered with fairly large areolas that were brown in color, with darker nipples that were erect.  He was sure that was because of the coolness of the air, but they looked delectable to him.  He scolded himself for thinking what he was thinking and reached in to slide one arm under her knees, and the other behind her back.  The angle was awkward, and she was heavier than he expected.  He felt the strain of complaining muscles, but then she moved and it got easier as he was able to stand up.

She shivered violently in his arms and he could hear her teeth chattering where her cheek lay against his pectoral.

"It's going to be okay," he said. "We're going to get you warm and then you can sleep and all this will just seem like a dream. Just pretend I'm a robot who is seeing to your immediate needs."

"S-s-so c-c-cold," she stuttered, through teeth that sounded like a starving woodpecker.

"I know, but we'll get you dry and in bed and then you'll warm up."

He dropped her, more or less, on top of the lower part of her bed, where the water that soaked into the covers would only be near her feet, later.  Grabbing a towel he started rubbing it roughly over her flesh.  She drew into a fetal position, either from shame at being naked in front of a man, or to try to conserve heat.  Because of that, he got her legs and back dry first.  She was shivering almost constantly now, and moaning in distress.  Her breathing was shallow.

"I have to get your front, Baby," he said, using the kind of voice he'd heard others use when talking to small children.  "I'm sorry, but I need to get all of you dry."

She didn't cooperate and he had to roll her onto her back, where her exhaustion and traitorous muscles couldn't maintain the tight curl.  Her back flattened and her arms flopped to the sides.  He grabbed the other towel and quickly dried her thighs, hips, and stomach, sliding the towel quickly over the damp mat of pubic hair that sprang into fluffiness as it was dried.  It was the same color as her head hair.  He couldn't help but see purplish lips, hiding between her legs. 

He wrenched his eyes away from her vulva only to find himself gazing at those impossibly large breasts.  As she shivered, they shook as if constructed from gelatin.  The nipples were still standing away from the areolas and, as he slid the towel over her breasts, mauling them gently, he couldn't help but wonder what those nipples would feel like sliding between his fingers as he massaged her chest.

She moaned again, a pitiful sound, and he was ashamed at what he'd been thinking.  Even worse, he was becoming erect.  It had been a long time since he'd had a woman, and his body had no morals when it found itself in a situation like this.

"Almost done," he said, drying her shoulders and neck.  Her hair wasn't wet, something he was thankful for, because he knew that her dry head had helped stave off worse symptoms than she was exhibiting.  "You'll be nice and warm in just a minute."

Rather than drag her higher on the bed, he lifted her again.  This time her arms went around his neck.  They stayed there as he deposited her on the sheets exposed where he had pulled the covers down.  As he tried to stand up, she shivered violently again.  Her teeth started a startlingly loud tattoo.

"Let go, Baby," he said, reaching for the covers.

"C-c-cold," she complained.

As he pulled his head upwards, her hands couldn't maintain their grip, and they fell limply beside her.  He pulled the covers up, covering what he wished he could look at a lot longer.  Only then did he realize that all that was on the bed was a summer type bedspread, with a top sheet under it.  It was September, and getting chilly, but she hadn't brought out her winter blankets yet.

"Where are your blankets, Lacey?" he asked.

She mumbled.  Her eyes were closed and she was still shivering violently.

He went to the closet and looked in there.  There were only shoes on the floor, sensible flats in three muted colors that went with her work clothes.  The shelf above her hanging clothes had another set of sheets on it and a box, but no blankets.  He didn't know that she stored her blankets in sealed vacuum bags in a plastic tote she kept in the basement storage room so that bugs couldn't get into them during the off season.

Frustrated he left the bedroom to go to his own room.  Maybe she stored her blankets in what had been the spare room before she hired him.  Tom Jenkins was in the front hallway, reading a magazine.  He glanced up and nodded at Bob, before going back to the magazine.

In his room he had no better luck.  He produced a lot of body heat and hadn't had to cover himself with anything while he slept, since moving in with Lacey.  So the fact that all that was on his bed was a sheet and bedspread hadn't really mattered.  He grabbed them, pulling them off his bed and hurried back to Lacey's bedroom.  Tom's eyes never left the magazine he was reading.

Lacey was curled up in a fetal position again, still shivering, though not quite as badly as before.  He spread his sheet and bedspread over her and stood back.  Her eyes fluttered open.

"I can't stop shivering," she said, weakly.  "I couldn't get out of the water."

"I pushed you too hard today," he said, sitting beside her on the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry."

"Not your fault," she whispered. "I wanted to go."

"The hot water sapped your strength," he said. "I should have thought of that."

"I can't feel my feet," she said.

"Where are your blankets?" he asked, remembering them.

"Downstairs ... storage locker."

"Where's the key?"

"Dresser," she sighed.

He went to the dresser and looked on top of it, and in each drawer, but found no keys of any kind.  He went back to the bed.

"I can't find it," he said. 

"Should be there," she muttered.  Her arm moved and she started to push the covers down.  He stopped her.

"You have to stay under the covers," he said.  "Where else could it be?"

"I don't know," she whispered.  "Bob, I'm so cold."

The thought that came to him then was half experience and half training.  But there was a third half, as the Car Talk guys on NPR might have said it.  And the third half of what made him think of a quick solution was lingering lust from having seen her lush, naked body.

"Lacey?"

She made a noise in response, but it wasn't a word.

"I know a way to get you warm, but it means I'll have to get in bed with you."

She shivered in response and her teeth chattered again.

"Is that okay, Baby?" he asked in that adult-to-child voice again.

She nodded, rather than speaking.  He hoped her head movement wasn't a product of the shivering, because he'd already decided to just do it.

Standing, he quickly shucked his clothes.  He left his boxers on, but that was all.

Then, lifting the covers, he slipped under them and took her naked body in his arms.

Her response was anything but what he expected.  He had thought she might shrink away from him in either embarrassment or terror.  He knew enough about her to know there had been few, if any, men in her life.  He didn't know why that was, but he expected her to react negatively to feeling a naked male body pulling her into its embrace.

But what she responded to by instinct was his heat, rather than her wish not to be in bed with a naked man.  Survival was more important at that point than the social indoctrination in her life.  What good was being a good girl if you were a dead girl?  Well ... religious beliefs aside, anyway.  Still, even committed Christians want to stay alive and enjoy God's bounty as long as possible.  It's just instinct. 

Her body came uncurled and she rolled against him, reaching to hug his warmth with the last of her strength.  What felt like icy cold breasts and thighs pressed against him and she moaned with the relief of finally finding heat.  His arms tightened as hers failed, too weak to maintain their momentary, fierce grip.

He knew that friction would help, but in this position he could really only move one hand.  Wondering if he was crazy, he rolled and pulled her on top of him.  She was so limp that she draped over his body like a damp wash cloth.  Her thigh muscles couldn't keep her legs closed, and her knees fell to straddle his own.

Now he could move his hands, and he slid them rapidly all over her naked back, rubbing in all directions, keeping his hands moving.  She groaned into his neck, where her chin had fallen over one shoulder.

"I'm just getting you warm, Baby," he said, softly.  "Don't worry.  All I'm doing is getting you warm."

At one point his hand slipped onto one of her butt cheeks, and he was startled at how cold that flesh felt.  Her back was warming up.  He couldn't reach her buttocks very well, but he tried to move his hands around on them, squeezing them and rubbing them as well as he could. 

He realized he was erect in his boxers, but luckily his penis had been lying off to one side when it started to inflate, so it wasn't touching that fluffy pubic hair he'd seen.  That was good.  He could live with the erection and not being able to do anything about it.  He just hoped she could live with it, if she felt it.

He was feeling less heat differential now when his hand went from her back to her bottom.  He moved his legs and felt the cooler skin of her lower leg.  Working first one of his legs and then the other, he managed to get them outside hers and push her legs together.  Then he wrapped his lower legs around her and used the back of his calves to warm up hers.  It was the best he could do under these conditions.

He realized she'd stopped shivering.  That was a good sign.  Now, if her heart could take all this, after being weakened by the botulism toxin, then she'd survive the night.

Moving her on top of him had dislodged the covers, pulling one side of them onto the top of the mattress.  Her back was warm now, so he rolled, letting her fall back onto her side.  That rolled her into the bunched covers and sealed her from the air nicely. 

Her breathing was slow and steady, now.  He was suddenly tired, too.  He knew he shouldn't stay.  He should get up and get dressed and leave her to wake up alone.  That would be the easiest thing for her.

But he didn't want to get up.  His stiff cock didn't even bother him right now.  It was just nice to hold a woman in his arms.  She'd been a cold woman when he first got into bed, but now she was only cool.  Her breasts were even warm against his chest now.  And if he got up, that would let cool room air into the cocoon that they had constructed around themselves.

He convinced himself it was better to stay.  She was going to fire him in the morning anyway.  He might as well have one nice night holding a woman he liked before that happened.

Ten minutes later they both slept, breathing slowly.

To Lacey, this whole incident had seemed like some horrible dream she was having.  That's too simplistic, of course, because "horrible" didn't describe all of it.  There were many other emotions in play in her exhausted mind that night as well.

Bob's hypothesis about her bath was correct.  She had drawn the bathwater as hot as she could stand it, and then lowered herself into it slowly.  At the last second, her tired arms failed her and she plopped the remaining four or five inches.  It felt like she was scalding her upper chest and armpits, but the feeling only lasted a hand span of seconds.  It had felt wonderful, then, and she relaxed, letting her head fall back over the edge of the old fashioned claw-foot tub.  She reached to pull her hair up so it hung outside the tub.  She was too tired to deal with washing and drying it.

She dozed, which was what got her in trouble, because as she did that the water slowly cooled, until it started pulling heat from her body, instead of infusing heat into it.  When she finally woke up, cold and uncomfortable, the effects of everything she'd gone through left her too weak to pull herself up and out of the tub.  She made an effort, but fell back, splashing water out of the tub.

She called out to Bob, but her voice was too weak to carry.  She didn't know what to do.  She hadn't felt this helpless since she woke up in the hospital.

Then Bob was there.  She had mixed feelings about that.  But she was so cold that the fact that she was naked, and that he could see her, seemed less important than getting out of the damned tub.  She felt momentary guilt for having thought the word, "damned".  But then other things were happening.  He was talking to her but it was difficult to pay attention to him.  She knew she was speaking, but didn't pay attention to that, either.  All she could think about at that moment in time was how cold she was.

She became aware of her surroundings when he moved her, and she fell onto the bed.  She felt the towel rubbing over her skin.  That felt good, but it wasn't enough.  She was still cold.  The covers being over her helped too, but it still wasn't enough.  He badgered her about a key. She didn't care about a key.  She just wanted to get warm.  She tried to keep her teeth from chattering, but it took too much strength.

Then, suddenly, something deliciously warm pressed against her.  It was incredible how warm that something was.  She reached to hold it against her and felt herself move.

It was as his hands slid all over her back, and then her buttocks, that she became aware of where she was and what was going on.  A complicated flood of information assaulted her mind as she pieced together what had happened. She couldn't remember everything that had been said, or happened, but she knew that Bob had gotten her out of that water and into the warmth.

His warmth.

She knew she was naked, and that caused something to rake at her psyche with claws that tried to shred.  But he was soooo warm.  And she needed that warmth.  She could actually feel some vitality coming back into her body.  She felt like she was stepping back from the abyss, and that she was safe again.  His legs moved and, in the process of being enfolded by them, she realized he was naked too!  In her mind she knew something was wrong.  Not the part about being naked.  That was patently wrong.  But her former expectations, vague and unformed as they might have been, didn't mesh with what she was experiencing.  The naked man in bed with her wasn't a ravening beast, taking what he wanted by force, using her body to sate his lust.  He was just making her feel wonderful.

The dichotomy between the dogma her mother had washed her mind with, concerning things sexual, and the reality of what she was experiencing left her confused, unable to make a decision as to what to do about all this.

Her body moved again, and his wonderful, soothing hands stopped rubbing her back.  And elsewhere, that place she didn't want to think about his hands touching because it made her want to scream.  And that scream would not be one of fear or disgust, and that was just too confusing to think about right now. 

She recognized the covers that molded to her back, where his hands had been.  That felt normal and was welcomed.  But the warmth radiating from his body like a sun was better.  She felt safe.  That was impossible, because she was naked, and he was naked, but she couldn't deny it.  She felt safe.  It was crazy!

It was too much to think about.  And she was tired.

So she just went to sleep.

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