CHRISTOPHER

 

To make the turn into the next street, I crane my head around my shoulder. My jet black Harley Davidson 883 rumbles between my thighs and my cock twitches with the vibration. I try to put it out of my mind, I don’t need a hard on at work.

The sun rose about an hour ago, bathing the semi-clean Vegas streets in warm desert light. Despite the sunlight it’s surprisingly cool. The air whips around me as I speed toward the courthouse. My beard itches under the helmet, but I keep my hands on the handlebars. It’s not itching enough to bother doing something about it, besides I’ll be there soon. My mind is still racing from the depositions I had to file before I left the office earlier.

“Be sure you make copies,” I told the new intern before leaving. He nodded like an asshole and pretended he’d been listening while his eyes scanned his phone.

“Sure thing, Mr Cole,” he replied. He must have thought I couldn’t see the screen, or that I wouldn’t care if he was texting his girlfriend nonstop while in the office.

I made a copy of the deposition myself because I know the asshole won’t remember to do it. Still, the fact that he won’t, is going to bug me all day. At least I can look forward to firing him when I finish court in a few hours.

Work seems to follow me wherever I go. It’s like the longer I spend at the law firm, the harder it becomes to leave. Even mentally. Clocking out and unwinding, either with a night on the town or a roll in the sack, had been a luxury I couldn’t afford when I was just an intern. Even when I was a first-year associate, I was spread too thinly for anything more than a quick date. Now I’m finally powerful enough to take the time to breathe, I can’t risk leaving the work in the hands of an incompetent team.

I’m still thinking about that idiot intern when I roll into the courthouse’s parking lot. I push my bike into a spot under the shade of a palm tree and turn it off, taking a moment to enjoy the final rumbles of the bike’s engine dying down. Then I swing my leg over the saddle and straighten up. I strip my leathers off and quickly check to make sure I didn’t sweat through my shirt on the ride over.

Sliding my arms through a suit jacket and pulling my briefcase from beneath the bike’s seat, I pause to check my reflection in one of the courthouse’s big windows. For a guy past forty, I keep myself in shape. I’m not as slim as I was when I was younger. I’ve got dense muscle in my shoulders and arms, and hard abs that I try to maintain with a careful gym regime which I fit in around the many hours I spend at the office pretending to care about civil cases. Those tend to blur together after a while, but civil law is where the money is.

Turning on my heels in the gravel, I make my way toward the courthouse’s front steps. A woman loitering there catches my eye–a slim blonde with her hair in a bun and a sweet little pout to her lips. She’s dressed in a suit that hugs her ass, and I wonder quickly if she’s there to sue or to be sued. She looks too tame to take someone to court, and too vanilla to get taken herself. She checks her watch and glares at the parking lot behind my shoulder.

Must be a relative, I think as I pass her by. Our eyes lock for the briefest of moments, leaving me with a heated feeling, then the moment passes.

Inside, my footsteps make heavy thuds that echo around the mahogany walls. My briefcase, stuffed with case notes is swinging in my hand. It has Christopher Cole, embossed on the front–a gift from my parents when I passed the bar.

The case I’m covering today is simple. I was brought in at the last minute, but I enjoy the adrenaline rush that brings. A woman was caught sneaking into an ex-lover’s house. I’m here to make sure she pays for damages. The local law firm I’m up against, Page & Sons, only has about a fifteen percent success rate when it comes to defense. Judge Hastings is presiding, which would ordinarily make me a little nervous. She’s a fearsome woman with a gavel. Whenever I plead cases to her, I’m always wondering if she’d secretly like to beat someone with it. She probably would. We all have our kinks.

After entering the courtroom I bow to the judge. Her head inclines toward me. I glance at the table to see my client hasn’t arrived yet, and another glance at the table across the aisle shows that my opposition isn’t here either.

I heard rumors that Page & Sons hired a secret weapon a few months back, but their close rate is still abysmal, so it’s probably just bullshit.

One of the guards, Jeremy, glares when I cross the floor and take a seat.

“Got a little sweat on your brow, Christopher. You nervous?”

“Rode my bike here, smartass,” I tell him as I take a seat, positioning my briefcase so the brass plaque on the front shines into his eyes. “How’s babysitting criminals treating you?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“Go back to your corner then, Jeremy. Let the real men get back to work.”

Jeremy seems to think all lawyers are crooks. To be fair, most are. I can be when my patience is tested, or when I’ve had a long day, or when someone pushes me just right.

The guard bares his teeth but I’ve already moved on, scanning the empty jury seats and scowling. Sometimes I wish I could argue straight to a jury all the time, but it’s only the rare civil cases that are interesting enough to crowd the jury box and give me a chance to really put on a show. Would have been nice to have one today, since Judge Hastings is a ball-breaker and my client is a total shit-stain.

Speaking of, I think as I turn to see the man striding into the courtroom. He’s wearing a mid-range suit with his blond hair slicked back in a way he probably thinks is vintage-style but just comes off as oily, and his stupid mustache is twirled at the edges.

“Real class-act you’re representing,” Jeremy mutters.

I sigh and run my hands over my forehead, collecting the beads of sweat that Jeremy had pointed out, which I’d almost forgotten about.

“You’re late,” I tell Corbyn Dale as he walks toward me.

He frowns with his nose tilted up, the universal sign of entitled annoyance. “The trial doesn’t even start for another ten minutes.”

“I told you to be here fifteen minutes early,” I tell him, choosing to forget that I only just arrived myself.

“But Jenny and her lawyer aren’t even here yet!” Corbyn whines. He fiddles with his phone–an iPhone 7 in a faux-vintage case that makes me hate him even more than I already do–and gazes around the room with a faint sneer. “Besides, this is going to be over quickly… isn’t it?”

“That’s not–”

I have to pause to remind myself that this shit-stain is paying my fee, and it won’t do me any good to start dressing him down before we even start. Better to dress him down when I’m done winning this case.

Because I will win. I’ve been a shark in the courtroom for as long as I’ve been able to run my own cases. In this room, no one can match me. I’ve got exes who accused me of being too domineering, but after hours owning courtroom after courtroom, I could never understand how they expected me to be anything less. Control is all I know.

The door opens again and two women stride into the room–the blonde I saw outside, and a dumpy little woman with an ill-fitting business jacket around her shoulders. The latter is the woman my client is suing. The other is… “Ah,” I say out loud as she strides with purpose toward the table on the other side of the courtroom then sets down a briefcase.

Her eyes turn to lock on mine and I feel my interest pique. She seems a little green to be running this show on her own, but maybe Page or one of his sons are outside. I let myself grin showing some teeth, like the shark I am. I keep that grin in reserve for when I’ve got a witness right where I want them. She purses her lips but otherwise does not react. I silently applaud her for keeping her cool.

“Sit down,” I tell Corbyn. “Let me do my job.”

The blonde turns her head to speak to her client, though she keeps her eyes firmly on me the entire time. I can tell she’s trying her hardest to stare me down. It’s cute. I take another moment to really appreciate how young she looks. She’s probably about half my age, and while she may not be a virgin, I know what little skills guys her age are capable of. She’s never seen anything like me before.

God, I would love to show her.

I stride over and enjoy the way her dark brown eyes go darker when she sees me coming. When I arrive at her desk her client seems to recoil into her cheap suit jacket and turn away so she doesn’t have to look at me. I lean on the low-cost, standard pine wooden table, stained darker to give the illusion of class and offer my hand to the blonde.

“Christopher Cole,” I tell her. “I’ll be working for the prosecution today.”

The blonde stares at my hand for a moment before taking it and giving what she probably considers a firm shake, though her palms are a tiny bit clammier than she would probably have liked.

“Ava Rose,” she replies. “First year associate for Page & Sons.”

I nod. So she’s probably not going to be trusted with this alone. No way Page would send a first-year up against me. He can barely keep up with me himself and this girl looks barely out of law school. Regardless of her attempts to glare me down, this buttoned-up blonde looks more repressed than confident. It’s a common sight in women who probably haven’t had a good fuck in forever because they’ve been too busy focusing on their career.

Such a shame. She looks like she’d be good.

I realize I’m staring because she’s starting to stare back. I drop her hand and sigh. “How long does Luke plan on keeping us waiting?”

Ava checks her watch. It looks expensive and I raise my eyebrows. How can she afford that while paying off her loans? If she came from money or had connections, then she wouldn’t be working for a nothing firm like Page & Sons.

“He’s running a little bit late at the moment,” she replies. “He’ll be here as soon as he can.”

“I don’t like to be kept waiting,” I tell her, lowering my voice feverously like I would if I were speaking to a lover who had misbehaved.

The effect is instant. Her eyes fall down to my lips then my chest—I take a breath so my well-muscled pecs strain against the shirt I’m wearing—and then fall further to my crotch which is at eye-level for her while she’s sitting.

She swallows. She looks hungry for it and I tilt my head as my interest in her shifts from passing to intense.

“Neither do I,” she says.

If I stand here much longer I might be tempted to grab her and bend her over the desk, but I know Judge Hastings will throw me out for contempt. Instead, I turn away without another word and let the blonde get a good look at my ass as I walk across to my own desk and my shit-stain client.

“Trying to intimidate the enemy, Christopher?” Jeremy asks when he sees me coming back. “Trying to talk her into settling?”

That thought hadn’t even occurred to me. I glance back at the blonde and realize she’s taken her eyes off me, and she’s now talking to her own client again. She looks like she’s reassuring the woman and it pisses me off that I didn’t take the time to try and talk the cute little blonde into settling before Page comes and takes over. She’d distracted me with her dark chocolate eyes and her adorably innocent attempts to meet me, intimidation tactic for intimidation tactic.

“Why would I do that?” I ask Jeremy, trying to cover myself. “She’s such an innocent little thing. This is probably her first time in the courtroom, don’t want to scare her.”

I glance at the blonde again out of the corner of my eye and, sure enough, she’s glaring at me. She heard. Her client is still talking to her but she’s no longer paying attention. Instead, she’s got her fingers curled over the handles of her briefcase like a hawk’s talons around a tree branch.

Normally, I’d think that look on a young woman is funny. On her, it looks sexy.

I wouldn’t mind seeing her in attack mode, seeing her fighting hard, maybe breathing heavily or red-cheeked—

I cut that thought off before it can settle, and start going through the files in my briefcase. Now isn’t the time to get a hard on. I need all my blood going to my brain, not cock. I’ve got a case to win.