Ronan
She’s nervous, but she’s horny as hell, and I don’t really know what to do about it. Oh, my inner wolf knows. My inner wolf knows exactly what to do, and he’s whispering that Lara is the one. I’m more skeptical than my feral half, though. It’s the lawyer in me: never believe anything without evidence, and then find a way to disbelieve it.
She sits down and her dress rides up her legs a little, revealing creamy thighs. What would Lara do if I pushed her chair back and knelt in front of her? What would she do if I started licking up those thighs? What would she do if I pressed my mouth over her sweet pussy and just tasted her?
Now I’m the one turned on, and I shouldn’t be. I should be professional. I need to be professional. I need to be in control, in charge of the situation. I need to be able to handle myself because the truth is that Lara is just a client. She’s just a normal person and I am her legal representation: nothing more.
I take a seat behind my desk and take a quick look at the notes Joyce took about Lara.
“Why don’t you tell me what the trouble seems to be, Miss Bradshaw? Then we can discuss your legal options and how we should proceed.”
“Please,” she says softly. “It’s Lara.”
“Lara.”
“Thank you. Um,” she fidgets. It’s a nervous habit. I make her nervous, uncomfortable. For some reason, this bothers me. I don’t like the idea that Lara doesn’t feel calm around me. I want to comfort her.
“Hey,” I reach for her hand, and she gives it to me. I hold it awkwardly, over the top of my desk. “It’s okay. Just take your time.”
“I’m sorry,” she shakes her head and lets go of my hand. “I don’t know why this makes me so nervous. It’s just that I’ve never met with a lawyer before. I feel like I’m the one in trouble. I mean, obviously, that’s what I am. I’m in trouble. It’s just that I don’t feel like I did anything wrong and I don’t know what to do.”
“Take a deep breath,” I suggest. “And then start from the beginning.”
Lara takes a couple of deep breaths and then nods. “It all started a few weeks ago. I moved into a new house. It’s over on 5th Street,” she adds.
“I’m familiar with the area. It’s a place with a lot of nice, quiet houses, from what I’ve heard.”
“That’s what I thought, too, but then my neighbor came over and started a fight with me.”
“A fight?” I try not to chuckle at that. Lara is one of the tiniest humans I’ve ever seen. Oh, yes, this woman is undoubtedly human, though I’m sure she knows exactly what I am: what we all are. You can’t live in a place like Bradshaw without seeing shifters, without noticing all the weird shit we do.
Lara is probably 5’2” and she’s petite. Oh, she probably thinks she’s fat. All humans do, but she’s not. She’s just the tiniest bit curvy and she reminds me of a porcelain doll. She’s delicate, soft. My inner wolf is craving her, and I’m trying so hard to listen to her and not to him.
“Yes,” she says. “A fight. He didn’t punch me. He just used his words.”
“What did he say?” I reach for my pen to start taking notes.
“He called me a human bitch and said I needed to go back to where I came from.”
I drop the pen on my desk. “What?” I growl. I shouldn’t growl, but what the hell? Who does this guy think he is? Lara looks close to tears as she nods.
“I told him it was my house. I rent it now. It’s a good house and it’s a nice neighborhood and it’s close to my job.”
“What’s your job?”
“I’m a teacher.”
“Oh?” I raise an eyebrow.
“Yes, I teach middle school English.”
Hot damn. Her students must be completely head-over-heels for their beautiful human teacher. To them, she’s completely exotic, completely perfect. She’s unattainable and that’s kind of incredible.
“But he didn’t care that I said that,” Lara continues. “He said he didn’t want to live next to a human.”
“And what did you do?” I wonder if she cried, if she’s the type of woman who would cower at such a harsh encounter, but Lara sits up straight and pushes her shoulders back.
“I told him to get the fuck off my lawn, sir.”
I can’t help it. I chuckle. The idea of this sweet, tiny human telling some old, crotchety shifter to fuck off is incredible.
“I’m guessing he didn’t take that well.”
“No,” Lara doesn’t laugh. “That’s when the trouble really started.”
“What happened?”
“First it was just words. Every day when I got home from work, he’d be waiting for me to yell at me and complain. I started mixing up my schedule so he couldn’t talk to me. I’d go out with friends after work and come home late, but he was always there. Then I tried parking a few streets over and sneaking in my backyard, but he knew about that, too, and he kept catching me. Then he’d just yell at me more and more.”
Sneaking around the back of the house wouldn’t work on a shifter, especially a wolf or cat shifter. If Lester is a tiger or jaguar, his sense of smell will be completely developed and he’ll be fast. Even as an old man, he’ll move more quickly than he should.
“Did you go to the police?” It seems like an obvious next step, but both humans and shifters tend to be nervous about reporting domestic disturbances and nuisance problems. When I first began studying law, I was surprised at how few shifters were comfortable reporting crimes to the police, but over time, this has become less shocking.
Some people think the police can’t help. Others feel they’ll be judged for getting into an uncomfortable situation. It’s not uncommon for the victim to blame themselves for their own mistakes, rather than focusing on what the offending party has done to escalate the situation.
“I did,” she says. “I guess I didn’t realize that the police would tend to side with shifters. It makes sense, of course,” she adds quickly. “I know I’m just a human and everything, but I guess I thought they’d give me a fair chance.”
“Lara, it doesn’t matter that you’re human. The job of the police department is not to side with shifters. It’s to give anyone having a problem the help they need to get through it.”
“That is not what happened,” she tells me. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a stack of papers. “These are the police reports.”
“Reports? As in multiple reports?”
“Yes,” she says. “After the third one, they told me I needed to figure out a solution to my problem because I didn’t have anything to go on. The next day, Lester filed a restraining order against me. He also said he’s going to be suing me for harassment.”
“You?” I take the pile of paper she hands me. Sure enough, all of the paperwork is here. Things are a little different in the shifter world when it comes to legal issues, which is why when you’re dealing with shifters, it’s important to have a lawyer who knows what’s up. Humans are fantastic, but they don’t always understand the way shifters work, which can make legal issues, especially ones involving both shifters and humans, a complete nightmare to deal with.
“Me,” Lara confirms, and she looks completely devastated, completely broken. Now that my initial shock of how gorgeous she is has worn off, I notice the things I didn’t see before: dark circles under her eyes, dry skin, flat hair. Her eyes are still bright, but she looks tired. She looks so, so tired.
“What basis does he have for filing a harassment lawsuit? Is that in here?”
“Yeah,” she points to the page, and I pull it out.
“Complete bullshit,” I say a little too harshly, and Lara cringes. “I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “But this pisses me off. You’ve done nothing wrong, Miss Berkshire.”
“Lara.”
“You’ve done nothing wrong, Lara, but we need to act fast in order to minimize the damage.”
“I’m supposed to go to court,” she says. “Isn’t that the way this works? I go to court and the judge will tell me how much money I have to give him? I just…I need to know what’s going to happen, Mr. Casa. Are they going to make me move? Can they do that?”
If Lester wins this case, Lara will definitely have to pay something. How much? I have no idea. If he’s suing for damages and emotional trauma, Lara will be required to bear the brunt of that expense.
The judge can demand that she move out of town, as well. Because Bradshaw is legally considered a shifter sanctuary, humans can be forcefully evicted when they get entangled in legal trouble. It doesn’t even matter if the human is in the right. What matters is that shifters don’t want people stirring up trouble. Shifters want a safe, quiet place they can do shifter things without being under scrutiny.
“We have a couple of options,” I tell her, looking at the paperwork. “First off, and this sounds like a huge cop-out, but you can move.”
“I don’t want to move,” her eyes fill with tears and my heart clenches. Damn, if she’s not the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. She’s so adorable and perfect. “I just moved in and I really like my house and I finally finished unpacking and I’m so close to work.” She shakes her head. “I guess I don’t have a choice, but if there’s any way I can stay, if there’s any way you can help me not have to move, I would really, really appreciate it.”
“Okay, so option one is off the table. Understood. Let’s talk about option two. You can give him what he wants, which seems to be money. I wouldn’t recommend this, however, because it never stops at just one payment. Handing over money, especially if you settle out-of-court, will set the precedent that you’re willing to pay. And unlike many human courts, he can sue you again for the same offense. Shifter law functions a little differently.”
She sighs, and Lauren buries her face in her hands and groans. “So I’m like, not only fucked, but super, completely, totally fucked.”
“There’s a third option,” I tell her. “We can fight it.”
“Fight it?” She asks, peeking up over her fingers. “How? On what grounds?”
“He’s harassing you,” I say. “You’re a fine, upstanding citizen. I bet you’ve never even had a parking ticket.”
“Well, no, I mean, but that’s because I always check where I am before I park. It’s not hard to avoid parking tickets. It’s not like, I don’t know…being sued, apparently.”
“From where I’m standing, I think we can build a case against him. When is your court date?”
“Two weeks, I think.”
“That gives us plenty of time to figure out how we’re going to approach this and how we can make the judge see our side.” I take a look at who the judge for this case is, and I smile. It’s a shifter who happens to be mated to a human. This is good news for us. It’s not a guarantee that things will go our way, but it gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, things will be okay.
“Really?” She asks. Then Lara smiles for real, perhaps for the first time since she walked into the office, and I’m struck once again by how lovely she is.
“Really.”
“So what do we do now?” She asks. “I mean, I have to pay you now, right? I know Joyce said the first consultation is free, but now that we’re moving forward, we should talk about the price.”
My usual rate is at the lower end of the “normal” range in Bradshaw, but Lara is a schoolteacher. She’s a human who is a sweet, adorable little schoolteacher, and the idea of charging her or inconveniencing her in any way is not okay with me. My inner wolf screams at me, but I ignore him.
Mate.
Mate.
Mate.
She’s my mate.
I don’t believe in mates. I’ve been a lawyer far too long to believe in fairytales or happy endings or anything that goes along with them. Romance comes and goes. Relationships bloom and die. It’s all part of the natural order of life, but life mates? That’s just a story invented to sell books.
“It’s been awhile since I did pro-bono work,” I tell her. “This one’s on me.”
“Wait, what?” She looks confused. She had been reaching for her checkbook, but she drops it back into her purse. “What do you mean? You mean it’s free?”
“That’s exactly what it means,” I tell her. “This one’s on the house, Lara Berkley.”
I expect Lara to be grateful or happy or relieved, but instead of jumping up and thanking me, she starts bawling in the center of my office. Lara doesn’t cry prettily, either. She’s not one of those girls who cries gently or quietly. No, she cries really, really loudly, and I have no idea what the hell to do.
Luckily for me, I work with three shifters, and their hearing is excellent. Fee, Lyon, and Joyce all come racing into the room at the same time.
“What did you do?” Fee asks me as Joyce wraps Lara up in a tight hug. Joyce starts stroking her hair and trying to help her calm down.
“It’s going to be okay,” Joyce whispers. “Everything is going to be just fine, sweetie. Everything is all right.”
“Holy dragons,” Lyon adds. “You can’t just make your clients cry, asshole. It’s bad for business.”
“You’re bad for business,” I glare at him.
“On the contrary,” Lyon grins. “I’m quite good for business, if my last few clients do say so themselves.” Lyon just finished representing three different high-profile divorces and his earnings from that alone will keep the firm open for the next two years.
“Seriously, man,” Fee looks at me like I punched Lara in the face. “You need to get your act together.”
“Fuck,” Joyce suddenly says, looking up. She sniffs the air. “Are you turned on right now?” She looks from Lara to me and back again. “You’re both totally horny right now. She’s crying and you’re still horny. Are you mates or something? Is Lara your mate?”
I’m going to need whiskey.