Redemption: A British Stepbrother Romance (36 page)

A
pril was up to something
. She had to be.

Ever since Friday’s unfortunate presentation, I’d been keeping a keen eye on April to see how she would act around me. I prepared for a volley of verbal abuse, but instead she just stayed in her office hard at work.

I couldn’t spend any time with her at the weekend, but that was probably for the best. Gave her time to cool off. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately. I should probably stop being such a jerk to her, but it takes time to change twenty-nine years of habit.

We finally met up on Monday, but instead of getting an earful from her she just smiled and spoke to me as if nothing had happened. She kept that up all week. I decided to test her resolve by inviting her to dinner on Friday night, but much to my amazement she agreed.

This out-of-character behavior made me suspicious, but other than making my own coffee and not eating any of the food she offered me, there didn’t seem to be much I could do about it.

April had even stopped giving me grief about PorTupe, or at least, she didn’t give me as much grief about it. She’d turned her attention instead to the
pro bono
case we were working on. I’d told April a hundred times that Doris’ case wasn’t going to go anywhere fast and that the motion would take time to be processed, but she still kept asking.

Just as I was about to head out for lunch, the phone rang from an undisclosed number. Unknown numbers had me on edge at the moment, because I was still waiting for another call from Zach. He’d been worryingly silent for too long, however this wasn’t him.

“Foster Arrington,” I said, as I answered the call.

“Hello Mr. Arrington, my name is Terrance Castle and I’m an intern for Judge Whiteman.”

I knew that judge’s name. Where did I know if from?

“How can I help you Mr. Castle?” I asked, as I typed ‘Judge Whiteman’ into the search bar on my emails. Bingo. He was the judge in Doris’ case.

“I’m calling about the motion you filed recently with this court.” He reeled off a document number, but we’d only made one filing so I didn’t bother taking a note of it. “The judge would like a conference with you.”

“Really?” I asked, not bothering to hide my surprise.

We’d requested that the case be expedited, but that meant we wanted to cut a few of the deadlines down from ninety days to thirty. We hadn’t been expecting a conference with the judge.

“Yes,” the clerk responded. “And he would like the conference to be tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow!” If I’d had a drink in my mouth, I would have spat it out. “That’s most unusual, Mr. Castle. Can you tell me what it’s about? You’re not exactly leaving me a lot of time to prepare.”

“I can’t say, Mr. Arrington, but as one professional to another, I would strongly recommend that you turn up. You’re going to want to be there to speak to the judge.”

“Uh, okay, sure.”

I made a note of the time, and called April into my office. I didn’t make that many court appearances, but I worked with plenty of attorneys who did. I knew that you rarely just showed up to court on less than twenty-four hours notice for a meeting with a judge. Other than refamiliarizing myself with the facts of the case and the motion we’d submitted, there wasn’t a lot we could do to prepare.

“You rang, m’lord,” April said, showing up in my doorway and giving a sarcastic curtsy. I wouldn’t mind lifting that skirt up a little higher and having her call me sir, but right now work had to take precedence.
Although, we could sneak in a few hours… no, not now. Think about Zach. That’s it.

“I just got a call from the judge in Doris’ case,” I explained. “He wants us to go to the courtroom tomorrow for a meeting. And before you ask, no, I don’t know what it’s about. It’s highly unusual to have a meeting at such short notice.”

“I suppose he just wants to talk about our motion,” April replied. “That’s a good thing isn’t it.”

“Maybe. You should come along as well. It’ll be a great experience for you, especially if you keep insisting on protecting the small fry instead of the big fish with money. You’ll be spending a lot of time in court if that’s the case.”

“There’s nothing wrong with fighting for people’s rights in court.”

“I meant, you’ll be in court fighting to enforce judgments so that you get paid by all your broke ass clients. We should spend some time going over the motion before tomorrow. It’s been weeks since I looked at it, so you know the facts better than me.”

April’s face turned a shade of pale I had never seen before. She hadn’t even looked that white when she’d found out our parents had got married.

“You feeling okay?” I asked. “If you’re going to throw up would you perhaps mind going to the bathroom?”

“You haven’t read the brief in weeks?” April asked.

“No, why?”

“But you submitted it to the court?”

“Yes. I had my paralegal do it on Monday.”

“So you didn’t check my citations?”

“God no,” I replied dismissively. “I haven’t done that since law school. I have complete confidence in your abilities to properly cite everything. You don’t need me to check that.”

Just when I thought April couldn’t get any paler, she somehow found another shade of white I didn’t know existed.

“I may know why we’ve been called in to see the judge,” April said softly. She bit her lip and tried to smile, but it came out as more of a constipated grimace. “You’re going to laugh when you hear this.”

“
I
s
that your special ‘court suit?’ ” April asked when we met outside the courtroom.

I often wore a suit to work, but the jacket would quickly get thrown over the chair and not worn again until it was time to leave. I rarely wore a tie. Couldn’t stand the things.

“This is my ‘I’m going to get torn a new one by the judge suit.’ I only wear it on the rare occasions when a summer associate thinks it’s funny to put a load of silly case names into a court document.”

“You should have checked it before filing it,” April insisted.

She’d apologized profusely yesterday, but as time passed she’d clearly decided that perhaps this wasn’t entirely her fault after all. I should have checked the document, especially after I’d just put April through hell with that presentation.

“What sort of stuff did you put in there anyway?” I asked.

“Bad stuff,” she replied. “Naughty things.”

“Hmm, well, in that case I can’t be too mad I suppose. You look nervous.”

“I’m terrified. My heart’s racing a mile a minute. Aren’t you worried?”

“I always try to remain calm. My heart rate only goes up during exercise and certain other physical activities. Look.” I took her hand and pressed it against my chest so that she could feel my heart.

“That’s strangely therapeutic. I think it’s actually helping me calm down.”

She kept her hand on my chest until the large wooden door opened and a man in his early twenties, presumably the court clerk, told us to come inside.

The judge was sitting in his chair, which meant this was going to be an official reaming. I told April to sit in one of the seats at the side while I went up and approached the bench.

April had insisted on coming along and owning up to the whole thing, but I’d made it clear she was to keep quiet. The last thing I wanted was to make this look like I was throwing my summer associate under the bus.

“You might as well both come up here,” the judge said, in a deep booming voice. “I’m guessing the young lady had something to do with this as well.”

“No your honor, it was all me,” I replied, motioning with my hand for April to stay seated.

“Really? So you cited a Supreme Court case as being between the parties of ‘My Tight Pussy’ versus ‘Your Hard Cock.’ ”

“Um…”

“And,” the judge continued, “while I respect the privacy of what two consenting adults get up to in the bedroom, I can’t help but think that you did not write ‘the court held that you must pull my long blonde hair the next time you take me from behind.’ ”

With pleasure, April
.

I turned around and saw her desperately looking everywhere other than at the judge. There wasn’t much I could do to keep her out of it now, so I motioned for her to come and join me.

“Obviously, your honor, that motion should never have been filed. It was intended as a joke. I just filed the wrong one.”

“Clearly. Look, I don’t care what goes on between you two. You wouldn’t be the first pair of lawyers to have an office romance--I can vouch for that personally--however when you took on this case you accepted a significant responsibility.”

“Yes, your honor,” I said, with April repeating it after me. “Obviously I accept full responsibility for this. It won’t happen again.”

“No, it had better not. I do hope you intend to take your
pro bono
responsibilities seriously from now on, Mr. Arrington?”

“Certainly, your honor.”

“You could prove that by, for example, volunteering at the the local law school to help with the moot court competition. I’m sure two intelligent young attorneys like yourselves could find a way to help.”

“That sounds like an excellent suggestion,” I said reluctantly, as a weekend spent screwing April disappeared before my eyes.

“Good. If that’s the case, I don’t see any need for further disciplinary action. Have fun, you two.”

The judge banged his gavel, and strolled off whistling and clearly feeling rather pleased with his morning’s work.

“What just happened?” April asked as we left the courtroom.

“You landed us with a weekend spent listening to law students give crappy oral arguments. That’s what happened.”

“Oh. Well, it could be worse.”

“If you say so. I hate law students.”

“Thanks. No offense taken.”

“You’re the exception. Now, let’s go back to the office and read over this motion you wrote. I have a feeling this one is going to be a lot less dry than usual.”

I
considered myself a studious person
, but you had to be a special kind of insane to be at law school on a Saturday during the summer break.

Even so, people were huddled over books in all the common areas, and no doubt the library would still be half-full. I may not have much of a life myself, but I could console myself in thinking that perhaps there were people with even less of a social presence.

Foster had arrived at the school early and arranged for us to both be judges, despite the fact that I would have less moot court experience than the contestants. All I’d done was compete in the mandatory first-year competition, and even though I’d enjoyed it, I’d not signed up for any more competitions. Court appearances were rare for corporate work, so it had seemed like a waste of my energy. Now, I wished I knew what was going on so as not to look completely stupid.

Mind you, it’s not like Foster had all that much experience either. He’d bragged about winning one of the moot court competitions while he’d been in law school, but when I’d questioned him about it, he’d admitted to having slept with both of the female judges. Knowing what he was like in bed, they were bound to have voted in his favor.

“How did you get us on the judging panel?” I asked Foster. “I’m still a law student. Some of the other judges are actual judges.”

“Judge Whiteman was supposed to be on the panel. He had to pull out which is no doubt why he conveniently suggested we show up here today.”

“He screwed us over, didn’t he?”

“Completely,” Foster agreed. “Come on, let’s go take our seats.”

We strolled into one of the law school’s moot court rooms, and sat on the raised table that looked down on the lawyers’ podiums. I’d stood on one of those podiums just over a year ago. It was terrifying down there looking up at the judges.

I couldn’t imagine anyone being particularly scared looking up at me, but I had to admit, I definitely felt more powerful in this position. I suppose there had to be some advantages to being a judge; it certainly had nothing to do with the meager pay.

I didn’t recognize any of the names on the list of contestants, so at least I wouldn’t be judging any of the few friends I had at law school.

The first two contestants stood up at the podium and introduced themselves to Foster, myself, and the third judge. The first speaker, a nervous guy who started sweating within minutes, gave his prepared speech about why his client’s position on some contract issue was the correct one and that the court should decide in his favor to avoid an unconscionable outcome.

He alternated eye contact between all three judges, as I knew he had been told to do, and I tried to look reassuring, but he didn’t grow in confidence. The third judge asked most of the questions, but Foster chipped in with a few as well. I intended to remain quiet unless something caught my attention. It was harder to sound stupid when you didn’t say anything.

By the time we listened to the same arguments for the fourth time, my eyes had glazed over and only the third judge had retained any kind of interest in proceedings.

Foster scribbled something on his pad of paper and pushed it towards me.
Do you know of anywhere we can go to get some privacy
?

The man had a one-track mind. Fortunately, I liked the direction that track was taking.

Lecture halls on top floor are usually quiet
, I wrote on my paper.
Why? :-)

I need to take a nap
.

Not what I’d been expecting.

I went to write a response, when Foster’s hand grabbed hold of my thigh and gave it a firm squeeze. Immediately all the nerves and tension I’d felt pretending to be a judge evaporated, and a warmth flooded my body, relaxing every muscle and making it almost impossible to keep my eyes open.

His fingers crept up my leg, turning the warmth to a fire, which started igniting my senses. I fought to keep my eyes open, but all I wanted to do was close them and throw my head back while Foster teased me to the point of ecstasy.

The girl kept giving me funny looks and I could swear she knew what was going on. I snapped out of my trance and tried to peel Foster’s hand off my thigh. I might as well have tried to remove my own foot from my leg. His hand was wedged on tight, as if it were a part of my body.

I gave up, but then Foster decided to remove his hand anyway. Typical. When I wanted him to do something, he fought me, even if that’s what he wanted to do regardless. He was such a stubborn ass sometimes.

No sooner was his hand off my thigh, than he had taken hold of my hand and placed it right between his legs. I couldn’t fight him. If I struggled in any way then it would be obvious what was happening under the table, if it wasn’t already.

Foster’s cock was rock hard already. My fingers curled around the thick shaft and squeezed tightly enough that I could feel blood pulsing through the thick vein running up the middle. Just thinking about Foster’s meat pumping into me had me dripping wet between my legs. My body acted on impulse around him, and I was hopeless to exert any kind of control.

I tried stroking his cock, but his pants and belt got in the way, so I had to give up. I wrote another note on the paper.
I hope that erection isn’t because you were looking at her
. I didn’t know the name of the law student currently speaking in front of us, but she was undeniably pretty and her top opened enough at the front to tease the large breasts that lay underneath. Even I’d looked twice.

It’s all for you
, came the reply.

After the fourth presentation, we’d finally earned ourselves an hour break for lunch. Foster quickly made it clear he had no intention of joining the third judge and the contestants for the free lunch provided in one of the communal rooms.

“Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand and leading me towards the stairs. “I hear there’s a lecture room on the top floor that should be vacant.”

I needed to start working out more, because by the time we made it to the fourth floor I was out of breath and breathing heavily just trying to keep up with Foster who practically sprinted to the top.

Sure enough, the lecture room on the top floor was completely empty. A feeling of dread washed over me as I walked inside; I associated this room with Civil Procedure classes, and that would put a damper on anyone’s sexual desire. Not for long though.

“Where do you sit?” Foster asked.

I pointed him to an aisle seat about halfway down. It was the perfect spot, almost exactly in the middle of the room, allowing me to blend in with the crowd and not get noticed.

Foster took off his suit jacket, yanked off his tie, and brazenly unbuttoned his shirt, before sitting down in my seat. The middle of his shirt hung tantalizingly open, revealing part of his firm pecs and most of his solid abs.

“Someone could walk in at any minute,” I said nervously, looking around to double check that the room was empty.

“No one’s going to walk in.”

“What if they do?”

“Then they see us having fun. Who cares? If you don’t start undressing right this second, I’m going to do my shirt back up and I know you don’t want that.”

He was right. I didn’t.

I slipped off my blazer and tugged my blouse out of my skirt. It’s about time I had some fun in here.