“It was just a little nudity. Besides, it was an accident.”
“Nothing about that looked like an accident. You just barged in. Do you even know what you thought you left in there?”
His eyes bounced across the floor as if something would reveal itself—an answer that would offer itself up to my inquiry.
“My watch,” he said, his eyes finally landing on his wrist. I narrowed my eyes at him, and his eyebrows lifted innocently. I focused my attention on the large face and chunky gold band wrapped around his thick wrist. A watch I hadn’t noticed up until then, but was the equivalent of a five-carat diamond on a woman’s finger—it was kind of hard to miss. My eyes didn’t stay on the watch long, instead following the dusting of hair across smooth cream skin, up forearms thick-slabbed and pulsing with every breath he inhaled. Those arms could hold me up nicely. I wondered if I took advantage of those arms while I was with him. Did I notice them? Maybe not like I was noticing now because we obviously had other things on our minds at the time, but now that I saw them, I wanted to lick a trail from fingers to shoulder, and feel his muscles strain against my tongue.
“I’m going to try to get some work done. I’ll be in my office if you need me,” I said with rushed words before escaping the room.
Chapter Five
The walk from the living room to the kitchen felt lighter than it had the past two days. Work always had a way of calming my frenzied mind. Everything in my line of work was based on logic, facts, things that are irrefutable. Truths that couldn’t be denied. Every case was like a puzzle waiting to be put together. So, as I carried my laptop back to the dining room, no thoughts clouded my mind. Nothing aside from a perfectly blank slate to help me pull together the facts of the case I was helping with. There was no storm or hot-as-sin one-night stand sitting in my living room like a walking hard-on. There was just me searching for a truth.
There were a couple of cases I’d been working on, but only one I had any desire to look at. When Henderson & Fitz first took the case, everyone in the office was elated with possibilities of what this could do for our firm. Ordinarily, it would be a simple case of our client suing for damages in a domestic abuse/battery case, but the defendant was the heir of the Trevaunt fortune, and from what I’d heard of the pictures of our client, Trevaunt did quite a number on her face. I tried not to pay too much attention to tabloid gossip, but I read somewhere that he went missing after it all happened. No one had seen him in weeks, and the only contact my firm had had with him had been seldom, and only via phone.
My job as an associate with a prestigious law firm was very fulfilling, but I wanted more. There was something about being in a courtroom and presenting that gave me a rush like nothing else. The adrenaline called to me. I wasn’t usually in the courtroom with Henderson or Fitz, but occasionally I was needed. And when that happened, it was like front-row tickets at a Yankees game. Of course, I kept my composure, not showing how excited I was to be picked to assist in a court case, but really I could fall at their feet thanking them for the honor. Don’t get me wrong, I like getting my hands dirty with the nitty-gritty work, too, but nothing compared to the courtroom.
Up until then, I hadn’t spent too much time looking into the defendant, EJ Trevaunt. I’d been trying to get background information on his ex-girlfriend, our client, Lara Farrows. There wasn’t much to find on her because she seemed to have a relatively humble life. She was born in Wisconsin, moved to Vegas to attend a university on scholarship, and dropped out of school a few months after meeting Mr. Trevaunt.
I spent the better part of the afternoon going over the medical records after the incident involving the two. Mr. Trevaunt claimed they broke up on May 12th and on May 15th, Ms. Farrows was admitted to the hospital with a fractured cheekbone, some lacerations, and bruising along her face and arms. Kerri was able to give me a copy of the medical report, but it didn’t have the photos included, making it harder to work from a written copy of what she looked like. It’s true what they say about a picture: it is worth a thousand words. I just wished I had the photo, so I could use my own words instead of those of the doctor’s.
My eyes felt dry after hours spent staring at my laptop screen. I pushed away from the desk, resting my elbows on the glass as I rubbed my fists into my strained eyes. I’d been looking through notes of past cases to use as guidance, yet still felt no closer than I was when I opened my laptop.
“Now looks like a good time for a break. I made lunch,” Joel said, standing within the doorframe of my office. I seemed to always find him hanging out in the doorways, his distance making me more uncomfortable than when he was standing right next to me. It felt like he was able to see more of me that way, but there was also something that drew me to him. Perhaps, it was the same thing that had me staring at him at the club, just like all the other onlookers. He had a certain magnetism that couldn’t be ignored.
I didn’t know how long I stayed looking at him like that, but it must have been minutes because he finally broke away from the door, each step slow and graceful with a calculated approach. I felt like I was being stalked as my eyes watched his feet move closer. By the time my eyes landed on his face, he was wearing that shit-eating grin of his. If I was speechless before, I was practically comatose now. His hand reached over the expanse of my desk, his palm facing up, willing me to place my hand in his. That hand promised to take me places, to do things that I’d only ever fantasized about.
That hand was dangerous.
He was still wearing a smile, but this one was endearing. My lips twitched at the corners just from looking at him. I didn’t take his hand though. I couldn’t. There was too much temptation in touching him. All of the thoughts of that morning came flooding back—seeing a half-naked Joel in nothing but his boxer-briefs, his hand casually brushing his chest as if to coax me into partaking of his flesh.
“Well?”
He questioned with his hand still outstretched, breaking me from my thoughts. I stumbled out of my chair and he simply watched, his eyes crinkling a bit at the corners as he looked back at the hand I bypassed. Apparently, he was amused by my blatant refusal at touching him. I didn’t really want to give him the impression that I had a problem with touching him; in fact, I didn’t want him to think about us touching at all, but it was too late. I tried not to dwell too much on it as he led me back to the dining room where lunch was already set for us.
***
“Sit on the couch while I grab something.”
While I continued to the couch, he hung a left to the kitchen. I took a seat uncertain of his intentions when I heard cupboards opening and closing in rapid succession as if he was looking for something in particular.
“You know, you really do have a way of making me feel like a guest in my own home,” I yelled over the clapping sound of the cabinets being shut. The clanking of glasses was my only response before he returned to the living room.
“Call it a talent of mine. I have a few other ones but you’ve already seen some of those.”
“Hardy-har-har. Now, why am I sitting here? The electricity is still out, so watching a movie is obviously out.”
He was still laughing to himself when I noticed the bottle in his hand. I couldn’t remember buying the bottle of whiskey or drinking it for that matter, but the way the liquid sloshed around the half-empty bottle like a lava lamp led me to believe that I bought it at some point in the past six months or so.