Confessions of a Litigation God: A Legal Affairs Full Length Erotic Novel (43 page)

“It needed to
be done,” I respond as I watch her sit back down behind her
desk.

Turning to me, she
cocks an eyebrow. “Why is that?”

I don’t answer
her, instead reaching inside my coat pocket and pulling out her
letter of resignation she turned in to me two weeks ago. Throwing it
on her desk, I watch as she stares at it a moment, and then looks up
at me in confusion.

“Open it,”
I tell her, nodding back down at the envelope.

She reaches out and
picks it up, opening the flap and looking inside. Her eyebrows furrow
inward and she turns the envelope upside down, letting the tiny
scraps inside flutter out over her desk.

“I don’t
accept your resignation,” I tell her firmly, and as evidenced
by her letter I just returned to her torn to shreds.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.
You’re not quitting. I need you.”

She curls a lip
upward and scoffs at me. “You don’t need me. You can put
an ad in the paper and have a hundred attorneys lined up in the
morning, all with better grades and references than I have.”

“No. You don’t
get it,” I tell her softly, I but annunciate very clearly. “I.
Need. You.”

Mac’s eyebrows
rise high now, as she understands what I’m saying. I take two
steps until I’m standing directly in front of her as she looks
up at me from her chair.

Dropping to my
knees, I watch her eyes go warm, her lips slack. Leaning forward, I
don’t say a word but merely wrap my arms around her waist and
lay my head in her lap. It’s a move calculated for her to
understand how very sorry I am for hurting her, and how very much I
need her. I’m literally putting myself in her arms and begging
her to let me back in. It’s the most humbling thing I’ve
ever done in my life.

Mac’s arms
come up and she puts her hands on my head, stroking her fingers
through my hair. I sigh in contentment, because her touch feels so
comforting. I decide this is the best thing I’ve ever felt. I’m
never moving from this position, and I let Mac pet me as I lay in her
embrace.

After what could be
forever of basking in her touch, I squeeze her waist before pulling
back.

My voice shakes with
emotion. “I need you, Mac. I need your smile, your touch, and
your wit. I need your tenderness, your brilliance, and your common
sense. I need you to be my champion, and I need you to want to come
home to me every night. I need all of those things…
desperately. I think I might die without them.”

I’m relieved
when her eyes fill with hope and yearning, yet she still feels the
need to clarify. “You need me?”

“You’re
usually not this dense,” I say with a grin.

She’s adorable
when she exposes her ear by pushing her hair behind it with her
fingers. “It’s just… I’m not sure I heard
you correctly. You did say you need me?”

“Yes,” I
affirm as I bring my hands up to cup her face. Leaning in, I give the
sweetest kiss I’ve ever bestowed. “I need you because I
love you. When you love someone the way I love you, the need for that
person is unquenchable. It will never go away… it will never
abate. My need for you will be forever.”

Her voice cracks
with sentiment. “And when did you come to this realization?”

I smile at her with
understanding eyes. “I think I’ve always known it. I was
just too filled with so many other things that I refused to
acknowledge it. But last night… I held you while you slept,
and I just laid there… the entire time, realizing how
wonderful it felt to have your body next to mine. When it got close
to the time I needed to leave so I could get ready for work, I felt
like my heart was being fucking pulled out of my chest. That’s
the moment I decided to acknowledge it.”

“Why didn’t
you just stick around… tell me then?” she asks in
curiosity.

“Because I had
to let my hatred of Cal go first. And Mac, I mean it with every
breath in my body. I did hate him. But the minute I decided to
forgive him, I became a different person. A better person.”

Her hand comes out
and she slides her fingers along my cheek. Her touch is so soft, so
caring, that I can’t help but close my eyes so I can give full
attention to the peacefulness coursing through me.

“I’m so
proud of you, Matt. You’re really kind of amazing.”

Opening my eyes, I
grin at her. “And you love me?”

“What makes
you think that?” she teases, leaning in to kiss me.

I take a moment to
savor her lips on mine, because this feels like the first time we
have ever kissed. There’s a different quality to it, now that
I’ve let all of my bitterness go. It’s like everything
was muted before, but now I’m seeing everything in vivid
display… I’m feeling everything with greater depth.

I pull away and
smile at her. “Because you already told me you did.”

Wrapping her arms
around my neck, she leans into me. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

“Say it
again,” I demand urgently, because it’s the last thing I
need for this to officially become the best day of my life.

She doesn’t
make me wait, and it’s even better than I could have imagined.
“I love you… so much.”

We kiss again,
sweetly, but then her tongue slides into my mouth and desire starts
to course through me.

“Let’s
take the rest of the day off,” I say as I move my lips over to
her ear. “I need to be inside of you.”

She groans and digs
her fingers into my shoulders, but shakes her head no. “I
can’t. I have to get this stuff finished. You know, today’s
my last day and all.”

I laugh at her
silliness and kiss her again. “Didn’t you understand me?
I’m not accepting your resignation. There’s no way I’m
letting you out of my sight. And I sure as hell don’t want you
working around Cal unattended. I don’t trust the bastard.”

“Hey!”
she chastises me as she punches me lightly in the shoulder. “I
thought you forgave him?”

“I did, Mac,”
I tell her somberly. “But I don’t like him. We’re
not friends.”

She sighs, but not
in frustration or anger, but understanding. “No, I don’t
suppose you are. You did more than enough by offering forgiveness.
But I can’t turn my back on him. I made a deal with him to open
up a law firm.”

“Yeah, well…
I sort of might have changed his mind after I talked to him today.”

“What did you
do?” she asks suspiciously.

I hold my hands up
in surrender. “Nothing bad, I swear it. I just sort of offered
him a job here, as long as you agreed to stay.”

“What? You
asked Cal… your arch nemesis… to come work for you? I
thought you said you didn’t trust the bastard.”

“I don’t,”
I tell her with a smirk. “What better way to keep tabs on him
than having him come to work for me?”

Mac doesn’t
fall for it and just looks at me skeptically.

“Fine,”
I capitulate with huffiness. “I want you to stay. You’re
a brilliant attorney, and you’re going places. I want you on my
team. I also want you within reach of me at all times because I love
you to fucking death. So, the easiest thing seemed to be for me to
get Cal on board. I knew you had committed to him, but if he came
here, you’d stay.”

“You’re
rotten,” she reprimands me. “And completely selfish.”

I make no apologies.
“When it comes to you, you’re damn right I am. But talk
to Cal… you both have a decision to make.”

She wraps her arms
back around my neck and kisses me. “I’ll talk to Cal, and
we’ll see. But for now… let’s get out of here.”

I take her hand and
don’t let it go as we navigate the hallways up to the lobby.
She squeezes me tightly and when I look down at her, she gives me a
smile so full of happiness and love, I know that at this moment, I’m
the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet.

“Mac?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m
never letting you go, you know that, right?”

“I’m
counting on it,” she says softly. “And you’ll never
regret it. I promise.”

Yup. Luckiest son of
a bitch on the planet.

Eight Months Later

Today is the day,
and I am so fucking nervous. More nervous than when I got laid for
the first time. Or when I took the bar exam. More nervous than my
first trial. I’m practically quaking in my shoes because the
stakes are higher than I could have ever imagined.

Mac’s office
door is open, and I can hear her voice filtering out. She and Cal
never did take my offer to come to work for my firm. She said
something to the extent of, “I want to do this on my own. I
need to know I can do this on my own without your help.”

Fucking prideful
girl, but damn… I respected the hell out of that.

I did, however,
convince her and Cal to rent office space from me, promising to
contract enough work to them to keep their business just barely
hovering out of the red. It gave me what I want… Mac within an
arm’s reach of me, and I got to keep my eye on Cal.

Not that I needed to
watch him. First, I truly believe that he was beyond remorseful for
the way he hurt me and he would never do that again. I just believe
it deep down. Still doesn’t mean we will ever be friends again,
but for Mac’s sake, I make sure I’m pleasant around him.
Most importantly, though, is that I implicitly trust Mac. Her
character and integrity are golden, lined with platinum, and
sprinkled with diamonds. She would never hurt me. I trust her with my
life, but more telling is that I trust her with Gabe’s life.

I step up to her
office door and see her sitting casually in her chair, leaning back
and tapping a pen against her temple. I’ve come to recognize
that little habit as her “focused mode”. She does it when
she’s concentrating on something, putting all of her energy
into accomplishing her goal. I suppose if she had a pen in her hand
while she was blowing me, she’d probably be tapping it against
her temple too, because damn… her focus is amazing when she
has me balls deep in her mouth.

Mac’s back is
to me so I lean against the door casing, hands casually resting in my
pockets, and listen to my litigation goddess.

“Listen…
I’m not impressed by that offer. It’s twenty-five and not
a penny less. If you don’t pay it, I’ll drag your ass
through the shit storm that is our legal system for so long, that
you’ll be ready to retire before this case is over. And I could
care less if I win it. Just drowning you in legal expenses makes me
all tingly inside.”

She’s silent
for a moment as she listens to whoever is on the other line, but I
assume she gets the answer she wants because the tapping pen goes
still.

Straightening up in
her chair, she tosses the pen on her desk. “Thank you,”
she says to the person on the phone, with a triumphant smile in her
voice. “And have a nice day.”

When her phone hits
the cradle, I pull my hands out of my pockets and start clapping
congratulations. She turns around and gives me a grin.

“That was
fantastic, baby,” I tell her with pride fucking oozing out of
my pores.

She shrugs her
shoulders in nonchalance. “Well… I learned from the
best.”

“Twenty-five?”
I ask her for clarification.

“Yup,
twenty-five hundred dollars. I know it’s not your twenty-five
million, but baby steps,” she tells me with a sheepish grin.

“I’m
proud of you nonetheless,” I tell her truthfully. And I am
proud. Doesn’t matter what she settled the case for, it’s
that she did it with confidence and conviction. She’s not easy
to rattle, and she’s going to be a fucking powerhouse in the
legal field one day. “We should celebrate tonight.”

Chuckling, she tells
me, “I’m not sure a twenty-five hundred dollar settlement
is worth celebrating. But… if you want to give me an extra
orgasm tonight, I wouldn’t be opposed.”

“I can arrange
that,” I tell her, the thought of which is sidetracking my true
purpose here. “But how about we fly down to Florida for a
weekend getaway?”

“That’s
a great idea. And let’s ask Marissa if we can take Gabe.”

God, I love this
woman. I’m offering to take her on a romantic getaway, where we
could have the privacy to fuck until we pass out, but she’d
rather bring Gabe along with us. Not a selfish bone in her body, and
when she does something like this, it makes me want to give her the
world.

“I’ll
give her a call and hopefully I’ll catch her in a good mood,”
I tell her softly.

My relationship with
Marissa has mellowed over the last several months. A few days after I
talked with Cal, and won my girl back, I called Marissa up and
invited her out for coffee. The conversation was awkward at first as
we sat at a small, outdoor table and sipped our drinks.

“So, what did
you want to talk about?” she asked me with impatience, glancing
at her watch.

I stared at her a
moment, trying to remember the woman I had fallen in love with…
wondering where it all went wrong. I couldn’t see anything that
gave me clarity, so I told her softly. “I’m sorry.”

Marissa jerked in
her chair, almost knocking her cup over. “Come again?”

“I’m
sorry for what I put you through. Kicking you out of our house when I
found out about you and Cal… not letting you see Gabe at
first… humiliating you. No matter what you did to me, it was
wrong to do that to the mother of my child.”

Marissa just stared
at me, mouth hanging slightly open, and blinking hard in confusion.
They were the gentlest words she had heard from me in years.

“I don’t
understand,” she murmured in bewilderment.

For the first time
in years, I smiled genuinely at her. “Then let me clarify. I’m
sorry for what I did to you, and I’m asking you to forgive me
for it.”

“What the hell
is going on?” Marissa demanded in confusion, and it made me
laugh, because she’s not used to the new and improved Matt
Connover.