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“Judge Harris, I would respectfully ask you to give me and Caitlin the room,” Cormac commanded, and the tension in the room became so dense that it felt hard to breathe.
I expected the judge to refuse. It was his chambers after all. Instead, I heard the telltale sound of his chair scraping back against the floor. In the silence, the quiet click of his shoes echoed deafeningly all around me. The air shifted slightly as he passed behind me.
Cormac didn’t look at the judge. His weighty blue gaze stayed firmly set on me.
The sound of the door opening and then shutting was deafeningly loud. Somehow, it was so much worse than the judge’s gavel that had cemented the doom of my sentence into reality. My heart pounded.
It was at that moment that I realized that I might have underestimated Cormac Murphy. It took some serious brass balls to come into a courthouse, pretend to be my uncle and then ask—no, demand—the judge to leave his own chambers.
Who was he? Why was he here? What did he want?
Slowly, Cormac stood up and closed the distance between his chair and mine in two broad strides. Then he grabbed my upper arm far more roughly than the guards had just minutes ago and swiftly forced me to my feet. Caught off guard and truly beginning to grow nervous at whatever this was, I tried to yank myself out of his grasp.
“How dare you lay your hands on me,” I spat.
Up close like this, I couldn’t help but notice the scent of his cologne. Initially, the aroma of citrus caught me by surprise, followed by a woodsy, herbaceous scent of a smoky campfire, but that wasn’t all. I took another deep breath, catching hints of coriander, sandalwood, and patchouli, maybe even some lavender. It was a heady scent that sent my senses spiraling along with the frantic beat of my heart.
He led me over to the judge’s desk, boldly using his free arm to sweep the surface clean. I fought and tried once more to pull free from him, but he was much bigger and stronger than me. I was barely over five feet tall, and he towered over six feet. Not only that, but his physique was all muscle. I didn’t have to see beneath his suit. The way the fabric clung to his hard form told me that.
I swallowed hard, trying my best to put my all into fighting him. I could call out for the judge, but I wasn’t certain he would answer. The guards probably wouldn’t help me either. To them, I was nothing more than a felon.
“I want my lawyer,” I shrieked.
“You have me,” Cormac rumbled, and before I even knew what was happening, he bent me over the desk.
I froze, my hipbones digging into the corner of the desk. When I finally remembered myself, I slapped my palms against the wooden surface and tried to push myself back up. His broad palm pressed firmly down in the middle of my back, holding me in place with a demoralizingly tiny amount of effort.
“Let me up,” I screeched, slowly coming to terms with the fact that I wasn’t strong enough to fight this beast of a man, and I started to panic.
Who even was he? Why did he have this much power?
Without a word, he brushed his free hand against my thigh, just enough to stir the threading of my fishnets. I stilled.
He wanted to fuck me.
Was he some sort of rich freak that bought off female felons? Was he going to rape me right here in the judge’s chambers? Myriad possibilities raced through my head, each one worse than the last with the final one ending with me chopped into bits and destroyed in a vat of acid.
“You and I are going to have a discussion, Caitlin,” he began.
His voice was close to my left ear, brushing against the tiny hairs of my earlobe and I shivered, trying to quell my rising fear so that it didn’t overcome my brave tenacity. The deep, gravelly rumble of his voice took me by surprise. It was different from before because he was now speaking directly to me and only me. My heart pounded even faster, and my breath caught in the back of my throat.
“Please let me up,” I tried, and I hated the way my voice trembled.
He’d probably think I was afraid, and I was, but I didn’t want him to know that.
Would he take my panties down? Would he rip them off?
He probably thought I was some easy lay with my reputation. Hell, my first boyfriend had spread one rumor after the next about me and I’d held my head up and owned every single one, telling all my friends that he only lasted two pumps before he came. I took his story and turned it on its head, making myself the victor when he was just a weak boy that had his feelings hurt because I’d been the one to dump him first.
Cormac probably assumed I was a bad girl that liked to do bad things. How would he even know that I’d never had sex before?
I don’t know why my worries suddenly turned to stressing about whether or not he would think something was wrong with me. His fingers brushed against the hem of my skirt, and I froze, trying to prepare myself for what was to come. Every book, movie, or television show had made it seem like losing your virginity was painful for a woman.
Would I be one of those girls?
I waited for him to lift my skirt. Even though I was mentally prepared for him to bare me that way, it was somehow worse than anything I could have imagined. Bent over like this, the skirt was just long enough to cover the whole of my cheeks, but he edged it up painfully slowly. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to imagine the view he had of my curves as the fabric rode up inch by inch. It was only when he pushed it up to the small of my back that I finally hazarded a small breath.
“I think you and I got off on the wrong foot the other day, Caitlin. Perhaps you can choose to listen to me now that the position between the two of us has changed.”
