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That both made it easier for me and creeped me out.
The camera St. Martin's tech had fixed me up with was in the earrings I wore. I was wired for sound through the unattractive crucifix necklace. The buttons in my shirt were wired for both sound and visual. I wasn't used to wearing a wire and felt like everything I was doing was on display.
Still, I used the time the receptionist was gone to unbutton my shirt down to the middle of my chest. The thing was tight anyway and that made it look like – actually, it looked like something from a pop music video. Lots of boob. I rolled up the sleeves on the blouse, then untucked it and tied it around my waist, wondering how hard the receptionist would roll her eyes when she came back. Hard enough to pass out?
She didn't even blink when she came back. She just said, "You can go back to the Judge's office. Third door on your right." She pointed, looked on the verge of saying something – probably questioning my sanity or if I was sure this grade was that important – and then she just sighed and sat down.
I was torn between giving her a dazzling and dumb smile and thanking her in a sane voice like the one I usually used. Suddenly being thought of as a brainless twit here to seduce a judge for a grade – how would that even work anyway? – was repellant.
I'd asked Cole for the chance to do this.
If this was where being with him again for less than 24 hours got me, maybe the men in my life telling me I needed to rethink things weren't wrong.
29
Annie
Where the receptionist had just sighed a lot, Judge Conway actually got out of his chair and came around the desk to shake my hand, which made me want to wash it, and to tenderly take my elbow to help me to the chair I was to take. As if I were one hundred and eighteen years old and not the eighteen I was claiming.
"My dear, how can I help you today?" The judge deposited me in a chair and moved back behind his desk. He was sixty if he was a day and while he had probably been attractive when younger, time had done that thing to him where his hair looked coarse and oily and bristly, too thick and in the wrong places. His nose had probably been straight once, a Cary Grant nose, but he'd aged and probably drank a bit and it was wide, fleshy and pockmarked now.
Still, had he not given off a very heavy vibe of predator, he would have been clean and boring and a not-that-attractive older man.
Attitude matters. His was enough that if I had been an eighteen year old ditzy student I might have run screaming despite the level of ditzy.
The chair he'd led me to was set up beside his desk. Beside his desk as in touching his desk, like a sidecar on a motorcycle, putting the person sitting in the chair within easy patting distance of the person sitting in the leather executive chair behind the desk.
I glanced down at the plush carpeting and the chair legs were definitely dug into it. The chair hadn't been moved just for my visit. It was always there. There were other chairs on the far side of the desk where people usually sat, like when visiting an attorney or a banker, the desk between the people in the meeting. Those were the "boring people" who weren't here to play seduction games, I assumed.
To me that meant the judge had received info from somebody that the co-ed coming his way for an interview was hot. Intentionally hot. As in wanting something and willing to fuck around to get it.
Or maybe not. Shit. Maybe he knew there was a co-ed coming and so set up all the chairs so he could have his pick of where to place me once he saw me.
Why was I looking for conspiracies? He was the only one I wanted to trap.
"I'm a student at UNLV?" I started in again, all my sentences ending in an uptick as if I wasn't quite sure of my facts. A little breathless. A little giddy.
A little grossed out as the judge checked out my cleavage and rearranged himself a few times to get a better view and probably to accommodate a growing erection.
"So I thought since you stand for cleaning up Sin City, I would interview you!" I said, ending on an upbeat and a definite note. I'd told him about my iffy grades, my need to graduate, my dream of being a paralegal, and he'd paid attention to something the entire time. Might have been my heaving breasts as I breathlessly described that dream.
Please tell me you're getting all this! I thought at Cole's tech. Sometimes buildings like this could be too thick, too much concrete and steel, to transmit. Or there could be dampening devices. Or – bad luck? Of course I should also be recording but bad luck was a possibility there, too.
Only the bad luck was just beginning. Because the judge had just shoved himself forward in his chair so he could put an understanding hand on my leg.
Even as his hand crept up my leg toward the hem of my skirt I was rethinking. When the first finger dipped under the plaid, I made the decision that this would have to be enough to stop him, because I wasn't offering myself up to stop him by going all the way.
It was an odd moment of internal clarity. It had actually been a long time since I'd found myself in a situation where I could actually make such a decision.
I stood, catapulting out of the chair as if burned.
"What are you doing?" I demanded. Like any normal person would. "It's just a grade! All I wanted was an interview!" As if just putting two and two together, I said, "Is that why you were willing to meet with me in person? I wanted to talk to you about your moral beliefs!" Oh, please let this be transmitting.
The judge stood. He wasn't wearing robes, just the pants to some boring suit, and they were definitely tented. I didn't have to pretend to be appalled because suddenly I was understanding so much more about consent. What Cole did, with women who needed his help, women who he wanted to help but still wanted something from?
There was consent there. It was obtained through intimidation or blackmail or just the fact that he had something they – we – wanted or needed but there was still consent. Because there was still the chance to walk away from the situation. Don't want to be Master's chew toy? Yeah, I got that suddenly, and I understood that this was very different. This man was in a position of authority not because he was rich but because he had law enforcement behind him. He was a judge. His word would be believed before someone who came before him or before an idiot college student who thought she could "charm" her way into an interview but never expected things to go this far.
"I have to go," I said, gathering my notebook and pen, my bag.
