Licking my lips, I stared at my shoes. “No shit? Hmm.”
“No.” Jury pushed me too hard, and I nearly tipped over. “Whatever you’re thinking, no. Judge, just let it go. You are a legend. You banged a teacher. Go you. But—”
“Shh, I’m thinking.”
He groaned.
Laughter behind us had me turning around toward the front of the club—Iton and Hill rushed onto the sidewalk with plastic cups they shouldn’t have taken outside of the bar, but no one chased after them to tell them not to do it. Iton was taller than me by about four inches, which made him larger than life. He had a shaved head and dimples that popped even when he was frowning, and his mahogany cheeks glowed with sweat, so he must’ve been having a good time dancing. Hill was the shortest out of all of us, and I’d looked at him a time or two. He was wide with muscles and had spiral curls, which were nearly black with sweat and clung to his forehead. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him in a bad mood, unless he’d lost a basketball game, and he loved to party, especially with us.
“You got booted!” Iton howled like a werewolf, and Hill high-fived him and joined in. Sometimes they still acted as if they were in high school, and tonight was apparently one of those times.
“Fuckin’ loser. What did you do? We saw you with that guy. Did the bouncers catch you with your dick out?” Hill mimed waving around his cock, then pouted when he spilled half of what was left of his drink directly onto his running shoes. “Aw, fuck.”
“Serves you right, asshole,” Jury said, coming to my rescue. “According to Judge he was an amazing fuck, so show the dude some respect. He serviced my brother, which is as good as doing me.”
Okay, I was ready to punch him again. I smacked Jury’s arm hard, and he haltingly apologized between laughing like a fucker.
Iton hummed, downed the rest of his drink, and tossed the cup onto the sidewalk. “Sinful? Someplace else? Not all of us managed to unload yet.” He shook his head at me as if I’d disappointed him and every person he’d ever met. “You jumped the gun. We said we’d wait until midnight to break up the party.”
I had to laugh. “You can’t pass up a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
He lowered his head and glared at me.
“Sure, why not. Let’s go. I can drive to the next place because I didn’t drink yet.”
“Yes, you can be the DD because you’re a fuck and you already... fucked,” Hill said, eloquent as ever. I rolled my eyes. How they’d managed to get so well on their way to smashed already was a mystery. Moderation wasn’t something we were known for when we were out together, though.
“All right, all right,” I grumbled, and the other three idiots cheered. I gave Jury a hug, because he was my favorite and only brother, and grinned to myself.
Flynn Goddard.I might not have been able to find a random Flynn in New Gothenburg, at least not without a lot of time on the project, but I could certainly find one teacher from our law school. That would be as easy as looking up his classes.
Humming to myself, I led the way to the rest of our night out. Jury caught my eye and shook his head. He’d always been able to tell when I was getting stuck on something—an idea or a person—but I didn’t care what he thought about this.
I would be seeing Flynn again.
* * *
Monday rolled aroundwith startling speed, and I made sure to get to campus with plenty of time to spare. My plan had to go off without a hitch. It hadn’t taken much to find Flynn on the New Gothenburg State Law School website, and it was a quick five minutes from spotting his faculty profile to finding out the times for his classes this week. After I knew when and where I could cross paths with him to hopefully get his number—or something—it seemed like a good idea to do some digging on the man.
I’d googled and searched the internet far and wide, read a few papers he’d published, and found some articles about cases he’d worked when he was practicing law instead of teaching. He had a tendency to help poor people, which was nice. My dad and papa didn’t go in for charity that wasn’t able to be written off on taxes, and I loved my parents, but it was a nice change of speed to see someone out there doing good.
It made me like Flynn more that he seemed to have a giving nature. I was beginning to build a deeper picture of this man, and I’d only fucked him for ten minutes after making out with him in a bar.
Maybe this was a bit much... but I also didn’t care.
It gave me a high to have a slight advantage over him, to learn things about him, and even though my extended digging into his background was slightly fucked-up, I hadn’t been able to stop myself from continuing. Being a generous person was an important quality in a man I wanted to make my sub. Flynn would be a good boy—the whole package.
I wasn’t sure at what point over the weekend my thoughts had shifted from “get in that ass again” to “own that ass,” but it had probably occurred around 2:00 a.m. on Sunday, when I was four court documents deep into my research. Dad always said I would make a good lawyer someday, but I was beginning to worry a little about the ability to use my research powers for evil... or whatever this happened to be.
I was giving myself stalker vibes but was also reluctant to rein it in.
Because once I had a name for the man who’d bent over for me so nicely, it also hadn’t been that difficult to find Flynn’s cheating ex that had put that sad tone in his voice at the bar. It had been almost too easy to figure out where the man worked. His Facebook profile was public. He’d posted a video from his new man’s TikTok, some pretty boy named Stanton, almost like he wanted everyone to be able to snoop all over his life.
Or maybe he wanted to rub Flynn’s face in it.
It all made me want to rearrange the guy’s face.
Jury had helped me with the social media hunt—under light protest. In the end he’d done it because, “If you’re going to be a psycho, I want to be here to document your slow slide into insanity.” He’d stared directly into my eyes while he’d spoken, and I’d shrugged. Whatever made him sleep better at night. But it had beenhimwho’d found the first pics of the ex, and he’d let out one of his outraged, overly dramatic, sipping-tea gasps while he’d done it. The dumbass loved gossip, he just pretended he didn’t for show.
