A guy like me thought them but he never told anyone about them until the right someone came along. Who would have ever thought the right someone would be a tiny dynamo with pink hair and an appetite for self-destruction and trouble. “Night, Avett. Be safe tomorrow.”

She nodded loosely. “Will do.” She blew me a little kiss and the screen went dark.

I got to my feet and made my way to the bathroom. It wasn’t until I was halfway through my second shower of the night that I remembered I wanted to know what she meant by my executive cock. The idea made me chuckle and as I washed the evidence of how she affected me off of my stomach. I wondered if the person that had coined the phrase “trying to capture lightning in a jar” had ever met Avett Walker.

THE NEXT DAY I was bogged down in client meeting after client meeting. A couple were cases I had already agreed to take on but a couple were new clients. New clients that I vetted way more carefully than I would have in the past. I asked questions. I wanted details beyond bank account balances and ability to pay my fees. I turned down a guy that was out on bail for suspected arson. He was a friend of Orsen’s and told me the partner had sent him to me and that I couldn’t come any more highly recommended.

I thanked him for the praise, but the more I talked to him, the more his inflated confidence and sense of entitlement filled my office, and the more I knew I couldn’t and wouldn’t take his case. The guy was accused of burning down his girlfriend’s house after she left him for someone else. It was a brutal and unnecessary crime, and when he mentioned that the girlfriend, her new boyfriend, and the child that he shared with the woman were home when the blaze started, it took every ounce of self-control I had not to leap across my desk and hit him in the face. He had no remorse, no basic human decency to pretend like he was sympathetic to what was lost. Considering how devastated Avett had been after the fire that took her home I couldn’t stomach the thought of helping this guy out.

I told him I wouldn’t be able to take his case and got the expected reaction.

He was pissed. He called me a hack. He told me he would take it up with my boss. I told him that if he and Orsen were such close friends he should ask the partner to represent him at his trial. The guy huffed out of my office, leaving a slammed door and the stench of guilt and wrongness behind.

I knew my refusal to take the case and the paycheck attached to it would have Orsen in my office, so when my receptionist told me I had a visitor the last person I expected to walk through my door was Avett.

She had on leggings covered in a spray of colorful roses that clung to her curvy legs like a second skin, with her ever present combat boots and long black top that was fitted with a scoop neck until it flared out at her hips like a tutu. She looked like a hipster ballerina with her Technicolor hair piled up on the top of her head in a messy bun and bright red lips painted on her smiling face.

Before I could ask her what she was doing in my office downtown when she was supposed to be under lock and key, she shoved a Styrofoam container in my hands and bent down to give me a hard kiss on my mouth, which went slack with surprise.

“Asa is on Avett babysitting duty today and he had a property around the corner he wanted to look at. He’s opening his own bar. He wants to do some kind of upscale speakeasy. He asked me if I wanted to run the kitchen for him.” She barked out a laugh. “He’s insane.” Her eyes glowed at me as she propped her hip on the edge of my desk. “I told him your office was around the corner, so he walked me to the entrance, but then I saw that there was a Greek food truck parked across the street and bet you hadn’t had lunch yet, since you were with me all weekend, so I thought I would say hi and feed you.” All the words tumbled out each faster and more hurried than the other. She smiled at me and I felt it take up so much of the empty space that was inside of me. “Food trucks are like my new favorite thing. They have so many different kinds of food in them and they can go all over the city so you’re not in one location. Freedom and food, they speak to my soul.” She finally ran out of breath. “So hi, here’s lunch.”

I reached out and put my hand on her knee and crooked my finger at her so that she bent down enough that I could touch my lips to hers.

“Hi.”

It was a sweet kiss. It was a kiss that had more than our mouths touching. I was pretty sure with the brush of her pouty lips against mine that I felt her heart bang against my own.

She put her hand on the side of my face and was rubbing her thumb across my cheek when she told me, “You look tired.”

I snorted and ran my hand up her thigh until it was resting against the lush curve of her backside. I wanted to pull those ridiculous leggings off of her and put her in my lap on my dick.

“I wonder why?”

She snickered and bent so that her forehead was touching mine. “I have no idea.”

I was going to kiss her again but as I was getting to my feet so I could grab her face and tilt her head back, my office door swung open and clattered against the wall hard enough to have my diploma and credentials shifting and sliding out of alignment.

I knew Orsen was going to be upset that I turned his friend away, but I didn’t expect the red-faced, squinty-eyed, chest-billowing kind of mad that stormed into my office. Avett let her hands fall away from me and I took a step away from her and closer to Orsen as his furious gaze swept over us. I saw him take in her unusual hair and her colorful outfit before a nasty sneer twisted across his angry mouth.

“If you wanted to take on charity cases and get paid by getting your dick sucked, then you should have joined the D.A.’s office, Jackson. We are not a pro bono firm, we are a firm that takes clients that can pay … with money. Not with whatever else they may be offering.” I heard Avett suck in a sharp breath and saw her whole body go stiff out of the corner of my eye.

I put my hands on my hips and gave Orsen a hard look. “That’s enough. I’ve been picking and choosing my own cases for years, Orsen. I’ve earned that right. The one today was no different.”

His angry gaze swept back over Avett and then bored into me with warning and threat obvious between each blink he took.

“No, but her case was different. Did you even bother to send her a bill, Quaid, or did you decide it was okay to waste your time and the firm’s valuable resources because you wanted to get your dick wet?”

I opened my mouth to tell him he needed to shut the hell up when he held up his hand before I could even begin.