Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

and grope her for several minutes before finally pushing him off and commanding him to wait whilst she stripped off her clothes.

      It had been the first time he had seen a real naked female in the flesh, and she had had no inhibitions about letting him see her, even to the extent of laughing mockingly at him after she propped herself up on her pillows and spread her legs, inviting him to have a good look at what lay between them.

      ‘Bet you haven’t seen many of these before, have you?’ she demanded, grinning at him as he touched the thicket of dark, rough hair and then parted the thick, fleshy lips beneath it. ‘Know what this is, do you?’ she asked him, commanding him to look as she revealed the small inner nub of hard flesh.

      ‘Course I do,’ Max responded swaggeringly.

      ‘Good,’ she announced, ‘then you’ll know what to do with it, won’t you?’

      Max certainly thought he did but she soon disabused him of this misapprehension.

      ‘God, you’re rough,’ she complained. ‘It’s not your own prick you’ve got there, you know, and besides,’ she added slyly, watching him, ‘it works much better if you suck it.’

      She laughed when she saw his expression.

      ‘Never gone down on a girl before, have you? Well, now’s your big chance.’

      She hadn’t let him put himself inside her until after she’d had her orgasm and by then … She had laughed again when he hadn’t been able to hold back or control his excitement or the thick gush of semen that shot from his tensely erect cock, but she hadn’t been laughing later when he had thrust into her and gone on thrusting until she was moaning and clawing at his back, urging him on and on and then screeching like the alley cat that she was as he took her through her orgasm and refused to stop until she had had another and then another. He hadn’t seen her again after that—there hadn’t been any need.

      He could remember how shocked and disgusted he’d been when his mother had been pregnant with Joss, knowing that she and his father still did it.

      He could remember her and his father attending one of his school functions and how furious and ashamed he had felt at the sight of her heavily pregnant body. She had no right, at her age … She was making a laughing-stock of herself and of him.

      Max’s mouth hardened as he thought of his parents; sometimes there was a look in his mother’s eyes when she watched him….

      His mother was crazy if she thought he was going to end up like his father, a second-rate man working for a second-rate out-of-touch family business in a second-rate county town. If it wasn’t for his Uncle David and his charismatic personality, the business would have gone to the wall years ago. Just because his uncle had made one foolish mistake and …

      It wasn’t a mistake Max was going to repeat. Oh, he intended to enjoy his life but he also intended to make sure he didn’t get caught in the same trap as his uncle.

      Max had made sure that he left Oxford with a good enough degree to get him into a decent set of chambers after his Bar finals; and once there not only had he made sure that he brought himself to the attention of those who could be of benefit to his future career, but additionally he had also made sure that his life wasn’t all hard work and paying lip-service to his professional ambitions. However, unlike his uncle, he had been discreet and careful.

      ‘Still here, old boy? I thought you were intending to get off early.’

      Max tensed as Roderick Hamilton walked into his office. Roderick was just over twelve months his senior. They had been at Oxford at the same time but had not mixed in the same circles; Roderick’s parents were extremely wealthy and well-connected. His uncle was the present head of chambers, which was no doubt why of the two of them Roderick had been chosen to fill the vacancy for a tenancy at the end of their pupillage whilst Max had had to fall back on the ignominy of being allowed merely to stay on as a squatter. This meant, of course, that the only fee-paying work that Max could get was whatever had been passed over by the existing members of the chambers, including Roderick.

      Max had never been the type to feel the need to make close friends; to Max his peers were rivals, obstacles he had to overcome, but in Roderick’s case, Max actively disliked the man, as well.

      ‘Mmm … the Wilson brief. Hard luck,’ Roderick commiserated as he picked up the papers on Max’s desk and glanced at them before tossing them to one side. ‘Pity you’re not free this weekend,’ he added. ‘Ma’s having a “do” for my sister. She’s coming out this year and Ma’s asked me to round up some men.’

      Max didn’t take his eyes off the papers he was now pretending to study. He knew perfectly well that Roderick was trying to amuse himself at his own expense; there was no way Roderick’s mother would welcome any uninvited extra guests to the extremely prestigious and carefully planned ball she was hostessing for her daughter’s coming-out party.

      ‘Out of the question, I’m afraid,’ he responded without looking at Roderick. ‘It’s my father’s fiftieth birthday this weekend.’

      ‘Ah, you’ll have heard about old Benson, I expect,’ Roderick remarked, obviously getting down to the real purpose of his ‘visit’.

      Even though he had been expecting it, waiting for it, in actual fact Max could still feel his body fighting to betray the rage that had been boiling inside him all day.

      ‘Yes, I’ve heard,’ he agreed.

      ‘Once he goes it will mean there’ll be a tenancy vacancy in chambers,’ Roderick told him unnecessarily.

      ‘Yes,’ Max responded neutrally, knowing that he had to make some response.

      ‘Applying for it, are you?’

      Max could feel his control starting to slip. ‘I haven’t made up my mind yet,’ he lied.

      ‘Well, I should do if I were you, old chap,’ Roderick warned him, ‘because it seems that tenancies aren’t that easy to come by these days and I’ve heard that there’s a lot of interest being shown in this one. Not, of course, that there should be any problem if you did decide to go for it. After all, you did your pupillage here and you’ve been squatting here for … let me think, it must be well over a year, mustn’t it? God, is that the time? I’d better go … I promised Ma I’d be on hand at home this evening. Good luck with the Wilson brief,’ he drawled as he walked into the corridor.

      Max waited until he was quite sure that Roderick had gone before balling up the piece of paper he had been reading and hurling it across the room with all the force of his rugger training. Damn Roderick, damn him to hell and back and damn his bloody uncle, as well.

      It was over eight months now since Max had heard the first whisper that Clive Benson was going to be invited to become a judge. He had heard it initially on a visit to Chester to keep up with the Chester branch of the family; after all, in this business you needed all the help you could get. And ever since then he had been doing all he could to make sure that he got the vacancy when it came up.

      On Wednesday morning, when the clerk had told him that the senior partner wanted to have a meeting with him, Max had confidently expected to be told officially about the vacancy and to be assured that once the tenancy did fall vacant, it would be his.

      Instead he had been told following much harrumphing and throat clearing that after much discussion the partners had decided it was time they observed the rules against sexual discrimination and gave consideration to taking on a female barrister. Not that that necessarily meant that they were going to do so, nor that he was being passed over, Max had been assured. All applicants would be considered on their merits, of course.

      ‘Of course,’ Max had returned through gritted teeth but he knew exactly what he was being told and, without doubt, Roderick also knew exactly what was going on. How could he not do?

      It was too late now for Max to wish he had not announced privately to his grandfather the last time he had gone home that the tenancy was as good as his.