‘The problem with a divorce case like that one is that we can get more money by stretching the proceedings outs.’
‘I know,’ Poppy said miserably. Over the past two years she did not think a week had gone by when she had not to endure this lecture. Every time she asked Arthur Knight for the smallest favour or service, he reminded her of the foolish mistake she had made on the Meadows case. If the idea of a fortnight’s break had not been so tempting she would not have set herself up for this purgatory again.
Thinking back to her mistake, Poppy supposed it was the sort of error that had been bound to happen sooner or later. Knight & Knight solicitors had been dealing with the affairs of Malcolm and Sky Meadows from the day that they announced their engagement. They had continued to work with the couple throughout their marriage and, when the pair decided to divorce, it was inevitable that one of them would want to use Knight & Knight.
Perhaps, Poppy thought, things would have been different if Sky Meadows had used a different solicitor. Malcolm Meadows was always in the office, attending to other matters of business that did not concern his divorce. In those circumstances, she supposed that a mistake was inevitable.
She had been a lot younger back then and eager to please all the clients who were submitted to her portfolio. When Malcolm Meadows had asked her to organise a substantial withdrawal from his bank, Poppy’s automatic reaction had been to say yes.
She had not given a thought to the divorce case she was handling for his wife.
Her attention was focused on customer satisfaction for Mr Meadows. On his instruction, she had withdrawn five million pounds from the Meadows’ joint account. If Poppy had done this with the permission of Mrs Meadows, she knew the pointing finger of blame would not have been so relentless. Instead, she had used her initiative and followed Malcolm’s instructions to the letter.
She was still paying for that crime.
After leaving the office, Malcolm Meadows had driven to the coast. No one knew if he was trying to meet his lover and met with misfortune instead, or if he was simply depressed by the acrimonious divorce and had decided to end it all. Whatever the reason, his fate was well documented.
The mangled wreckage of his car was retrieved from the sea bed beneath the shadow of the cliffs. There was no trace of his body or the briefcase with its five million pounds. The notorious currents in that stretch of water were blamed for Malcolm’s missing body and, after a rudimentary search, the local authorities quickly stopped looking.
No trace of him, or his money, had been seen since.
‘Sky Meadows could have taken us for ten million or more,’ Arthur said, closing his eyes and pushing himself back into his chair. ‘She still could. Did I ever tell you that?’
Every week, whether I wanted to hear it or not, Poppy thought miserably, as she answered, ‘No, Mr Knight, I don’t think you did tell me.’
Arthur grunted dourly. ‘It also thwarted our chances of making a lot of money out of that divorce. We could have still been working our way through the paperwork, and taking a tidy profit from the account at that.’
Poppy closed her eyes and chewed on her lower lip. Two years of listening to this, and mumbling apologies in response, had left her inured to the words. She could sense that Arthur Knight was building up to something, and wondered if he was going to turn down her request for a holiday. It would not be the first time and she was already prepared for the disappointment of his refusal.
‘Does this mean I can’t have the fortnight off?’ Poppy asked boldly. She dared to meet his gaze when she asked the question, then looked away quickly when she saw he was watching her.
‘Poppy, Poppy, Poppy,’ Arthur said, shaking his head sadly. He slapped the seat next to his, and waited until she had settled herself there before continuing. ‘I’d love to let you have a fortnight off;’ he began seriously. ‘No one deserves a fortnight off more than you – I mean that in all sincerity – but you’re a victim of your own success.’
Poppy felt like a victim, but not of her own success. ‘How do you mean?’ she asked, not sure she wanted to hear.
Arthur laughed and clapped a friendly hand on her leg as he spoke. Poppy knew there was no intimation in the touch. Not only was Arthur Knight an ugly, balding, fat bastard, he was also married to Mrs Knight and, therefore, Poppy knew he would have no interest in her. Also, she had seen her own reflection when she dressed that morning. The whey-faced, shapeless thing that had stared back was so dull and uninteresting it was incapable of inspiring sexual feelings in anyone.
Despite all these assurances she was making to herself, she noticed that his hand remained where it was, against the coarse fabric of her long, all-concealing skirt. He rubbed a fat thumb against the top of her thigh as he spoke. His fingers occasionally squeezed her leg for punctuation. ‘You really do deserve a break. And I really want you to have one, too. No one deserves time off more than you do.’
Poppy could sense the word ‘but’ was about to raise its ugly head. She braced herself for its impact, as though it would hurt like a slap.
Still stroking her thigh, Arthur Knight went on. ‘But you do too much around here. Far too much. And the thought of having to cope without you for a fortnight is quite frightening.’ He shivered theatrically, as if to show her just how terrifying the ordeal would be.
Poppy lowered her head and sighed heavily. She could tell a refusal when she heard one and would rather he had simply said no, rather than trying to dress it up as though it was a compliment. She considered pushing his fat, sweaty hand off her leg and telling him to stick his job where he shoved his Anusol, knowing she would not dare to do either.
Arthur Knight was still talking. ‘I suppose you think I’m being foolish, saying that I’m frightened by the prospect of a fortnight without you. But I guess that’s part of the problem.’ He smiled easily.
Poppy frowned, uncomfortable with the cool appraisal of his stare.
‘The idea of having to manage without you makes me so upset that I get very, very tense,’ Arthur told her. His fingers squeezed her leg as though he had just made a point.
Poppy wished she understood what he was talking about. He was not making sense. His sweaty hand was making her leg uncomfortable, and the anticipatory air in the conference room was so thick and unsettling that she felt quite ill.
Arthur smiled at her. ‘Now, if only I could find some way of releasing all that tension, then perhaps I could let you have your two weeks off.’
An unsettling thought occurred to Poppy and she glanced into his face. He was grinning broadly and dared to wink at her when she looked at him. The hand on her leg squeezed hard again and Poppy could feel her fears being confirmed. She swallowed thickly and tried to take a deep breath. Staring hard at the conference table, she said quietly, ‘I’m not quite sure I understand what you mean.’
In all honesty, she felt certain that she had guessed exactly what he meant, but the idea was so unexpected, and at the same time so repulsive, she dared not contemplate it until Arthur knight had said the words aloud.
‘Tension has different ways of affecting people.’ Arthur’s fingers inched ever so slightly further up her leg. Poppy could feel the flesh of her thigh was warm and wet where his hand had been. She did not feel particularly excited by his touch but she had to admit it was not an unpleasant sensation.
‘Some people need massages.’ Arthur was struggling to affect a casual tone. ‘Others need to smoke. But with me –’ He paused and studied her face for a second. ‘Can I be honest with you?’
‘Of course,’ Poppy told him. The words came from her mouth like a sigh. She could tell where this was leading and the muscles in her stomach were knotting frantically.
‘Of course,’ he repeated, laughing. He squeezed harder on her leg for a brief moment before pushing his fingers a little higher. ‘Well, to be totally honest with you, tension gives me an unbearable stiffness.’ His voice had fallen to a conspiratorial whisper that made Poppy feel distinct
ly uncomfortable. ‘The thought of being without you for a fortnight makes that stiffness even worse. But if I could find a way of relieving it, then I’d be happy to let you have the time off.’
‘You want me to relieve your stiffness?’ Poppy asked dully. She felt certain she was misinterpreting his meaning but she could not quite contemplate how.
He was grinning lasciviously. ‘Relieve my stiffness and you can have your fortnight’s leave,’ he said. His bottom lip protruded heavily and his eyelids had lowered into a sleepy leer.
Poppy glanced at his face and could not recall seeing anything less sexually exciting in her entire life. His hand was still inching its way up her thigh, while the other was buried deep in his pocket. Even though she was trying not to notice, she could see the large swell of his arousal distorting the front of his pants. The slow rhythmic action of his hand, shuffling up and down over the erection, left Poppy in no doubt as to what he was doing. With a rising wave of revulsion, she realised that, as he spoke to her, Arthur Knight was intimately caressing himself.
He was still considering her with his repellent, roguish gaze and Poppy saw that something was expected of her. ‘Do you need a massage or something?’ she asked, wishing she did not sound so childishly naive.
He growled soft laughter. ‘You could start by massaging it,’ he told her. The hand inside his trousers began to work up and down faster and his salacious grin widened.
With her heart pounding nervously, Poppy stood up and brushed his hand away. She could feel her breath coming in bursts and it was an effort to speak to him in a coherent, sensible voice. ‘Could you please stop speaking in riddles and rhymes? I don’t know what you want from me but if you’d -’
‘I want you to suck my dick,’ Arthur Knight said sharply.
His words struck Poppy like an open palm against her face. She dared to meet his gaze, then wished she hadn’t. The sincerity she saw in his dark-blue eyes was chilling.
‘I want you to get down on your knees, beside this table, then suck on my dick,’ Arthur told her. His gaze never left her face as he spoke. His hand was moving up and down even faster than before and she wondered if she was enduring some bizarre work-related dream. The thought seemed unlikely and she crushed it before its hopes could hurt her.
‘Come on,’ Arthur said encouragingly. ‘Kneel down, do as I’ve asked, and you can have your fortnight’s holiday.’ As she watched, he moved his hands from his pocket and stroked himself through the silver-grey fabric of his trousers. His fingers reached the top of his zipper and she watched him tug it slowly down. The length of eager flesh he had been holding inside strained against the opening slit. Poppy could see a glimpse of pink skin struggling to escape through the fly. He reached a pair of fat fingers between the zippered teeth and eased his length out.
Poppy heard herself gasp. She was staring at his cock with wide-eyed surprise, not sure what she should be doing. She knew exactly what was expected of her now and, although she harboured so many reservations, her overriding instinct was to kneel down and do exactly as Arthur Knight had asked.
It was not that she particularly wanted to suck his cock, or that she found the idea extremely exciting. In all honesty, she considered Arthur Knight to be a repugnant, self-seeking bastard, as sexually exciting as furniture polish. However, she desperately wanted her fortnight’s holiday and, if this was the only way of acquiring it, she was determined to do as he asked.
She glanced into his face, desperately searching for a trace of compassion that would allow her to escape the office without having to suffer this indignity. Even before she had looked at him, Poppy knew it would be a fruitless search.
Arthur licked his parched lips as he stared at her. His hand openly massaged his fat, pink length as he shifted his gaze from her face to the front of her long, baggy jumper. ‘Get your titties out before you suck me,’ Arthur told her, sliding his first idly over the tip of his cock. ‘I’ve always wondered what your titties look like.’
Poppy risked a nervous glance at his face. ‘Could I still go on my holiday if I didn’t do this?’
He shrugged. ‘I couldn’t stop you from going really,’ he said with infuriating self-confidence. ‘But I promise you now, you wouldn’t have a job to come back to.’
Those words were enough for Poppy.
Jobs were difficult enough to come by at the best of times and things were currently moving slowly in the legal world. Since the cock-up with the Meadows case, she had made regular enquiries with local employment agencies. The response she had received left Poppy feeling trapped and cold. While she did not particularly like her job with Knight & Knight, she had to admit that it provided a regular income. Arthur’s threat of unemployment was all the impetus she needed to do his bidding.
She lowered herself to her knees and moved her head over his lap. Staring at his exposed cock in such close proximity, she could smell the scent of his excitement.
She had not been expecting to feel any arousal herself, but the act of kneeling seemed to have tickled some subconscious erogenous zone. A nervous thrill caused a ripple of gooseflesh to prickle her forearms. She reached a tentative hand forward and felt the warm pulse of his cock against the tips of her fingers.
Arthur Knight’s hand was suddenly in her hair and she felt her head being tugged roughly backward. She stared up at him with a helpless expression as she wondered what she had done wrong.
‘I told you to get your titties out,’ Arthur reminded her. ‘Get ’em out,’ he growled. As his excitement mounted, she realised the subtle inflection of his Northern accent was becoming more pronounced.
‘But I –’ Poppy began, trying to find the words to tell him that her breasts were not worth looking at.
Arthur did not allow her to finish. ‘I want my dick sucking and I want to see your titties,’ he said flatly. ‘Anything less, and you’ll be getting a damned sight longer than a fortnight away from here.’
Shuddering, Poppy moved her gaze away from his. She crossed her arms over her chest and reached for the sides of her jumper. In one casual motion, she had pulled the garment off. She wore no bra and revealed herself to him topless. The orbs of her breasts swayed provocatively as she straightened up and glanced at him. She did not know if it was her imagination, coincidence, or something else, but, as she removed her top, Arthur’s cock seemed to twitch more excitedly than before.
He moved forward in his chair, his fingers eagerly reaching for the dark-brown tips of her breasts. Deciding she had already gone so far, and there was no point being prudish at such a late stage, Poppy allowed him to touch her. She tried to ignore the sparkle of pleasure inspired by his rough, careless fingers, unhappy with the thought of enjoying herself under these circumstances. Nevertheless, a whisper of excitement touched her and she could feel herself being drawn by the heady impulse to indulge her awakening appetite.
‘I always wondered what you had under that scraggy bloody jumper,’ he growled, tugging her towards him.
Poppy gasped as he took in his arms, not sure what he intended to do with her now. He moved his mouth over her breasts and took a dark-brown nipple between his lips. The thrill was far greater than she had expected. She released a soft sigh of contentment, suddenly enjoying herself. The whirlpool of her emotions span faster as Arthur teased the sensitive tip with his teeth, playfully biting at the erect pearl of flesh. With his free hand, he squeezed her other nipple between rough, callused fingers, pinching her so painfully that she began to shiver with mounting delight.
‘Now, suck it,’ he said, releasing her so suddenly it was like a push backward.
Poppy drew a heavy breath, torn between her arousal and her dissipating feeling of revulsion. Not wanting to torture herself with a moment’s more thought, she moved her mouth closer to his cock and pushed out her tongue.
Arthur Knight drew a heavy breath. His arms moved over her head and she expected to feel his fingers in her hair. Instead, she saw that he was reaching for the conference table
and she suspected he was trying to steady himself, even though he was sitting down. She heard his fingers distantly brush against the intercom console on the conference table, and assumed he had simply caught it accidentally. For the moment there were more pressing matters on her mind.
She placed the tip of her tongue against the swollen end of his erection and drew a wet circle around the bulbous purple head. As soon as she touched the flesh, his cock seemed to leap away from the mouth. She glanced unhappily at him and reached out to hold the base of his length.
Arthur grinned down at her. ‘You’re doing fine down there, Poppy,’ he said loudly. ‘Now take it all in your mouth. You know you want to.’
Obediently, Poppy lowered her mouth over the end. She sucked gently, aware of the quickening pulse of his excitement throbbing against her tongue. She could feel the warmth of her own arousal beginning to spread between her legs and she wondered how her body could be capable of such a response. Arthur Knight was incapable of arousing her and she suspected it was only the intoxication of the moment. The bullying way that he had manoeuvred her into this position was reprehensible and she despised him for doing it to her. But she could not deny the mounting thrill that her submission had evoked. She knew that if she slid a hand between her own legs her pussy would be so hot it would scald her fingertips. Trying to brush that image from her mind, she lowered her mouth slowly down Arthur’s raging hard erection.
‘Good lass,’ he muttered, the words coming out in a dry grunt.
Poppy smiled dutifully around his cock, allowing her head to rise and fall. Her lips gripped wetly to his stiff rod and she stroked her tongue against the pulsating flesh inside her mouth. Each time she pushed her head down, she could feel the swollen end pressing at the back of her throat, threatening to climax.
That twitch of excitement was darkly inspirational. Each time she felt the pulse of Arthur’s nearness, she could feel her own climax edging nearer. The intensity of her own impending orgasm was so great she did not hear the door of the conference room opening.
The Black Widow Page 5
