Submitted for Feedback -- "Run-of-the-Mill"
***Begin Adult Content: Sexuality***



Jill couldn’t sleep.

Then again, neither could David Gregor. It was 3:00 in the morning in his palatial suite overlooking much of downtown Baltimore – a sight that many nights would take the brunette’s breath away.

But on this night, she kept the covers over her naked form, watching her mentor sit at the edge of the bed smoking a cigarette. His ponytail was gone, his hair now a shoulder-length sea of brown with the tiniest sprinkles of grey. She watched smoke from his cigarette flutter about above him, and her brow furrowed.

He was thinking about something.

“What’s up?” she asked, sitting up and ignoring the covers as they fell, exposing her pale chest. “What’s going on in that overactive head of yours?”

It took a few moments for Gregor to register that Jill had said something. Blinking, he put out the cigarette and glanced over his shoulder, smiling lightly at the sight of the nude attorney-to-be in front of him. He stared at the body that had been coated in sweat just three hours earlier and though it was a sight he’d grown used to over the past several years, it was one he never took for granted.

Humanity, such that it was, still had its pleasures.

“You,” he said, running his fingers through his somewhat-tussled hair. “Your impending promotion, in point of fact.”

Jill furrowed her brow again, leaning in and wrapping her arms around her mentor’s shoulders. She kissed his temple and watched his fingers, fingers that not long ago had somehow made all the stress melt away from the young woman’s body.

“Promotion?” she asked with a hint of trepidation. She’d learned a thing or two in her time at Wolfram & Hart, and she knew such things as promotions rarely came without a price. Then again, Gregor hadn’t steered her wrong yet, so she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt – for now.

“I didn’t know I was being promoted.”

David Gregor smiled. Jill’s affection for him was a complicated one; for so long, he likened himself to a father figure. With her mother dead and her father locked up awaiting the chair, Gregor had become the only family Jill could rely on. Daniel Richards had served that role – for a time – but the older Jill got, the more useless the police chief became.

But now? Oh, Gregor was fairly certain as his eyes drank in the sight of Jill’s naked frame that this was not the way fathers treated their daughters.

Well, unless they were clients or employees of Wolfram & Hart. Then anything was possible.

“You are,” he said, kissing Jill on the tip of her nose. “A position has opened up at the Las Vegas branch. Junior partner, full-fledged attorney. All the responsibilities and benefits an important cog in the Wolfram & Hart wheel can be entitled to.

“And it’s all going to be yours.”

Jill blinked. Wait a minute … junior partner. Junior partner? Junior partner?! No way … this wasn’t happening. David Gregor did not just tell Jill she was going to become a junior partner of the firm.

Did he?

“That … that’s great!” she said with a bright, beaming smile – a smile that drifted away almost as fast as it appeared. “But … I’m not ready yet. Still haven’t got my law degree.”

Gregor chuckled, this time running his fingers through her hair, untangling the tossed locks and brushing the dark strands out of her nearly ghost-white face. “And if we were a regular law firm, that would be a problem,” he said. “But we’re anything but normal, Jill. You know that.”

His fingers caressed her cheek before he leaned in and pressed his lips softly to hers. He felt her melt into the kiss, and he knew if he wanted to take it one step further right now, he could. A flick of the tongue, a twist of the head and she’d be sprawled out on his mattress, sweating and calling his name.

She’d be putty in his hands … warm, moist putty.

But it was shop-talk time, so Gregor broke the kiss and ran his thumb along Jill’s lower lip. Still smiling, he whispered, “And you … you’re just the sort of thing we’ve been after.”

Jill felt a quiver as Gregor kissed her, feeling that familiar sensation. That want, that desire … she could feel it building even in her physical exhaustion. If he hadn’t pulled back when he did, she would’ve probably lost control of herself and taken him right then and there.

But that could wait until after the business talk. She wanted to hear everything she could about this promotion.

“So we just had to wait for the right opportunity?” she pondered aloud. “What do the Senior Partners think of this?”

Gregor simply smiled. “It was their idea,” he said. “As soon as the position opened up, they contacted me and suggested we give you the job. Las Vegas is one of our most resourceful locations, and I’d imagine that branch is among our most powerful and profitable.

“Which is only fitting, that being the city of sin and all.”

Gregor smiled again at his pupil, putting his arm around her and giving her shoulder a soft squeeze. He kissed the top of her head, his nose filled with the scent of lavender – the shampoo she’d used in the shower that morning, no doubt. “I’ve told you time and again you’re special,” he said softly. “Not just to me, but to Wolfram & Hart and everything they have planned. The firm has so much invested in you, it’d be a shame for any more time to pass without you completely in the fold. This firm has huge plans, Jillian, and you are an integral part of those plans.”

It all sounded well and good, but Jill couldn’t shake a nagging doubt as she rested her head on her mentor’s shoulder. She frowned slightly, resting her chin on Gregor’s shoulder and looking into his disarming eyes. She gave a heavy sigh and shook her head, resting her hand over his beating heart.

“But,” she began, pausing to find the right words. “What about that McDonald guy? I’ve seen files on him and – and it looks like he was the golden boy.”

“He was,” Gregor said, running his fingers through Jill’s dark hair. “But you obviously didn’t read the part where he just up and left the firm about seven years ago, only to resurface once control of the Los Angeles branch was handed over to Angel in an attempt to throw a monkey wrench into the Senior Partners’ plans.

“This ‘Golden Boy’ you speak of was killed a little over four years ago." Gregor paused, chuckled. “By an empath demon, no less.”

Yeah, Jill missed that part of the file. As extensive as Wolfram & Hart’s Files & Records department was, she wondered how she could’ve missed it. Unless someone didn’t want her to read that part, but if that were the case, why? Her superiors had been nothing but forthcoming with her since she first set foot into the firm’s offices; why start hiding things now?

Especially if they were handing her the keys to the bloody kingdom.

“So,” she said with a gulp, “when do I start?”

Gregor again kissed his protégé on the top of the head. “Once all the paperwork’s been finalized,” he said. “Should be no later than the beginning of next month.”

Jill looked into Gregor’s eyes, uncertainty washing away as she felt his hand on her cheek. His fingers were so delicate given their considerable size, and the attorney-to-be found herself at ease with the upcoming change in her life. Ever since her father was convicted of drug trafficking and murder, Jill wanted nothing more out of life than to be a lawyer, and now she was just weeks away from an office overlooking the Vegas Strip in the world’s most powerful law firm.

But she couldn’t shake the question … “So, what do the Senior Partners have planned for me, anyway?”

Gregor chuckled, grabbing Jill’s arm and pressing her body closer to his. “Power, influence … everything your corrupt little heart desires. You’ll start off as a regular run-of-the-mill lawyer, sure, but soon enough you’ll open doors and see things most of our employees could only dream of.

“Then, who knows? One day you might become a conduit to the Senior Partners ... their liaison, so to speak. Or perhaps, if things fall just right, you could be one.”

Jill blinked. Be a Senior Partner? Was that even possible? She’d never met the Senior Partners, and from what she’d heard, they existed on some out-of-reach plane of existence and only popped up – in the form of Kleynach demons – every 75 years for the Review. So there was no way she could ever become one of them, right?

Right?

But the possibility of it did intrigue her, as did any notion of power. Jill felt powerless through much of her childhood, between watching her mother give up on everything and watching her father turn into the very monster she thought he was putting away. She couldn’t do anything about them, or how their decision affected her, so Wolfram & Hart and its possibilities were beyond enticing.

So much so, she was willing to kill anyone – even her own family – for it.

“Be a Senior Partner,” she whispered, her lithe finger trailing Gregor’s jaw and running through his spotted goatee. “All that power and influence, have pretty much anything I want with nothing more than a snap of my fingers – you know, assuming I’ll have fingers.”

Gregor smiled and nodded, grabbing Jill’s chin and kissing her gently. “That’s the idea,” he whispered as he slid his arm around Jill’s waist, resting his hand on the small of her back.

Rolling over, he laid the woman on her back before kissing her again, this time with more hunger and lust. He and his firm were everything to the young woman splayed out before him, and Gregor took great pleasure in providing for her every need. He knew there’d come a day where he’d have to betray her – or vice versa – but for the time being, he was hers.

But more importantly, she was his. And she always would be.



***End Adult Content: Sexuality***