DISCLAIMER: The following story may contain elements of incest, cuckoldry, light femdom, women who like to fuck, and lawyers. If these are not to your particular taste, the management suggests you stop reading immediately; any and all complaints that this story has not been written to your particular tastes will be roundly ignored. The management advises you to find something else to read, and offers abject apologies to any members of the legal profession in the audience.
"In the Family Business"
by
g00db0i
--for my muse--
*****
"This is not going to be an easy clerkship for you," Margaret said, checking her makeup in the rear view mirror for the second time since they'd gotten in the car. "I am not going to be soft on you just because you're my son."
Ben laughed that easy laugh of his, grinning. "Mom, Dad said-"
"Benjamin John Fletcher, I do not care a single iota of a jot what your father said." She fixed him with a hard glare, green eyes flashing. "It may be his last name above the door, but he doesn't deign to come into the office more than a couple of times a month; for all intents and purposes this is my practice and my livelihood and I will not risk my professional reputation just because your father thought you could use an easy ride. Is that understood?"
Her son just nodded, wide-eyed. He'd seen his mother angry, before, of course, but he'd never seen her like this before: she seemed like a seething volcano of rage, moments away from going off altogether. The knuckles of long, elegant fingers were white with tension as they gripped the steering wheel; her face was flushed beneath the impeccably professional makeup; and her eyes flashed with anger as she turned them back to the road. He was flung against his seatbelt as she dropped the clutch and tore out of the stop.
"Mom, look-"
"And that's another thing," she said, pulling their big BMW SUV sharply to the left. "That is the last time you call me that today. So long as you're clerking for me, I expect you to behave exactly as any other clerk. That means from now on, you will address me as 'Mrs. Fletcher' or 'ma'am,' understand?"
"Yes Mo- ma'am, I mean ma'am." Ben felt like he was somehow five years old again instead of a twenty five year old law school graduate who was this close to taking the bar. He didn't know how the old man had fucked up this time, but it seemed to be pretty badly.
"Furthermore, if you're going to be working for me, I expect you to dress the part," Margaret said, shooting him a baleful look. "What on earth are you wearing that godawful suit for?"
He tried to sink into the warm leather of the seats, feeling his jacket sag around him. When it had been his only suit, for funerals and weddings, it had been just fine, he reflected.
"You'll find most of our clients are a: rich and b: women, and they respond much better to a man in a sharp suit than they do to somebody who looks like he just left the Burlington Coat Factory." Hand over hand, she wheeled into their parking lot, pulling into her spot next to the door. They stepped out into the warm summer air.
"Come on," Margaret said, curtly. On long legs made longer by mirror-black heels, she strode into the building, auburn hair flying behind her, looking for all the world like some legal valkyrie. He followed suit, feeling younger and dumber than he had on the first day of law school.
He passed through the door for the hundredth time in his life, looking around at the clean, modern interior (routinely refreshed and hand picked by his mother every two years) as though he'd never been there before.
"Hi Ben," chirped Glenys, the longtime receptionist. "What brings you in today?"
"Mister Fletcher," Margaret wheeled about on one heel, "is going to join us this summer as our clerk, Glenys, and we will treat him just like any other clerk won't we?" Even in the air conditioned office, her voice was cold enough to drop the ambient temp a degree or two.
All the color drained from Glenys' face as she looked at her boss.
"Really? Are-are you sure about that? Should I call Mr. Fl-"
"This was his idea," said Ben's mother. "So if you want to call him, feel free to do so. He'll tell you exactly the same as I have. Benjamin here is going to be treated like a normal, average, everyday law clerk until the end of the summer. Do you understand?"
"Oooohh." Relief spread across the receptionist's face, followed by the merest flicker of disappointment, then her usual sunny smile. "I gotcha. Welcome to Fletcher & Fletcher, Family Law, Mister uh, Fletcher."
"Get the necessary paperwork ready please, Glenys. He'll need a door code and a desk somewhere. He can get his own office supplies from the cupboard." Margaret turned her attention to her son. "She will help you find whatever you need, but bear in mind she is my receptionist, not your secretary. As far as I'm concerned she outranks you, and you will show her the proper respect by calling her Ms. Button at all times. Is that clear?"
"Yes m-ma'am," Ben considered saluting but didn't think it would go down well.
"Good. In my office please, Mister Fletcher. I believe you know the way." She turned and strode on. He followed, but not before shooting a backwards glance at the receptionist, who smiled warmly back at him, then silently mouthed the words 'I'm so sorry.'
His mom's office was the biggest in the building, twice the size of his dorm room. An enormous antique desk dominated one side of the room, the wall behind it covered in her degrees, and an overstuffed leather couch divided it more or less in half. In the corner by the couch were two sizeable bookshelves that held volume after volume of legal decisions: her own private legal library. A one-way picture window took up most of the remaining wall, looking out on the pond in a nearby park.
"Sit," she said, taking her own seat behind the desk, stacked high with file folders. Ben moved to take one of the client chairs, but there was a slim folder there; a post-it on the cover said, 'Glenys.'
"What's this?" He picked it up, and a photo slid out, fluttering to the chair. It was a shot of a couple at a bar, obviously after a few drinks. She was sitting in the man's lap, her short leather skirt hiked high enough to reveal yards of long, toned, fishnet-clad leg, one of which was kicked out playfully, while her head was thrown back in raucous laughter, auburn hair flying. The dark haired man whose neck she had wrapped her arms around was younger, much younger, by about 20 years. His eyes were firmly fixed on the white blouse she was wearing, specifically where she had undone about half the buttons to reveal a prodigious, mature cleavage. His mother's cleavage. "What the f-"
"Give that to me, please," she snapped, holding out her hand. "The folder, too. All of it. That's not for you."
"Mom, what-"
"BENJAMIN JOHN FLETCHER you will hand me that photograph now and you will address me as Mrs. Fletcher or you can march yourself out of this office immediately!" His mother snapped her fingers imperiously.
Ben's nostrils flared. He met her eyes, and wilted a little under that familiar glare. Sliding the photo back into the folder, he handed it over.
"Thank you," she said, putting it on the desk. "If you must know, every summer we give our departing clerk a little party as a kind of a send-off; these are photos of last year's wonderful idiot, Jordan. A very nice young man with not very much going on upstairs. I hear he passed the bar in April, thanks to a very strong recommendation from me. If you want a similar one, I trust you'll put in the effort he did." An expression he didn't recognize flickered across her face. "Well, not necessarily all the effort, but similar."
"You looked like you were having fun." He regretted saying it as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
"I am fun, thank you," his mother replied, suddenly wounded. "And you know it."
Ben laughed, and the tension was broken.
"Sorry, yes. I'm sorry, M- Mrs. Fletcher. Can we start again?"
"That sounds like a good idea to me, Mister Fletcher." Margaret smiled at him, and all was right with the world again. "Please, sit. Let me tell you about some of these case files..." She began to speak, outlining whatever was currently on her desk, and how she saw his role in their office, or the "family business" as the old man liked to call it. Benjamin only half-paid attention, studying her face as she talked. His mother was forty-six, but a young forty-six, as they called it. Thanks to a rigorous evening regimen, a strict diet and the addition of a gym in their basement, she'd mostly kept time away, and looked like a woman at least ten years younger; if there was dye in the glorious mane of hair that shimmered and bounced when it was down (as she kept it at home), that was a secret between her and the expensive hair salon she patronized. His mother was beautiful, he knew that, in a disinterested kind of a way -- his douchebag friends in high school had been very vocal about it, if nothing else -- but he'd never seen her looking as she had in that photograph, full of verve, having the time of her life, completely relaxed, completely herself. Always the mom or the long-suffering wife, never just Maggie Fletcher.
A stray thought wandered through his head: had her legs always been that long or was it trick of the photography?
"...ready?" She asked, coming to the end of her spiel.
"Hm?" Then, before she could get angry again, he said, "yes. I'm ready! Let's do this thing."
"Good!" His mother stacked two or three folders together and laid them with a thump before him. "Take these and talk to Glenys. She'll tell you how the filing system works." Grunting, he lifted the stack and turned to go.
"Mom? Mrs. Fletcher?" Ben hesitated at the door. She had the file with the photos in her lap, apparently leafing through them.
"Yes?" She didn't look up.
"I think dad went around you on this, and I know he's a shit, but thanks for this opportunity. I appreciate it."