Like Blood for Coffee Pt. 01

"He's right. I'll have to take you," said the Director. She appeared beside them against the wall, her voice carrying easily through the din of the music. A tall elf marked with the wood antlers of House Air stood at her side. The vampire deferred to him with an almost imperceptible curtsey and he inclined his head, granting permission.

Hall bristled - a literal flexing of his leaves and branches in ire. He caught Eiri's eye and snapped, "Do what she tells you. Vampires are accustomed to being obeyed."

The Director looped an arm around Christy's shoulders and placed her hand at the small of Eiri's back, guiding them away from Hall and toward the entrance. Eiri could feel the pressure of her hand there, through his coat, just above the place where his back rounded into the curve of his buttocks. Like a cattle prod, it led him to the elevator, to the lobby, to the street, and to the back of a black car.

If he offers to go somewhere with you, do not go with him! His mother warned about the vampire in the streets back at home. Vampires work in the dark.

But he was already buckling into the backseat, Christy crushed in beside him. The vampire sat across, fixing them both with her magnetic black stare. In no time at all, it intoxicated Christy even further, overwhelming her senses. She shrugged off the shoulder strap of her seatbelt, turned to him, wrapped her arms up and around his neck, pulling him down to his kiss face, again and again.

He tried to stop her, gently pushing her arms back, pleading softly. "Get ahold of yourself. You're drunk, you're drunk, stop it..."

"I know what I'm doing," she whispered, breath hot with Yamazaki. "Touch me. Do it. She likes it. They all do - they like to watch."

Eiri glanced at the Director. She was watching.

He couldn't do it. He took Christy's arms, put both of her wrists in one of his hands and crushed them together in his grip. He held them there on her knee while she struggled and writhed, entreating, begging. Finally pleading, "You're hurting me!"

"It's better this way," he hissed at her. The vampire was still watching.

They came to the employee housing. Like him, Christy had a suite in the converted church, but it was on the far side of the building. The snow had just begun to fall as he wrestled his drunk coworker out of the limousine and onto the icy sidewalk. He slipped - and the Director was there, steadying him with that firm touch.

"I'll get her to the door," she said. "But you'll have to take her inside yourself."

Eiri glanced at her, confused. She smiled. And he forgot for a moment what she was. When she smiled, she appeared sweet and friendly, the wide lower lip folding into dimples on her snow white cheeks, the delicate upper lip curling downward.

"Hallowed ground." The Director pointed up at the steeple where a cross would have hung before Hadrian's time.

He carried Christy into her apartment, swiping his employee badge to unlock the door. She was already swooning, fading. He put her on her bed, and went into her bathroom to look for a bottle of naproxen sodium - still the preferred cure for a hangover even after sixteen thousand years of human hangovers. He found a glass to fill with water. He left both by her bedside table, positioned just far enough away that she wouldn't knock it off the surface if she flailed in her drunken stupor. Eiri almost left then, but turned back for one more detail - fetching the little trash can from the bathroom to position by her bed.

Finally, he felt he'd done enough to help her, and he badged out of her room.

The vampire was still waiting for him outside. She gestured for him to return to the back of the car. "Come. It's hours to midnight. People will talk if you two are both gone when the ball rises."

Eiri hesitated. He could turn away, walk around the block, and be safe inside his apartment - on hallowed ground - with heated floors for the night. But the Director was right. It would be bad for his career if he missed the midnight celebration, worse if Hall thought he and Christy were celebrating it in private. He joined the vampire in the backseat of her car. This time, she sat beside him.

"You're very particular, aren't you?" she observed. "Another man might've dumped her on the floor of the living room and called the job done."

"I prefer... efficiency," Eiri said, fumbling for what to say. He wanted to turn to her. Without her eyes on him, he felt alone, bereft. He settled for turning his chin slightly, to look down at her legs, shrouded in shiny black material. Her hand was resting on the seat between them, ungloved. "Aren't you cold?"

"We don't feel cold unless we're starving," she said. She picked up her hand then and rested the back of it against his face. It was warmer than his own flesh, which stung still with the icy air from his brief time outside. "See?"

"So... you're not hungry?"

She laughed, then, a gentle exhalation of air through the nose. "No. Does that relax you? It's not my habit to prey on colleagues."

Then why were you watching us, he thought. Her hand was still on his face, sliding down his cheek. She ran her thumb along his lips, then pressed it to his chin, turning his head toward her. Those chocolatey eyes met his again, warm and waiting. Like a hot cup of coffee on a cold morning.

She held him again for a moment, and then said, "Come to my place. After midnight."

...

Vampires kept harems, he heard. Dozens of men and women, naked, languishing in well decorated rooms with gothic fireplaces. Waiting to satisfy their masters' appetites. A vampire might feed or fuck any of them at a moment's notice, or sometimes do both at once.

Eiri hadn't seen any slaves like those at Starbucks. Everyone wore the elvish uniform - tight pants, green or grey cotton, gloves for handling that which was considered too fine for a human to touch. When the Ipomoea family arrived, he noticed an increase in the number of new employees; obsequious, quiet individuals who never went to the cross-functional syncs but turned up to eat at the cafes. Sometimes he saw bite marks on their necks.

Vampires feed on humans, his mother warned him, reading him ghost stories from pre-Collapse about dark mansions and long fangs. But in his mind, he couldn't conjure any image but the Director. Her eyes, her smile - the dimples puckering as she said, "It's not my habit to prey on colleagues" - lulled him. If she didn't mean to feed on him, it could mean she wanted only to fuck him.

He saw her apartment - a rented loft over The Pike - and thought it wouldn't be so bad. It gave the impression of a love nest; low tables, lounge chairs, votive candles on every surface that gave off the heady aroma of jasmine and amber. She left him in the living area while she went up a flight of stairs to the bedroom, preparing. With a designer's eye, Eiri discerned her style was eclectic, every surface a tumult of textures in desaturated palettes. The longer his eyes rested on a piece, the more detail he discovered - curved edges, gilded corners, hidden friezes. The detail captivated him.

After a moment, she called for him to come up. It was not her true bedroom, of course - vampires kept their coffins' location a well-guarded secret - but the sheer linen canopy over a bedframe of raw wood and black iron spoke to her attention to even her false sanctuary. She smiled, watching him take it all in.

"You were expecting a dungeon, perhaps?" She waited for him on a low-backed side chair, tufted with studs in different metals. She'd removed the expensive jacket, taken off her shoes, undone the top buttons of her blouse, exposing a beautifully embroidered bra underneath. Black lace and leather, constricting boning. "Come here."

Eiri hesitated, wondering if she expected him to strip. He could not sit beside her on the chair and she indicated no other place for him to sit. He drew close and saw she held a hairbrush in one hand.

"Would you... brush my hair for me?" she asked, handing it to him. Soft bristles. A wooden paddle back, handle made of heavy gilded silver. She turned her back to him, river of chocolatey hair rustling over the silk of her blouse. At the roots, it matched the color of her eyes. Toward the tips, it lightened to almost a honey color.

"You have interesting tastes," he said, setting the brush to the crown of her head. It was easier to speak to her when he wasn't looking at those eyes.

"Thank you," she said.

In silence, he worked, drawing the brush through her hair, draping smooth hanks of it over his free hand. It took him a few minutes to figure out the most efficient means of detangling, working from the bottom of the snarls rather than the tops. He worried he hurt her with his clumsiness, tugging too hard while he adapted his technique. He tried to go slow, understanding this was a test of seduction. To Eiri's surprise, he found he wanted to please her.

When the tangles were all smoothed and the pieces of her hair joined in one unbroken cascade of brown down her back, he thought of setting the brush aside. But to do it, Eiri needed to lean past her, over the chair, to reach the small end table where the brush's matching accessories rested on a mirrored tray.

As he passed by her ear, she whispered to him. "I want you to pull my hair."

He froze, not sure he heard correctly. She rested a hand on his elbow, and applied just the slightest bit of pressure, pushing him to straighten. The swell of his cock, nestled into the left leg of his trouser, was at the level of her eye. Terrifyingly close to her mouth. "Director...?"

Those eyes, sweeping up to lock onto his. It felt like looking down from a cliff into a diving pool in the dead of night. Dizzying.

"Grab my hair... and pull on it as hard as you can," she said, her voice soft, caressing.

Do whatever she tells you, Hall had said. Vampires are accustomed to being obeyed. Even the elves feared them.

Eiri seized a fistfull of the silky brown strands just behind her ear and tugged.

"Harder," she said.

He obeyed, pulling back, and down. She tilted her head back with the force of it. He saw, towering over her, down the front of her blouse to where the lace of the bra met her creamy skin. He hadn't realized, living among the elves for weeks, how sexual a bra was - its rigid ribs and clever straps foisting the tender flesh of the breasts upward, outward, entreating. Her cups were unlined, and he saw the hint of her nipples pressing against a prison of netted lace.

"Harder," she demanded.

He obeyed, repositioning his hand along the back of her head to gather more hair, exerting more pressure. She arched her back, and gasped.

Then Eiri saw the teeth. White fangs, a perfect form factor of regular incisors. Fear struck through him, cold and knifelike, in his belly. He held her like that, for a moment, panicked, and then let her go.

Her eyes were open again. In their unfathomable depths, he thought he saw fear.

"I... I have to go," he blurted, stumbling backward. "Milestone meeting in the morning."

"On New Year's Day?"

"Yes," he said. Then remembered it was pointless to lie to a vampire. "No. It's the day after tomorrow. But... I should prepare. I need time."

She held him in place with her gaze, and then dropped it to her lap. In her hands, she held her phone. "Then, you must go. Goodbye."

The front door opened, and he heard footsteps. A human woman - her assistant, he assumed - come to show him out.

The vampire did not look at him again when he left.

Later, alone in his bed, he tried to remember her eyes in that moment. Was she sad? Angry? Disappointed? But, to his desperation, all he could recall was the sight of her breasts in the bra, the feel of her silky soft hair between his fingers. Eiri's cock stirred, free of its confines, and he instinctively clasped a hand to it, feeling it swell as he pressed down.

The white skin, spilling over the tops of the cups. The valley between them so like the one between her legs. Wondering whether her panties matched her bra, whether they rode high between her legs when he squeezed her hair, pulling, pulling, pulling...

I shouldn't, he thought, rubbing his cock, tugging it. I shouldn't make it a habit... with colleagues. But he thought again of her hardening nipples, supplemented with the body memory of Christy pressing against him in the back of the car, begging him. "Touch me."

He thought of pulling on her hair as he pulled the hard length of his shaft, thought of rubbing the nipples beneath the lace when he ran his thumb over his weeping tip. The last memory he had before the orgasm took him was of her eyes.

...

"We're not delaying Fulbright because you can't configure a pixel," Hall sneered. "Do what it takes, but get the menu logging where it needs to be by end of day."

"That's not possible," Eiri pushed back.

He knew the retaliation would come. Not just for going against the product manager, but also for depriving him of his plaything. Christy even now thwarted him, maring her natural beauty with the aftermath of a hangover - messy hair, smudged eyeliner, bags under the eyes. The elf would not even sit next to her in that state of dishabble. His rage, couple with the eight hours already gone in their war room with guilt trips for every bathroom break or mouthful of food taken, weighed on Eiri.

He was just about to suggest staying behind to work on the menu logging himself when the Director breezed into the room. "I've had dinner ordered to the cantina for you. Please, go and enjoy it. Hallenwae - a moment of your time?"

She wore, as always, an impeccable suit cut to flatter her hourglass figure, hugging the curve of her hips, cupping the sweep of her breasts. Eiri's breath caught at the sight of her, imaging the lace underneath. Her hair was plaited down her back in an old style that allowed charming wisps to escape, framing her ears and cheeks with ringlets.

Then those eyes were on him. "Lao, you want to listen in?"

He didn't realize she addressed him until Hall hissed at him to answer. "Ma'am. I would - if it concerns the logging issue blocking next week's test."

"Stay, then. Hallenwae, give me the rundown."

The elf, flustered, struggled to navigate their scrum chart, squinting at Eiri's neat handwriting. The vampire was, as ever, patient and silent, waiting. Under her gaze, the elf stirred, blinking furiously to contain his frustration, shaking the leaves of his hair in irritated rustles. When at last, he gave up his incomplete explanation, Eiri started to speak, to clarify, but the Director spoke first:

"It's pointless to launch the test if we're not confident our logging holds up. We don't have budget for custom UI, and I'm loathe to disrupt user experience for a small test. Let's move the marketing sprint up to next week and reassess."

"Director..."

"I'm sure Chandagar will resolve the tracking issue and Lao already has the branding A/B test lined up. We gain nothing pushing a test now, launch-wise. As for milestones, we can bend..." she said, catching Eiri's eye for a fleeting moment, "without breaking."

Overruled, Hall agreed. He fled the war room to cover his frustration, leaving Eiri to rearrange the notes on the task chart. The Director watched him. He could feel her gaze on his back like the touch of her hand on the small of his back - warm, firm, guiding him.

"Ma'am," he said, finally. "About the other day."

"Yesterday," she corrected. "It's only been eighteen hours."

"Yes," he agreed. "I want to apologize if... if I offended. I've never encountered one of your kind before, in... that way."

He heard a little stir behind him, felt her gaze leave him. Eiri turned to look at her, leaning against the meeting table, arms crossed over her chest. He imaged, but could not see, the line of cleavage between her breasts deepening under the pressure of her arms. "Don't apologize. I should have explained. I... am here for only a little while, until the launch. There are distractions, plenty of hospitality from my elven hosts. But I, like you, am... particular. I was rather hoping we could share a mutual agreement."

Eiri did not understand what she meant, not completely. She said she wouldn't feed on him. She clearly wanted to have sex with him. But there was something about the way of her now, nervous and unsettled, that hinted at more.

"Go on," he said.

"I wanted you to... be rough with me." She said the last so softly, he caught himself leaning toward her to hear. "Among my kind, it's not common. Sex, for us, is a proxy for power. We dominate. We control."

She locked her eyes on him again, and he felt it. That deep, yawning pull like walking the edge of a cliff - always tempted to the edge. She's doing that to me, he realized. It was a way to lure prey.

"If I want, I could compel you to strip naked right now. Crawl across the floor and kiss my feet." The thought crossed his mind as she said it, and he felt his cock stir and his cheeks sting. Simultaneously thrilled and ashamed. But she dropped his gaze and the feeling passed. Had never really been there at all. "It's nothing I want for myself. But... having it the other way around..."

Eiri found himself drifting closer to her. Did she mean it? Or, like the glamour she caught him in a moment a go, some kind of manipulation? "Go on," he said again.

Her cheeks flushed, pink spreading across the porcelain cheeks. "It's too... too embarrassing... The things that I want."

He tried to imagine them. Couldn't. What would a vampire - one of the most powerful creatures on earth - want from a bit of hair pulling? Eiri himself had indulged in light spanking with his freshman girlfriend at the Academy. Was there more to it than that?

"What would it be like? A... mutual agreement, I mean," he asked, genuinely curious what rules could exist for a mutual relationship between human and vampire. "Is it like a demon contract? Do you... put some kind of mark on me, with your teeth...?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that!" she laughed, a nervous bubbling sound. It lit up her eyes in a way almost human. "It would be - like a typical office romance. Secret. And... not without its privileges."

"Such as?"

She met his eyes again, the blush receding from her cheeks as her dimples puckered them. "I am the Director. I can be good to you. Within reason, of course. Fulbright will ship in six months whether or not our... agreement persists."

Does it mean that much to her? A bit of rough sex? Surely she could get it outside the office...

"Don't misunderstand," she said, and he realized she'd been reading his thoughts. "I am careful. I don't dally. The nature of my desires isn't something I want shared as common gossip, or mocked among my reports. I chose you because you are vulnerable. Uniquely so, on this team. Hall would cancel your visa with the slightest provocation - and I know you're not eager to go home."

"Is that the only reason?" Eiri was surprised to hear himself ask. Pride swelled in his chest, pressing against the rough weave of his shirt, the tightness of the leggings over his hips. He was young, good-looking, fresh out of school and working in one of the best job markets for humans. He wanted her to want him, even if she was a vile murderous creature that preyed on humans. "Did you pick me because I'm weak?"

"No, it wasn't the only reason." She let her eyes run the length of him, gauging the offer his body made to her now. "Tonight, then?"

Pride smothered fear. He agreed.

...

She handed him a black silk blindfold when he came to her. She did not ask, though she must have intuited the effect her eyes had on him. They met again at her apartment. Her human assistant wasn't there, and the car not outside when he arrived.

Like brushing her hair, he had a learning curve to master with the blindfold. He fumbled a little, tying the straps of the silk behind her head where the scalp met the neck. She was fully dressed, and he felt unsure of how and where to touch her to begin stripping her suit.