Like Blood for Coffee Pt. 01

She really is enjoying this, he thought. She was selfish. She did not care about the tests, she did not care about Hall's humiliation of him. She didn't even appreciate that he was mad; the net result was the same to her.

In a furious rage, he shoved his fingers into the hot crevice between her fleshy mounds, probing, digging. He found the tight little aperture and inserted a finger into it. She gasped, froze. With his finger pinning her in place, he let go of her arm and went on spanking her, swiping his hand downward over the fleshiest part of her cheeks in painful swats. She struggled, unable to push back without inviting more of the finger into her. She spread her hands on the desk, bracing against the blows. He heard her panting, and he plunged a second finger into the puckering orifice, working the knuckles inside of her. She grunted, twisted under his assault.

"Do you enjoy that? Do you like being fucked in the ass?" he demanded. He thrust his hand against her, roughly, bending the fingers inside of her. "Because that's what you're doing to me! This is what you put us through!"

He grabbed her hair, and pulled while shoving a third finger into her. She hissed in pain, arching her back, throwing her hips against the edge of the desk trying to get away from those stabbing fingers that stretched her. "Stop," she said. "Please...!"

Eiri paused, amazed at his temerity, wondering if she really wanted him to stop or if it was all part of the game to her. Before he could decide, there was a knock on the door.

In a blindingly fast motion, she stood up, turned, wrenching her ass free of his grip, and struck him. Eiri flew backward with the force of it, colliding with one of the chairs, falling over it. Everyone definitely heard that.

"What is it?" the Director said, voice steady but sharp. She was straightening her clothes, smoothing her hair, her back to him.

"Ma'am," her assistant called in a knowing sing-song voice. "Your 11 o'clock is here."

"I'll take it in here. Bring coffee." The Director ran a hand over the torn seam of a skirt. She would not look at him, but he knew she spoke to him when she said, coldly, "You should go."

He stepped outside her office, feeling the throbbing parts of his back and neck where they struck the chair. His erection long gone. It wasn't until he made it to the bathroom that he saw the blood on his glove. Shame, mingled with pleasure, twisted his stomach.

Eiri hid there until it was time to go home for the day.

...

Oddly, work improved for the team after the incident. The Director moved them out of the war room back into the open floor, allowing them to take one of the bays near the windows on the fourth floor. Hall also took them off swing shift, allowing them to clock in at 10am instead of 3pm. The regular hours put them in contact with the other Starbucks employees, and moral improved. Christy wore less makeup; Alan and Jaymin spent less time together and indulged in fewer exclusionary jokes. Eiri had the opportunity to meet with several other designers and attend the broader company marketing syncs. The contact restored the team's spirit and gave them each new ideas for improvements to the product.

The move also kept them at the office mainly during daylight hours. The Director and her subordinates weren't around, then, for chance encounters. Once or twice, Eiri drifted by the frosted fishbowl office, searching for her silhouette. She was never there, even after sundown.

Guilt tore at him. As much as he felt he had the right to be angry, he couldn't convince himself that his actions toward the Director were appropriate. Two wrongs don't make a right, his mother often told him.

He struggled with how to atone. A private message? A note to her assistant? Eiri never saw the woman anywhere on campus during his work hours. Leaving a note under her office door wasn't even open to him - the seal was airtight and monitored by camera.

Fulbright chugged along. The second round of taste tests with the "soft boil" technique and his Bauhaus-inspired font tracked positive on sentiment analysis and product recall. Christy also found a new compound treatment for the inside of the cups that improved flavor, pulling long overtime hours in the lab with a few of the chemists she met during lunchtime.

One day, she invited Eiri to visit her there below ground in the secure lab, and he was started to see bite marks on her neck. "Has the Director seen this?" he asked, innocently, when she finished explaining the science of flavor manipulation.

Christy's hand went to her neck, a telltale sheepish crinkle forming in her lips "Yes... she wanted to know why I kept staying late. We got dinner a few times..."

Eiri was shocked to realize he was jealous. She never bought me dinner, he thought. Did she ask you to brush her hair, too?

Christy mistook his look for one of chagrin. "Oh, don't worry, Eiri-chan! She's really very nice, and it doesn't hurt at all. It's like getting a hickey!" She smiled. "I can... show you sometime if you like?"

"I make it a point not to fool around with coworkers," he lied.

The deadline for the spring taste test approached. Eiri found himself putting in more hours alongside Christy, revising the go-to-market strategy and backfilling the roadmap with her achievements to improve Hall's confidence in the tests. Jaymin completed the menu logging ahead of schedule, but Hall, always ready to exploit, hinted that Eiri needed to pull an all-nighter to design a new lid for the limited edition seasonal cups.

Vindictive son of a bitch, Eiri thought. Nevertheless, he obliged, lowering all the lights in his corner of the bullpen and losing himself in the design process he loved so much.

Sometime before midnight, he caught sight of the Director, walking the concrete path that looped the center of his floor. She was alone, without even her assistant, engrossed in something on her phone screen. She went to the fishbowl and shut the door, frosted the glass. Eiri's heart thumped in his chest. Had she seen him? Did she know he was there?

A tumult of feelings overwhelmed him. Anger, jealousy, suspicion. Had she only toyed with him all this time, with her talk of mutual understanding, of not feeding on coworkers? Was she fucking more of his coworkers, all of them, Hall? Beneath those burning questions smoldered shame - white hot and liquid in his stomach. How could he ever look her in the eyes again without remembering her blood on his fingers, the exhilaration he felt at hurting her?

Shame won out. His mother raised him to fear vampires and elves and all the creatures of the Collapse. But she also raised him to be honorable to own up to his mistakes. He got up from his desk and made his way to the fishbowl.

"Director," he announced, rapping on the glass. "A word, please."

"Come in." She defrosted the glass.

No skirts to entice him, no hairbrush awaited him. She stood beside her desk, a stack of reports spread out over its surface, her phone in her hand. "Yes?"

Eiri approached, closing the door behind him. He kept his head down so that he wouldn't have to see her eyes on him. "Director. I apologize for my actions." Reflexively, he bowed.

She did not respond. He heard her moving, shuffling the reports. After a long moment, she said, "Is that all?"

His face felt hot. What does she mean...? Did she want some other form of apology? Was it a test to see if he wanted to resume their agreement?

He lifted his torso to look at her. But as he did, he caught a flicker of alarm in her face. At the exact moment, all the lights in the building winked out. Her phone vibrated.

"Shit," the Director hissed. "Lao, get down on the floor."

Confused, he hesitated. Then felt her hand around his ankle, yanking his leg out from under him. He landed hard on his back with a thud, knocking the wind from him. "Oof!"

"Stay still," she whispered. "Security breach."

Far below them, through the floor, they could feel vibrations. Irregular, moving. Eiri stiffened, ready to rise. But the Director reached over his chest, pinned his shoulders down with her hands. He'd never imagined the raw strength there until it held him.

"Gunfire," she said. "Can you hear it?"

He couldn't - not with his human ears. But he felt another rumble through the ground, powerful enough to rattle the furniture. "Was that an explosion?"

"I think so."

He could feel her there, lying alongside him. The tension in the dark stretching. Frustratingly, he felt the beginnings of an erection. Why now? They waited like that for seconds, minutes. He filled the time with thoughts of the woman beside him, memories of her skin, the breasts bound in her lace bra. He couldn't help himself.

She stirred a little, an imperceptible movement that brought them closer together. She fitted her waist against his hip, like that time they laid together in her fake bed, talking. He imagined, but could not feel, the warmth of her skin through his clothes.

She was reading his thoughts.

He imagined her again, reaching behind to unhook herself, imagining the breasts falling like apples from a tree, the nipples red and hard. His cock got harder. Even before he could wonder whether or not she could see in the dark, her hand closed around it. He gasped. She covered her mouth with his, hot and open against his. He shoved his tongue inside, urgently. In the dark, without her eyes on him, with no way of seeing her teeth, she was just a woman. Just a warm, turgid body sliding against his, entrating.

Eiri didn't know if it was the danger or the thrill of the forbidden or both, but seized with a sudden frantic desire, he turned to her. Extended his leg over her, mounting, pressing down. He thrust his hips down against her, pinning her to the floor while he crushed his mouth to hers.

I want to punish you, he thought, hoping she could hear it. If we die tonight, I want the last thing you think of to be my cock. He rammed his hips down onto her with brutal thrusts, feeling her rock beneath him with the force of it.

Her hands were moving, down his torso, over his stomach, to the drawstrings of his leggings. Her fingers worked, freeing him.

He put a hand in her hair, wound his fingers through it. Pulled. She arched her back, pressing the smooth linen of her pants against his full, hard length. "Pull your pants down," he whispered. Far below them, the ground rumbled. "Hurry."

He felt her wiggling beneath him, that maddening shimmy. Grinding herself against him as the friction of fabric receded, rolled downward. The cool, naked flesh of her thighs was a shock against his aching hot shaft. She kept wiggling. He let go of her hair, reached between them, digging his thumbs past her hip bones to where he felt the coarse, curling hair, searching. She moved, and he felt a wetness somewhere near the base of his shaft.

She lifted her hips as he lowered his - and he was in her. He flexed his buttocks, braced his hands against her, holding her down. In three short, sharp thrusts he was all the way inside, buried to the hilt.

Another explosion rocked the floor below them. He froze, feeling his cock pulse inside of her, the blood rushing all through his body in a frantic surge.

"Don't stop," she begged.

He found her mouth again, muzzled her with his own, plunging his tongue deep into the hot, wet hole while his cock did the same. She was moving now, small gyrating movements of her hips. He felt all around inside of her, the ridges, the smoothness. Human women sometimes flinched under him, held him back with their thighs to control the depth of his thrust. With her trapped there beneath him, tight little moans in her throat, he ran the full depth of his manhood into her, deep as he could go, not worried if he hurt her. Knowing she loved it if he did.

The glass above them lit up, a light refracting against the glass. She tightened around him, surprised. The light moved - a flashlight shone from a great distance. Eiri felt a thread of terror wind through him, snaking down from his chest to his groin. His cock surged with it, quivered - and burst like a dam. She shuddered, feeling him spend inside her.

The light moved again, passing over the office wall. A voice called out, "This is Air security - executing an emergency wellness check. Any persons on this floor, identify yourself!"

She called back, still beneath him, still sheathing him, voice perfectly steady, "Two employees here! Is the evacuation route secure?"

Eiri got to his knees, pulling out of her, tucking himself back into his pants. She shimmied her pants back up, smearing their mingled juices along her legs with her panties. He reached to help her to her feet, and she managed to smooth her hair and tuck her shirt in with incredible speed, buttoning her blazer neatly over her abdomen as a security guard pushed through the glass door, shining their flashlights at them.

"Director," he said. "The route is clear. Please follow me to the meeting point."

She led him out, following the guard. She walked as she always did, light-stepped and confident like a dance. Totally at ease despite the danger, despite his cum dribbling down her legs.

As they were led through the pitch black halls, Eiri couldn't resist reaching out to cup a buttock, slipping a finger between her legs. She was wet through to her pants.

...

Security confined all employees to their housing for 48 hours. Eiri didn't catch the full extent of the damage to the building while evacuating, but he caught sight Christy and her boys from the lab being ushered into a security transport. An armored guard took his phone, and his screens vanished from the walls of his condo in the first two hours of the lockdown.

Whatever had happened, it was bad. A Human Resources officer visited his apartment for a half hour security review. They took samples of his blood, his urine. They gave him a bitter mushroom to chew and then asked him a series of questions about where he'd been, who he'd spoken to, had he taken any goods or money from anyone since arriving in Seattle. Mercifully, they did not ask about the Director. When they left, satisfied, Eiri was left behind to retch up the contents of his stomach, head spinning from the effects of the plant.

It made him anxious and paranoid, unable to eat. Eiri didn't feel safe even with the lights on. He drew the curtains, fetched bottled water and crackers from the kitchen, and kept to his bed, moving as little as possible, rising only to go to the bathroom. He worried that any moment would bring an attack - gunshots through his windows, a pounding on his door.

What is going on? He wondered. Was it like the demon attacks on Lan Fan University where hundreds of human students were carried off? Had there been a bombing like on the subways in Uganda when the humans took back the volcano? His mind spun with all the horrors visited on humans just trying to go to work.

Finally, the dreaded pounding came. He jumped up from his bed, alarmed. "Who is it?"

The Director's assistant answered, "Employees may return to their posts tomorrow morning, but she'd like you to have dinner with her tonight. Her car is waiting to take you to her place. You may stay there tonight."

It never occurred to him that he could refuse. Eiri's hands shook slightly as he drew on his clothes - a crisp slim-fitting Prada suit that hadn't seen the outside of a garment bag since coming to Seattle - put on his shoes. She wasn't waiting for him in the car. Outside Pike Place, he recognized the dark prowling shapes from his youth in China - Demon Triads, on patrol. The Ipomoea must've had extensive connections to use them for private security on elven territory.

He found her waiting inside, a candlelit dinner set for two on her low dining table. White tablecloth, red wine. She emerged from the kitchen as he entered, wearing simple, shapeless cotton sweatpants and a muscle shirt that bared her arms. Her hair was undone, hanging down her back. In the warm light of the candles, she looked soft and vulnerable - almost human.

"I'm glad to see you're alright," she said. She waved a hand to the table. "Please, sit."

She set before him a steaming bowl with a familiar smell. "Ramen?"

She smiled. "I thought you might like some home cooked comfort food. The last few days have been... intense."

He started to wonder how she would know to serve him ramen rather than congee, but then remembered she'd been inside his mind for weeks. "You're just going to watch me eat?"

She chuckled. "Does it make you uncomfortable? I could taste it a little. But it would be a waste of good ramen. Besides - I'm not even hungry."

He couldn't resist the umami smell. Taking up the long wooden chopsticks, he tasted the broth, picked up the slice of fishcake to nibble. He tried a noodle next, savoring the familiar chewy texture, the satisfying smoothness as he slurped it into his mouth. The sound, he thought, was meant to remind him of sex.

"Director," he said. "I know I shouldn't ask, but..."

"I don't have much I can share," she said, following his thought without even using her eyes. "We didn't take any alive, but none were left to make off with any of our secrets. Mercenaries - difficult to trace, though I think it fairly obvious who stands to gain from a hit on Starbucks."

Eiri wasn't convinced. Dunkin Donuts had enough market share among demons not to worry about losing a small percentage of its human audience. He thought of saying this to the Director. But he really didn't want to talk about work. Not with her. "Before the attack..."

"You were in the middle of an apology."

"Yes. But you didn't accept?"

"No? Well..." She slid her chair close to his, rested her arm on the table and turned to him. The candlelight glowed against the pure white skin of her head, her neck, sparkling in her bistre eyes. "I might still be a bit - sore with you. But, I have to say... I understand. I understand what you must have been feeling."

He slurped up the last of his meal. Sat back, facing her. Go on, he thought.

She smiled, hearing him. "I haven't been human for eight hundred years. But, I can still remember, sometimes, what it felt like to be human. To have no control over anything. Living after the Collapse, at the mercy of any race that sought to exploit the meek. It was... exhausting."

"Is that why you turned?"

A blush stained her cheeks. "That's a very personal question."

"We have a very personal relationship," Eiri said.

She laughed at his bold approach. "You don't even know my name!"

"Well, tell it to me," he said, letting his voice take on just a hint of the tone he used when commanding her to take her clothes off.

She smiled. "My friends call me Noth."

"And... am I your friend?"

Slowly, she reached her arm across the table, turning the soft white palm upward. Reaching for him. "No, but I'd like that."

He took her hand. "Eiri," he said. "Lao Eiri."

"Nothera Ipomoea," she said, squeezing his fingers, the warmth of her palm against his knuckles. Shyly, she added in Japanese, "Pleased to meet you."

Now he laughed. "Where did you learn that?"

"From my human days. Old Japan was still open then, at least to student workers. I lived there for a little while."

"And then?"

"You really want to know when I turned?" She sighed, ran a hand through her hair, the silky brown strands clinging to her knuckles. "Vampire children are offered The Choice three times in their lives - once at twenty, once at fifty, and finally when you're at death's doorstep. I refused First Choice. When I was in my thirties, I... got sick. Cancer. My husband left me. My father offered me Final Choice, and I accepted." She had tears in her eyes. She blinked them away. "Even now, when I can't remember much else, I can still remember how I felt at the time. Powerless. Victimized. Nothing ever seemed so unfair to me as my life did, then. So - when you say to me now that that's how you feel - brutalized, taken advantage of... I can understand. You have every right to be angry with me, my kind, and the people we do business with at your expense."