Like Blood for Coffee Pt. 02

...

He left her in the shower to finish washing her hair though her limbs felt heavy and her eyelids dropped. When she emerged, she saw he'd found her towels. He wrapped her in them, cocooning her hair, her shoulders, her hips. Lifting her and carrying her back to the bed to sleep, completely shielded from the world. She thought he would leave her there and go back to his own apartment to shower and change, but later - much later - when she finally woke at sundown with her natural rhythm, she heard him downstairs, moving around the kitchen.

She smelled coffee.

Descending into the living room, she caught sight of him, clothed only in the uniform tunic, his flaccid dick swinging proudly down underneath it as puttered around, looking for utensils. The sight stirred a long ago memory in her of the human husband who used to make her coffee on weekend mornings. She pushed it aside and joined him, sliding her arms around him from behind in a hug. One of her porcelain cups tinkled as he set it down and she felt his hand on her wrist, the skin of his palm hot from holding the fresh cup of coffee.

"Is that Fulbright?" she asked.

"Yeah, I had a bag with me from the office," he said.

It smells different. "Can I have a sip?"

She let go of him. He picked up the cup and turned toward her, holding it out to her. She cradled the back of his hand, guiding the ceramic rim to her lips. That memory stirred again - a sun-filled kitchen, a man that loved her and swore never to leave her. Back when she had a different name and it wouldn't have been such a pain in the ass to arrange a good, hard spanking once in a while.

Being a vampire sucks, her father would sometimes say. His equivalent of a vampire dad joke.

Noth dipped her tongue into the hot, black pool and felt herself gag, the memory dissolving. "Ugh-! What is that?"

Eiri lifted the cup to his own lips, sipped. He rolled the fluid around his mouth a little, breathing through his nose, and then swallowed. Tasting. "It's Fulbright. Isn't it?"

"No - it tastes... wrong." Her mind, finally clear of the drug and full of blood to sustain its higher functions, began to put things together. "You brought a bag of it? May I see it?"

Eiri set down the cup and pointed to the silver bag open on her countertop. Noth picked it up and examined the packaging - it was an earlier, discarded version of the branding they stopped using after the spring festival. She reached her fingers into the beans, pinching one between her fingers, rolling it. The oily texture seemed more pronounced than she thought it should be, even before they switched to the soft boil method.

"Maybe it's because we're not using Christy's flavor cups?" Eiri asked.

Christy. Noth had forgotten all about her, Eldunord, and even the dead intern until that very moment. Fuck. "I have to go into work. Did you take today off sick to stay with me...?"

"I did." He smiled and it melted her heart.

"Take another day off," Noth told him. Oddly, the human resources management training came to her. She was his superior, she was responsible for his well-being. "Stay here - I'll have my assistant bring some groceries for you. Don't leave without telling her."

Eiri nodded, uneasy. But he leaned forward and kissed her, and she knew she wouldn't need to compel him to obey.

...

She confronted her fiance. "You changed the formula. Why?"

Eldunord regarded her, his liquid amber eyes narrowing as he took her in. She dressed to please herself, not him - a black pinstripe suit with massive engraved metal buttons and black lace at the collar, pockets, and cuffs. Tailored, fitted, boned, restrained. A vampire and the motherfucking Director of Product.

"Why wasn't I told?" she demanded again.

"It was only a small batch - a creative exercise out of chemical engineering," he said, his voice never rising above a murmur, like a soft wind rustling through trees.

"That's not in scope," Noth scolded him. "Are you adding more to the roadmap?" She held up her left hand, the ring finger jutting upward while the rest made a fist. "We should talk about the existing milestones we haven't met. You, me, and my father."

"Calm yourself," he said. "It was just a small experiment."

"And the intern? Was he part of it?"

Eldunord shrugged, his aging joints creaking like branches scraping against each other.

"Does that mean you don't know, or that you don't want to answer?" It infuriated her that she couldn't read elven minds. She wanted to claw the back from her would-be husband's face, scratch open his skull and look at all the thoughts hidden underneath. Did he care for her, did he at the very least respect her? She was putting her career on hold for him; the least he could do was treat her better than elves treated humans.

He was, at least, vulnerable to compulsion. She locked eyes with him and though, loud and clear: Careful, Twiggy. You've got another hundred years at best, and all of them belong to me. Treat me as the wife who will outlive you, not a middle manager you're managing out.

She broke him with her anger. The elf sighed, a creaking rustle and the whorls in his skin seemed to sag.

"It was just an experiment," he repeated, his voice crumbling like dried leaves crushed under her foot. "Sales on Fulbright met expectations, but retention is an ongoing problem. I signed off on an extension of the project to focus on those KPIs; I do not know who all worked with Hallenwae on it. I should have told you, but you were on your way out."

It stung, hearing him say it out loud. Noth enjoyed her work; leaving it behind - even if it was only until her husband left her a widow - would be like a breakup. Worse, even, than saying goodbye to Eiri, who was sure to die of old age long before the elf did.

"You look sad," he observed. "I am sorry I've hurt your feelings. I do not mean to insult you, or create false delays. We wanted more tests - there have been side effects."

"So I've seen." Noth briefly relayed her encounter with Christy, her nasty hangover. She left the part about Eiri and the vampiric compulsion out, keeping that information for herself.

"I gave her a common psilocybin cap as a party favor - we had a small happy hour to celebrate a recent breakthrough," her fiance explained. "She probably chased it with a bit of the new batch - you know how the lab rats like to drink their own creations - and suffered a bad reaction. I am sorry it was so frightening to you. I did not realize you'd feed on her!"

He laughed. She didn't.

"Please don't be cross," he pleaded. "Perhaps this will cheer you up."

He touched the ancient slab of oak he called a desk, sliding open a compartment. He took a small wooden ring box from it and opened it for her to see. A red diamond, glistening like a drop of blood.

"The deal is still on," he reassured her. "I will keep the promises I made your family. You will never go hungry or walk in daylight while I shelter you in my arms, so long as the blood flows. And behind it, coffee."

This is what she came for, she reminded herself. Her father made it clear: Get the ring, get it done. Nothing else.

She held out her hand.

...

Vampires avoided goodbyes. When you lived nearly forever, they cost too much. Too much pain, too much turmoil. Goodbyes were expensive.

So Noth did not say goodbye to Eiri when she saw him, waiting up for her at her apartment. Instead, she bid him follow her upstairs, where she spread herself out on the bed, her wedding ring glinting in the low votive lights.

She said, "Do whatever you want to me."

She saw him inhale, that smooth chest expanding, the hollow where his ribs met over his abs deepening. Truly, she had chosen well in Eiri Lao. The wide shoulders, the narrow hips, the lean thighs. She watched it all bloom before her like a night flower as he stripped off his clothes.

By now, he knew where she kept everything in her bedroom - the ropes, the cuffs, the candles, the hairbrush. She watched him watch her, and then he moved to the bedside cupboard and became her Master one more time.

His first command: "Close your eyes."

She obeyed. She thought he would blindfold her. He didn't. She thought he might gag her, but he didn't. She felt something heavy brush against her - the braided ropes they hadn't used yet. Something new.

Fuck yeah, she thought. If this is going to be the last time... She shut the thought down, focusing instead on Eiri's hands moving over her in the dark.

He left the suit on her, winding the ropes around the fine fabric, tightening them with a rustle of hemp on silk. He wound it in a deliberate pattern, creating knots in strategic places. Noth once found an ancient picture book in her father's library called The Art of Japanese Rope Bondage. Eiri put her in mind of it now as he created a harness over her torso from the rope in her bedroom, trussing her arms overhead, attached somewhere to the bedposts. He's been practicing...

When her legs were bound, too, she felt him get up from the bed. Unable to resist temptation, she cracked an eyelid to look for him - and caught him leaning over her face, watching her.

He smiled, mischief glinting in his dark chocolate eyes. "I didn't tell you you could open them yet!"

She shut her eyes again. "Forgive me, Master..."

"We'll see."

How had he learned to move so silently? She barely felt him move to the foot of the bed - only becoming aware of it when one of her shoes came off in his hand. He bared both her feet and she felt his warm hands run over them, cupping her heel, a thumb running along her arch.

Something stung the ball of her foot. Hot wax, dripping onto the skin.

Noth cried out, surprised. The ropes around her tightened as she moved, the knots pressing through her suit into the skin. But she kept her eyes shut.

"Good girl." She felt his lips caressing her just above the ankle, the softest kiss. A reward.

She squirmed inside the ropes, feeling them rub up against her arms, her ribs, her hips. A wide, heavy knot pressing down over the high mound of her sex. She didn't want to be "good," she didn't want to obey. Noth gritted her teeth and opened her eyes to look down at him, kneeling at the foot of the bed, naked, a votive candle in his hand.

He met her eyes. "You really want to be punished."

She panted, her chest heaving against the ropes, the breasts trapped beneath the cords quivering, the silk of her fine suit between rustling. That outfit cost a few thousand dollars, including the underwear. A few hundred more to clean. More to repair if anything tore.

She could afford it. She could free herself, move that abrasive, offening rope off her cunt so the fabric there wouldn't pill while she squirmed. Could say no to the marriage, could find another job, could take him with me... She shut her eyes, cut off the thoughts. Fighting to obey.

"I'm sorry, Master," she made herself say, her voice catching in her throat. "Please. Punish me."

She felt the heat of the candle, circling the heel of her foot. He moved it upward, slowly - so slowly. She could almost imaging, though she could not see, him tilting the ceramic bowl in his fingers, the red wax spilling over its brim to land in stinging wet drops on her toes, her soles.

"Ah-ahhhh!" All her awareness sharpened, honed in on the spots of pain on her foot. She quivered within the ropes, straining. That fat, heavy knot bearing down on the crest of her mons, pressing the luxurious silk into her swelling vulva. He dripped more of the wax onto her, pushing her pant leg up to splash some on her ankles, the tender spot where her shin joined her foot. Each drop sent her shaking, undulating. Each motion tightening her bonds.

The gray stole over her. All her thoughts, all her ambition obliterated. She lost herself, her body moving without volition. Grinding itself against her bindings, against her clothes. The silk teasing her, sliding over her skin. The ropes hurting her, digging into it. And Eiri with his candle, burning her naked feet in his hands.

She must have cum, send over the edge by the pressure of the knot against her sex, the radiating pain zinging up her legs to it. She knew it only because she felt Eiri touch the rope scissoring between her legs, move it to one side, his fingers probing. The silk between her sex and his fingers damp and slippery.

"Madam Director, you are wet through," he scolded. "Open your eyes - look what a mess you've made!"

She obeyed. He was kneeling between her splayed legs, the candle gone from his hands, abandoned somewhere on the floor. Eiri reached for the ropes tying her legs down, loosened them. Grabbed her by the thighs and doubled her legs back over her torso, lifting her pelvis, angling it toward her face. The rope dug in, hiking up between the lips, spreading them to either side, pushing the silk of her expensive suit, high into her wet cleft. She saw the place where she'd soaked it, a dark we spot spreading as more of her cum inundated the expensive fabric.

"You'll have to have it cleaned," he said.

"I can afford it..." she panted.

"Don't talk back." He let go of her legs and reached up to slap her across the face. "Close your eyes again."

She did, slowly, the gray making her sluggish and languid. He was moving over her, his shadow blotting out the light she could see behind her eyelids. She felt his lips on her face, kissing.

Does he know? She wondered. He was a designer, detail-oriented. He must've seen the ring. He kissed her mouth, his tongue plunging into her as it never had before, the tip running along the ridges on the roof of it, just grazing the tips of her fangs. Is this his goodbye?

She felt his knee pressing between her legs, up against the knot, the damp fabric underneath. She twisted against it, under him while he used his tongue to fuck her mouth, plunging in and out. She felt his cock somewhere between her belly and her chest - hardening.

He broke away, uttering her name in a hoarse whisper. She started to tremble under him, feeling his passion for her grow, overwhelming her.

"Do whatever you want to me," she urged him again. I'll obey. I'll never retaliate... Tell me to leave him and be with you, and I would...! She thought it, but she'd never say it. Not even if he broke her.

She felt him shift again, that hard weight sliding up over her bound breasts, up past her chest, over her constricted throat. The tip brushed her chin, moistening it with sticky essence.

"Open your mouth," he commanded.

She obeyed - and he rammed his cock into her, burying himself deep into her throat in one brutal thrust. She gagged, spasmed, nearly throwing him off with her convulsion. She felt one of the metal posts groan, bending under her strength. Another few thousand dollars down the tank.

But she kept her jaw open and her eyes shut. His obedient slave.

"Good," he sighed, reaching down to stroke her hair, easing his hard length back to give her enough room to breathe. "Good girl..."

She gasped, choking on her spit and his pre-cum. The gray was throbbing behind her eyes, black dots lining its edge. His cock slid back into her mouth, more slowly and she ran her tongue along it. He pushed his cock deep into her mouth again, using a hand to guide himself in, his knuckles brushing her chin.

She felt his hips on either side of her head as he drove into her mouth, the legs braced on either side of her straining with each thrust. Her lips swelled with the friction, her breath rasped in her nose. Loud wet slurps and gulps sliding from her mouth - the ultimate source of her dominion. Restrained. Gagged. Subjugated.

She opened her eyes just as he pulled out of her mouth. She watched his cock, glistening and flushed, just inches from her face quiver and spurt. He came all over her three thousand dollar suit, his white sticky cum oozing through the lace.

Well, she thought to herself, calculating the cleaning bill. That's a goodbye I can afford.

[End Part 2]