Like Blood for Coffee Pt. 05: Conclusion

A body swam into view above him. An elf he didn't recognize, gazing down into his face, the mouth moving, repeating: "How many times?"

Embarrassed, he thrashed his head, trying to get away from those eyes on him in the dark, caressing his naked body. His cock throbbed against his bindings, rubbing painfully over the wood.

"What color is the hair between your legs?" the interrogator continued, swaying away from him, out of his line of sight. "Do you normally shave it?"

Something moved over his leg - a tickling, soft thing brushing against him. His skin started to tingle, to itch. It made him think of Noth's bright red buttocks, stretched over his knee, hot to the touch. He imagined himself pinching that reddened flesh, feeling the burn in his cock as he imagined she'd feel it in her tortured cheek, screaming her pleasure into her gag.

When the leaf of the "naughty kiss" plant touched the sticky tip of his weeping dick, he spasmed, unable to help himself. Cum shooting up over his abdomen, hot and runny.

He felt the stinging leaf move over it, wiping his it away.

...

The questions resumed, "When you touch yourself, do you think of her?"

"Yes," he answered. He did. He thought of her rounded hips, her heavy breasts. The precious pink nipples. The little glint of desire and mischief in her eye when she called him, "Master."

Have you been naughty, Noth? He wanted to ask her. Interrogate her as they were interrogating him. Are you in some kind of trouble?

He imagined her there in front of him. Dressed in one of her tailored suits, hair braided, lipstick immaculate. He interrogated her and she flushed and squirmed under his questioning, embarrassed. Her hair escaping its coils, the buttons on her blouse coming undone.

"Do you touch yourself at night?" asked the voice.

"Yes," he said.

Night was the only time he could touch her, Eiri thought. He saw her only in moonlight, in candlelight, in shadow. When she flushed, he felt it more than saw it. Heard her breath, ragged and catching in her throat as he teased her like she liked. Winding the leather belts around her body, pulling until the flesh bulged over the edges and she writhed, hard and strained like the flesh between his fingers when he touched himself.

He felt something moving over him now, some heavy touch in that place where he would've been touching himself if his hands were free. He opened his eyes to see, but it was all dark. Shadowed. The only light streaming in from the skylight - the full moon hanging down like a naked breast. Her breast.

"Noth," he whispered, half-hoping, half-terrified.

"Is that what you call her?" the bodiless voice asked.

Only when we're alone, he thought, biting his lip. His heart pounded in his chest, adrenaline surging in him like a wave. He had to free himself, to escape before they dragged it out of him. He promised never to betray her - never to reveal her shameful desires to anyone. He would not give her up.

"Open your mouth," the voice commanded.

Eiri resisted. Fought. Hands were all around him, now - not one pair, but many, pressing into his skin, making little strange markings on him with sharp fingertips. He struggled, thrashing his head.

And then Eldunord was leaning over him, looking directly into his eyes. Eiri felt a tide of dread running out of him, weakening him. Sagging helplessly against his bonds, looking into the face of a man whose wife he fucked.

He knows, Eiri thought.

"Open your mouth," Noth's husband commanded again.

Eiri obeyed, feeling something thick and bitter go down his throat. They held his jaw and his nose shut until he swallowed, gagging. At last, fainting from the lack of air.

...

He felt the moonlight on his skin, moving over him like a living touch. Outside, the sounds of a party reverberated through the walls, rattling the window panes. Thrumming music, cries, and shouts.

He drifted, eyes filled by the moon's white glare, blinding him with its brilliance against the night sky. He swam up to it, feeling himself rise to touch the cold face of it. Sacred to the elves, as alive as a beating heart under his hands.

A heat sprung up at his back, prickling his skin all over with beads of sweat. Eiri swayed his head, surprised to find himself free and moving - his limbs heavy and slow as he raised his hands overhead to welcome the moon's touch in him.

He saw the crowd before him now - thousands of naked bodies dancing and swaying down below the dias. Watching him where he stood beside his bride, his arm around her shoulder. His hand at her breast. His wife.

Noth!

Eiri turned, recognizing the nude body beside him on the dias. His head spun, amazed. Somehow, he understood where he was - in the body of Eldunord, who'd stood over him and poured that liquid down his throat. It bound them together, whatever it was. He didn't understand quite how.

All he knew now was that his slave stood there beside him. His lover - the wife of the man whose body he now found himself in. He could have her. There, in front of a thousand people, all eyes on them.

He tried to say her name - to get her attention. But she turned her back to him, the firelight casting an orange glow over her naked shoulders, her rounded buttocks as she bent over, going on her hands and her knees before him, her ass raised, offering. He saw that slick, pink chasm opening between her legs, the curling hair already matted and shining with cum.

And Eiri was kneeling behind her, reaching out to grasp those wide, firm hips, nudging the rigid wet lips apart to force himself inside. Pulling her back against him. He couldn't bear to look down - to see another man's cock go into her. But he felt her skin against his. Felt his sac slap against the high mound of her sex as he penetrated her.

He reached up a hand to grab her by the hair and pull, like she liked. She arched her back, cried out. He wanted to see her face so badly - see the fangs dripping with saliva, her tongue undulating as he rolled into her, fucking her until she screamed.

More, Eiri thought, frantic - fighting to reach her through another man's body, so that she would feel him there. More!

But something slipped - went sideways. Jealousy, treacherous and smothering like quicksand, pulling him away from her. He felt Noth's dripping cunt slipping off of him, taking his sensation with it. He blinked, eyes full of the moon - both inside Eldunord's body and still inside his own, strapped down and locked away inside the office.

Come back, he thought, straining for Noth, trying to see her in the crowd through the other man's eyes. Come find me!

But she was gone, lost in the naked crowd. And Eldunord started to move away from the bodies. Away from the fire. Eventually, Eiri lost sight of him in his mind, falling into a confused half-sleep. Vaguely aware he'd drenched himself in his own cum.

...

The elf slapped him awake only moments later, having come inside from the festival to find him.

"How many times?" Eldunord demanded, shaking with jealousy. "How many times have you had her? Where did you have her? Where did you touch her?"

Still in the throes of the drugged trance, Eiri couldn't answer. His thoughts scattered, cracked apart, like a glass dropped onto the ground. The elf slapped him again, and a ringing started in his ears, dulling the sounds of the music, the cries of fury and pleasure from the orgy.

"Answer me!" the elf commanded, his voice like a branch snapping in half.

"It doesn't matter!" Eiri yelled, compelled by those angry amber eyes staring directly into his. He'd lost his fear, forgotten his shame. The worst that could happen to him had already happened; his slave claimed by another man. And he'd had to watch it. Feel it. "She's yours, now!"

"Life belongs to no one, blasphemer." Eldunord shook, from head to toe, his naked body tensing. The little symbols painted onto his skin shimmering in the fading light of the moon leaving the sky. Those same symbols were painted on Eiri's skin in nearly the same places.

With the last of the drug in him, Eiri slipped inside the elf's mind again - and found the source of his anger. It was a cold, white back turned toward him. Her eyes shut, her mind going elsewhere while he joined her in a sacred act of union. It was seeing her wet herself with her fingers rather than letting him stroke her to excitement. It was that his wife was unsatisfied.

Pride swelled in Eiri's chest. The strong, hard rhythm beating away the drug in his blood. He was only a human, the plaything of the supernatural beings that signed his paychecks. But he could fuck his vampire boss better than her elf husband could.

He doesn't know how to please her...! He started to laugh.

Eiri stopped when the elf seized him by the throat. He thought he might die then, choked to death by an EVP on company property. But then security knocked on the door and told Eldunord his wife needed him.

He left Eiri there, trapped and alone, listening to the sounds of the orgy outside.

...

He didn't know how much time passed. He drifted in and out of sleep - seeing the sun in the sky. Then the moon, again, still full for the second night in a row. The bio-pod kept him nourished, suffusing his body with nutrients and moisture, wicking away waste and sweat. He tried to call out to someone, to ask to be let go. But for all he knew, not even a guard stood outside the office door. Or if they did, they wouldn't respond.

Eiri tried to go back to sleep, to pass the time as Eldunord told him to. He tried not to think about the repercussions of the festival. Or of who would come to let him out on Monday morning when work started back up, whether or not they would give his clothes back. The worst they could do was fire him, he supposed.

He filled his head with thoughts of Noth, remembering all the times that he had fucked her. That first night when she asked him to pull her hair and he'd panicked. The awful day when he bent her over her own desk, and the reconciliation afterward. The dress boutique and the tears on her cheeks as she confessed he'd been the only man inside her mouth.

She'd never taken her husband in her mouth. Eiri was sure of it. He saw so clearly inside their marriage, now, and knew that she was only pretending with the elf. Bored. And maybe, just maybe, she longed for him as he did for her. Really meant it when she said she was glad it had been him.

He held onto that hope, nursed it. Fantasizing she was there with them, that it was her strapped down and him standing over her while she begged him to free her.

Her master. His slave.

...

And then she really was there. Standing over him in the dark.

He knew it was her and not some illusion, because she didn't look perfect - she looked haggard and worried. She wore a dark, ugly coat that was too long for her, the oversized collar almost like a hood around her shoulders. There was a line between her eyebrows, her hair hung over her shoulder in a messy braid.

"Eiri," she whispered, touching his face. "Eiri - can you hear me?"

He smiled at her and said what he believed to be true, "You're really here...?"

"I am," she said. He thought she might lean down to kiss him, strained against the wood to reach his face toward her lips.

But they were interrupted by a whiny, angry voice cracking through the dark like a whip: "What the fuck are you doing here?"

Noth startled, half-turning. And Eiri saw, past her silhouette, an elf standing in the doorway of the conference room - a dark shadow with spindly limbs casting jagged shadows across the floor in the light of the moon from the skylight. He recognized him.

"Hall," Eiri snarled.

"You shouldn't be here!" Hall snapped, his voice high and grating. He jerked into the room, limbs and leaves trembling with rage. He was covered in dark bruises, his narrow face puffy, both eyes swollen, lips contused.

Eiri opened his mouth to argue, to spit some reply - but he realized it was the vampire the elf was talking to.

"Fuck off, Hallenwae," Noth said, turning to face him, putting herself between him and Eiri. "Unless you had something to do with this...? With Christy? With Ted?"

"His name was Tim, you sanctimonious cunt," Hall screamed, his voice cracking like dried leaves. "It was an accident."

"And is it some 'accident' you have planned for Lao, here?" Noth said, her voice chilly. "What about Chandagar and Hollenshead? Have you got them chained up somewhere in the basement, too?"

"This is my office," he snarled back. He pointed at Eiri. "He shouldn't be here either."

"But he is, and you're coming in here to bite him - just like you did to Christy," Noth said. Her voice took on an edge, "Want to see how a real vampire does it?"

Hall stopped his advance, possibly to answer, possibly to turn and call security. But Noth never gave him the chance. Eiri watched, stunned, as the vampire lunged - covering half the distance of the room in a single motion. She seized the elf in her arms and bit down on his neck with a sharp crack.

He'd never seen a vampire kill before. He thought they seduced their prey with kisses and long stares. Slowly biting the neck so the victim didn't struggle or cry out.

What Noth did to Hall wasn't sensual at all. It was more like watching a spider with a fly caught in its web. She held him in her arms, drinking from him in big gulps that rocked her shoulders. While he struggled and spasmed, growing weaker, and weaker under her mouth. Falling to the floor where she dropped him, sucked dry.

Eiri stared for a moment, horrified. Then shut his eyes, trying to blot out the sight. A dead elf - his workplace bully, drained to an empty husk. He opened his eyes again when he felt her hands on him. She looked even worse than before, eyes bright with a feverish intensity.

"Can you stand?" she asked. "I can carry you, if I have to."

She yanked at the bands holding him, tearing the wood away piece by piece. He watched her, still unable to comprehend that she was really there. That she was rescuing him. That she'd killed for him.

"Don't worry about that," Noth interrupted him, reading his thoughts, compelling him with her own. "Worry about getting out of here."

"Yes, Director," he answered. "I can stand."

"Director?" She glanced up at his face, lips curving in a gentle smile. "I resigned. Didn't you get the memo? It's that corpse over there on the floor."

She pulled the last of the roots off of him. As soon as his arms were free, Eiri wound them around her.

...

Noth was right about Alan and Jaymin - they'd been detained, the same as Eiri, locked in different conference rooms in other parts of the campus. He saw them briefly while they piled into the back of an empty employee shuttle piloted by one of the other vampires, the tall dusky one. Noth got into the backseat with the humans. They stole out of the campus in the early morning hours before the work week started back up.

In front of the other employees, Noth was all business. She handed each of the humans spare work uniforms to put on, covering their nakedness. Poor Jaymin had bites arms and legs - Noth took pictures of the wounds, her hands shaking almost too badly to hold her phone steady.

"What happened?" the other vampire asked, glancing backward to look at Noth. "You don't look so good."

"Drank elf blood," she answered, wiping her sweating brow with the back of her hand. "I'll be straight in a minute. Cut over to I-5 and get off at Denny, we'll drop them at St. Stamos's."

Dawn was near. The shuttle glided toward the center of Seattle, to where one of the oldest hospitals in the western world still treated exclusively human patients. Noth got out and held open the door of the car for them to get out in the parking lot.

"Check yourselves in," she instructed them. "Privacy policy prevents Starbucks from finding you here. You can send in resignation letters before nine A.M. today and they'll count them as filed on Friday. I'd advise you each get a lawyer and sue for workers compensation."

"Thank you, Director," Jaymin said.

"Fuck," Alan whispered, sniffling.

Eiri stayed in the backseat. When she glanced at him, he met her eyes and formed a thought: He would not be leaving her side, not even for medical attention. Noth shut the door and climbed into the front. Eiri caught the other vampire looking back at him with a knowing smile.

...

Noth pulled him into her apartment, where they'd met so many times before. It was different now, much of the furniture removed or disassembled. The votive candles and low tables were packed up in boxes, stacked neatly along the exposed brick wall. Only a few items remained - a rug, the dining chairs, and the blackout shades already drawn against the rising sun. It looked less like a love nest and more like a hideout.

She closed the door behind them, tapped something on her phone. A lock clicked somewhere with a reassuring thud. Eiri felt a stir of anxiety in his chest. He'd spent a long time behind a locked door already that week, far from safe.

But I'm locked in here with her, he thought. Nowhere else is safer.

He turned to her and gathered her in his arms, pressing his face to her hair, kissing her. He ran a hand down her back to cup her closer at the small of it, winding the fingers of his other hand through the tangled mess of her hair.

He overbalanced her, pushing her back against the locked door. He felt her against his chest, trembling, kissing him through the thin fabric of his clothes. He tugged her hair, pulling her head back. Crushed his mouth to hers, pinning her where she stood.

Her skin was ice cold.

"Nothera," he murmured against her mouth. Now he realized her stirring against him, her hands at his chest, pushing him away. He could feel the cold of her skin through her palms. She wasn't trembling, she was shivering. "You're starving...?"

"I haven't fed," she whispered. "I haven't slept... It's been days. I had to find you."

"What about...?" He couldn't bring himself to say it: What about what you did to Hall?

"Can't feed on elf blood," she told him. "It's like binge-drinking whiskey. No nutritional value. And it makes you hungrier."

She wouldn't look at him. She stood in the circle of his arms, shivering and cold, starving. So close to his warmth, his neck just inches from the top of her head. Eiri marveled at her restraint, her perfect command of herself. Even if she was the vampire equivalent of drunk.

He tilted her head up with his fingers on her chin. "Drink."

The deep bistre pools of her eyes filled with tears. He saw fear in them. Her lips parted only slightly, and then shook her head.

"Drink," he said again, sliding his thumb to her lower lip, dragging it down. Exposing just the tip of her fangs.

She kissed his thumb, eyes closing. A single tear sliding down her icy cheek. Again, she shook her head.

"Am I still your master?" Eiri demanded, surprised to hear his voice ringing in his ears, confident and strong. She saved him, but she needed him to save her from herself, now. He rose to the challenge. "Don't you want to please me?"

"I do," she whispered. Another tear dripping down her opposite cheek. He took his thumb from her lip and wiped it away.

"Then obey me," he said. He turned his hand, offering his wrist to her.

Trembling and obedient, she pressed her lips to the tender skin at the base of his hand, where the delicate blue veins curved over the ball of it. He barely felt her fangs slipping into his skin - just a dull ache, the slightest bit of pressure. And then he felt the chilly lips pressed against him warming, working. Puckering as she gently kissed and suckled, swallowing slow gulps of him.

Seeing her feed was beautiful, he thought. It was nothing like the viscous brutality she killed with. This was careful, intricate. Like the time they first met, when she held his hand and sucked spilled coffee from his fingers, capturing him with her eyes. Now he was enslaved to her glowing beauty, the flush of vitality spreading across her cheeks, giving her pale skin radiance and color.