Arcadia Resurgence, Vague Vermillion [best book club books for discussion .TXT] 📗

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