Corax and Grum Pt. 02

She was biao zi, a real bitch, but get her in bed and all the nastiness outside seemed a small price to pay.

That's how the whole thing got rolling in the first place, after all.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Kevin sat at the end of the bar inside The Pontiac, another bottle of cheap scotch in front of him. All of the seats at the bar were full, which didn't take much, as there were approximately a dozen seats total stretched along the small bar. Despite the downright American flavor of the bar, its small size and foreignness in HK made him think of the pubs back home in England.

The shunning continued. The seat next to him was occupied, but the tenant sat with his back to Kevin, all but ensuring his isolation. No matter. There wasn't much talking to be done, at least from Kevin's side.

He caught himself reaching into his coat pocket for his card holder. It was a funny thing; he wasn't aware he had done it until the slim business card holder was in his fingers. His hands had a mind of their own. Opening the lid, he took out the card on top. All black with a white Gothic font.

Corax & Grum

He blinked at the card, as the edges of it blurred into and out of focus. The reverse side inverted the front, white background with black font.

Lost & Found

Blinking, he was struck with the notion that the back of the card had said something else when the tall man had handed it to him back at Drunkerland a week ago, but he was damned if he could remember what it was.

He fiddled with the card, running fingertips along the edges, the irritation from reading the text giving him some sensation other than the constant inner anger and loss, or numbing of alcohol.

A few refills of his glass and a bit more numbing later, he still absently handled the card when the light and sound within his immediate area changed.

"I see I don't need to reintroduce myself, Mr. Kevin Houghton," came from over his right shoulder. Kevin turned, startled. Despite the ambient ruckus in the bar from the post-work crowd, and the distance of the speaker, the words had sounded in his ear, as if spoken from inches away.

Recognition of the speaker dulled the shock. Almost immediately after, he noted that the seat next to him was suddenly empty despite the bar being filled to capacity.

"Hello Mr. Corax. Funny running into you here."

"Is it? Well, I suppose."

"Won't you have a seat?"

Corax grinned down at the drunk, sliding the cap from his head and into the pocket of the ever-present overcoat. It was early summer and the day time temperatures were in the mid-80s, but the man still dressed in black, except for the white collared shirt under his suit. But there was no acknowledgement of discomfort on his part, or any deferment to the temperature in the warm bar.

Corax slid into the chair. Despite his size, he folded himself into the tight space, almost as if he were perched on the stool.

The bartender, a lovely American woman, took his order and brought a teapot with a steeping ball and a used but clean porcelain cup. Corax's hand reached into the overcoat's inner pocket to extract a small billfold and peeled off notes without looking at them. Kevin's vision was blurry but if asked he'd have sworn he handed her several US $100 notes. The reaction from the bartender was equally quizzical, but Corax was focused on Kevin. A beat, and she placed the excess under a marker, establishing a tab before she moved on to the next customer clamoring for her attention.

Corax turned and faced forward. "Well, Kevin. You were telling me about yourself last time our paths crossed." The tall man's eyes were straight ahead. "You are a lawyer, working in a patents office for a large pharmaceutical concern. You moved here from your home in Wales to head up the office here."

"That sounds li' me," Kevin raised his cup in honor of the summary.

"A profession, not quite noble, but not worth the sorrow you're demonstrating here, if I may say so."

Kevin chuckled mirthlessly. "Why'm I here, then? Izzat the question?"

The grin came from Corax. "If that is how you'd interpret my concern, I would listen to that."

Kevin lifted the tumbler to eye level, studying the honey-colored drink. " 's not a nice story. D'you need to hear something like that?"

The giant turned to him, leaning in slightly. "I'm told I have a trust worthy face," he flashed that graveyard smile. Kevin's first impression of that smile and the eyes above it wasn't particularly one of trust, but more of a predatory thing. "Besides, establishments like this were made for ballads and tragedies, no?" Corax lifted his tea cup in salute.

Kevin sighed before turning his red-rimmed eyes to the giant roosting next to him. "I miss my kids," he began.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I came to Hong Kong eleven years ago. I had worked at the UK head office of my company, specializing on extending patents on existing products and ensuring we did not broach on competitors technologies. This means that I got involved with development teams at early stages. I'm not a techie by training, but just by osmosis, I could absorb a fair bit of the knowledge. Getting the background early in the process meant I could be better prepared to avoid problems later on. Not all patent attorney can or will do that, but my projects were always on time and had a minimum number of countersuits and infringement follow up actions.

It got me noticed within the company. And when they asked me to relocate here, I had no wife or kids and career-wise, it would be a huge leap for me towards the C-suite set.

For the first year, it was all I could do to keep my head straight. Sure, I was still employed in the same company, but moving from the UK to China was culture shock in itself. Yes, technically Hong Kong had a degree of independence back then, but the East versus West change was vast. HK is international enough that there's a bit of a buffer built in. There's enough English spoken here, and Western ideas have much deeper acceptance here than on the mainland or in other parts of Asia. Still...

The local group had a particular focus which I had to get up to speed with. It's called 'chirality', and it took me the better part of that first year to wrap my head around it.

Apparently in chemistry terms, drugs can be right-handed or left-handed. It just means that as the different atoms are bonded to each other, they will reflect light in a certain direction. The lab here focused on creating compounds that are exactly the identical, but reflect light in a different or opposite manner.

That's all well and good, but the way the chemistry usually works is that this opposite twist changes the property of the drug in many of the ways that make it useful in the first place. For example, you can make a safe drug into a toxic one, or change the smell or flavor simply by flipping the chirality. None of this is particularly useful, since what good is a drug that doesn't work the way it's supposed to?

Well, the local office has some kind of chemistry guru in place who had been busy. He'd been able to discover certain ways to use the chirals so that the original properties are preserved. This has allowed the HK office to establish patents on drugs which are already covered by other companies, but the chiral itself was not covered; what's the point of patenting something that doesn't work? Getting new drugs to market takes a long time, so the work we did once I first got here is just coming to market now. But we did it and we made them effective while not covered by the original patents. We could swoop in and piggyback on their work. We've had a decade head start on everyone else in the industry and have captured big potential advantages. In the meantime, my team has also moved to protect our own products and their chirals, to prevent the competition from scooping them up. My group has headed up this effort in secret, although it won't be secret for much longer.

My chemist partner in this, Oliver, is a genius; like Nobel Prize level stuff. For me, the rewards were less internationally recognized; just more patents, but still worth the efforts. I get paid for patents granted and for successful defenses, and in that regard, we've done quite well. HQ recognized our contributions to both gain market share as well as protect our own portfolio. I was discreetly told that I headed for the executive level in just a few years.

After about eighteen months here, I got over my culture shock and work load and practically living in the office, and began to reenter humanity again. Honestly, my secretary told me she'd start sending hookers to my flat if I didn't start getting out at night. So, I did.

Turns out HK has a great nightlife and I'd been missing it. There're actually several different cultures that you can be a part of. There are the Western expat group, mostly gweilao like me, the mainland community and even a domestic helper culture. That's for the Philippine and Indonesian women who work as maids during the week; turns out they get Sunday's off and the gather in different pubs and clubs and cut loose. They call them "Tea Dances", but it rivals almost any rave for sweat, skin and sex.

I bounced around those for a while, fitting in well enough to get laid, but not enough to find a partner.

Until I met Joyce.

I actually met her at a tradeshow in Guangzhou about three years into my time in HK. I had scheduled to meet with some execs who had come in from the offices in London and Geneva for the show, and she was a spokesmodel at a booth for some local government support agency. We must've bumped into each other a few times on the first morning as I crisscrossed the floor and each time, it took me longer and longer to stop staring at her. She was clothed in a trim professional business suit, but the way she wore those clothes? Heavenly. And as far as giving the eyeball, she gave just as good as she got, checking me out with enough heat that I had to adjust my trousers.

I mustered up some courage on the second to last day of the show, and asked her for her number. She agreed only if I took her to the conference farewell dinner that night. I made her my Plus-1, and we went.

It was a fantastic night. Her English was accented slightly, but perfectly understandable. She was smart, and whilst not a pharma person, she didn't fall asleep when I spoke about it, and she was able to ask highly intelligent questions about it. At the pre-dinner mixer, she moved from group to group, introducing me to executives she had met during the show. She remembered names of a surprising number of them, quietly filling me in which of them had groped, flirted or outright asked her to sleep with them. She licked her full lips in distaste when describing this, as if she were that cheap.

"A man would have to get me dinner first before he'd get into my knickers," she winked at me, leaving me stunned. Needless to say, even jokingly, she'd thrown down the gauntlet.

I collected business cards from some very high-level industry contacts at that mixer, people who would later come in very handy in my career climb. All were envious to a degree of how I had managed to capture Joyce when they had failed. Far from the stereotypical Asian demure wallflower, Joyce fired right back "I grabbed him, not the other way around!"

It was clear she was doing this for my benefit. After all, why would a model need to speak with a pharma executive? When I asked her, she just simply nodded, as though the answer was clear and I was too dim to see it.

After dinner, we went to the hotel night club for some drinks and a little dancing. She was just gorgeous, and did not lack for attention. Several admirers asked her to dance, but for each one, she asked my permission first. I allowed it, after all, I had no exclusive claim to her. But she rejected each one for the slow numbers, insisting that I was the one she wanted to be held by.

By the end of the night, I was aroused and exhausted. I had a suite in the hotel, but Joyce politely put to rest any idea that I would be taking her to bed that night. At the taxi queue, she held me close to give a sly seductive kiss.

"Dinner was enough to get me to bed," she hinted, her jasmine perfume still clinging to her skin like an erotic film. "But some dishes are better if they marinate and simmer for a while. I want you to be juicy and fully flavored when I finally eat you."

She climbed into the taxi, but offered me her final kiss from the open door; the tip of her tongue danced across my lips and teeth before she pushed me away and closed the door. I had to stay bent over for a few minutes or else reveal to everyone else in the line how intensely she had affected me.

It was almost two weeks before she decided I was flavorful enough for her.

My secretary buzzed me that I had an announced visitor. I gave my OK to send them in, and I was a bit stunned to see Joyce walk in. And then close the door behind her. She leaned against the door for a pause, eyeing me before engaging the lock.

She wore a matching gray jacket and pencil skirt ending a few inches above her knees, business-like at a glance. But upon the inspection, they may have been sewn onto her. An ivory silk blouse, with three buttons open and matching stockings. Her hair was up in a bun with sticks holding it and then cat's eye librarian specs.

In short, she was a lad's fantasy secretary.

"You don't call, you don't write. I'm beginning to think you were using me." Her grin was feline, matching her catwalk strut to my desk in four-inch strapped stilettos.

"You never gave me your number," my reply was choked, being suddenly put on the spot. "You took my card and ...". I wasn't aware that I was standing, until she came around the side of my desk and pushed me into my chair with a single well-manicured finger.

Holding my tie, she sat on my desk. "Not an excuse, barrister." She pulled me close to her, raising her heels to the arms of my chair, forcing her legs apart and her knees high, and giving me a direct view at the creamy skin beyond her stocking tops, and what was beyond. Or wasn't beyond, as there were no knickers and if my nose was correct, a very moist and ready quim.

"You're going to make up for your pathetic attempts to reach out to me, and I won't be leaving without full satisfaction. A girl expects certain efforts from her suitors." Releasing my tie, her hands rested on her thighs for a moment before holding the hem of that skirt. Then she gave a small hop and pulled the whole thing up over her ass. "Lycra," she said as if that explained anything to me.

She could've told me anything and I wouldn't have cared, because I was locked onto that honey pot between her legs. A thin Brazilian above her mons was the only hair there.

"I seem to have a problem with my briefs, barrister. Could you help me?" a finger to the lips like an ingénue and the dainty look through the specs was all the invitation I needed. I dove in like the beggar I was - all lips, tongue and teeth. Moving her knees to my shoulders, she gently and quietly guided me to pleasing her through touches and quiet encouragement.

She demanded attention all over: clitoris, labia, perineum and sphincter before my fingers explored her musky cave. I probed and mapped the spots and techniques which I could feel made her quiver. I didn't focus on any one in particular, just identified what would work from her feedback. During this, she tousled my hair, letting me know subtly that I wasn't overly impressing her.

OK, if she wanted to play that game, I intended to show that she wasn't the only one who could be patient. Being good in the court room isn't about who lands the first punch, it's about who's standing at the end.

Once I had an idea of where and how I would get some reactions, I leaned in. Within a minute, her breathing had picked up to near panting. Within two, she moaned softly and was sweating lightly. By three, her glasses were off, she was reclined completely and she had her arm over her eyes. Slight tremors shook her slick and writhing body as several skipping orgasms passed over her, but I dug in for more. I nibbled on her button, while rubbing two fingers inside her against her rough spots; it felt like I was massaging a kitten's tongue. With my free hand, I scooped up some of her plentiful juices and rubbed at her mocha bung, before gently pushing in a single finger. She gasped a deep whoosh of air as her legs shot out straight, knees locked and toes pointed. She shook and quivered, speaking in the guttural local Teochew dialect before she pushed me away. Apparently, her opinion of my skills had been suitably adjusted upwards.

With the flush in her cheeks and he eyes nearly closed, she was the most stunning woman I'd ever seen. And I had just rocked her world.

I reached around her, wiping my face with the tissue from a box on my desk, as she recovered, shaking and panting, her dark almond eyes unfocused.

Once she got her breath back, "We have reservations tonight," she propped herself up on her elbows. "Dinner, and then yours after. More of that little trick you just did, and I'll make sure you can't walk straight for days."

And with that, she dressed and left. I had apparently passed initiation and was found worthy. My secretary stuck her head in my office as Joyce strutted away, and with a smirk asked if the meeting was productive, and if there was anything else I needed. She looked at my lap with very interested eyes.

I must've been insane to do that, there and then, with a woman I barely knew. But that was Joyce. She did what she wanted, got what she wanted, all when she wanted, consequences be damned, and the world would just have to reset itself to her.

She was partially true to her word. We met that night for dinner and we did go back to mine, but I didn't have a problem with my walking simply because we didn't leave the bed for more than two days; if we did, it was the bath, or if she ordered takeaway food delivered; she met the delivery person at my door wearing nothing other than my semen in various strategic places.

I was in lust. Love came later.

I'd tell you it was a fairybook romance, but obviously it wasn't. She was impulsive and petulant. If she didn't get her way, she'd sulk, ignore me or flat out flee for days before returning, often repentant and resentful in that uniquely Chinese way until she could get me into bed, when she would have her revenge, one way or another.

But she could be loving and nurturing. We progressed quickly and she moved in after a few months.

I was introduced to her family and that's where the problems started. Or started getting worse. Rare is the case where a Westerner is accepted by a Chinese family, let alone welcomed. I was barely tolerated. For most family events, my invitation was often 'lost'. When I was invited, I was ignored. I had picked up a bit of the local dialects in my time there, and she made it clear that I could converse lightly in either Mandarin or Cantonese. Her family intentionally reverted to the local Teochew dialect around me to again show that I was an outsider.

I didn't mind. Joyce was the only child and took delight in the cachet I brought her, so her mild tweaking of her parents, of dating me whilst still showing familial piety brought her the best of both worlds. She knew of their treatment of me, and in exchange for my tolerance of it, she allowed me to vent my frustrations on her body afterwards in any form I chose. And I left no options on the table. I'm pretty sure she enjoyed it all; I never heard her say 'no' to anything I did.

Within eighteen months of meeting we were married and David came alone exactly nine months later. Serene came another eighteen months after that.