Like Blood for Coffee Pt. 05: Conclusion

"Do you?" he asked, surprised to hear the hoarseness in his voice. He hadn't realized until that moment how many of his feelings he'd fucked into her the last few days. Trying to pretend he didn't have any.

"In eight hundred years, you think I haven't been through some shit?" She returned her hand to his face, turned him to face her. Her eyes drinking him in. "If you ask me to, I can make you forget. Will it away. You'd wake up back home with no memory of ever having been in Seattle in the first place. Nothing to torment you."

"Nothing? Not even you?" he asked, gripping her by the elbows. Trying again to push her back onto the bed. "Or am I the one tormenting you...?"

She resisted his clumsy invitation, holding herself as still as a marble pillar under his hands. She treated his question as a serious one: "I can't choose what to make you forget - just how far back in time you can remember."

So I'd forget you, if I forgot Seattle? That meant he would lose her again. Eiri shivered, his hands clutching her wrists possessively. "No, thanks."

He tried to push her back onto the bed a third time, his need to exert control - some control, over anything! - growing. This time, she let him lean her back, but her eyes never closed. Not even when he pressed his lips against hers, insisting.

"Why not stay here? With me?" he asked against her immobile mouth.

"I can't," the vampire smiled, the tips of her fangs peeking out from behind her lips. "I'm gearing up for a legal battle between my father and my husband. Staying here gives my husband an advantage I don't want him to have: He'd know where to serve the divorce papers."

"And... you don't want to divorce?" Eiri's heart dropped. He sat up, leaving her stretched out on the bed. And still, she held onto him with her eyes. That unfathomable gaze searching him even as he tried to hide his turmoil, his mounting jealousy.

"Don't be jealous," she scolded. "You know I put him in a coma, right? For what he did to me. I'm not sure how long it will last, but I definitely plan to be gone by the time he wakes up."

And now Eiri recognized the look in her eyes, the glint behind them. It was the same way she looked at him in the backseat of her care while Christy threw herself at him. Hungry. Ambitious. Planning out how to get what she wanted... And she wanted him.

"I guess I don't need to worry about you leaving me for him, then," Eiri laughed, the sound coming out harsh and humorless. "OK, I'll come with you."

"To vampire country?" she asked. "Eiri, the only humans that live there are slaves. You just got your freedom back - you want to throw it away?"

"Noth - I don't want to be away from you!" he snapped, finally pushed to admit his true feelings. He didn't like the sound of the words in his mouth. It made him feel weak. That now, once he'd said it, she was empowered to say no to him.

"How do I know you're not just going to leave again?" he continued. "Take me on vacation somewhere, wipe my memory and ditch?"

"You haven't had any Fulbright lately, have you...?"

"Oh my God..." His heart fell into his stomach. "You were thinking of doing that?"

"I was joking, Eiri!" She burst out laughing, the dimpled cheeks folding over her sparkling eyes as she grasped her belly and rolled a little away from him onto her side.

He grabbed her around the middle and swatted at her naked backside. She squealed and struggled, trying to get away but deliberately not going very far.

"I'm sorry!" she cried, kicking her legs as he slapped her ass. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

"Not yet, you're not!" he said, hauling her over his lap.

He spanked her - playfully at first. She made a show of struggling, more positioning herself over his knee than trying to escape his hand, turning her ass upward to let him land on the fleshiest part of the cheek. He struck a little harder there against her bare flesh, feeling the skin soften under his hand. He went on like that, building a rhythm. Holding her steady with a hand on the small of her back while he disciplined her.

She went from laughing to gasping, and finally biting her lips and moaning. Quivering and shaking under his hand as he went on spanking, and spanking, the slaps loud and echoing in the nearly empty apartment.

"Forgive me," she gasped, her ass bright red and trembling. Her hand worming beneath her to reach for his cock, entreating. "Please forgive me, Master..."

"I might," he grunted, sweating with exertion, feeling his hand throb from the repeated impact. "But you'll have to beg a lot harder than that..."

He reached that tingling, stinging hand up inside her. Delighted to find her dripping wet.

...

It took him one more night in her arms to make up his mind. All this time working in Seattle, he avoided ever saying what he thought - always trying to keep to himself and work hard. Believing that that was enough in life.

It wasn't. Not anymore. Not now that she was in his life.

"I want you to come home with me," Eiri said. "There's no better place for you to disappear than China, right? Elves don't talk to demons. And we don't even have a word for 'vampire' - that'll make it hard for a process server to find you."

"That's true," she said, thinking it over. He saw her running the tip of her tongue over a fang, the thousand-yard stare she used to scrutinize product roadmaps. She wore no clothes, but he could see the change in her naked body; that paradigm shift from submissive slave to ambitious business woman molding her soft, rounded curves to firm, determined angles.

"Noth..." It struck him suddenly that, in all of this, he hadn't ever considered her needs. Part of it was his belief that she could take care of herself - she's rich, she's powerful, she killed a coworker without a second thought! - and part of it was his own lack of experience in relationships. He made the amatuer mistake of confusing his needs with hers.

Abashed, he asked, "What do you want to do?"

"Me?" She blinked, coming back from her faraway thoughts, her plans. "No one's ever asked me that. At least... not on a meta-level. Not for a very long time, anyway..."

She looked at him, but he didn't meet her eyes, afraid she might parrot his wants back to him and never reveal her true feelings.

He wanted her to want him - on the same level, and in the same way. Wanted to command her if only to thrill at it when she obeyed. But as much fun as it was to be her master, she would always be her own person. Eiri vowed to himself to respect that.

"I... I hate even saying it," she confessed, her voice softening. "But... I like working. I like my job. I never wanted to give it up in the first place, but my father... He wanted me to take some time off. Said I was burning out. And I feel... I feel like if I stop, I'm not me anymore."

She broke off. Eiri put his arms around her, drawing her against his chest so that she could cry without his eyes on her, if she wanted to. He knew she was ambitious, but he didn't understand until then how much conflict it caused her.

I have to be a partner to her, Eiri realized. Master, slave - boss, employee... No matter which way the balance of power between them shifted, being her equal in life was the key to their mutual happiness. The foundation of their understanding.

"You don't have to stop," he told her. "You can keep doing what you love to do. Maybe not here - but..."

"In China," she finished his thought. She took a deep breath against his chest, expanding within the circle of his arms, filling it. "In China, I could... do something on the side, something small. A startup. Dad might not even notice it, while the lawsuit plays out - no one in the family would. And as long as I stay married..."

"Then it all works out," Eiri said, hoping it was true. He had no idea what the terms of the marriage or the business partnership really were. But he saw hope in her eyes, and he fed it with his own. "And we can be together. You can even be my boss again!"

"Really," she laughed. "You want to work for me again?"

"You were a pretty good director," Eiri said. "Minus the whole sexual harassment thing..."

Now she swatted his behind, and it was his turn to laugh.

...

The next day, they were ready to leave. He left his employee badge on the countertop of her apartment, the uniform folded neatly beside it. All her things were packed up to be shipped. They'd travel by private hop-jet to San Francisco, avoiding border control, and then on to Xianzhou via jump gate. Literally flying under the radar in a high tech grey market transport elves would find too ugly even to search.

As they boarded the vessel in the hour after sunset, Eiri paused to look back at the Seattle skyline - the Broken Needle on the horizon drawing his gaze. He still had his original temporary visa with him, and his Starbucks new hire manual, buried somewhere in his bag. He barely remembered what it said anymore. Something about inspiring the human spirit with cups of coffee in neighborhoods.

He turned back to look at her, saw her watching him. Boss, savior, salve - and now business partner. Nothera was Eiri's home, now. And his human spirit would thrive whenever he drank from her vampire eyes.

[The End]