The nights without Noth dragged by. Two at a time. Then three. When Eiri went five days without seeing her even in the fishbowl office at work, he knew it was over. She was married and gone.
The pain didn't hit him at first. He was grateful to have his nights back - he could sleep, go to dinner with his teammates, even enjoy some of Seattle's nightlife. All of it had a positive impact on his work performance: he made friends, could focus on his work, met his third quarter goals. His visa was renewed and his manager talked about promotions on the horizon in Q4.
What hurt was not being able to tell Noth about it. He liked the nights they sat up talking about history and art and all the things that interested him. He thought she might be proud of his accomplishments, or at least have some thoughts about how to negotiate terms of the promotion. But he couldn't even contact her. Her work email bounced, she'd never given him her number, and he hardly saw any of the other Ipomoea family or staff around the office.
He also missed the sex.
It gnawed at him, especially knowing he could be having it without her. Eiri found himself the subject of long gazes and flirty giggles nearly everywhere he went in daylight. Christy still texted him at least three times a week, asking him to come out. Even his manager, an elf named Deedella, sometimes flipped her white, silky hair at him while they walked the sunshine-filled campus during their weekly one-on-ones.
He enjoyed the attention, but he missed his vampire. Bound and beautiful underneath him, the fangs peaking above her gag, her cheeks blushing furiously under her blindfold. Totally unlike any woman he'd known. At night, he remembered her, touching himself. Thinking of the time he first burned her with the candle wax. Thinking of her on her knees in the dress boutique.
He stole the ribbon from the dress, still stiff in places with her cum. Their last night together, while she was tied up with rope to her headboard, he'd pulled it out of her nightstand full of her dirty little toys. Hid it in his clothes, carried it home. Sometimes at night, he tool the silky strap out of its hiding place. Pressed it to his face, trying to pick up the salty smell of her sex. Winding it around his cock while he played with himself. Staining it with more cum in the place where it tormented her most.
It would never be like that again, Eiri thought. Whatever woman he had next might not even like to have her hair touched, let alone pulled or brushed. It made him shy, anxious.
So when his manager flipped her hair at him again and ran a fingertip along the back of his hand while she leaned over his shoulder to review his designs, he jumped a little. Pulled back.
"I'm sorry," Eiri said. "I try not to get involved with coworkers."
Deedella the elf smiled back and said, "That won't get you very far, here! Humans have their good looks for only so long... My advice - use them now and get ahead in your career. Then, when you get old and ugly, you'll be so high up the ladder they can't bring themselves to fire you!"
She giggled and Eiri smiled along with her, hoping it was a joke. But she reached out and put a long-fingered hand on his chest, her touch warm and firm through the cotton tunic. He stopped smiling. It wasn't a joke.
"The summer picnic is tomorrow," Deedella told him, her voice lilting, a current of tension running beneath it. "Maybe you could sit with me?"
It was the first time he really looked at her. She was tall and willowy like the Clan Air elves, but her skin was darker, like his and she had no markings besides a smattering of freckles on her apple-like cheeks - a lesser Clan Earth elf. White-blonde hair and sandy brown eyes. Nothing like the chilly dark beauty he was used to. Her friendly invitation to a picnic totally different from Noth's command to come home with her.
Like night and day, Eiri thought. I'll give day a chance.
Starbucks held company picnics once a quarter in a grassy lawn at the center of its sprawling campus. For summertime, the event was set in the late afternoon - assistants and contract workers scurrying about with decorations that caught and reflected the setting sun in yellow-orange glints across the grass. Logs for a bonfire stacked at the center. Employees and their families brought blankets to spread out while Starbucks circulated among them with trays of iced coffees and savory mushroom skewers. Singers and jugglers roamed along behind them, entertaining. By the time the sun set, the bonfire blazed and dancers ringed it, jumping and swaying.
Eiri and his date sprawled out directly on the grass, warm with the summer sun, and talked until twilight folded over the skyline. They laid on their backs and watched the stars come out, a silvery full moon rising in their sparkling midst. The air was warm and fragrant with the scent of jasmine and the exotic plants only the elves knew how to grow, just a hint of the bonfire smoke spicing it.
He could be happy staying here, Eiri thought. Now that Hall wasn't on his team and he had the hang of navigating workplace politics, he saw the future his mother wanted for him within reach. If that were the case, sooner or later, he would have to move on from Noth. Maybe find a nice local girl to settle down with and start a family.
Eiri was still thinking that when Deedella slid her hand across his chest, her fingers slipping just inside the deep V of the tunic to caress his skin.
"It's beautiful tonight," she murmured. Her voice was shy, breathy. But the fingers that touched him were smooth and firm. "I could stay up all night, looking at that moon..."
Her hand was moving, hovering just above his abs. Waiting for his permission to drift lower. Eiri didn't know if it was the warm night air, the thrill of her unfamiliar touch, or his grief that drove him to turn toward her. But he found his neck twisting, craning. And then her lips brushing his, the gentlest of kisses.
The hand slid lower.
Eiri expected a learning curve. No two women he'd kissed were ever alike; some liked it soft and wet, others preferred shorter kisses with closed lips to start. And then there was Noth - an unknowable force nursing secret shameful delights he couldn't even imagine until he made her say them aloud. He played it safe, letting Deedella do all the work.
She kissed lightly, no tongue. But that hand roving over him was firm and insistent, like the branch of a small tree resisting the wind, running down his flesh without bending to his contours. He inhaled through his nose, breathing in the scent of her - flowers and grass, an earthy tang. Against his will, his mouth opened, and she delved into this with a maddening languor, swishing her hair around him as she moved her head to hover over his face, the soft tip of her tongue just grazing the moist inside of his lower lip.
Her hand came to rest across the tops of his thighs, the base of her palm pressed against the soft mound of his sex, crammed into the leggings. He felt himself stirring against the heavy feeling.
Glancing out of the corner of his eye, he took in the scene. No one sat nearer to them than ten feet. Most of the families with young children had already gone home for the day. And those that stayed behind were like them - clustered together in groups of two or three. Touching.
"It's the full moon," Deedella whispered against his lips. "Can you feel it? The Goddess shines down on her children, blessing us with clarity to see what's right in front of us."
Through the curtain of her hair, he could see the moon, shining directly down onto the courtyard, full and bright. He wondered if that was how Fulbright got its name.
"My mother told me a rabbit lives on the moon, making mochi." It was all he could think of to say. She was his superior, and her hand was on his dick. What could he say about the moon that would make her make him cum?
She giggled and he felt her hand tremble with the vibration of it.
"That's so silly! You're so funny, Eiri..." She kissed him again, and then laid back down beside him, her chin tucked to his shoulder, her leg edging over his hip. Hand moving at the laces of his leggings. "Look at up at the moon - get lost in its radiance. See if you can feel Her touch..."
He looked. It was round and scarred - dark patches where satellites crashed into its surface just after the Collapse. Lighter ones where ancient meteors broke its skin. A cold rock in the orbit of the Earth, desolate and alone.
Not sexy, he thought. Try to stay hard!
She clearly wanted him to respond to her, drawing his half-hard length out of the leggings, the warm night air tickling the hair at the base of his shaft. He glanced around again at the courtyard - would somebody see them?
She sensed his anxiety. "Sh... sh... Now is the time for Her children to come together with her blessing... Can't you feel the moon tides in your blood, Eiri?"
Her fingers lightly squeezed along his shaft, inching its length completely free of the clothes her people mandated him to wear. She tickled and tapped, the very tips of those firm fingers sending little ripples of heat through his balls.
"I can feel... something..." He thought he saw pale skin in the dark around him. Humans having their shirts pulled off, elves fondling them under the open night sky. The usual after-hours lighting was dimmed, he realized. They planned this.
Deedella whispered in his ear, her lips brushing the sensitive helix, sending chills down his spin. His cock surged in her hand, filling. "Feel Her touch... feel it. Hold on to it..."
