“See? We all want to hear it again,” Silva sighed dreamily, resting her chin atop her folded hands, waiting for Lurielle's repeated recitation.
"It was nothing!" Lurielle laughed. "Really, it was so low-key. Honestly, I could smack him for how much he hyped up what itallegedlyneeded to be. If I'd known it was something we could just do in the backyard . . . Anyway, it was perfect."
Silva sighed again as Lurielle recounted the way Khash had made dinner that night, serving her and loading the dishwasher before they'd strolled hand-in-hand with their dogs through Cambric Creek's downtown. She was over the moon for her friend. Silva didn’t personally see Khash’s appeal, but she knewattraction was as subjective as books. Lurielle was on cloud nine and that was all that mattered.
“That’s the most romantic part of the entire story,” volunteered the tiefling leaning against the counter, eating a salad and listening in on their conversation. “I know it’s mundane, but a partner who takes care of dinnerandloads the dishes? Please. I’ll take that over flowers and candy every day of the week. If the next part is ‘he threw in a batch of separated whites,’ you need to drag him to city hall right now. My wife can’t even look at the machine without spilling the bleach.”
They all laughed, the three of them at their small table and the two goblins who’d turned their chairs to listen in. Ris’s voice was a bit too high and bright, and Silva knew Ris was likely gritting her teeth, counting the minutes until the tiefling finished her salad and left. Portia was one of the executives, and although she seemed friendly and down-to-earth, Silva was self-aware enough to recognize that she was a novice in the corporate world and took her cues from her more experienced friends. Smile, laugh, toe the line.
“Let’s just say Khash keeps the laundry service in his building well-employed. If they had an option to deliver directly to his closet, he’d do it in a heartbeat.”
They were fully off-track now, one of the goblins recounting the way her middle school-aged son had brought his entire ketterling team home after a particularly muddy practice, leaving their uniforms in a disgusting heap in the laundry room and using the swimming pool as a communal bathtub.
Silva grinned, thinking of the way Tate spot-treated a dress she’d spilled wine on a few weeks earlier, always ensuring her work clothes were laundered and steamed on the evenings she drove from the office straight to his apartment. Another time, she’d sat on the sink eating a peanut butter sandwich as he knelt on the bathroom floor, cleaning the already-clean grout with atoothbrush. He cooked her gourmet meals, always ensured her favorites were on hand, and never let her lift a finger to help, unless she asked to do so. If this was a contest of domestic competency, she was certain she’d already won.
The tiefling’s phone buzzed on the counter beside her, prompting her swift exit from the breakroom, salad and all.
“Congratulations to you, he sounds like a keeper!” Portia called over her shoulder to Lurielle on her way out the door, and Ris slumped the instant she was gone.
“Oh, thank the stars. That should beillegal. Don’t they have their own breakroom?! I’m pretty sure that’s why accounting sits outside.”
“So, obviously you said yes,” one of the goblins went on, getting them back on topic.
“I did,” Lurielle confirmed, beaming with the force of her smile, unhampered when she pulled a face. “But I don’t want a long engagement. So now I need to plan a wedding, and that seems over my paygrade.”
"That's why I’m here,” Silva trilled, as several more of their coworkers from a different department came in laughing, taking turns at the coffee machine. She and Lurielle had been missing each other since she’d returned from the office, but that day she’d come prepared.
The noise level in the small room seemed deafening compared to the serene silence of Tate’s apartment in the afternoons, and Silva winced in reaction. She had missed these break room chats with her friends, but beyond that, she found she didn't miss office culture that much, nor any of her other co-workers.
She had tried to be friendly with everyone when she was new, but each department had its own little clique, species groups that automatically formed, and existing friend circles who telegraphed they were not interested in expanding. Her friendly overtures had been widely rebuffed, and while she was gladshe’d fallen in with the girls, Silva found she didn’t miss seeing the vast majority of her uncongenial co-workers. She didn’t care that she was missing office gossip because these people were still strangers to her. She wasn’t emotionally invested in any of them, so not being present to learn about the affair in legal or the fight over common space in accounting wasn’t nearly as interesting to her as sitting across Tate’s lap in the middle of a workday as he scrolled through a greenhouse website, picking out which herbs would grace the rooftop garden come spring.
She’d ceased bringing in cookies and baked goods for the breakroom, especially after her cider had been guzzled by the thief. She was still under-assigned in her department and had come to terms with the fact that she always would be, as long as she remained. Her meager assignments for the day could be completed in just a few hours, leaving her to struggle finding enough mindless busywork to fill the rest of the work day in the office, which was not something she had to do when she worked from Tate's apartment.
There, she would rise at the crack of dawn with him, kissing the side of his long neck as the soft melody of his phone alarm went off on the bedside table. Some mornings, he would silence the alarm and snuggle back beneath the covers with her for another hour, his arms wrapped around her and his face buried in her hair.
On others, he would kiss her slowly, rolling them until he covered her completely. Silva wasn’t sure if it was fae magic or a testament to how completely he occupied her thoughts, for his long fingers would only need to stroke through her silky heat for a heartbeat before she was slick and writhing beneath him, desperate to be filled. She would beg until he held her legs over the crook of his arms, hilting himself with a single slow, deep thrust, letting her acclimatize to his shape before he began to move. Sometimes he would stay like that for an interminableamount of time — hips motionless, his cock filling her, tickling her clit as she quivered around him. The combination of fullness and pressure coupled with unceasing attention of the bud of nerves never failed to make her come. She would gasp and whine as he stroked her clit, tracing shapes against its sensitive side, or pulling back its hood to rub her directly.
“Dove, you’re squeezing me hard enough to circumcise. Is this what you need?”
His voice would be a low, lilting purr in her ear, her high moans the only sound puncturing the early morning quiet. His groan against her when she finally came — clenching around the satisfying girth of his cock — would be muffled by her hair, quiet and close.
Then and only then would he begin to move, his cock slick and slippery from her orgasm. He would thump into her rhythmically, always hitting that spot within her that made her toes curl, his sharp teeth catching at her neck, her ears, her shoulders. There was something oddly sacred about those mornings — spread open beneath him, her head tipped back, breathy moans she couldn't hold in, the bedroom lit with grey, predawn light and nothing but silence beyond the two of them. She would curl her fingers into his hair and squeeze as she shook apart beneath him, her body clenching until he groaned, his hips surging, dropping against her once they were both sated.
On other mornings, his alarm would go off and she would join him in the shower, her back pressed to the wet tiles, her legs wrapped around his waist and his cock dragging against her inner walls in a way that made her feel as if her soul might rip free of her body. Clean, white and clear, steaming water, and silence beyond the door — again, sacred and secret, as if they were the only two beings in existence.
It was a cruel irony that the shower had been the scene of her fantasy realized at last. It had been one of those averagemornings, her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist.
"Right there,” she’d wheezed.“Rightthere. Don't stop."
She'd been so close,soclose to coming that her thighs had already begun to tremble. She continued to whimper and gasp against him, begging and pleading, not even cognizant of what she was saying. She just needed him to keep goingright there, needed him to not slow down or stop, needed him to hold the exact position he was in with no deviation. She had crossed her ankles over the rounded swell of his ass, using her feet to hold him in place, urging him in just a bit deeper, just a bit harder,rightthere . . .
"Fuck. . ."
His hips bounced off hers awkwardly, his rhythm changing and tripping, the peak she'd been rapidly ascending suddenly out of reach as she whined.
Her eyes popped open when she realized what happened, what wasstillhappening at that moment as he groaned against her neck, his hips jerking. He'd not pulled out immediately. In for a penny, in for a pound, was likely his thinking at that point, Silva assumed. Her own eyes closed, focusing every nerve ending in her body to her core, desperate tofeelhim pulsing within her, to feel the pressure of his release and the hot eruptions of it . . . but at this angle, all she felt was the hot water overhead, the tiles at her back and the glance of his hips, his cock too busy contracting within her to hit her in the right spot.
Once, twice . . . after the third quiver of his back, he was finished. He’d pulled out, cursing again.
