9. Mel
Elim pulled me into his chest and pressed a surprisingly tender kiss to my temple before helping me off his lap to address our unintentional audience. When his body tensed right after my own unexpected and surprisingly amazing orgasm, I thought maybe he’d also had some fun while I was basically making him my human hitachi. The telltale click of Vic’s door told me that something far less fun had occurred: I’d been caught red-dry-humping at work, and worse, I’d been caught with the owner.
I mean, Elim outranked Vic technically, and unless I was misreading things he was hinting at offering to make me his sugar baby, so maybe this wasn’t as bad as I thought? My brain was still scrambled from getting off and I held onto the back of the chair to stay standing as Elim got to his own feet, bowing in an oddly formal way and delivering the same strange question / statement he’d offered me.
“Who the fuck are you.” Elim raised a brow as silence filled the hallway as he straightened, rather than a response.
“I-I-” Vic was uncharacteristically at a loss for words as he gaped at Elim for long moments, completely ignoring me and the fact that I’d clearly just had an orgasm in the man’s lap. Huh, maybe I’d duck a lecture after all. Sweet: I’d gotten to grind on a hot guy that was also a get out of jail free card.
I cleared my throat, struggling to keep a dopey grin off my face as post-sex endorphins bubbled through me like a lava lamp. “Uh, hey Vic. Elim got here earlier. I was, uh…telling him what a great job you do running the place. What an awesome manager you are, you know.”
My cheeks ached as I lost the battle to a grin. Oh well, I was happy. Sue me.
Vic inhaled slowly, eyes widening with shock as he looked between us rapidly, back and forth, his eyes lingering on the strange tapered points of Elim’s ears, which I assumed were a latex body mod but I was now noticing must have been an expensive one because they looked oddly realistic. “Come into my office, please, both of you.” He tacked on a surprisingly formal bow to Elim and I blinked, fully shaking off my faint haze of satisfaction. Why the hell was everyone acting so weird?
Twenty minutes of dizzying explanations later, I was convinced Elim had, in fact, spiked my coffee. He was not the owner of the Scarlet Pole, but was actually some kind of magical fugitive. My longtime manager was vouching for the insane story my would-be fanged sugar daddy insisted was true. Not only that, the stressed-out, height-challenged Italian that signed my paychecks was insisting that he was also from some kind of magical fairyland too.
“So you’re trying to tell me that you got stuck here and just…what, made the best of things with Mary? For years? Bullshit, Vic. You love that woman to the ends of the earth, we can all see that. I don’t know what this nonsense you two are trying to pull is, but it’s not funny,” I crossed my arms and huffed, giving Elim a baleful glance as Vic fondly twisted his wedding ring around his finger.
“And you! Don’t look so smug. I’m not going to mar-” My tongue adhered to the roof of my mouth mid-sentence and I shoved my fingers between my lips to unstick it, panicking I was going to suffocate. Elim leaned over sharply and cupped my cheek as he kissed me, instantly remedying the problem and, annoyingly, turning me on again.
“My intended, I’d strongly suggest you not make any more declarations of that sort. The bond is strong and it might hurt you as it protects itself. Fae bargains are not things to be undone, particularly where humans are involved, and words have power.” He at least had the grace to look apologetic as he chastised me, but I was ticked.
Vic looked even more tired than he had earlier. “Lord Shadowcourt, perhaps if we-”
Elim slipped his hand into mine, interlacing our fingers with a gentle, cautious smile, and my annoyance levels dipped even further. Charming bastard. He gave my hand a squeeze before releasing it, turning his attention back to my manager, who had gotten a hell of a lot more interesting in the last hour. “Call me Elim, Victor, please. We aren’t in our Courts and the formality invites distance. I consider you an ally, if only for the sake of our mutual niece. Getting you back to the Bright Court alongside your sister will give us the leverage and support we need to oust Gretvir and his kin, and together we’ll be able to keep her safe.”
As they talked a little further about things I didn’t quite understand, something about shorn and Glade and some foreign words that made my ears ring, it was clear whatever had happened was not good and was about to get worse if the two of them couldn’t do something. I’d caught enough of their discussion to more or less pick up the Game-of-Thrones gist of things, and the fact that Elim and Vic probably weren’t the bad guys. Wherever Vic was from, he’d been presumed dead, and wherever Elim was from, he was supposed to be dead, and his replacement sounded pretty shitty, and too interested in young girls.
The fact my mouth kept malfunctioning when I tried to deny “the bond” with Elim had convinced me that the supernatural wasn’t just a tv show, and wasn’t that some shit? I was freaked out, sure, but I wasn’t freaked out enough to suffocate myself by trying to stubborn my way out of the obvious.
I excused myself to hit the dressing room as my head spun with the new information, grateful to find the room empty so I could get dressed again in peace as the men talked things over. I chuckled sadly as I used a wet-wipe to swipe my eye makeup off in the mirror: 24 hours ago, my biggest concern had been making rent. Now I was apparently in the middle of some magical battle for a place I never dreamed actually existed, and my boss was a goddamn fairy. It still didn’t explain why I felt such a draw to Elim, but it was a small relief that magic might have something to do with my growing obsession with a practical stranger. I plunked down in a chair and pulled on my sneakers before heading back: if the world was going off the rails, I sure as shit wasn’t going to meet armageddon in heels.
“The coffee.” Vic sat straight up and looked at me, breaking off mid-sentence with Elim as I slipped back into the office. “Mel, the coffee, we figure that’s got to be it. You said Elim was holding it when you first went outside, right? And you took it back from him? You drank it? The ritual of offering and exchange wouldn’t have been enough to bond you two, not here.”
“Yeah? I get the same thing every day, you know that. Same place, too. A girl named Bailey made it for me this morning instead of Mat, but it was a little bit sweeter than normal, kinda cinnamony maybe when I took the first sip, but that’s it.” Elim was already on his feet, trading unreadable expressions with Vic as the latter reached for his office door.
“Please, you need to show us where this Second Steep is, my Queen. It could potentially save our niece and our lives.” Elim set his hands on my shoulders and touched his forehead to mine before pressing a kiss there too, his eyes flashing with hurt for a moment, whispering for my ears alone. “It may also be able to give you a choice I cannot.”
Before I could ask him what the hell he was talking about, the strange pull in my chest had me eagerly following them both out to the parking lot, and right up to my little shitkicker of a car.