Ch.18
"Azazel hasn't responded," Rias said. She was behind her desk with a stack of reports and a pen she'd been clicking for the last ten minutes. The ORC clubroom was empty, the evening shadows stretching across the floor, candles low. Everyone else had left hours ago. "Three of his operatives in custody on Gremory-Sitri territory and the Governor-General of the Grigori hasn't said a word. He either doesn't care or he's watching."
"Or both."
"Both is worse." She clicked the pen again. Her crimson hair was pinned up and she'd taken her blazer off and the white shirt underneath was untucked on one side. She looked tired. The engagement was eating at her. Her shoulders sat too high and her mouth was tight and she was reading Fallen Angel intelligence reports at eight in the evening instead of going home.
A moth was bumping against the window behind her, rhythmic, soft taps against the glass. It had been doing it since sunset.
"The timeline is accelerating," she said. She turned a page. "My father's last letter mentioned a formal gathering. The Phenex side wants to set a date. If we don't have a Rating Game clause invoked before they formalize-"
I stood up from the couch, crossed the room, took the reports out of her hands, and put them on the desk.
"Stop working."
She blinked up at me. Her mouth was open, mid-sentence, and the pen was still between her fingers. "I was in the middle of-"
I kissed her.
Her mouth was warm and tasted like tea and she froze for half a second before her hands came up to my collar and gripped and pulled and she kissed me back with the desperate energy of a woman who'd been wound too tight for too long. Her pen clattered to the floor. Her fingers moved from my collar to my hair and she made a sound against my mouth, frustrated and hungry.
I pulled her up from the chair. Turned her. Set her on the desk. Reports slid off the edge and fanned across the floor. She sat on the polished wood with her legs hanging and her skirt bunched and her hands still in my hair and she wrapped her legs around my waist and pulled me between her thighs. The desk was cool against the backs of her legs and she shifted on the surface, her stockings sliding on the polish.
"We shouldn't-" she started.
I pushed her skirt up to her hips. Her thighs were bare above the stockings, smooth, warm. Her underwear was white and there was a damp spot at the center, visible in the candlelight, and and when she saw me looking her face flushed from her cheeks to her ears.
"Ise-"
"You're already wet."
"I've been-" She swallowed. "The reports. The stress. It's not-"
I pressed my thumb against the damp fabric, right over her clit, and her excuse died. Her hips shifted toward my hand and her fingers tightened in my hair and her breathing went shallow.
"Ah- nn-"
"Quiet. The barrier's thin."
"I know the barrier's thin. I cast the-" I rubbed harder and her words broke. Her teeth caught her lower lip and her hands gripped the edge of the desk and her thighs pressed together around my wrist. The cotton was soaked now, warm and clinging, and the heat of her came through the fabric against my fingers.
I pushed her underwear to the side. My fingers found her bare, slick, swollen, and she was wet enough that my index and middle finger slid across her without resistance. I stroked her clit, direct, and she gasped and her thighs opened wider.
"Ah-"
I pushed two fingers into her. She was hot and tight and her body gripped me immediately and her head tipped back and the sound she made was too loud for the ORC. Her hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes were wide above her fingers, her face flushed from her cheeks to where her collar met her throat.
I curled my fingers inside her. Found the spot. Her hips bucked against my hand and a strangled "nn-" came through her fingers and her pulse was fast and hard around my knuckles.
My cock was aching against my pants. Hard since the kiss, harder since her hips had started moving on my hand, and watching her sit on her own desk with her skirt around her waist and her hand over her mouth and her underwear shoved to the side was making patience difficult.
I pulled my fingers out. She made a noise of protest behind her hand. Wet, frustrated. I unbuckled my belt, pushed my pants down, and she watched. Her hand dropped from her mouth. Her blue-green eyes went from my face to my cock and her lower lip was between her teeth and her breathing was shallow and fast.
I stepped between her legs. Positioned myself against her, the head pressing against slick heat where I'd pushed her underwear aside. The desk edge was at the right height. Her stockings were smooth against my hips.
I pushed in.
One stroke. Deep. She was wet enough that I slid in to the hilt and the desk groaned under us and her legs locked around my waist. Her mouth opened. No sound for a second. Just her breath, held. Then: "Ah- fuck-" and her hands flew behind her to brace against the desk.
I moved. Fast. This was different from the first night. No slow exploration. I knew her body now and she knew mine and she needed to stop thinking about Riser and the engagement and the timeline, and the fastest way to make Rias Gremory stop thinking was to fuck her until her brain quit.
I thrust hard and the desk scraped on the floor and she choked on air and her nails dug into the wood behind her. The skirt was bunched at her waist and her shirt was still buttoned and her underwear was pulled to the side and she was half-dressed and it was hotter than naked because it was desperate, because we hadn't made it to undressing.
"Ise- nn- harder-"
Her voice was getting louder. Each thrust punched a sound out of her and the desk creaked and she was getting wetter around me, the friction decreasing, the slick sound of each stroke audible in the quiet room. She wasn't being quiet. She was trying to be quiet and failing.
I grabbed her hair. The crimson strands wrapped around my fist and I pulled, gentle but firm, tilting her head back. Her throat was exposed, pale, the faded hickey from last week, and I pressed my mouth to the skin above her pulse and thrust deeper.
"Ah- ah-" Her legs tightened around me. Her heels dug into my lower back. Her fingers were clawing at the desk surface and her body was tightening, the grip of her pussy around my cock increasing with each stroke.
She turned her head and bit my shoulder. Hard. Through the shirt. Her teeth sank in and the pain was sharp and the connection went straight from my shoulder to my cock and my hips drove harder because the bite had done what the bite does and I couldn't have slowed down if she'd asked.
She kept her teeth in my shoulder. The sounds she was making came through the bite, muffled, vibrating against my skin. "Nn- mm- nnh-" Every thrust. Her heels dug deeper into my lower back. Her pussy was clenching on every stroke, tight and wet and hot, and the desk was creaking steadily and the slap of our bodies through her pushed-aside underwear was wet and rhythmic and neither of us was thinking about Azazel's response time anymore.
The Destruction energy started at her fingertips. Faint crimson arcs, crackling where her nails dug into the desk's surface. The wood scorched under her fingers, two small black marks that Akeno was definitely going to notice tomorrow.
I pulled her hips to the edge of the desk and changed the angle. Deeper. Grinding against her clit on each forward stroke. She released my shoulder and threw her head back and her eyes were glassy and her mouth was open and the composure was gone, completely, her face wrecked and flushed and her hair falling out of its pins.
"Ise- I'm- right there- don't stop-"
Her hand gripped the desk edge. Her chin turned right.
I didn't stop. Harder. Faster. The desk scraped across the floor and the last reports slid off in a paper cascade and her legs were shaking around me and her body was tightening and her breathing caught and held and her whole body went taut.
She came with her teeth in her own fist, biting down to muffle the sound. Her pussy clenched around me in hard rhythmic pulses and her back arched and the Destruction energy flared across her fingers and scorched the desk and her whole body shuddered against mine and her heels drove into my lower back hard enough to leave bruises.
I followed. A few more strokes, burying myself deep, and the orgasm hit and I came inside her with my hand still in her hair and my forehead against her throat and her legs locked around me and the heat of her body everywhere. The energy transfer was there, warm, flowing through our contact points, lighter than the first night, a trickle where that had been a flood.
We stayed. Her sitting on the desk, me standing between her legs, both breathing hard. Her teeth marks in my shoulder throbbed. The desk had moved a foot from its original position. Her hand was still at her mouth, the bite marks from her own teeth visible on her knuckles. Sweat on her temples, on the hollow of her throat.
She loosened her legs. I pulled out and she winced, a small "nn-," and her hand went between her thighs, pressing her underwear back into place. She smoothed her skirt down. I buckled my belt. The floor was covered in reports. White pages scattered across the dark wood.
She looked at the floor. Looked at me. Her face was still flushed and her hair was falling from its pins in crimson strands and there were two scorch marks on her desk where her fingers had been.
"You scattered my pages."
"You were holding them too tight."
She pressed her lips together. The composure mask was trying to reassemble but it couldn't get a foothold with her cheeks still pink and her skirt crooked and the scorch marks right there. She smiled. Warm, real, tired.
She slid off the desk. We knelt on the floor and sorted reports in the candlelight. Her fingers were still trembling. One of the pages had a boot print on it. Neither of us mentioned it.
Halfway through the stack, her hand stopped on a page. She was looking at me. The flush was still on her cheeks and her hair was still falling from its pins and the composure was still somewhere on the floor with the reports.
"The couch," she said.
I looked at the couch. Looked at her. Her skirt was still crooked and her eyes were still glassy and she was already reaching for my shirt.