by Molly Harper
Free of my delicate burden, I boarded the elevator, humming absently along with the Muzak version of “Girl from Ipanema.” But three floors from my own office level, the elevator jolted to a stop.
“Gah!” I yelled, grabbing the safety bar on the side of the car to keep from face-planting on the floor. A wave of terror fluttered through my belly, making my legs go weak and watery. Was the car going to plummet to the bottom of the elevator shaft? How deep did it go? Why wasn’t some sort of alarm going off? I tried to employ all those awesome survival skills Cal had taught me. I didn’t want to panic, but damn it, this was how a lot of horror movies started, and I was not prepared for whatever killer virus, zombie horde, or ax murderer might be waiting for me outside the elevator door. I hadn’t had nearly enough caffeine for this.
I pressed the red emergency button, but it didn’t make a sound. I lifted the red emergency phone, but it didn’t have a dial tone. Suddenly and silently, the elevator doors slid open on a well-lit, zombie-free hallway. I stuck my head out of the elevator, and then, remembering that as far as I knew, the car could fall at any moment and decapitate me, I hopped out onto the strange new floor. The doors closed without incident, and I could hear the car ascending to the next floor. No matter how many times I pressed the up button, the car wouldn’t come back.
“Weird,” I muttered. I scanned the hallway and couldn’t see a living or undead soul, just a sign that read “Floor 2B Disposal Rooms.” I wasn’t sure what the disposal rooms were for, and I was certain I didn’t want to find out. Plausible deniability was a good thing.
“Cal, if this is some sort of test, I will tell Iris on you. A lot,” I muttered.
Of course, I’d left all of my weapons in my purse in my office. I was going to start wearing pants with bigger pockets. Then again, I was wearing a pencil skirt, so pockets were sort of a moot point. I moved quickly and quietly down the hall, toward the stairs. It was only three floors, right? I could make it up three flights of steps.
Well, I made it up one flight of steps. The door to my floor was locked, and the keypass wouldn’t respond to my security badge. No amount of pounding on the door got any attention from my office mates. The door to Floor 1B, however, was wide open, so I entered yet another unoccupied floor, labeled “Holding Cells and Interrogation Rooms.”
Just as I passed by the first interrogation room, the door opened, and a pair of arms shot out, dragging me inside the cold, gray cement-block room. I struck out blindly, landing a respectable left hook against the figure’s jaw and following through with my elbow.
“Ow!” he yelped.
Nik turned on the interrogation-room light and slammed the door behind us. I slapped at his shoulder. “Stop sneaking up on me!”
“I am sorry,” he said. “I was trying to lead you here with the elevator and the malfunctioning doors without being too obvious about it. You are not great with subterfuge.”
“Well, I’m sorry about your face. And the bitchiness last night. I was having an awful night, and I took that out on you, and that’s not OK,” I said, stroking my thumb over the split lip that was already healing.
“No, it is not, but you have also been through higher-than-average stress in the last few weeks. I forget sometimes how young you are and how human. Your nerves are bound to be frayed.”
“I’m going to ignore the implications of my youth and humanity as weaknesses and just let you hug me,” I said, as he pulled me close. I pressed my forehead into the hollow of his throat.
“Did we just have our first fight?” he asked, trailing his fingers down my spine.
“It was more of a minor disagreement, but sure, we’ll count it as a fight.”
His golden eyes twinkled in the harsh fluorescent lights as he toyed with the top button of my blouse. “And in a relationship, what generally follows a resolved fight?”
“So this is a relationship?”
He leveled a very serious gaze at me as he backed me against the wide metal interrogation table. “You know it is.”
“I don’t know that,” I told him. “Because I don’t know what we are.”
“You know what we are, Gigi,” he breathed against my lips, sliding his hands under my ass and lifting me onto the table.
“And what are we, Nikolai?” I asked, as he brushed his lips across mine.
“You are mine. And I am yours. As I have never belonged to anyone before, I belong to you,” he whispered, before sealing his lips over mine
OK, that still told me nothing, but it sure sounded great, and it was hard to think about vague implications when he was doing that thing with his tongue. My thighs curled around his hips, and I locked my ankles, enjoying the delicious friction this position afforded against his bulging zipper. This was not appropriate workplace behavior.
Nik traced the line of my jaw with the tip of his nose. “Did you know that this is one of the few rooms in the Council office without cameras?”
“Well, you wouldn’t want nice people to know what happens in here, would you?” I chuckled, surprised by the dark, husky edge to my voice.
Nik nipped a line across the seam of my lips. When his fangs popped down, I tentatively ran my tongue along the points, making him growl. His hands slid under my skirt, nails severing the sides of my panties. The shreds fluttered to the ground, and from the look on his face, Nik wasn’t even sorry.
He yanked my hips closer to the edge of the table, making the shackles attached there clank. I caught him staring at them with a wicked gleam in his eye. Biting the tip of my tongue, I curled my hand around his jaw and shook his head back and forth.
He shrugged. “It is a little much for your first workplace sexual infraction.”
“Oh, I love a man who can use big words. Come on, baby, talk nerdy to me.”
“Next time,” he swore, pushing me back on the table, spanning his fingers over my bare ass. He peppered kisses down my neck, his tongue following his hands as he unbuttoned my shirt.
“Tell me you locked the door,” I whispered against his head.
He nodded frantically, snagging the connecting lace between my lilac lace bra cups and snapping it with his fangs.
“I liked that one.” I grunted as the bra disintegrated onto the table.
“I will buy you one in every color,” he promised, yanking my skirt down my hips and tossing it over his shoulder.
I pressed my palms against the table, balancing my weight so I could rock my hips against him. I grabbed the tail of his shirt, pulling it over his head and mussing his perfect blond hair. His hand wrapped around my throat, pressing me down against the table as he traced a long line from my neck to my breasts, skimming the curve of each with his fangs, just enough to make me shiver. I twined my legs around his rib cage, urging him closer.
His fangs scraped against my belly, leaving a raised red trail of pleasure-pain against my skin. I heard the faint rasp of a zipper and then felt the hot, smooth weight of him against my thigh. He shimmied his hips, letting his pants fall to his thighs.
I reached between us, palming him, guiding him toward my wet, aching flesh. He thrust inside me with a groan, nibbling along the curve of my jaw. I bit my lip to contain my moan of absolute contented bliss, but then I remembered. Interrogation room. Soundproof walls.
He snapped his hips, and I let loose a throaty howl. He propped his elbows up on the table so he could watch me, clearly pleased that I’d made such a noise, if the bared fangs were any indication. I grinned, snaking my arms around his neck and pulling myself up to press against him.
Nik bucked his hips, nudging against my sweet spot with every roll. He slowly but surely pushed the collar of my blouse aside and let his fangs sink into my throat, just over the jugular. And I barely felt the pain, only the pull of my blood surging up to his mouth. It was as if there was some sort of string connecting the two locations, and it was pleasantly chafin
g against my clit with every pull.
I curled my hand around his head, clutching him tighter to my neck. His thrusts sent my ass sliding back over the cold metal. The contrast in temperatures gave me gooseflesh, making every movement its own mini-orgasm, leading to one violent spasm that rippled out from my center and curled my toes.
“Mine.” Nik threw his head back, lips red and wet, as he fell over the edge with me. He rested his forehead against mine. “Yours.”
The door flew open, and I froze, unable to move a muscle, as Marty strolled through the door. Nik moved between the two of us, so Marty wouldn’t have a clear shot of me or my bared bits.
“Gigi,” Marty said, ever so casually going over papers in a file folder without looking up. “You’ve been gone for a while. I was looking for you, and I thought I heard you in here—” He looked up.
Nik didn’t even have the decency to hike his pants over his exposed ass cheeks. He just smirked over his shoulder at Marty and said, “Is there something we can help you with, Morton?”
“Marty,” I squeaked.
“Right. Marky,” Nik drawled. “Do you mind?”
“I thought you locked the door,” I said, smacking his arm while I buried my hot, red face against his shoulder.
“G-Gigi, what’s going on here?” Marty stammered. “How could you—”
I clamped my hands over my face, apparently buying into the theory that if I couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see me or my destroyed bra hanging over the interrogator’s chair.
I heard Nik zip up his pants and the rustle of a shirt settling over his shoulders. “Leave now, Marky.”
“It’s Marty.”
I felt my own shirt being gently pressed over my bare chest. I opened my eyes long enough to see Marty shoot a poisonous look at Nik, then back out of the room and close the door behind him.
“I want the table to open up and swallow me.” I thunked my head against the metal. “Is that too much to ask?”
“It was an innocent mistake,” Nik told me, helping me slip back into my blouse. “I am sure Mikey will forget about it by tomorrow.”
“One, I don’t know what sort of office you’ve been working in, but seeing a coworker spreadeagled on a metal table is one of those things that stays with you for a while. Two, interrogation-table sex is never innocent. And three, oh, my God, I just realized you did that on purpose!” I exclaimed, smacking him.
“I would not say on purpose,” he protested, helping me step into my skirt. He turned me around so I rested my palms against the table as he zipped me. “I just did not prevent it from happening.”
“I can’t believe this.” I sighed. And since I couldn’t put my bra back on, I was going to be returning to my office with the girls running free. This was why I was not built for clandestine office sex: my lack of foresight and extra undergarments. “That guy—”
“Is infatuated with you and believes that you should be dating him.”
My hands stilled over the buttons of my shirt. “How did you know that?”
For the first time since Marty had interrupted us, Nik actually looked embarrassed. “You were so upset after your multiple coffee runs that I might have gone to your office and held your coffee cup to get a read on what happened while you were out. I saw the whole scene with Merle’s—”
“Marty’s—”
“Heartfelt confession and your horrified reaction. I just thought that if Mel saw that you are with someone else, with his own eyes, he will leave you alone.”
“OK, using my coffee cup as a conduit for your psychic abilities so you can spy on me is super-inappropriate,” I told him.
He shrugged. “Eh, that is debatable.”
“No,” I said, shaking my hair loose from its messy ponytail and trying to wrestle it back into submission. “It’s really, really not. And second, you didn’t just magically cure Marty’s crush on me. You just made it worse, because now you’re the reason I won’t go out with him, and you’ve opened me up to almost daily discussions of your faults and why he is a much better choice for me. Also, he could report me for violating about ten different office policies, which I am guilty of, to an insane degree.”
“I doubt very much that Ophelia will care, as long as we count this time as your coffee break. Our having sex is the least disturbing thing that has happened in this room in a while. And a lot of people have had sex on that table. Trust me. I touched it.”
I took a big step away from the table. “That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Well, give me a few minutes to recover, and I will give it another—ow!” He yelped when I smacked him with what looked like a big canvas purse that had been shoved under the table. “Easy with that!”
“Good night, this thing is heavy!” I exclaimed, as he took the bag from me and checked over its contents. “Are you actually carrying this thing around with you?”
“Yes, Ophelia keeps giving me evidence from the break-in cases to take home. And I do not want to be seen hauling items like this around.” He plucked a plastic bag from inside the tote, displaying a pewter fairy statue the size of my hand.
“This doesn’t look like the kind of thing you’d find in any self-respecting vampire’s house,” I said, as I slipped into my heels.
Nik chuckled. “That is what I thought, but maybe it is a recently turned vampire.”
“The thefts you’ve been investigating,” I said. “Who are the victims?”
He rooted through his man-bag and slid a list across the desk. None of these names looked familiar. And considering that my sister’s business served the majority of Half-Moon Hollow’s undead, it seemed unlikely that I’d never heard any of these names.
“Come upstairs with me,” I said, gathering his list and his fairy statue. I barely paid attention to the stairs or the security doors as I dragged him toward my office. Marty was mysteriously and blessedly absent from his desk.
If Aaron and Jordan were surprised to see me yanking a tall, blond, disheveled vampire behind me like an ill-behaved poodle . . . well, OK, they showed it quite a bit. Jordan’s eyebrows disappeared into her purple bangs, and Aaron’s mouth dropped open, letting his gum slide out onto the carpet. Charming.
“Guys, this is Nik,” I said, closing the office door. “Nik, this is Aaron, and this is Jordan, my coworkers.”
Jordan remained stone-still, but Aaron managed to lift his hand and wave it silently.
“We’re kind of in a cone of silence right now, if that’s OK with you two,” I said. “It will just take a few minutes.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Jordan said, shrugging.
Aaron stared at the ceiling. “What vampire?”
“That girl’s hair is all the colors of the rainbow,” Nik whispered, as I slid into my desk chair.
“Yes, and she happens to be a very nice girl who is very good at her job, so we’re going to avoid making any of the jokes or comments that may be on the tip of your tongue right now in order to prevent hurting her feelings, OK?”
“Aw, that’s nice, thank you, Gigi,” Jordan said, seeming sincerely pleased by the compliment.
“Cone of silence, Jordan,” I reminded her. “You heard nothing. Go back to thinking I undervalue your work, so you should try hard to impress me.”
“Too late!” Jordan scoffed. “I haven’t tried hard in weeks!”
“I was just going to say I would like to know how she dyed it,” Nik muttered. “It must have been complicated and time-consuming.”
“It was so worth it,” Jordan informed him.
Giggling to myself, I fired up my computer and pulled up a list of active local vampires.
Nik watched my fingers dance over the keyboard as multiple windows opened on my screen and mobilized to do my bidding. “Is this something you could get into trouble for?” he asked.
; “Meh,” I said, jerking my shoulders. “It doesn’t fall under my job description, but since I’m technically using Council resources to do Council business, we’ll just call this an IT policy gray area.” I leaned back and called over my shoulder, “Cone of silence!”
“We see nothing!” Aaron called back.
“We hear nothing!” Jordan added.
“And might I ask why your underlings are so loyal?”
“I may have stumbled upon them making out in the copy room. My discretion was purchased with Red Vines and Starbucks gift cards,” I said over the clacking of my keyboard. “Come to think of it, this place is a hotbed of illicit sex and extortion. It’s better than HBO on Sunday nights.”
“Barely twenty, and you have already mastered the arts of intrigue and bribery. If you had lived during my time, you might have ruled the world,” Nik marveled, pulling a small red insulated cooler bag from his man-purse.
I scoffed. “Who says I won’t? Also, you forgot the art of parking-lot fisticuffs, which I have also mastered.”
Through all of this flattery, I searched through Nik’s list of names, but none of them showed up as confirmed Council constituents. I did some online searching, just to be sure, but as far as I could tell, none of the vampires named actually existed. Meanwhile, he was unpacking his cooler bag. I thought it was a weird time to have lunch, but what did I know about his liquid diet?
“I think the names are fake,” I whispered. “They have no credit history, no Council records, no recorded moves, nothing.”
“Why would Ophelia ask me to investigate crimes against people who do not exist?” he asked, pulling various artifacts out of his bag and putting them on my desk. The objects were all random home décor items. The fairy statue, a piece of pressed glass in the shape of a crescent moon, a broken photo frame.
“Well, have you seen any actual crime scenes yet, or is she just giving you objects as evidence?”
Nik frowned. “I have seen plenty of pictures of the crime scenes, and surely I . . . I cannot remember seeing any of them personally. That is very strange. Under normal circumstances, I would not investigate any situation without seeing the location with my own eyes. But when I try to remember seeing them this time around, I am just drawing a blank. It seems bizarre that I have not even thought of it before now.”