The key to making relationships work is setting healthy boundaries. Or, so Iâve heard. And thatâs the advice I give to friends because it sounds like a smart plan. Just because Iâm mate-bonded with Khent doesnât mean Iâm getting unhealthily attached. Iâm just dating him the way I would date anyone.
Which starts with stealing one of his shirts.
Not really stealing, just borrowing it.
There isnât a lot of mattress space left in my bed when he stays over, so I roll off the top of him and land a little too hard on the floor.
I grab his button-down shirt off the floor and pull it on like itâs a bathrobe, rolling the sleeves up a number of times before I head to the kitchen to make my usual eggs and toast.
âOne or two eggs?â
âI donât really eat breakfast,â he shrugs. He leans against my cabinetry as he threads his belt through his.
âYouâve said, and I cannot believe that,â I tell him. I canât imagine not eating even a little in the morning. Usually, my stomach is what compels me to get out of bed. Two eggs barely sustain me till lunch, and eyeing Khent I canât believe he doesnât have at least a dozen.
âItâs my deepest flaw,â he shrugs, rolling his eyes with a smile.
I turned the stove off and slid the eggs onto their awaiting toast. I turned away from them to give Khent a good morning kiss, but of course it becomes anything but brief.
He takes a knee to come down to my height, shuffling his shirt off of me, putting his arms through the sleeves even as my hands thread into his hair.
When heâs halfway through putting his shirt on, he curls an arm around me, pulling me in and letting out this big sigh like heâs the most content person alive.
When heâs got me gathered up in his arms like this, I wish he would never let go. That the world could fall away and it would be just this until my stomach completely rebels.
But then my âYou should be leaving nowâ alarm starts to beep, making us shuffle away from each other. Overlord, Iâm not even dressed yet.
âShould we both be late?â he hums, taking in my now borrowed-shirt-less body. One of these days, Iâm going to convince him to leave without it.
âThatâs a dangerous question,â I return, shivering as his gaze sweeps down my skin.
âWe could be very, very late.â
I tilt my neck back and feel the way his tusks graze my skin as he trails kisses down my neck and collar. My hands trace down his shoulders⦠and start buttoning up his shirt.
Weâve already been very, very, very late twice.
âYou go, Iâll catch up,â I tell him. âProbably in the parking lot because youâll have passed out from not having breakfast.â
âHasnât happened yet.â
âOne day,â I tug on his tie and he leans in for another kiss goodbye. He doesnât even fully kiss me back, heâs smiling too hard, the nerd.
Then heâs out to go pick up a change of clothes from his place before work, and Iâm standing naked in my kitchen, waffling back and forth between getting ready and kind of staring at the door after him.
I do mean it. I can see a day when our routines will have finally meshed together seamlessly. And I will finally make him see how vital a meal breakfast is.
This has been our routine for the last week or so. Somehow, I still get to work mostly on time, and Bill has observed my abnormally chipper mood of late.
âI donât want to get into trouble with HR,â I text Khent during a particularly boring meeting, my phone hidden behind a stack of binders I have on the table. âOr Monsters Resources.â
Employee relationships arenât exactly forbidden, but considering the bureaucratic hoops you have to jump through so the company can guard itself against sexual harassment lawsuits, personal injury suits, property damage filings, and other things, they might as well be.
Iâve led enough employees through exactly that kind of paperwork. Iâve done the explaining what it all means and the legal clauses and how all this is important to maintaining a professional evil work environment.
Iâve seen employees go from puppy love to falling out of love after filling out everything in triplicate. Itâd honestly be easier just to make pre-nups for everyone involved.
âThink about the paperwork weâd have to do for MR and HR,â I type, not really giving him a chance to respond to my first text. âEspecially after all the paperwork following up the filing cabinet incident.â
Especially considering we were instructed to avoid each other to avoid liability issues.
After a few minutes of me constantly unlocking my phone to see if he responded yet, he sends back, âWeâll be fine.â
He adds a smiley with a capital C instead of a singular parentheses. C:
I like his nonconforming smiley faces. They seem bigger and goofier than the standard parenthesis conveys.
âStill, maybe we can keep things on the down-low at least.â
A little bit later, he sends me a lowercase face. c:
I bite back against my own grin. Who knew there was this adorkable Orc hiding in the IT department all these years?
All around the meeting table, my coworkers look like theyâre either falling asleep with their eyes trained on the powerpoint presentation, or like theyâve gone to some deep recess of their soul. No wonder nothing gets accomplished in meetings and we end up repeating everything again in follow up emails.
I school my face into something similarly bored. I wouldnât want them to wonder whatâs up with me by looking excited to get to work.
It was a feeling that was increasingly hard to keep under wraps. My mind would wander into coming up with excuses to interact with Khent at work. The next few days were a blur between the heightened moments of passing notes to each other tucked into documents, pretending not to look at each other too much when we passed in the hallway, but still brushing shoulders. In stolen moments, weâd been exchanging flirty emails that are not nearly as covert as we thought we were, about floppy drives and uploading my data onto his hard drive.
Iâm happier than Iâve been in a long time.
The next day, I stop in the office lobby, lingering by the front desk. Iâm pretending I have a reason to fritter away moments because I donât want to go up to my desk just yet. I know I said I wanted to keep things hush at work, but I want one more glance at him before I start my day.
I catch Khent out of the corner of my eye and try not to look too excited at the prospect of running into him in the lobby. We see each other so sparingly in person during work, it gives me a little rush just to walk past him. Something about being around him makes the skirt Iâm wearing feel so much shorter.
I swear I can feel the heat radiating off of him as he brushes past. I gripped the counter of the lobby desk as I scribble nonsense on a sign-in page that is really just for visitors. Goosebumps raise up on my skin and the familiar ache between my legs hits me so suddenly my knees shake. Itâs really for the better that we spend most of our work day several floors apart.
Since our relationship started and Iâve been seeing Khent after work and getting my back blown out nightly, the Blood Fever has all but died down. I barely notice it during the day, unless I run into him and it flares up again. Iâd imagine that thereâs likely also something about being pumped full of Orc cum nightly that calms the raging fever down. But Iâm no scientist.
Maybe itâs because of that oil stuff I got from the holistic place. I set up a little mug warmer at my desk that I put a drop of it on every few hours. Itâs tempting to just dab a little on my wrists and rub them together like a perfume, and just smell that warmth incarnate on myself all day. The thing that stops me from doing that is the memory of buying that little bottle and the girl behind the counter telling me that a lot of people use it as lube. And after some additional research, apparently using it as lube during the mating ritual is pretty common.
But during a company-wide meeting all I could do was sit and thirst from across the room, gripping my chair and hoping I wasnât going to charge across the table to climb him like a tree. The thought had crossed my mind several times and almost seemed like a good idea many of them.
I hold still and scribble circles on the corner of the page like Iâm trying to get ink out of the pen while Khent crosses to the elevators and presses the button. I breathe slowly and carefully listening as it arrives, the doors trundle open and he gets in, the carriage creaking under his weight.
I donât hear the doors close though, and turn around to look.
Heâs holding the elevator door open and as my eyes meet his, he raises his brows.
Sharing an elevator with Khent. Heat blooms across my skin at the thought and my body moves before my brain fully processes it.
The elevator door closes behind me and Iâm hooking my fingers in Khentâs belt loops, looking up at him. He glances away, holding back a smile.
Even with the elevatorâs mirrored walls, I can feel how little space there is in here. When I turn around to push the button for my floor, my ass brushes up against him. I stretch and do it again just so he knows it was entirely on purpose.
The elevatorâs machinery begins to whir, the floor jerks and I let myself use it to fall back against him. I tilt my head back against his sort of the lower end of his chest to glance up at him through my eyelashes. I can see the color in his cheeks just before he lifts a hand to trace my jawline. His other hand drags up my hip, palming the fabric of my skirt upwards. I grind back against him harder.
âI take it we need to go to your office and fill out some paperwork?â he murmurs, voice so low it goes straight to my clit.
âFuck the paperwork,â I gasp, gathering up fistfuls of my pencil skirt, hiking it up enough to actually do more than tease. His hand curls fully around my thigh, giving me something to grind desperately against.
My heart is beating out of my chest when he leans forward to hit the emergency stop switch, bringing the elevator to a halt between floors.
The lurch sends me forward, I catch myself against the mirrored wall, the cool surface a stark contrast against my skin. Khent drags a thick finger through my cunt, until itâs slick enough to enter me.
Iâm still a little sore from our antics last night at my apartment, but in some ways that heightens the sensation of it all. I move my hips experimentally as his finger slides in and out, the smallest of moans riding on my breath.
We donât have much time before someone notices the elevator isnât working, but the thought of being able to watch ourselves in the mirrored walls is making me wetter by the second.
I turn around, unbuttoning my blouse. His cock is straining against his pants, which I imagine must have some fantastic tensile strength to be able to contain him.
âI need you in me. Now. Right now,â I breathe, a combination of words thatâs becoming a habit, almost a ritual between us.
The look he gives me is the same look heâs given me the last few nights between my place and his. He raises an eyebrow, a smile tucked away behind a tusk. He thinks heâs so fucking cute, I swear Iâm going to bite him if he tries telling me to ask politely again.
He corrals me into his arms, holds my chin, kissing my forehead, my nose, and mouth in turn. He wants to see how long he can tease me before Iâm practically begging for his cock. I make another noise of impatience, staring at him, starting to undo his belt and zipper my goddamn self.
He rolls his eyes and takes a knee in front of me. It does make it easier for me, even if I have to stand on my tiptoes to get things started.
He lifts and steadies me with a hand on my hip with a familiarity that almost makes me blush. I bite back any comment about being able to do this myself. I watch the reflection as he guides me down onto the head of his cock. My hands find fistfuls of his shirt as we start to move together, and I take more and more of him in me with each thrust. Iâm not saying we should record porn of us, but I am surprised Iâve never seen human/Orc porn before.
He pushes my bra aside and dips his head to flick his tongue across one nipple, sucking and licking and kissing my tits, treating each of them in turn. As his tongue worked away at my breast, the pleasure he gave only increased the ache and need in my pussy. It snags my attention how he knows what I like, that a little more sensation while heâs rutting into me is enough to push me over the edge.
Somewhere between the sensation of and the sight of him pounding into me, I break.
âFuck, Khent, Iâmââ I canât even manage a verb before Iâm gasping for breath with a cry.
If thereâs one thing the Blood Fever has taught me, his orgasm will quickly follow mine. I can feel his release course into me, hot and wet. I canât think about how Iâm going to figure out how to clean up after this, all I can do is ride the aftershocks of my orgasm and try not to rip the buttons off his shirt.
We slow our movements until itâs just our breathing, holding each other loosely, our foreheads touching, the way he held me in his gaze and the way I couldnât even meet his eyes through my blush. Itâs just a touch too intimate, even after all weâve done together. Itâs just something too much to know heâs looking at me like Iâm wonderful and I can see that soft smile on him. I canât put my finger on it, but it makes me want to take myself out of the equation. Like a sunlight so bright I need to shield my eyes from it. A warmth you could either melt or burn under.
I pull away first, running my hands through my hair and shaking off the afterglow.
My hair is a mess and my tits feel like theyâve been shuffled around in my bra.
I pull down my skirt from where itâs hiked up around my hips, despite the cum I can feel starting to stick between my thighs. When weâre sort of tidied up, he presses the button again, gets the elevator moving. A moment later the doors are opening on the IT department.
âHereâs where I get off,â he says, tucking his shirt in, cheeky smile and all.
Iâm holding myself up against the elevator wall. I snort. âYeah you do.â
He blushes, running a hand through his tousled hair. âI didnât mean it likeââ
âYeah you did. See you later, nerd,â I return, scrunching my nose at him.
He waves goodbye to me and that little gesture makes my knees weak. The doors rattle shut and Iâm left alone, smiling like an idiot.
I never thought it was possible to be this happy.
The elevator begins to move upwards again, and I push off the wall. My legs are starting to regain some amount of steadiness, but Iâm definitely going to collapse in my chair once I get into my office.
I turn to the mirrored walls, no longer fogged up by two of us panting in these tight quarters, and start to adjust my appearance, hopeless as that seems. Even if I donât run into anyone in the twenty feet from the elevator to my door, I still look like Iâve been jogging for an hour. Not to mention the cum still sticking between my thighs.
Iâm fixing my hair when I spot it, and it makes my blood run cold.
The little red blink in a black lens tucked away in the ceiling corner.
It was never safe to be this happy.