The rest of the work day, I could barely think about anything but my not-date with Khent.
Because it wasn’t a date.
It was more like after work drinks with some coworkers, totally platonic, a hundred percent about the group morale and departmental bonding. Except that it was just the two of us. And it would be inter-departmental. And there would be no bonding.
I was looking forward to it because I was ready to not look at my vibrator for a week. Maybe two weeks. To not constantly wonder if I was coming down with a regular human fever, or if it was just another flare up of the Blood Fever whenever my skin started to heat.
I’d thought perhaps he was just coping with the Blood Fever better, but this was totally the reason why. And if it worked on me too, then maybe getting through this would be a lot easier.
Clearly whatever these holistic practices were, they worked. As far as I could tell, Khent didn’t seem nearly as affected by the Blood Fever as I was. At least, for as much as I was constantly pressing my thighs together, I hadn’t noticed him strategically angling a hard-on away from me. Which maybe was something I might have been on the lookout for after that video. Just professional curiosity.
After a few short emails (to my personal address, not my work one) we decided to meet in the lobby. I pressed the elevator button maybe a dozen times on the way down.
We took separate cars, of course, with me following him from the more metropolitan part of the city, to a part that was surprisingly surrounded by lush green park land.
The name of the place is in Orcish calligraphy, sort of blocky and sweepy at the same time. I think in a college ceramics elective I learned something about how Orcish calligraphy is done with a square of dyed clay repeatedly dipped into an herbal tea between letter strokes. We’d done a little unit on kneading the dye into the clay and trying to inscribe our badly made creations with the technique, but it was surprisingly difficult to manage.
Khent was waiting outside as I walked up the building steps. He held the door for me, and Evil Overlord, if that didn’t make me shiver and warm again. No matter, this would soon be easier. There would be no more clutching my hands to myself to avoid climbing Khent like a tree. Or really, more like a boulder. He was definitely more boulder shaped.
As soon as we stepped inside, the quiet of the building washed over us. It was mildly humid and warmer than it was outside.
“Do you think I could write this off as a work expense?” I whisper to Khent, standing in line at the – spa? Sauna? Spauna? “What’s this place called?”
He chuckles low in his throat a moment. “You couldn’t pronounce it.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Whatever. I’m still fully prepared to save the receipt, send a copy of it to the Accounting department, and CC Gwen in the email.
Of course, being near Khent in line is its own little mistake. Maybe I should have waited by the door or one of the windows, but I’ll be damned if I let him pay for my half.
Apparently, I’m vibrating obviously enough that he feels the need to put a hand on the top of my head to stop it, like I’m an antique alarm clock or something that would dance off the bedside table with my fidgety energy.
I make a point of staring at the fingertips resting just over my forehead. Khent rolls his eyes and after a moment, he transfers his hand to just resting on my shoulder. If someone looked at us, they would just see a couple casually, almost boringly embraced while waiting in line.
My chest tightens for a moment. It’s been a while since I had that kind of relationship. Wouldn’t it be nice to be so safe it’s almost boring? To not be on guard all the time?
The tension I’ve been holding in my back melts momentarily, or maybe it slips, and then my shoulder is falling into Khent’s side.
I’m as still as I possibly can be against him.
I barely pay attention to the transaction at the counter, I honestly don’t hear much, if anything the harpy behind the counter says. I nod along as if I do.
Only when it’s over, I separate myself from him. We follow an Orc woman down a hallway. Normally Khent’s stride could easily outpace me, but he slows himself to walk beside me.
She stops in front of a pair of doors to two different rooms, and opens both of them.
“It’s set up already. There’s a bell if you need anything else, but otherwise, you have the full hour,” she says more to Khent than me, probably because I’m peering around her to see what’s inside.
For a few feet, it’s just a normal room, with regular tile and some shelves. Further in, the light is softer, from a ceiling that is nearly obscured with steam billowing down. The walls and floor seem carpeted almost entirely in lichen and shaggy moss. There’s a low bed that looks like it’s been carved from stone.
“Thanks,” Khent nods. He glances at me, and I nod vigorously. I’m ready. I cannot wait to feel totally relaxed and rejuvenated and not horny.
Khent’s mouth tips to the side in an unsure smile. We kind of awkwardly wave at one another and go into each room separately, closing the doors behind us.
I look around at the room before me once I’m alone. Lichen is still where it was before. I look to the shelf beside me, and kick off my shoes, some sensible flats have finally stopped cutting the back of my heels open. I stick them in the cubby.
I take in the room for a few more minutes, as it dawns on me I have no idea what to do. I grumble at myself for not thinking to ask Khent more info about these holistic practices he’s been doing.
I open the door and gingerly step across the cold slate floors to Khent’s door. I only just took off my shoes a second ago, so it doesn’t really occur to me to knock.
My eyes find the white towel being unfolded first, then separate the form of the entirely green, entirely bare Orc from the lichen behind him.
Brain short circuits.
Oh, Overlord. Nudity.
Close the door, quick quick quick.
I manage that much, but I’m still on the wrong side.
“Janice?”
Look away. Look down.
My eyes snag on his cock before I force them to the ground. My cheeks scald.
I have a number of thoughts, most of them about the mere logistics of him fitting inside me that I immediately stamp down. I do think I could manage it, maybe.
“If I’d known we were supposed to undress, maybe I would have knocked,” I stammer out.
So the Orc pornstar I’d been ogling before was not an outlier, ok, that’s something new. You learn something every day. Knowledge is amazing.
“Maybe you would have knocked?” Khent repeats in disbelief, and stifles a snort. “What are the odds on that maybe, like a 50-50? 60-40?”
“I’ll get those numbers on your desk by tomorrow,” I sigh, scrubbing my hands over my face, and peeking through my fingers. He has the towel wrapped around his waist now, fastened at his hip.
With herculean effort, I bring my eyes up to his face.
“I think that answers my question though,” I nod, and duck out of the room. Once safely back in my little room, I take my clothes off and pile them on the shelf. The towel is big enough to wrap around me twice, and about as long as a dress on me.
Man, I want towels like these. All my towels at home are too short to wrap around me even once.
I swear I’m just hypnotized by the soft luxuriousness of these towels, and that’s why my mind wanders off into a scenario where I come here more often with Khent.
I pinch myself. No, don’t think like that. That’s just the Blood Fever talking.
After I’m done admiring the size of these towels, it occurs to me that I still super do not know what I’m supposed to be doing in here.
This time when I shuffle to Khent’s door, I knock.
“Yeah?”
“It’s me again,” I call through the door.
“More questions?”
I scoot through the door and the image that greets me nearly knocks me over, I stumble back against the door as it shuts.
Khent is – all of his green glory, sitting down on that mossy stone stool. His knees splayed wide, the towel draped over them making me forget why I came in here.
The humidity in the room is starting to condensate on his skin. His shoulders are just massive.
“I don’t know what I’m doing in there,” I confess after a few minutes.
“You didn’t read the links I sent you?”
“I was in meetings till the end of my day,” I lie, and I’m sure he sees right through it. I shake my head quickly. “Can you show me what to do? And then, I promise I’ll go back into my room, and I won’t bother you again. I swear.”
I feel like everything I say to Khent is dipped in defensiveness, but when I look at him, the openness of his posture, his expression, I wonder why I felt the need at all. He looks even a little happy that I’m here, asking him this.
“I’ll show you.”
“You will?”
“Sure.”
The moss that carpets the floor is soft and damp underfoot as I cross to sit on the stone slab. It’s probably a good thing the towel wraps around me twice so he definitely can’t see the way my nipples harden when I step closer to him.
My hand will probably have terry cloth imprinted on it by the time I’m back in my room and I can stop clutching the knot closed like it’s my sole lifeline.
Khent pauses by an arrangement of stones that, to me, had mostly blended in with the rest of the room’s pocket of nature.
I hadn’t seen the little waterfall weaving between the stones of that panel the back wall, the water pooling in a small basin. As I step nearer to it, I can feel how it’s the source of most of the warmth in this room.
He picks up a little vial from a shelf, unscrewing the top. He’s clearly well versed in what one’s supposed to do in this room.
From the vial, he drops a little dark colored oil on a heated metal disk, a small tuft of vapor blooms off from it.
There’s so little of it used, but taking in a breath of it is amazing. It’s less like a smell and more like a sensation. Like being rolled up in fresh sheets still warm from the dryer. There’s a hint of something almost musky.
I guess I should do the same things he’s doing? So I reach for it as well.
“You’re don’t want to touch that,” Khent says abruptly, pulling me from my thoughts as well as physically tugging me back. He sweeps me back a few steps like it was dangerous.
“I wasn’t going to touch the hot plate,” I protest, getting my bearings back after that dizzying swoosh.
“Not that, the oil,” he says, and my eyes fall back on the incense smelling stuff. Turning away from me, he explains, “It’s, uh, usually used in mating rituals.”
“That stuff they draw on each other’s faces with?” I blurt out. Jeez, isn’t it dangerous to keep that in here? Then again, I did come in here on my own.
He pauses and turns back around to me, raising an eyebrow as if to prompt how I knew that.
I cross my arms. “I wasn’t just watching porn at work, y’know.”
“No, just romantic porn,” he snorts. It doesn’t escape my notice that he considers porn that includes a mating ritual romantic. I guess if he grew up on it, he would.
“Well, it’s weird to watch porn when it doesn’t have a plot!” I return, only to realize half a second later I’m digging a deeper grave for myself. I lock my teeth together and straighten my spine. No, I’m not going to act like that’s a weird thing to prefer. “At least a little bit of emotional connection is important to me.”
“You know, you can stop telling me about your preferences in pornography at any moment you feel like it,” he says, though there’s a teasing undercurrent in his tone. I can see the shy smile tugging at his tusks.
I want more of that smile.
“Well, if it doesn’t end in a creampie then it’s not worth my time either,” I announce, and it’s fully worth it for the expression that crosses his face as he tries not to laugh.
“Emotional connections and creampies. Noted,” Khent sighs, burying his face in his hands. He doesn’t completely hide the dark green flush in his cheeks.
I turn my attention back to the heated metal with the oil to give him a breath, and because it snags my curiosity again.
After a few moments, he says, like that whole dirty tangent didn’t just occur, “Heating a drop or two of that can help take the edge off some of the Blood Fever symptoms.”
“Oh. Do you think I could take some home?”
“They probably sell little bottles of it at the front desk.”
I nod, taking that in. I could put together a little hot plate or something at my desk that would simulate this. Maybe that would make all this a lot easier.
Of course, I’m not totally sure it’s doing anything to abate the feelings I’m having right now.
My eyes draw to the way sweat is already gathering on his skin. I’m overly aware of my tongue and how it’s still just in my mouth. “And that’s how you’ve been relaxing these last few days?”
He shrugs. “I’ve definitely found it to work a reasonable amount. But if you listen to your matriarch too much, she’s bound to tell you it cures everything from poison ivy to broken bones.”
I nod, and a small laugh escapes me.
“My grandma used to make me put yogurt on my sunburns. I think I totally trusted her faith in that working until a few years ago.”
The steam is gathering on his glasses, and he pushes them up on top of his head as he nods. It feels a little like permission to stare unabashedly into his dark brown eyes. I wonder how bad his eyesight is without them, if I just become a blur to him, or if he can still see where I’m staring.
I stare too long. It’s gotta be obvious after a minute.
I quickly turn back to the heated stone, scooping up a bowl full of water to add more steam to the room.
“…So, am I doing this right yet? Just sit here in the steam? Or would your matriarch tell me I’m doing it wrong?”
I look from him to the waterfall behind him a couple times to check his expression without staring too long again.
He chews the corner of his mouth as he watches me flip back and forth. “It does work better if you relax.”
“RELAX?” I repeat, and maybe it comes out a little strangled. I swallow and nod. “Ok. How do you usually relax?”
He tilts his head to what I had mistaken for a shallow pool earlier. From here, it does seem more like a bathing spring.
Gulp.
