Chapter 5: Office Confessions
The fluorescents in the accounting department hummed like angry insects, a sound Taichi had never noticed until today. Every flicker felt like a tiny assault. He shifted carefully in his ergonomic chair, a flare of deep, intimate soreness making him suck in a sharp breath. The “bond,” as Ryuu called it, was a constant, low pulse in his abdomen, a secret sun burning behind his navel. It was distracting in a way no spreadsheet could ever be.
Walking from the train station had been a study in controlled misery. Each step sent echoes through his body, a reminder of the brutal, glorious possession in the penthouse, of the impossible fullness, of the heat now permanently nesting inside him. He’d worn his softest, loosest trousers and had still felt impossibly exposed.
“Okay, spill.”
The voice made him jump. Hana slid into the adjacent cubicle, her chair wheeling smoothly across the cheap carpet. Her eyes, sharp and mischievous behind her stylish glasses, scanned him like a detective at a crime scene.
“Spill what?” Taichi mumbled, focusing with immense concentration on a column of figures that blurred together.
“The walk.” She pointed a pen at him. “You’re moving like you got run over by a very handsome, very enthusiastic tractor. And you’ve been staring at the same cell for ten minutes. Your face is doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“The ‘I’ve-seen-the-cosmic-horror-and-it-was-weirdly-hot’ thing.” She rested her chin in her hand. “It’s the CEO, isn’t it? Ryuu Kurosawa. You had your ‘special project’ on the roof last week. And you’ve been a ghost ever since.”
Taichi felt a flush creep up his neck. “It’s not… it’s complicated, Hana.”
“Complicated is my specialty. Break room. Now. You need tea, and I need gossip that isn’t about the procurement team’s pizza fund.”
The break room was a tomb of linoleum and low-grade melancholia. The coffee pot gurgled a bitter epitaph. Taichi lowered himself gingerly onto a plastic chair, hissing slightly.
Hana’s grin widened as she plunked two steaming mugs of chamomile on the table. “That good, huh?”
“It’s not like that,” Taichi started, then stopped. How could he possibly explain? My boss is a dragon. He says I’m carrying his magical egg. My insides feel rearranged and I keep having flashes of what his scales feel like. He settled for, “He’s… intense.”
“The intense ones are the best,” Hana sighed dreamily, then leaned forward. “Details, Tai. Did he take you to some fancy hotel? Feed you oysters? Whisper terrifyingly sexy commands in your ear?”
Before Taichi could fashion a lie, the atmosphere in the room changed.
It wasn’t the door opening. It was the air itself thickening, the fluorescent light seeming to bend and pool around the figure in the doorway. Ryuu stood there, impeccably dressed in a charcoal suit that cost more than Taichi’s car. His presence swallowed the drab room whole.
His gold-flecked eyes went straight to Taichi, ignoring Hana completely. That gaze was a physical touch, a proprietary scan that seemed to measure Taichi’s soreness, his exhaustion, the viability of the bond. Taichi’s skin prickled. The hum in his belly gave a sudden, resonant thrum, as if answering a call.
Hana froze, mug halfway to her lips.
“Taichi,” Ryuu said, his voice a quiet rumble that vibrated in Taichi’s bones. “There you are.”
“Sir,” Taichi squeaked, feeling about sixteen years old.
Ryuu’s lips twitched in the faintest sign of amusement. He finally acknowledged Hana with a slight, imperious nod. “Ms. Ishikawa.”
“Mr. Kurosawa!” she said, her voice an octave too high. “We were just… tea!”
“I see.” Ryuu took two steps into the room. He didn’t need to dominate the space; he simply redefined it as his. His focus returned to Taichi. “I’ll be needing you in my office this afternoon. Clear your schedule.”
“Another special project?” Hana blurted out, then immediately looked like she wanted to swallow her own tongue.
Ryuu’s eyes never left Taichi’s. A slow, dangerous smile spread across his face. It was a smile that knew about the ache, the seed, the claiming. “Indeed. A continuous one. It requires… close and sustained attention.” His gaze dropped meaningfully to Taichi’s midsection, then back up. “The foundational work has been laid, but it demands constant reinforcement.”
Taichi felt his face burn. He knew Hana was hearing one thing—a sordid, thrilling office affair. But he was hearing another: a reference to the relentless, biological imperative now governing his body. Reinforcement.
The coffee machine behind Ryuu let out a sudden, violent hiss, spewing steam. Neither Ryuu nor Taichi flinched. Ryuu simply raised a hand, and without touching it, the machine fell silent and dark.
Hana stared, her mouth agape.
Ryuu seemed to remember she was there. He tilted his head. “You may finish your tea, Ms. Ishikawa. Taichi, five minutes.” The command was absolute, softened only by the heat in his eyes. “Don’t keep me waiting.”
He left. The room felt instantly hollow, cheap, and cold again. The fluorescents resumed their miserable buzz.
For a long moment, the only sound was Hana’s slow, deliberate exhale.
“Okay,” she whispered, putting her mug down with a shaky hand. “New theory. Your boyfriend isn’t just a CEO who’s into kinky power dynamics.”
Taichi said nothing. He was still locked in the vise of that gaze.
“He just… psychically turned off the coffee maker,” Hana continued, her voice hushed with awe and dawning terror. “He looked at you like he was deciding whether to eat you or worship you. And you… you looked like you already knew the answer.” She reached across the table and grabbed Taichi’s wrist. Her hand was cold. “Tai. What the actual hell is going on?”
Taichi looked at her worried face, then down at his own stomach. He thought of the heat, the impossible depth of Ryuu’s possession, the words our child. He opened his mouth. Closed it. The truth was a boulder he couldn’t lift.
The intercom on the wall crackled to life, the receptionist’s voice tinny and nervous. “Taichi Yagami, please report to Mr. Kurosawa’s office immediately. Mr. Kurosawa, that is, he, uh… he says now.”
The summons was a live wire. The bond in his core pulled taut, a golden leash. He stood up, the soreness a familiar, almost comforting mark.
“I have to go,” he said, his voice strangely calm.
“Taichi,” Hana pleaded.
He offered her a weak, apologetic smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s complicated,” he repeated, and walked out, following the pull in his blood, leaving her alone with the cold tea and the broken machine.