Chapter 1: Midnight Belly Devouring Under Waterfall
The office garden was supposed to be a place to clear your head. Nikki had come out for exactly that, to escape the fluorescent buzz of the overtime shift, the stale coffee air. But under the moon, the familiar space had transformed into something alive and whispering.
Tall bamboo ferns brushed against each other with a sound like hushed gossip. A man-made waterfall cascaded down a feature wall, throwing a fine, cool mist into the air that beaded on her skin and dampened the fabric of her red sweatshirt. It clung, uncomfortably intimate. She could smell the wet earth and the night-blooming jasmine, a sweetness that felt suddenly heavy.
“Think they’ll ever fix the printer on the third floor?”
The voice came from right behind her. She flinched, a hand flying to her chest. “Srikanth. God. You scared me.”
He was just a silhouette at first, tall and broad-shouldered, blocking the soft glow from the distant security light. Then he stepped closer, and the moon caught the planes of his face. He wasn’t smiling his usual, easy colleague smile. This was something else. His gaze felt physical, tracking from her eyes down to where her damp sweatshirt stuck to her stomach.
“You’re always out here,” he said, his voice lower than she remembered.
“It’s better than the break room.” She tried for a laugh. It came out thin. “The smell of burnt popcorn is permanent, I swear.”
He didn’t answer. He just kept looking at her. The roar of the waterfall filled the silence, a sound so constant it was almost like silence itself. She took a half-step back, her heel sinking into the soft mulch.
“I should probably head back. Mendez will want those files–”
His hand shot out, not to grab her, but to land flat on the tree trunk beside her head, caging her in. She froze. The warmth of him radiated against her side. He smelled like clean cotton and the faint, sharp scent of his aftershave, cutting through the garden’s perfume.
“Srikanth?”
“Your shirt’s wet,” he said, as if pointing out a meteorological fact.
Before she could form a reply, his other hand fisted in the soft fabric at her waist and yanked it up. The night air hit her stomach, a shocking coolness. Her gasp was lost in the waterfall’s white noise.
Then his mouth was on her.
Not on her lips. Lower. The heat of it was a brand against her navel. He didn’t kiss it gently. He consumed it. His lips sealed over the delicate dip, his tongue pressing deep, a hot, relentless stroke that sent a jolt straight down to the soles of her feet. Her back arched off the rough bark of the tree, a purely instinctive retreat that only served to push her stomach further into his face.
He made a low, hungry sound against her skin. His free arm slid around her back, hand splayed between her shoulder blades, holding her in place. There was no tenderness in it. It was all possession. His tongue circled, probed, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin with a threat that was also a promise. A sharp bite, just shy of pain, made her cry out. His grip tightened.
“Wh– stop…” The word was a breathless puff, devoid of conviction. Her hands had flown up, fingers splayed, but they hovered in the air, unsure. Push him away? Clutch him closer? Her mind was a static blur, overridden by the raw sensory overload: the scrape of bark through her thin shirt, the slick heat of his mouth, the overwhelming smell of him and the damp earth.
He pulled back for a fraction of a second, his breath a hot gust on her wet skin. His eyes, dark and glittering, locked on hers. There was a question in them, but it wasn’t a request. It was a challenge.
“You’ve been driving me crazy in that shirt all day,” he growled, the words vibrating against her belly.
He moved again, and this time his body pressed her fully into the tree. The solid, unyielding strength of him pinned her. One of his thighs nudged between hers. The world narrowed to points of contact: the hard ridge of his belt buckle against her hip, the punishing hold on her back, the devastating work of his mouth. He was everywhere. The waterfall’s mist coated them both, a cool counterpoint to the fever he was igniting.
A thought, sharp and clear, finally pierced the haze. This is Srikanth from Accounts. We had a meeting about quarterly invoices yesterday.
The absurdity of it almost made her laugh. Or scream. Instead, a low moan tangled in her throat. Her hovering hands finally landed, fingers digging into the hard muscle of his shoulders. She didn’t know if she was pulling or pushing. Her head fell back against the tree, eyes staring blindly at the sliver of sky between the rustling fern fronds.
He was marking her. The realization came with another dizzying wave of heat. This wasn’t a prelude to the bedroom, to whispered negotiation. This was the main event. A claiming, here against a tree, with their office just a hundred feet away, lit up like a beacon.
As if reading her thought, he lifted his head again. His lips were slick, his breathing ragged. He searched her face, her wide eyes, her parted lips. He looked feral, triumphant.
Then his expression shifted, just a crack. Something flickered behind the hunger. Uncertainty? A sliver of the man she knew, the one who made bad jokes by the coffee machine.
“Nikki…” he started, her name a rough scrape in his throat.
The spell didn’t break, but it wavered. The sound of a distant car door slamming in the parking lot sliced through the garden’s seclusion. Reality, cold and insistent, began its drip-feed back into her veins.
She was still pinned. He was still holding her sweatshirt bunched up in his fist. Her skin where his mouth had been felt alive, singed, painfully aware of the cool air now touching it.
She swallowed, her throat tight. “We…” she began, but had no idea how to finish.
The momentum of the last two minutes hung between them, a physical thing. It hadn’t ended. It had just… paused. And the look on his face said he knew it, too. He wasn’t done. This was just the start of something they couldn’t take back, and the office, the world, was waiting right outside the whispering bamboo.
This was just the start of something they couldn’t take back, and the office, the world, was waiting right outside the whispering bamboo.
The car door sound faded. In the new silence, Nikki heard her own heartbeat, a frantic drum against her ribs competing with the waterfall. Srikanth’s eyes held hers, that flicker of uncertainty hardening back into something darker, more resolved. The hand fisted in her sweatshirt relaxed, but only to slide around her waist, his thumb stroking a brutal, possessive arc over her hip bone.
“You’re shaking,” he said. It wasn’t concern. It was an observation of effect.
“I’m cold.” The lie was automatic. She was burning up.
“You’re not cold.”
He lowered his head again, but this time his mouth went to the sensitive curve just beside her navel. His tongue traced a slow, maddening path. Her fingers, still dug into his shoulders, clenched. A part of her brain screamed about security cameras, about Mendez and the files, about the sheer insanity of this. The rest of her was liquid fire, pooling low and heavy.
“Srikanth, we can’t… here.” It was the last protest she could muster.
“We already are.” His words were muffled against her skin. His teeth scraped. A warning.
Then he bit down.
Not a graze. Not a tease.
HE BITES HARDER.
A sharp, stunning pain bloomed, immediate and bright, before melting into a deep, throbbing heat that radiated outwards, shocking her system. A choked cry escaped her, her body bowing into the bite, a perverse offering. The pain was a clean line through the fog, a defining edge to everything that was happening. It claimed her, focused her entirely on the point where his body met hers.
He didn’t let go. He held the pressure, a constant, claiming ache, until she went limp against the tree, her breath coming in ragged pulls. Only then did he release, softening the bite to a slow, lapping kiss over the wounded skin. A soothe after the storm. An apology he would never voice.
“See?” he breathed, his lips moving against the feverish skin. “You didn’t want me to stop.”
She had no answer. Her mind was blank, wiped clean by the sensation. She was just a collection of feelings: the burn of his bite, the cold bark, the wet air, the solid, unshakeable bulk of him holding her upright.
Slowly, he tugged her sweatshirt back down. The soft cotton felt abrasive over the tender mark. The action was almost domestic, surreal in its contrast. He took a full step back, releasing her. The sudden lack of his heat made her sway. She put a hand out, bracing against the rough tree trunk for balance.
He just watched her, his chest rising and falling. He looked like he’d just run a sprint. He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it disheveled.
“The quarterly invoices,” he said, his voice rough but deliberately casual, as if picking up a discarded thread from another lifetime. “I finished the variance report. I’ll email it to you and Mendez.”
She stared at him, blinking. The mundane words didn’t compute. They hung in the jasmine-scented air, absurd and terrifying.
He turned and walked away, not back toward the office door, but down the gravel path that wound deeper into the dark garden. He didn’t look back.
Nikki slid down the trunk until she was sitting in the damp mulch, her legs unable to hold her. She pulled her knees up, wrapped her arms around them, and stared at the spot where he’d vanished. The waterfall roared on, indifferent. She touched her stomach through the soft red fabric. She could still feel the precise imprint of his teeth, a phantom brand.
From the building, a door squealed open. A rectangle of yellow light cut across the far end of the garden. “Nikki? You out here? Mendez is looking for you!” A colleague’s voice, tinny and impatient.
She took a deep, shuddering breath that smelled of earth and him and her own shock. She pushed herself up, her clothes damp and dirty, her body humming with a strange, new electricity. She smoothed her sweatshirt.
“Yeah!” she called back, her voice surprisingly steady. “I’m coming.”
She took one last look at the dark path, then walked toward the light, every step a conscious effort, feeling the vivid, aching proof of what had just happened pulse beneath her clothes.
She took one last look at the dark path, then walked toward the light, every step a conscious effort, feeling the vivid, aching proof of what had just happened pulse beneath her clothes.
The office air hit her like a wall of static. Fluorescent, dry, smelling of toner and defeated dreams. It was a different universe.
“There you are.” Mendez didn’t look up from his monitor, his glasses reflecting a spreadsheet. “The Henderson files. I need the digital copies collated with the physical audits. They’re on your desk.”
“Right. Yes.” Her voice sounded foreign. Too calm.
Her cubicle was a sanctuary of normalcy. A dying succulent, a photo of her dog, a half-empty water bottle. She sank into her chair, the fabric sighing. The dull throb in her stomach flared with the movement, a secret counterpoint to the clicking keyboards around her. She opened a folder, stared at columns of numbers. They swam. All she could see was the dark shift of bamboo fronds, feel the hot brand of his mouth.
She pulled her sweatshirt tighter, as if it could compress the memory.
An hour bled by. She managed to send two emails. Every rustle, every footfall in the corridor made her nerves jangle. He didn’t appear. The regular world reasserted itself with a vicious boredom. Maybe it had been a freak event. A shared madness evaporated by the fluorescent lights.
She needed water. The break room was empty. She filled a paper cup, drank it fast, refilled it. The ritual was grounding. She was just Nikki, getting water. Nothing had changed.
The door swung open behind her.
She knew it was him before she turned. The air changed, tightened.
Srikanth leaned against the doorframe, blocking the exit. He held a tablet, looking at it casually. He’d put his suit jacket back on. He looked professional. Composed. The only hint was his hair, still slightly messed up where he’d run his hand through it. Her mouth went dry.
“Mendez is asking for the Henderson cross-reference,” he said, his eyes on the tablet. His tone was flat, collegial.
“I sent it. Twenty minutes ago.”
“He can’t find it.”
“It’s in his inbox.”
He finally looked at her. The eye contact was a physical shock. There was no apology there. No shared secret. There was just a cool, assessing hunger that hadn’t been satisfied. It had just been put on pause.
“You should come show him.”
“He can check his spam folder.” She tried to move past him, to slip back into the safe, populated bullpen.
He didn’t move. He shifted his weight, just enough that she had to stop or brush against him. She stopped. The space between them crackled.
“You’re still wet,” he murmured, his voice so low only she could hear it. His gaze dipped to her sweatshirt, then back to her eyes. “From the garden.”
Her heart hammered against her ribs. “It’s just water.”
“Is it?”
He pushed off the doorframe suddenly, and she flinched. He didn’t leave. He stepped past her to the coffee machine, his arm brushing hers. A simple accident. It burned.
He started making a coffee, the mundane clicks and hisses of the machine grotesque in the tension. “You know,” he said, his back to her, “that printer on three is definitely a lost cause. I think it’s possessed.”
He was making small talk. The ordinary sound of it was more destabilizing than anything else. She stood frozen, cup in hand.
He turned, leaning back against the counter, holding his mug. He took a slow sip, watching her over the rim. “You’re not saying much, Nikki.”
“What do you want me to say?”
He shrugged. “You could tell me if I hurt you.”
The question was a trap. Admitting it gave him power. Denying it was a lie he’d see right through. She said nothing.
He put the mug down. The clink was final. In two strides he was in front of her. The table dug into her back. There was nowhere to go.
“Let me see,” he said, and it wasn’t a request.
His hands went to the hem of her sweatshirt. She grabbed his wrists. “Don’t. Not here.”
“Here is all there is.” His voice was quiet, absolute. He peeled her fingers away, not with violence, but with an implacable strength that was more frightening. He pushed the fabric up.
The break room lights were mercilessly bright. On the smooth skin of her stomach, just below her navel, was a lurid red mark. The perfect, aching outline of his teeth. It was a shock to see it, this physical testament to what she half-convinced herself was a hallucination.
He stared at it, his expression unreadable. Then he made a soft, approving sound in his throat. “Good.”
He didn’t kiss it. He lowered his head and, with a focused, deliberate precision, he bit down on the exact same spot.
HE BITES AGAIN.
HE BITES AGAIN.
This time there’s no surprise to soften the blow. Just the blunt, sharp pressure of his teeth sinking into the same already-tender mark. A grunt punches out of her, her hands flying back to grip the edge of the table. The pain is a bright, clean wire, pulling everything tight inside her. He holds it, a sustained, deepening pressure that feels less like passion and more like punishment. A brand being seared.
When he releases, the air on the wet, bruised skin is an ice-burn. She’s panting.
“Why—” she starts, but he’s already moving.
His mouth covers the spot, his tongue a rough, apologetic swipe before his jaw sets again.
He bites down a third time.
Harder. Deeper.
Nikki sees a flash of white behind her eyes. Her knees buckle, but he’s ready, his arm hooking around her waist, hauling her up against him as his teeth remain locked on her flesh. The pain isn’t separate from pleasure now; it’s a single, overwhelming current coursing through her, short-circuiting thought. A tear, hot and sudden, tracks from the corner of her eye into her hairline. She isn’t crying from hurt. She’s crying from the sheer, shocking invasion of it, the way her body is arching into the pain, betraying her completely.
He lets go, panting against her stomach. His breath is scorching. “You taste like the garden,” he rasps. “Like jasmine and cold water.” He says it like it’s a diagnosis.
His head dips. He doesn’t kiss the surrounding skin. He goes straight back to the epicenter, the skin now hot and swollen under his lips.
The fourth bite is brutal.
It’s a claim. It’s a correction. It’s hard enough to make her cry out, a short, sharp sound she barely recognizes as her own voice. His teeth feel like they’re meeting through her flesh. The world dissolves into that single, piercing point of contact. The break room, the office, the possibility of someone walking in—it all melts away, irrelevant noise. There is only this: the punishing grip of his hands on her hips, the solid wall of his body, and the dazzling, terrible pain he’s imprinting on her.
He doesn’t soothe it this time. He pulls back, looking at his work. The mark is a dark, furious crimson, the skin strained and shiny. A droplet of blood, pinprick-small, wells up in the perfect indentation of a canine tooth.
He stares at it, transfixed. Then he looks up at her face, at her tear-streaked cheeks, her parted lips, her wide, shocked eyes. A muscle ticks in his jaw.
“One more,” he says, his voice guttural. It’s not a request. It’s a promise he’s making to himself.
His mouth descends for a fifth time.
This is beyond anything before. It’s not aggression anymore. It’s something primal, a final boundary being crossed. The pressure builds and builds, a cresting wave with no break. Nikki’s vision tunnels. A high, thin sound is trapped in her throat. She’s certain the skin will break, that this will become something else entirely—a wound, a scar, a fact.
At the last possible second, just as the pain peaks into a silent scream, he wrenches his head away.
They’re both frozen, gasping. The only sound is the hum of the fridge and their ragged breathing. The pain radiates out from her navel in pounding, hot waves. He slowly, carefully, pulls her sweatshirt down. The fabric is agony against the raw nerve of her skin.
His hands are trembling. He stares at his own fingers like he doesn’t recognize them.
From the corridor, the clear, ordinary sound of laughter. Two people walking by, chatting about a TV show.
The sound is a bucket of cold water.
Srikanth blinks. The feral intensity in his eyes recedes, replaced by a dazed, almost hollow look. He takes a full step back, then another, putting the width of the small room between them.
Nikki can’t move. She is anchored to the spot by the throbbing in her stomach, a lighthouse pulse of what just happened.
He opens his mouth, closes it. He runs a hand over his face. “The Henderson files,” he said, his voice now eerily normal, just strained at the edges. “I’ll… I’ll tell Mendez I found them in my sent folder. A mistake.”
He turned and walked out of the break room, leaving the door swinging on its hinges.
Nikki slid down the cupboard door to the linoleum floor, the cold a shock through her jeans. She hugged her knees to her chest, feeling the new, profound ache pulse in time with her heartbeat. Each throb was a perfect echo of his teeth.
She stayed there for a long time, listening to the office sounds slowly reclaim their normal shape around her. The mark on her skin felt like a secret so big it threatened to crack her open. It wasn't an end. It was a fuse, lit and sputtering, and she had no idea what it was attached to, or when it would finally reach the powder.