Chapter 6: The Devil's Bargain
The power didn’t settle in my pocket. It fermented. It grew hot and eager, demanding release. I spent the next day pushing my cart through the hollow halls of Beacon, the digital photos a scorching brand against my thigh. Every echo of laughter from a passing student felt like a mockery of my newfound gravity. I wasn’t just the man who cleaned their mess anymore. I was the man who held the truth. I was the one who could break their revered Coach Nikos.
By the time her office hours were posted, the fermentation had boiled over into a reckless, shaking rage. It wasn't just about exposing her anymore. It was about forcing her to see me. To acknowledge the man who had cracked her vault wide open.
I didn’t knock.
I shoved the door open, the force of it sending a shockwave through the quiet, perfumed space. Salem was at her desk, pen in hand, looking over a spreadsheet. She didn’t jump. She didn’t even look up immediately. The dismissal was absolute.
“We need to talk,” I growled, my voice rougher than I intended.
Finally, she lifted her gaze. Those dark eyes, bottomless and cool, traveled from my furious face down to my hands. In them, I held the oxblood ledger. With a violence that startled even me, I slammed it onto the polished surface of her desk. The sound was a gunshot in the quiet room. A framed photo of the swim team wobbled.
“Something the matter, Qrow?” she asked. Her voice was liquid nitrogen. It didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
“You know what this is.” I jabbed a finger at the leather cover. “I know what this is. I’ve seen it all. Ruby. Reese. Nebula. All of them.”
A slow, calculating smile touched her lips. It wasn’t fear. It was appraisal. She leaned back in her chair, the expensive leather sighing beneath her. She crossed her legs, the motion deliberate. The sharp point of her stiletto heel, black and deadly, swung into view.
“Have you now?” she purred. “And what do you think you’re going to do with that information?”
“I’m going to burn your world down,” I said, the words feeling good and solid in my mouth.
She uncrossed her legs and stood. She moved around the desk with a predator’s grace, not toward the door, but toward me. Her scent, that cold perfume over warm skin, enveloped me. She stopped inches away, her presence an physical pressure. My anger faltered, tripping over the sudden, dizzying proximity of her.
“Burn my world,” she repeated, as if tasting the phrase. “Such dramatic language from the man who mops up after pep rallies.”
Before I could retort, she took one final, fluid step forward. The pointed tip of her stiletto pressed, not gently, into the soft inner seam of my work pants, right between my thighs. A bolt of shock, part pain, part something else entirely, shot through me. I froze.
She looked up at me, her head tilted. Her expression was one of pure, amused condescension. “You hold a book,” she whispered, her voice a low, intimate hum that vibrated in the space between us. “And you think that makes you powerful?”
She increased the pressure. A threat and a promise, exquisitely balanced.
“You want power?” she purred, the word dripping with disdain and a darker, more enticing invitation. “Here’s what power looks like.”
Her eyes never left mine. They held me pinned more effectively than her heel.
“Kneel.”
The word wasn’t a shout. It was a command, flat and absolute, delivered with the certainty of one who has never been disobeyed. It bypassed my thoughts and went straight to my spine.
“Lick my ass like the janitor you are,” she continued, her voice dropping to a hypnotic murmur, “and I’ll let you watch Ruby scream.”
The ledger, the photos, the righteous fury—it all evaporated. The fantasy I’d harbored for years, of having her writhing under my touch, inverted itself in a heartbeat. It was replaced by this. This brutal, degrading, electrifying reality. She wasn’t offering herself. She was offering me a front-row seat to my own annihilation, and to the proof of her absolute control.
My defiance didn’t just crumble. It dissolved. It turned to ash on my tongue. A terrible, shameful heat flooded my veins, a dizzying cocktail of outrage and a desire so profound it felt like nausea.
I saw it in her eyes: she knew. She saw the conflict, the collapse, and the burgeoning, horrifying surrender.
A slow, triumphant smile spread on her lips. She didn’t move her foot. With her free hand, she gathered the fabric of her tight pencil skirt and began to hitch it up. The sound of the material sliding over her thighs was the only sound in the universe. Inch by deliberate inch, she revealed the shadowed hem of her stockings, the stark white of her skin above them.
My breath hitched in my throat. The world narrowed to the point of her heel, the rising hem, the dark promise beneath it.
She revealed the glistening promise of absolute submission.
I knelt.
The cold floor bit through the fabric of my pants. The polished tile was a brutal contrast to the heat roaring in my skull. She kept her heel pressed where it was, a constant, degrading reminder of my position. I was below her now, in every sense.
“Eyes up here,” she said, her voice softer now, almost conversational.
I dragged my gaze from the floor, past the elegant line of her calves, up to her face. She looked down at me with an expression of cool, clinical interest. There was no lust in it. This was an inspection. She was assessing the quality of my surrender.
“Good,” she murmured, as if noting a satisfactory data point.
Her hands went back to her skirt. She gathered the dark material again, rolling it up with deliberate, unhurried motions. The hem rose past her knees, over the sheer black tops of her stockings. My throat tightened. The air grew thick with her perfume and the silence. She revealed the pale skin of her upper thighs, the shadow of her silhouette against the office’s muted light.
Then she turned. A slow, graceful pivot that presented her back to me. She glanced over her shoulder, one dark eyebrow arched.
“You have the tool for the job,” she said, nodding slightly toward my mouth. “Get to work.”
The reality of it slammed into me. The ledger was on the desk. My phone with its damning proof was in my pocket. And I was on my knees, about to service the monster it documented. A bitter, metallic taste flooded my mouth. This was the power I’d wanted. This was the connection I’d craved.
She didn't wait. She leaned forward, bracing her hands on the edge of her desk. The posture was casual, expecting. The black lace of her underwear was a dark frame against her skin. The intimacy of the act she demanded was world-ending. It wasn't passion. It was punctuation.
My body moved before my mind could form another protest. A strange numbness settled over my thoughts, leaving only raw sensation. The office air felt cold on my heated face. I could smell the clean linen of her clothes, the subtle salt of her skin beneath. I leaned forward, the movement feeling both foreign and inevitable.
My breath hitched, fogging the air just before contact.
My breath hitched, fogging the air just before contact.
My tongue made contact not with skin, but with the delicate, intricate lace of her underwear. The fabric was damp. The taste was a complex, alien shock—her expensive perfume, a sharp, clean sweat, and something fundamentally, deeply her. I flinched, a full-body spasm of pure instinct.
“None of that,” she said, her voice above me calm and instructional. “Through the material. Properly.”
I pressed forward. The lace scratched against my tongue. I closed my eyes, and the world dissolved into this single, degrading point of sensation. I moved my head, a clumsy, mechanical motion. A sound escaped me, a muffled groan of shame that vibrated against her.
“You’re thinking too much.” Her tone was flat, a coach correcting form. “This is a physical act. A maintenance task. Like scrubbing a floor.”
Her words stripped the last pretense. This was just another service I provided in this building. My jaw ached. The position was awkward, my knees protesting against the hard floor. I focused on the rhythm, the pressure, the growing dampness of the lace. I tried to detach, to become just a tool.
It was impossible.
Every scent, every muffled sound of my own breathing, every shift of her weight above me wired itself directly into my shame. This was the power I’d stolen? This was the confrontation I’d envisioned? My proof was in my pocket, and my face was buried in her ass.
She let out a soft, considering hum. “Better.”
Her hand left the desk. I felt her fingers slide into my hair, not a caress, but a grip. She gathered a fistful of my grey-streaked hair and pulled, guiding the angle and pressure. I was a rudder being steered. The ache in my scalp was clarifying.
“Now the fabric is in the way,” she stated, as if commenting on the weather. “Remove it. Use your teeth.”
A fresh wave of heat washed over me. I fumbled, my nose pressing into her skin. I got the edge of the lace between my teeth. I tugged, and the material slid to the side. The new exposure was profound, intimate, and terrifyingly real.
I hesitated, my lips a millimeter from her skin.
Her grip tightened, a sharp, painful yank that brought tears to my eyes. “Now, Qrow.”
I obeyed.
The first touch of my bare tongue was a current completing a circuit. My eyes rolled back. She was warm, soft, tasted of salt and power. I served. I explored. I forgot the ledger, the photos, my name.
A low, soft sigh escaped her. It wasn’t pleasure. It was acknowledgment. A checkmark on a list. I worked harder, driven by a desperate need to earn that sound again. Time lost meaning. There was only the strain in my neck, the taste, the sound of my own ragged breath.
Then, a tension gathered in her muscles under my hands. Her breathing, which had been so even, hitched. The fingers in my hair clenched, tightening into a desperate fist.
A shudder ran through her frame, a tremor she couldn’t control.
SHE MOANS.