“Long,” he says, pleading.

Careful to not actually touch his cock, she rolls the condom over him, and he twitches magnificently. “Do you want to fuck me?”

“Please,” he whispers, his voice breaking. “Please.”

There’s a convenient step stool, and she climbs up on the table, bracing herself on his thighs, and she doesn’t even need to take off her dress. The hardwood bites into her knees, and the man beneath her arches up towards her.

“And you want this, right?” She asks, again, like a broken record but still needing to ask.

“Please.”

Climbing over him, every part of her incredibly aware of the closeness of his bare skin, she kisses him on the hollow of his neck, on the side of his chin, and on the rough scruff of his cheek. He swallows, again, something approaching a whimper.

His fingers flex, in their cuffs, like he’s reaching out.

Slow, giving him abundant time to call out for her to stop, she lowers herself on him, and he does nothing but groan against her, holding perfectly still.

* * *

After,she trembles as she crawls off of him, feeling like she’s going to shake apart out of something close to nerves, and the man, Franklin, is sighing happily against the table.

“Do you want me to untie you?” She asks, feeling like she has to do something, like she got more out of that than he did, like she used him too much.

“Sure?” He says, and even his voice is full of less tension and less breathless, so she quickly undoes the clasps. He flexes his fingers, sitting up, rolling his wrists, before he leans over and starts to undo the straps around his ankles, still blindfolded, and she escapes before she has to say anything else, jittery.

It’s not hard to find her way back to the main room, and where Not-Thomas sits with the woman in the corset, discussing something quietly. In his hands he holds a tablet, the screen dark.

He looks up when she walks up, the eye contact searing into her, and he sets it aside, quickly, his brows drawing together.

The woman gives her a quick look, before an even quicker shrug, and Miri doesn’t even hesitate before sitting next to Not-Thomas and getting that soul affirming arm around her shoulder. Within a couple of breaths, she can feel her heart stop pounding, and her hands stop shaking, and after a few breaths more she’s aware enough to feel like her skin contains her again.

It takes her a few minutes to realize that the woman has left them alone, and they’re sitting together in the warmly lit room, and she’s all but curled up against the Archdemon’s side.

He rubs against her shoulder, slowly, in small soothing circles, and she tilts her head back to look at him.

“Did I interrupt?” She asks, her words feeling a little bit slurred, like she had too much of that wine or not enough sleep. Like her tongue is tripping over itself.

“We were winding down,” he says, his voice low. “I was looking for an excuse to leave the conversation.”

“All powerful demon can’t cut off an awkward discussion?” She asks, gripping onto her awareness and trying to drag it towards herself.

“Do you need anything more?”

“I’m certainly not starving anymore,” she says, leaning back against him and closing her eyes to the warmth. “Last one was strange.”

He shifts, pulling her closer, and after a moment of internal conflict she just snuggles up closer to him. If he’s going to provide her comfort, she’s not one to deny herself.

The rise and fall of his chest is soothing, almost hypnotic, and despite herself and the setting and the strangeness, she wants to just stay there, like this.

“I’ve heard from Grant, several times, that skin contact is just as important to a succubi as sex is,” he says, voice still low, but loose, like he is unafraid someone would overhear them. “That all this mandated requirements on when and how you can touch someone causes sickness and depression that’s not easily cured. He said it was the greatest harm the Organization did.”

“Greatest seems like a strong term,” she says, especially after the night before. “But it’s...not great.”

“Is that why you keep your friends around? Your roommate?” He asks, like this puzzles him beyond everything else. “So you have someone to touch?”

She opens her eyes and blinks out at the room again. “No....he’s a friend. We met in college, he doesn’t get freaked out by my existence, we hang out, and I couldn’t afford an apartment without a roommate, so...”.

He shifts, again, like she said something a bit too real. “Literally just for companionship?”