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She could feel ire flaring, but she would not get angry again. This had wasted enough of her time, she had work to do, and he was displaying behavior she would never tolerate from subordinates. What made him think she'd indulge him?

And why was he still in her office?

Nadja shoved those thoughts down and stamped on them.

"Hold on to him for a little bit more, please," she requested of Pele, continuing, "I do appreciate it." Seth was a wriggling, ranting figure in her peripheral vision, but she was focused on the Typhlosion as she added, "It's good to see you again, Myshka."

Then she started up her laptop, watching the screen glow to life while Moloch's tail thumped on the carpet. There was going to be some sort of productivity today, even if a madman had deprived her of her tea.

"I hate the way you're acting. I'll decide the rest later."

"She was Myshka before she was Pele," Nadja replied levelly without looking up, "and you're going to feel very stupid once you come to your senses. Now stop assuming how I feel before you create a self-fulfilling prophecy."

The honeyed hot water was cooling, but she had another swig of it anyway and set about typing out e-mail replies with more force than necessary to the keyboard. Moloch rumbled and uttered a little whine.

"You got her from a breeder just outside Goldenrod, and I'm not ignoring you if I'm answering." Although that certainly didn't mean she wasn't trying. Nadja read what she'd just typed and growled in frustration; it said 'ATTN laboratory staff: This Saturday the ventilation system will stop ignoring self-fulfilling prophecy.'

The redhead gave up and leveled a pen at Seth. "You're proud. You hate to lose your dignity. I daresay it's nonexistent at this point, so it's a reasonable assumption that you're going to be unhappy once you realize it's gone."

"You told me. Over dinner. Just before you threw a Corphish in my lap." The pen remained silently accusatory.

"Aurrowh," Moloch complained from his station. Nadja gave him a look of fellow feeling, reached with her free hand for her tea, and was displeased to find it was only water. Still. That made her remember the zavarka cooling on her kitchen counter, and why it wasn't on top of her samovar. She gave the teacup a frigid look as if it had done something offensive, then snapped her head up to glare at Seth.

"Because there are things I would much rather be doing with you than dealing with your tantrums!"

All Moloch could see was that there was an angry man in the office and he hadn't been told to bite him yet. This went against all precedent.

The pen clattered suddenly to the desk and Nadja gave Seth an icy look. "Were you paying any attention to that conversation while you were trying to get me into bed, or did you just ask the question and forget about it?" His question now was pointedly ignored, though she clamped down on a mouthful of answers.

One could argue there was such a thing as foreplay, but Seth's words gave her pause.

Nadja kept this to herself.

By this point she'd shifted in her chair to face him, the better to argue without twisting her spine. "I don't hate you. But I find it very difficult to trust you, man of mystery who signs documents with an ID number and interrupts my meetings - which, let me remind you, was the cause of this whole mess when you decided to stay for 'tea.'"

"Especially now that you're drugged into next week."

Nadja made a noise of exasperated disgust at the sheer.. testosterone of that last statement and rested her chin on one hand, one corner of her mouth pulling back in a wan half-smile with no humor about it. "Then you'll never get more than a bedfellow - and you'll be lucky to get even that," the redhead said in a more normal tone of voice.

There was a bottle of aspirin in her desk drawer. Nadja picked it up and read the label thoughtfully.