Safeword: Storm Clouds (11 page)

He broke up with you?

No. Yes. I don't know. He said he needs time to think. Can I stay at your house on the mountain tonight? I can't deal with questions from the coterie tonight.

Of course. And knowing you, you'd like something to keep you busy. I'm short handed at The Carnival if you'd like to go see what you can do to get things running smoothly.

That would be great. I'll run by there and handle things and then see you on the mountain later tonight?

It's a deal. Want me to see if I can round some refreshment up for you that comes straight from the source?

Don't go out of your way, but if it's convenient, then, sure.

And so she want to The Carnival, one of Abbot's bars that was set up with jugglers and girls overhead on trapeze bars. Well, not so much a trapeze as a large bar hanging from the ceiling, so when they flipped around on the bars they moved back and forth a few feet. The girls and jugglers were only there on the weekends though, so tonight there was only the virtual game section and the decor that made it look like a carnival. She arrived to discover they were short one doorman and one bartender. The manager was capable of tending bar but was trying to handle the door, which meant one bartender was trying to do everything by himself. She set the manager up at the bar and then set herself up at the door. The doorman also doubles as a bouncer for the front part of the club, but Kendra could handle anything that might come up. It was a fairly busy night and she appreciated the chance to keep busy and not think of Eric, but watching a few of the couples come in made her miss him. Which was ridiculous, they'd only just met. But, last night had been special. And she had thought he'd handled the whole 'I'm a bloodsucking vampire' thing fairly well, considering.

She helped close up at the end of the night and then drove up the mountain to Abbot's house. She phoned Gavin on the way to let him know she wasn't coming home tonight. She could have used the mind link, but the phone was considered more polite amongst people who weren't close friends. When he asked her where she was staying she changed the subject, and he thankfully didn’t push for an answer. Not that it was any of his business, but they were friends even if they weren't really close, and that’s the kind of things friends usually told each other.

When she went into Abbot’s house she saw Carla and a man she didn't recognize. Carla was Abbot's hair stylist, she came to his home to cut his hair since he couldn't very well visit her during daylight hours. She knew he was a vampire and she had been bound as an employee so she wouldn't tell the secret. Kendra knew that Abbot also occasionally drank from Carla, and Carla thought that was pretty cool.

"Kendra, you've met Carla, of course. I'd like for you to meet her husband Tom. They are newlyweds, and Carla asked me last week for permission to tell her husband about me, since she didn't want to keep secrets from him. He is here so she can tell him and I can bind him, which we have already done. Tom would like to be bitten, to see what it is that Carla experiences when I bite her. I thought you'd enjoy doing that."

No orgasmic bite, please. Just a blissfully pleasant and non-sexual experience.

You got it. And thanks. You're the best.

She looked at Tom and gave what she knew to be a warm smile. "Hello Tom, it's nice to meet you. I can sense that you are nervous, there is no reason to be. I'll be gentle, there will be an instant of pain when I first bite but then it will turn into a pleasurable experience. There should be less than a second of pain."

"They will be completely healed over by noon tomorrow. There is a healing agent in our saliva. But, Tom, you don't seem too sure of this. Let us all have a drink and sit and talk for a bit, and then see if you still want to be bitten."

"No, I'm sure. If Carla has been being bitten then I need to understand what that has meant. And what it might mean if she keeps doing it. She says she wants to keep doing it. To keep letting Abbot bite her when she does his hair."

Kendra smiled. "Good, because I'm hungry. I won't take as much as the Red Cross though. They usually take around sixteen ounces, I'll only take around twelve. I usually take six or eight at a time, but... since you can handle it, I've had a rough day and twelve would make me feel much better."

He grinned back at her. "If you've had a rough day and it will help, take sixteen if you want. I was thinking you'd take more than they take, not less."

"Okay, sit back down, lean back against the back of your chair and relax. I'm going to come around back of you for this."

She thought that would be better, Abbot wasn't wanting him to get the intimacy of this, and when you took from behind it was easier to ignore the intimacy of it. Stepping around behind him, she pulled his head to the right at an angle to show the length of the left side of his neck. He was incredibly tense so she massaged the muscles just a bit and told him to relax. As he relaxed she moved her left hand down across his chest to hold him in place and immediately let her teeth sink into his neck, injecting the numbing agent first and then the right combination to give him bliss without sexual ecstasy. She gave his bloodstream a second to carry away what she'd injected and then she drank. And drank. She monitored how much she was drinking and stopped at around twelve or fourteen ounces, paying special attention to use her tongue to put saliva on the two marks before she pulled her mouth away, so they would heal. She relaxed her hold on his head but otherwise stayed where she was until he raised his head back up on his own, and then she slowly moved her hand off of his chest and backed up.

She walked behind the bar area in Abbot's great room and opened the mini frig, taking out the orange juice to pour him a glass. She walked to him and set it on a coaster on the table beside him and then went to another chair across from him to sit while he worked on figuring out how he felt and how to begin talking again. Most people didn't recover as quickly as Eric had the other night, but Eric had filled his life with new experiences and he was used to having that adrenaline overdose kick in.

* * * *

When Carla and Tom left, Abbot thanked Kendra for giving him the right kind of experience. "No problem, he was lovely. Just what I needed, you really are the best."

"We've got some time before dawn, let's have some wine and talk."

"Sure."

Once they were seated on the sofa, Kendra leaning up against Abbot with her eyes closed, Abbot wrapped an arm around her and finally spoke about Eric. "Do you want me to fire him, find someone else to do the job?"

"No, he said he'd follow through with it because he wasn't sure about things, and if he wanted to pursue something with me he wanted the proper protections in place. Plus, I think he's just an honorable kind of guy, he said he'd do it, so he will."

"No Kendra, that wasn't my question. If I keep the contract with him he's going to be in and out of your house working on the security system and teaching classes. Do you want to have to keep seeing him? If you were to see him right now the other vampires would smell your pain and hurt and sadness towards him and know something was up with the two of you."

"It shouldn't be too hard to avoid him. And, if it gets that bad I'll take a vacation somewhere. Or if you need to send an emissary for something I can go for you. Speaking of which, you are correct that I'm going to want to stay busy for a while. You mentioned a while back that you wanted to look into putting a small bar somewhere close to the University. If you still think that's a good idea I can start looking for a place, something within walking distance to the new dorms they are building would be good, I think. We could serve cheap food aimed at college kids for lunch and dinner and then revert to more of a bar atmosphere that evening. When I lived in, oh, I forget where, but somewhere I've lived there was a bar near a college campus called The Library, and kids thought it was cool to tell their parents they went to The Library yesterday, because it made their parents think they were busy studying instead of partying."

"Sure, see what you can find and get the contractor and decorator involved if you find something you like. Take it from concept to opening night all on your own and you'll get twenty-five percent of the net profit as long as it remains in business, same as always. Keep me updated on things, I'll want a walk through and a plan from the decorator and cost estimate from the contractor before we sign papers to buy or lease, but the rest will be all yours."

"Cool, I'll send an email to the Realtor and see if he can meet me tomorrow evening after the sun goes down to show me some things. I've got my laptop in my car, I'll run out and get it and then head downstairs. Can I have the yellow room for my rest today?"

"Of course, I'll see you when we arise, then."

Chapter Six

The next few days went by in a blur and Kendra tried to keep busy. She met with the Realtor and found three possible locations, though none were perfect. The available unit that was easiest to use for her purposes would make the patrons who lived in the new dorms have to cross a very busy road, but the spots on the correct side of the road were either smaller than she wanted or larger than she wanted. Meanwhile, she'd put herself on the 'on call' list at all of Abbot's other establishments so when they were short someone she could go in and help. She didn't waitress, but she could do doorman duties and bouncer duties and was more than capable of managerial duties, of course.

So, five nights later when Abbot warned her that Eric would be coming at 8:00 the following night with his proposal, she made sure she was up and gone before he arrived. She had told Eric he was going to have to call her, and she meant it. She kept her cellphone in her pocket and on vibrate all night to make sure she knew if it rang, but it didn't. She was almost in tears when she headed home after helping to close up the restaurant she'd helped at that night. She went to her room and read for a while, finally deciding to check email just before dawn to see if the Realtor may have sent something before he went to bed for the night.

She was surprised to see an email from Eric.

I hoped to see you when I went to the house tonight, but you weren't there. Can we talk? Without you just disappearing on me again? I miss you.

She hit reply.

Sure, we can talk. I'll be going into TBR around 9:00 tomorrow night to help out since the regular manager's wife just had a baby. Sunset is at around 7:15 so I should awaken around 6:30 or 6:45 if you want to call me and tell me where you want to meet. I can be ready to leave the house by the time the sun goes down so I can drive somewhere to meet you, but I don't want to talk here at the house.

There, that let him know that she was going to have to work him into her schedule, but also told him she was willing to do that. She read it over a few times and finally hit the send button and then powered her laptop down and fell back into bed to think until the sun came up and she died for the day.

She awakened the next evening closer to 6:00 than she'd expected to. She took a quick shower and then checked her email. She saw something from Abbot, the Realtor, and Eric. She opened Abbot's first and saw that he liked Eric's plans and wanted to talk to his inner circle about them before he talked to Eric again, he was calling for a meeting the following morning at 4:00 at the house. She could do that, no problem. Next she opened the email from the Realtor, there was a unit that would be coming off of its lease in a month that he'd like to show her. She emailed him back and told him she could meet him the following night to look it over if that was okay. As Abbot's Realtor he was used to dealing with vampires and she knew he would email her back with an appropriate time.

And finally she opened Eric's email.

Please come to the marina. There is a trail that leads up the hill to a large rock outcropping overlooking the river. I'll bring a blanket so we can sit up there and talk.

Damn, he wasn't good at following instructions. She'd said he'd have to call her. And then she'd emailed him to call her. Since when is an email the same as a phone call? But, he did make the effort by sending her an email. She guessed that would have to be good enough, if she insisted on a phone call at this point she risked looking petty. She dressed for TBR but put boots on instead of heels, she'd carry heels to change into before going to TBR.

When she arrived at the marina he was standing below the parking lot at the water's edge, throwing what looked like dog food to the ducks. She got out and went to him and he handed her the bag. She took it and looked at it questioningly, "Dog food?"

"No, it's duck food. I buy it at a farm supply store so I can feed them something that's actually got some nutrition in it. Most people feed them crackers or bread and that's really not all that good for them." He gave her that magical little warm smile of his. "Toss the rest of that and we'll walk up the hill."