Safeword: Storm Clouds (4 page)

He smiled and gently placed the rope he was working on at his feet before walking to within a few feet of her. He spoke softly, but she could sense the strength in that gentle voice. "Stand up Kendra, and put your hands behind your back."

She looked up at him and narrowed her eyes. "Don't push it, Eric."

"You want me to kiss you so you can be sure my kiss really affects you the way you think it did when we were hanging off the cliff, right? Does the idea of having to hold your hands behind your back while I kiss you turn you on? I'm trying to help you answer your question, Kendra. If we're going to do this, you'll have to learn to trust me."

Damn, he was right. She gracefully stood up and put her hands behind her back, realizing it made her breasts stick out some when she did. She was very under-endowed, she barely filled out a B cup, so it wasn't like they were sticking way out. But she still felt self conscious about it. After going so long without submitting it was almost like she had never done it before. This was going to be very hard.

Eric took the last two steps to her and put one hand ever so gently on her cheek and kissed her. Gently at first, but then he reached around with the other hand on the back of her head just under her ponytail and his kiss grew more insistent until she was melting into him. He slowly eased up, then pulled back a few inches before placing both hands gently on her cheeks and then ever-so-softly kissing on her forehead.

"You can release your hands now Kendra. Did that answer your question?"

She closed her eyes a second to get her bearings and then opened them, looking into his eyes. "It's going to be very hard for me to submit. Can you be patient? Treat me like I'm new to the lifestyle? Actually, I think doing it this way may be harder than being new. Going from Dom to sub is... I'm not actually sure I can do it. But you are correct that I'm responding to you, and I guess I owe it to both of us to explore that."

He ran his finger down her cheek and then gave her another small kiss on the lips, just a touch. "Yes, I can be patient. I'll go slow where I think it is needed, but there will be some things I won't go slow with. Your submission will be just that much more exquisite, knowing what you are going through to offer it."

And then he stepped away and got a mischievous look as he said, "Not to mention knowing you could put me flat on my back if you wanted and are choosing to submit anyway. You're going to have to show me that trick at some point. I'm almost done with the ropes and then we can head back. When you are ready, we can sit down and talk about hard limits and soft limits and what you think might turn you on and what you think would turn you off. But if you want to wait a few weeks, just date for a while first, that's okay."

"You've seen my house, I'd like to see your yacht. Do you have plans for tomorrow night? I could be there around 8:00. Maybe we can talk for a little bit and then you could take me for a ride around the lake? Or am I being too forward, inviting myself?"

"You're being honest, and I like honesty. Come hungry and I'll make you dinner."

"I'll have already eaten by then, but drinks might be nice. What do you drink when you aren’t drinking beer? I don’t suppose you drink wine?"

He smiled. He had a beautiful smile. "I think I can arrange for that. I’ve got a great desert wine I can open."

Chapter Three

The next night Abbot followed Kendra to the marina but wasn't obvious about it. The two of them had talked a little and Kendra had decided that she would go for a regular relationship with Eric instead of a traditional human companion relationship. If he happened to be okay with her drinking his blood then that would just be the icing on the cake.

Abbot would wait until she used their mind connection to let him know she was ready for him and then he'd come onto the boat to help her explain the whole vampire thing to Eric. There were very strict rules that kept humans from knowing about vampires, and the humans who knew of their existence were metaphysically bound in a way that kept them from telling the secret. Once she told a human what she was she'd be required to bind him to her before she could leave his presence. But binding him involved biting him, and Abbot didn't allow his vampires to bite someone without their permission. If Eric chose to not be bound then she would have to erase his memory. The rules stated that someone had to witness the binding to make sure it took. It didn't happen often, but every once in a while a human was immune to vampire powers enough that they could not be bound. Abbot had four people in his territory that he'd given the okay to be able to witness a binding. Kendra was one of the four, but she could not witness a binding that she created, which was the main reason for Abbot's attendance.

Kendra was having second thoughts about telling Eric, but she knew it had to be done sooner or later, and she had a feeling that with Eric sooner would be much better than later. As she got out of her car she saw him coming up some steps towards her, he'd been watching for her.

"Hi Kendra, I believe you are even more beautiful than I remembered you being. It's good to see you."

She smiled at the warmth she saw in his eyes. "It's good to see you too, Eric. Which one of these boats are we climbing onto?"

He walked her past the area with slips for the boats to an area with great big shed like things on either side of a dock. They went into one of the sheds and Kendra was amazed. The boat was in its own huge garage, kind of. It was in the water, all you'd have to do would be to open the huge garage door and drive out. The door was open now so they had a view around the side of the boat out into the water.

As they stepped up onto it she realized that this boat was bigger than the pirate ship that had tried to rob the ship she'd sailed on from England to India so many years ago.

When Eric took her inside she was even more amazed – it was a home, not just a boat. He walked her around and she saw three bedrooms, two and a half baths, an impressive office, a living room type area on one level and more of a party type room on another level, a kitchen area, and even a small dining room.

"Creating video games must pay very well."

He shrugged. “I started my own company a while back and managed to successfully market a few cutting edge games. One of the larger game companies bought my company for about ten times more than it was worth, and part of the deal was that I'd continue to work for them. I pretty much got to set my pay, so I told them I wanted a salary plus a cut of the profits on any game that was my brainchild, and that I wanted to work from home and not have to come into the office to do what I could do at home. They'd rather have me on their team than as the competition, so they agreed to it without a whole lot of negotiation. Some in the gaming world said that I sold out, but in reality it just freed me up to do what I really wanted to do anyway, create video games. Running my own company was a huge pain in the ass, I only did it because no one wanted to let me just create a game that they didn't want to make all kinds of changes to first. I didn't want to go to meetings about it between conception and creation and argue to try to keep it as my creation and not the product of a bunch of inane meetings. I wanted to conceive it and then create it. Now I get to do that."

They walked into a more casual room, one that looked like it was made for parties and entertaining, and Kendra made a point of looking around before saying, "I don't see a dungeon or a play room, is that downstairs by the boiler room?"

He grinned. “Look at that wall and tell me what you see."

"It looks like some interior designer got creative with those huge chains that I guess they use for anchors. It's an attractive way to decorate that spot of blank wall. Though I personally might not have taken it all the way to the floor, it works, whoever did it had an eye for what would look good in here. Rough chains wouldn't have looked good, but that gunmetal black look ties it in perfectly with the other hardware in the room."

"That wall has been reinforced, and the chain is well secured to the wall. Every link in those chains can be considered a bondage point. I can tie you to it to give the feel of a St Andrews Cross, or a whipping post, or a number of other pieces of equipment. You noted that the bed in the master suite was a canopy bed? The canopy and the struts going across the top have been reinforced. Not just reinforced enough to use as tie-off points, but reinforced enough to use for suspension. There is decorative hardware in the headboard and foot-board and all up and down the sides of the bed that double as bondage tie off points. That bench at the foot of the bed? The legs are adjustable so I can put your knees on it and bend your hips over the back of the foot-board and onto the bed and it's a perfect spanking bench, complete with tie-off points to secure your ankles, knees, backs of legs, lower back, and hands."

Kendra's body went into overdrive on her. She was so turned on by the idea of being restrained in the ways he was talking about that she was sure he could tell. Never mind that his reinforcements couldn't hold her, the idea of it still turned her on.

She decided not to comment on what he'd said. “Let's get some of that wine and sit where we can talk. I had thought that after we talked you could take me for a ride, but now that I've seen how big this thing is, I imagine it's quite a job to get it in and out of the garage."

"It's no problem at all, but I've got a smaller boat we can take out, too. If you want to talk first we can certainly do that."

He brought the wine in a bucket of ice along with two wine glasses. Once he'd opened the wine and poured their glasses and seated them in the more formal living room area she decided to just jump right into it. But first she probed into his mind just enough to put a little beginning marker into it. If she had to clear his memory later she'd clear it from this point forward. She also opened up communication with Abbot so he could hear what she was saying out loud to Eric.

"Eric, there is something about me you need to know. When I first start talking you aren't going to take me seriously, or you are going to think I'm crazy. Don't interrupt, just let me talk for about three minutes and then I'll give you whatever proof you want me to give you."

She took a deep breath. Not that she needed to breathe, other than what was needed for the mechanics of talking, but she wanted to get as much of this out as she could before he interrupted.

"I'm not human. Not anymore. When I was twenty-three years old I was turned into a vampire. I'm very old, even though I don't look it. Hang gliding with you at night wouldn't have been dangerous because I can fly. I wasn't nervous about going over the cliff to rappel for the same reason. I'm very strong and very fast, that's how I put you on the ground so fast you didn't really know how you got there. I have excellent night vision and I can hear about one hundred times better than you can. I can also hear frequency ranges you can't hear. Life is much easier as a vampire now that there are blood banks and we can drink bagged blood. I don't eat food. The only things I drink are water, unsweetened tea, alcoholic beverages, and blood."

Abbot had come in while she was talking but Eric hadn't seen him yet.

"This is my friend Abbot. I was a little nervous about telling you so soon so he's here to help me talk to you. Normally we like to wait until we know someone fairly well before we share our secret, but... you're different. You needed to know sooner rather than later."

She couldn't tell what Eric was thinking, but she could tell he didn't believe her just yet. He glanced at Abbot and then looked back at Kendra.

Kendra couldn't really fly around inside, so she levitated up from the chair she was in and floated across the room and back, sinking gracefully back into her chair. She looked at him the entire time, but he waited until she was back in her seat before responding in any way.

He didn't get flustered, he just calmly said, "Well, that
is
a neat trick. I thought vampires had fangs?"

She opened her mouth so he could see her teeth and then let her fangs grow out, stay that way a few seconds, and then shrink back to their normal size.

"Eric, every human emotion has a smell. I can smell when you are afraid, when you are horny, when you are angry, when you are happy."

She heard Abbot in her mind.
That is not helping Kendra. Let him get used to the idea of not being able to hide emotions later.

How do I help him not be afraid?

You know how to do this. Sit back in your chair, look relaxed. Drink some wine. I'm going to stay on the other side of the room and be as discrete as I can for now.

Kendra sat back in her chair. "Eric, before we had blood banks, when we needed to feed from humans, we didn't have to kill to feed. We take less in a feeding than the Red Cross takes in a blood donation. And our bite is much more fun, if I choose I can even make it orgasmic. But I've already fed tonight, as has Abbot. We aren't interested in your blood. Very few humans know of our existence. I'm only telling you because I want to try to have a relationship with you and, well, this is probably information you need to know, if we are going to date."