Riding the Storm (6 page)

Eric nodded, and Abbott continued. “Next, you need to know
there is nothing on this yacht you can successfully restrain Kendra to. We have
a play room at the coterie house with bondage furniture capable of holding a
vampire, but it will be a little while before the two of you will be able to
play there. Meanwhile, I would suggest not restraining her to anything you
don’t want broken, because if she pulls on her restraints in the heat of the
moment, she could easily destroy it by accident. If you bind her to herself
with cuffs or rope, then the only thing she may break is the cuff or the rope.
Also, you don’t have to worry about circulation with a vampire, so you can bind
her much tighter than you would a human. If you get creative enough, you can
put her muscles at such an angle so it’ll at least be a little harder for her
to break free.”

Abbott could see the sadist and Dom peeking through Eric’s
smile as he said, “Thanks, Abbott. I can see this is information Kendra may not
have shared with me.”

“You’re most welcome. Kendra is a good friend, and I like
what I’ve seen of you so far. I’ll walk myself out, and I hope you enjoy the
rest of your evening. I’ll see you tomorrow night at eight, so we can formalize
our arrangement.”

When Abbott was gone, Eric pulled Kendra closer to him, his
gaze holding hers as he skimmed his hand down her back, returned to her
shoulder, and then skated his fingers around her neck to caress her cheek with
his thumb. “Kendra, when you bit me, it was…”

He didn’t seem to have the words to describe it, so she
leaned her head into his hand a little, grinned, and asked, “Orgasmic?”

“Well, yeah, but it was more than that. I mean, usually when
you get off, your dick and balls feel it and transmit it to the rest of your
body. But this was like every cell in my body was climaxing, but only my dick
and balls could actually complete the act. I’ve never felt anything like it.”

Now, she held
his
gaze, watched and listened for his
reaction as she told him, “Just imagine how it might be if I do it at the end
of sex, just as you begin to orgasm the regular way?”

His heart sped, his breathing hitched, and blood roared
through his veins. “I think it might be enough to just kill me dead, right
there.”

Kendra laughed, and realized she’d laughed more in the
twenty-four hours since she’d met Eric than she likely had in the past year.
“Oh no, you’ll survive it,” but then she paused and added, “assuming you want
me to bite you again.”

“You didn’t orgasm,” he said, “but when I held you, you
seemed all relaxed and
happy
, like you had. What does it do for you?”

She noted he hadn’t answered her question, but she didn’t
push. “Well, first off, you taste amazing. If you had a meal cooked by some
world famous chef, you’d be sated afterwards, reeling from the taste
sensations, right? Your blood is
that
good to me. And, second, there was
a bit of a metaphysical thing that happened, too, with our auras. They didn’t
join, but they mixed with each other a little, so I guess you could say I was
basking in the sensation I got from your aura. When two people are close, their
auras can join, become one large ball of light with two people in it. We may
eventually get there, but it’ll take time. Quite frankly, it’s rare for them to
mix so quickly after two people have met, so it’s confirmation, I guess,
showing the two of us have connected on a deeper level, already.”

Eric kissed her forehead, and every nerve ending in her body
came to life. She rested her head on his shoulder, let him pet her, and
snuggled into him. So comfortable with him already. She’d always taken care of
her humans, and yet it felt so natural for him to hold her.

“We haven’t done anything more than kiss,” he told her, “yet
I feel as comfortable with you as if we’d had sex already. I guess in a way we
have, with the mind-blowing orgasm, but... we haven’t seen each other without
clothes and we haven’t, you know,
touched
each other. Well, not
physically, anyway.”

“Do you feel like you’ve lost blood? When you stood to go
clean up, were you dizzy or lightheaded?”

He ran his hand over her hair. “No, I feel fine. How much
did you take?”

“Only about five ounces. For one thing, I’ve already fed
tonight, and for another I didn’t want to make you weak. If you want me to feed
from you often then we have to work up to it so your body gets used to
manufacturing more blood. If you don’t want me to feed frequently, we’ll figure
out how much I can take at a time before you feel it. For some people it’s five
or six ounces, for others it’s ten or twelve.”

He pulled back, looked in her eyes, one hand at her
shoulder, the other tilting her chin up. “How much blood do you need a day?”

He wasn’t asking for self-preservation reasons, but because
he wanted to know what it took to keep her alive, so she gave him the complete
answer. “I need about thirty ounces of liquid a day. On a normal day I need
from six to ten ounces of blood and the rest can be water. However, if I’m
injured and need to heal, or if I’m active and use up a lot of energy, then I
need more blood and less water to make up the thirty or so ounces. If I’m badly
injured then I need enough blood to replace whatever I lost, plus enough to
heal.”

His mouth twisted into a grin, his eyes happy, suggestive.
“Does sex with a vampire work the same as sex with a human?”

“Yes, even though we can’t make babies, so you might think
evolution would’ve made our bodies do away with that particular function, but
the ability to attract and hold onto humans sexually has helped us survive
through the years, and we’ve evolved so sex works the same, just without the
reproductive possibilities.”

“So, if you and I get together for... for good... we can
never have kids? I won’t be a father?”

Kendra softened. “I’m sorry, Eric.” Looked like she’d
overshared too soon, after all.

And now, Kendra saw the wheels turning in his head. She
knew, without peeking into his thoughts, he was now putting together
all
the downsides to dating a vampire.

“You sleep during the day. Can you stay up if you want? Can
you go out in the sun?”

“I haven’t felt the warmth of the sun on my skin in
thousands of years. I literally die at dawn. Most vampires awaken as the sun
drops below the horizon at night. I’m strong enough to rise a few hours before
sunset, but I can’t leave the basement until the sun goes below the horizon.”

“Thousands of years? How old are you?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Probably just under three thousand
years old. At least twenty-five hundred, though my best guess would be about
twenty-eight hundred.”

“You’ll watch me grow old and die?”

This wasn’t an easy question to answer, but she felt
relieved he hadn’t asked about the circumstances of her being turned. “Yes,
unless you someday want me to turn you, but I’ll never try to talk you into it.
If it’s something you think you may want at some point, you’ll have to bring it
up, and you’ll have to do a lot to convince me you’re serious, and
then
you’ll have to talk to Abbott and convince
him
you’re serious, too.”

Eric went a few moments without saying anything, and Kendra
thought it was time to lighten the conversation.

“You were going to take me for a boat ride tonight. Can we
still go?”

“You’re changing the conversation.”

“Yes, I am. You’ve been hit with a lot tonight, and I think
you need time to think it over. Let’s go for a ride and have some fun, and then
tomorrow night after you and Abbott are done, we can talk about it again, if
you want.”

“If it’s fun you want then taking the yacht out won’t do it,
we’ll need to take the ski boat. C’mon.”

Kendra followed him outside and down the walkway, where she
saw a smaller boat cradled by a small crane-like contraption on the back of the
yacht. Eric flipped some switches and the smaller boat was slowly lowered into
the water, and Eric opened the railing so they could walk through it. He
offered his hand to help her down, and she accepted it, but then floated from
the walkway to the other boat instead of climbing down.

He seemed to take it in stride. “Show-off.”

“In two weeks, when the moon is new, I’ll take you night
flying without a hang glider, if you want.”

He stepped to the steering wheel. “Seriously?”

She kissed his cheek before she settled in the seat beside
his and replied, “Seriously.”

As Eric slowly headed out of the slue and towards the river,
Kendra thought a turtle could swim faster, and she
knew
she could swim
faster.

“I thought you said this boat went fast?”

“This is a no wake zone, so you don’t knock the boats around
in their slips. Don’t worry, give me a few minutes and I’ll give you your
adrenaline rush.” He paused a moment before asking, “Do vampires have
adrenaline?”

“I don’t know if it’s biologically the same, but we’re still
capable of the rush you get from danger, so whether it’s still technically
adrenaline or not, it works the same.”

True to his word, just before they would emerge out into the
main part of the river, he gunned the engine and they took off. Kendra’s blouse
had been unbuttoned, just layered over the t-shirt, and she had to button it to
keep it from billowing.

Her hair blowing behind her was exhilarating as he drove
like a madman, skipping and skating over the surface of the Tennessee River,
but it was obvious he was in control and having fun with it.

It was a beautiful fall night, with the moon close to full.
The river was so wide here it looked more like a lake, and the surface so
smooth on the widest sections, it felt as if they were gliding on ice at times.

After a while, he stopped in the middle
of a wider spot in the river and shut the engine off. He reached for her,
pulled her to him, and didn’t seem to care she was a vampire. He vibrated with
energy, and she could smell the sunshine in his skin as his lips took hers,
opening, demanding, possessing… she had to focus to keep her fangs retracted,
and his blood coursing through her body heated her as it had warmed his body.
Suddenly, she had to have him, but this was a small boat, built for speed, and
she didn’t think it was the best place for their first time.

She started to say something, but Eric beat her to it.
“Since you aren’t used to submitting, I’ll assume you don’t have a safeword?”

“Correct.”

“Okay then,
raindrops
. Your safeword if you need me
to lighten up on the intensity, or maybe just talk about things but not go out
of power exchange is
raindrops
. When you’re hang gliding, if someone
yells
raindrops
, you look around to see if it’ll stay a light rain so we
can stay up, or if it might turn into a downpour, in which case we’d all head
to the ground. However, if you want to end the scene and go completely out of
power exchange then your safeword is
storm clouds
. Okay?”

She smiled. “Raindrops and storm clouds. Got it.” She shook
her head and added, “I have this, I don’t know, mantra, I guess. It’s a saying
I use when times are bad, to remind me things’ll get better. I tell myself it’s
just a matter of riding out the storm until blue skies return. It’s kind of a
perfect safeword.”

He pulled her into his embrace, and she relaxed into his
body. His arm rubbed her back as he said, “I know we haven’t negotiated, and I
know I need to take it slow in some areas, but...”

He hesitated, as if he needed her to finish his sentence,
and Kendra realized he didn’t want to order her into it. He wanted her to take
them the rest of the way, and she trusted him all the more for it because she
knew it was his way of solidifying the consensual side, so there could be no
doubt they were both ready. And though she was terrified, she wanted this man
to take her, to fill her. “Yes, I know. It’s time. I feel it, too.”

He kissed her cheek, his lips a caress, and his blue eyes
held her with a solemn intensity, trapping her as if
he
were the
vampire, holding her in his gaze. “I’ll stay with the normal stuff since we
haven’t talked about limits, but if I accidentally hit on one of your hard
limits I need you to tell me. Later, there’ll sometimes be restrictions on your
speech, but tonight you can talk as much as you want, as long as you include a
Sir
somewhere every time you speak. Understand?”

She nodded.

“No, Kendra.” He cradled her cheek as he held her gaze. “I
need you to answer me verbally.”

Damn, she was trying to hold off on calling him Sir as long
as possible, but he obviously wasn’t going to let her get away with it. She
took a breath, hesitated, and said, “Yes, Sir. I understand.”

“Take the blouse and your bra off and hand them to me,
please. Leave the t-shirt on.”

He put her shirt under the seat cushion, and her bra in his
pocket, and then casually caressed her left breast through the softness of her
thin shirt, circling the nipple before lightly pinching it. Not enough to hurt,
just enough to show he could.

Kendra drew on every ounce of her willpower to keep her
hands in place. When he moved to her right breast, her hands actually lifted a
few inches, a reflex action to stop him, but she quickly put them back down,
and slid them under her legs.

“I can see how hard this is for you, and you wouldn’t
believe how much it’s turning me on. Is it turning you on, Kendra?”

“Yes... yes, Sir.”

He smiled and handed her blouse back to her. “Put this back
on so you don’t get cold. We’re going back to the yacht, now.”

When they pulled in he told her to fly back up to the
walkway, and then he fiddled with a bunch of ropes, climbed up, and flipped a
switch that brought the little boat back up into its cradle. Taking her by the
hand, he walked her downstairs to his bedroom.

He put a finger under her chin, lifted it until she was
looking him in the eyes, and said, “I’m going upstairs to get a few things.
While I’m gone I’d like you to remove your clothes. When I return, I expect to
see you standing beside the bed with your hands behind your back and your head
lowered, and you’ll remain in position until I give you permission to look up.
Do you understand these instructions?”

She wanted to look down, look away, and it took effort to
hold his gaze as she said, “Yes, Sir.”

Kendra undressed, folded her clothes neatly and put them on
the small sofa by the door, and then walked back to the bed to stand beside it.
When she heard his footsteps on the stairs, she put her hands behind her back
and looked down.

“Beautiful, Kendra. You are stunningly beautiful.”

Nudity normally didn’t faze her, but today, she felt exposed
and vulnerable. And yet, this felt right, exposed before this strong, powerful
man so full of vitality.

Eric walked to the foot of the bed and threw something on
it, and while she desperately wanted to look, she kept her head down.