Safeword: Storm Clouds (15 page)

He put his arms around her again and she started a series of loop-de-loops, coming out of them to a steep ascent until she went over the top of a circle at the top and then she was on top and he was on bottom but he was upside down, and then diving steeply down until they were leveled off and right side up again. She loved doing that. She'd briefly smelled the scared kind of fear coming off of him, but now that it was gone it seemed to have just pumped his excitement up that much more. She made a sharp right turn and dove for the ground, skimming a few feet above a meadow on Randall's land and then taking another sharp ascent just before they reached the edge of the woods, missing the tops of the tree tops by a few feet. When she finally thought he'd had enough she landed. She had decided not to change them around so he was in front, she'd save that for another time. As she got herself out of the harness she could feel him vibrating again. He was so alive. She wanted a taste of him. She had blood in a cooler in the car, she knew she'd need it when they landed, but she wanted
his
blood. Badly. She got him out of the harness and he took her into his arms and kissed her. Not the good night kisses she'd been getting, but a kiss that set her on fire. Kendra kissed her way from his mouth to his cheek to the back of his jawbone and then kissed her way down to that pulse point that she wanted to sink into.

"Eric, I want you, I want to taste your excitement, your adrenaline. Please, tell me I can."

"I don't want to orgasm right now. I want to take you home and make love to you and have you bite me then, as we come. But if you can bite me now without making me orgasm then that would be nice."

Kendra put her arms around him to support him in case his knees gave out, one of her arms wound under his left arm and her other arm over his right arm, and she bit. She put the numbing agent in first thing and then just the right combination of chemicals to give him bliss but no orgasm. As his knees gave way she held him firmly so he didn't fall. She didn't drink too much, about five or six ounces. She'd make sure he drank some fluids on the way back so she could take that much again later tonight. She wanted to make love to him, too. She liked his idea.

When she stopped drinking from him she held him until she felt him get his legs back under him and start to support himself. She gradually let him go, making sure he could stand okay, and then walked him to the passenger side and sat him down, fastening his seat belt for him before she closed the door. She tossed the harnesses in the trunk, grabbed some bottled water, and got into the driver side and started the car. She opened one of the bottled waters and handed it to him, "Drink."

She started to open hers, but she liked having the taste of him in her mouth and didn't want to wash it away just yet. She would before they got back to the marina so he wouldn't taste his own blood in her mouth. Humans sometimes got a bit touchy about that.

When they arrived at the marina he was in good shape and they held hands as they approached the big building that housed his yacht. As they got about thirty yards from it she heard a heartbeat that sounded like it was coming from his yacht. She at first assumed one of the boats near his yacht must have had a person on it, but as they got closer she really had to wonder. At about twenty yards away she stopped and held him back. "There is a heartbeat, coming from your yacht. Someone is in there."

"No, it's my boat, I'll check it out. I was about to tell
you
to wait here, but... oh hell, let's just go together."

Kendra wasn't up to arguing with him about this so she just went, which meant that it looked to Eric like she disappeared again. She heard him outside saying, "Dammit, would you stop
doing
that!"

Before Eric made it to the building Kendra had the intruder immobilized. "Explain who you are and why you are here, now, before I start to hurt you."

Eric came sprinting into the yacht through the door that was open and into the room Kendra and the intruder were in. Kendra had the man down on the ground, her knee in the small of his back and one arm twisting his arm behind his back and up, painfully. Her other arm held his hair and pulled his head up and to the side at what looked like a painful angle.

"Umm, Kendra, please let him go. This is my uncle."

Kendra immediately released the man and stepped back. "Your uncle? Were you expecting him?"

"No, but he has a key and it's never been a problem before for him to let himself in. It wouldn't have been this time either if you hadn't, err, realized someone was here."

The man spoke. "Eric, is this your girlfriend? And if so, then what the hell have you gotten yourself into?"

"Hi Ranger. I'd like to introduce you to Kendra. Kendra, this is my Uncle, Ranger."

Ranger stood and tried to make it look like it didn't hurt. He pulled it off visually but she could smell differently. Kendra had probably hurt his back a little worse than was necessary, she felt kind of bad about that. She'd probably wrenched his shoulder and neck a bit, too. She felt like she should say something, apologize or something, but wasn't really sure what to say. Eric filled in the silence with, "Kendra, I told you my uncle is spec ops, I doubt anyone has single handedly taken him down in decades, so he's probably wondering what kind of training you've had and how you managed to sneak up on him and take him down."

"Spec ops? I heard you say it, but didn't know what it meant and didn't ask at the time. I figured it had something to do with the military since that is what your dad did. What does is mean?"

"Special Operations, it basically means he's a bad ass."

"Oh," she turned to Ranger, "Ranger, I'm sorry if I hurt you, I thought you were an intruder. I feel bad that we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot, should I let you knock me down so we'll be even?"

Ranger was standing at alert, as if he expected her to attack again at any minute, and he’d be ready for her this time. "What kind of training have you had, Kendra?"

"I think calling it training might be an overstatement. I've got some experience with a couple of flavors of martial arts, and lots of experience fighting with brothers. Nothing major, I guess I just got lucky with you. You must have felt safe here and just not been on guard or something."

He leveled his eyes at Kendra and said, "No", then looked at Eric. "How much do you know about this woman? What has she told you she does for a living?"

He sighed, "Ranger, I'm really not up for the third degree about Kendra right now. She took you down, your ego is bruised, end of story. Let's all get a drink and get to know each other. Nicely, with manners. And, as nice as it is to see you, why didn't you let me know you were coming?"

"I had a security company offer me a job. I wasn't planning on retiring from the government yet, but an old friend recommended me for this outfit and knew I was about to renegotiate my contract with the military. He told me it would be worth my while to come talk to them. They even flew me in on the company jet. I figured I got a free trip to come see you and no harm in seeing what they had to say. It all happened kind of fast or I'd have let you know ahead of time."

Kendra wanted to ask about the security firm, but this man was already curious enough about her. Still, she should probably try to figure out who was recruiting these kinds of people to Chattanooga.

Eric was talking again. "How long are you in town?"

"Only a day or two, I'll spend the day interviewing with them tomorrow, if they want to make me an offer I'll have an appointment with an outside person the following morning, some kind of therapist or something, and then if she gives the okay they'll make me an offer and fly me home that evening."

Kendra stood. "Well, since the two of you aren't going to have much time to spend together I'll leave the two of you alone so you can catch up with each other."

Eric stood and put his arm around her, "Actually, if you could stick around a bit, I'd like for you to get to know Ranger a little, and I'd kind of like for him to have a better impression of you than the one your knee probably left in his back. He's family, and you are important to me. Please stay for a little bit."

"Well, since you asked nice, I guess I kind of have to now."

Ranger apparently had some questions for her. "So Kendra, what do you do for a living?"

"Well, I'm kind of independently wealthy, but I like to keep busy, so I work with a friend who owns several bars and restaurants in town. I help with the overall management, and when a manager somewhere calls in sick or something I can go in and cover for them. I've also been known to fill in as doorman, and in most of the bars the doorman acts as bouncer for the front part of the club, so I guess I've managed to keep some of my reflexes in shape with that. Most recently I've been opening another bar for him, it will be down near the new dorm buildings at the University, we're going to call it The Library. I'd start my own bar, but it's a huge pain to keep up with the management. Abbot's deal with me is that I start it up and then he handles the brunt of the management headache and still cuts me in on a good portion of the net profits for the life of the bar. Works for me."

"How did you become independently wealthy?"

"I used to work as an assassin, and that paid really well."

He raised his eyebrows, not believing her, but waiting for her to say whatever came next. She gave something between a grin and a glare. "Sorry, but that sounded like the kind of answer you were looking for, so I gave it to you. The truth is kind of boring - I got an inheritance and invested it wisely. I continue to make more money than I spend, and if I keep that up I'll never have to have a regular job. I'm not dating Eric for his money."

"Most people who have not killed people are not eager to claim they have."

Whoa, she hadn't thought of that. Oh well, guilty dog barks the loudest, so proclaiming to have never killed wouldn't be wise. Besides, she didn't want to lie to him, probably best to try to turn the tables, "Spoken by someone who has killed?"

He just observed her again, probably noting that she hadn't denied killing, "You say you aren't dating Eric for his money, that hints there is another reason you are dating him. Why are you dating Eric?"

Eric spoke up at that, "Ranger, you're getting out of..."

"No Eric, that's okay, I can answer his questions. I like that you have someone who loves you enough to give me the third degree."

Kendra had not looked away from Ranger as she was talking to Eric, and she kept her eyes on him as she answered his question. "Because he's so alive, so full of.. energy, life. He doesn't let fear hold him back, if he wants to do something, he does it. I enjoy spending time with him. We're still figuring things out, but I guess we're both hoping we can find a way to make things work."

"Why might things not work?"

Kendra looked at Eric, then back at Ranger. "That's kind of personal, but since you asked, I'm infertile and Eric wants kids."

Ranger looked shocked, he looked at Eric. "You've let a relationship get to the point where you are talking about kids and I don't know about it? You told me you were seeing someone, but... "

Eric shrugged, "Sorry, I didn't want to jinx things."

Ranger apparently didn’t want to stay on that subject any longer. "Well, it's close to midnight now and I've got to be at Drake Security at 10:00 in the morning. It looks like it's about a twenty or thirty minute drive from here, so I can stay up a couple of hours but I should probably head to bed around two in the morning or so."

"Special Operations Forces are trained for, as you might guess, Special Operations. Some things are obvious, like rescuing hostages, or extracting forces that somehow get caught behind enemy lines. It's public knowledge that Spec Ops forces have been active in Mogadishu, Afghanistan, and lots of Central and South American countries. I can speak five languages fluently and another four just enough to get around. I have to be able to look at someone and know if they are dressed to look like they have money or if they actually have money. That's how I know about the shoes, and it's how I know that the athletic shoes you are wearing now are Gucci and those combined with a few other things I've noted tell me that you most likely are in fact fairly wealthy. Probably wealthier than your words earlier would have led one to believe."

"They handle security details for some pretty famous people, which seems odd since they are situated here in Chattanooga, but I guess that's the reason for the company jet. They also handle consulting for some major corporations, to set up their security systems and to come in and help with security for special events."