Safeword: Storm Clouds (7 page)

"Only about five ounces. For one thing I've already fed today 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 then 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."

"How much blood do you need a day?"

"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 am 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 that thirty or so ounces. If I'm badly injured then I need enough blood to replace whatever I lost plus enough to heal with."

"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 have made our bodies do away with that particular function. The ability to attract and hold onto humans sexually has helped us survive through the years, so we've evolved in such a way that sex works the same way, 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."

Kendra saw the wheels turning in his head, he was putting together all of the downsides to dating a vampire now. "You sleep during the day. Can you stay up if you want? Can you go out in the sunshine?"

"I haven't felt the warmth of the sun on my skin in thousands of years, Eric. I literally die at dawn. Most vampires awaken as the sun drops below the horizon at night. I'm strong enough that I wake up a little bit before the sun goes down, but I can't leave the basement of the house until the sun is down."

"Thousands of years? How old are you?"

"I don't know exactly, probably just under three thousand years old. At least twenty five hundred years old, though my best guess would be about twenty eight hundred."

"You'll watch me grow old and die?"

"Yes, unless you someday want me to turn you. But I'll never try to talk you into it. If that is something you think you may want at some point then you'll have to bring it up, and then you'll have to do a lot to convince me you are serious, and
then
you’ll have to talk to Abbot and convince him you are serious as well."

"Yes, I am. You've been hit with a lot tonight and I think you need time to think it over. It's a lot to take in all at once. Let's go for a ride and have some fun and then tomorrow night after you and Abbot are done we can talk about this again if you want."

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

Kendra followed him outside and down the outside walkway area to the back of the yacht where she saw a smaller boat at the back of the one they were on. He flipped some switches and the smaller boat was slowly placed into the water. Then he opened up the railing so they could walk through it and reached his hand out to help her down. She took his hand but floated from the walkway to the other boat instead of climbing down.

After releasing the rope he started the engine and turned some lights on that didn't seem to act like headlights but were probably just so other boats would see them. And then he slowly drove 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. Once we pass the outer boundaries of the no wake zone 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 are still capable of that rush you get from danger, so whether it's still technically adrenaline or not, it works pretty much the same way."

True to his word, just before they would emerge out into the main part of the river he gunned something and they took off. Kendra had on khaki pants and a light pink tee with a light pink blouse in the same shade layered over the top. She finally had to fasten the blouse in front to keep it from trying to blow off. Her hair was blowing behind her and it was exhilarating. Eric drove like a madman, but it was obvious he was in control and was having fun with it. It was a nice fall night and the moon was very close to being full. They were in a very wide part of the river that looked more like a lake than a river and the surface was so smooth it almost felt like they were gliding on ice at times.

After a while he stopped in the middle of the river and shut the engine off. He reached for her, then pulled her to him and kissed her. He was vibrating with energy and that kiss made her want him worse than she'd wanted him yet. Suddenly, she had to have him. But this was a small boat built for speed, and while sex would be possible on it she didn't think it was the best place for their first time.

She started to say something but Eric beat her to it. "Kendra, since you aren't used to submitting I will assume you don't have a safe word?"

She moved her head to the right and back again once and he said, "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 mode is raindrops. When you are hang gliding if someone yells out raindrops then you look around to see if it's going to stay a light rain so we can stay up, or if it might turn into a downpour, in which case we'd all head down to the ground. So, raindrops won't end the scene, it will just make us take a look at where we are without leaving the power exchange to do so.
But
, If you want end the scene and go completely out of the power exchange then your safeword is
storm clouds
. Okay?"

She smiled. "Raindrops and storm clouds. Got it."

"Okay, I know we haven't negotiated, and I know I need to take it slowly in some areas, but..."

Kendra knew 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 part of things so there could be no doubt they were both ready. And though she was terrified, she was ready. "Yes, I know. It's time. I feel it, too."

He kissed her on the cheek and then looked her in the eyes as he said, "I'll stay with the pretty normal stuff since we haven't talked about limits, but if I accidentally hit on something that is a limit I need you to tell me right away. Later on in our relationship there will sometimes be restrictions on your speech, but tonight you can speak at will as long as you include a Sir somewhere every time you speak. Understand?"

She nodded her head.

"No Kendra, I need you to answer me verbally."

Damn, she was trying to hold off on calling him Sir as long as possible. He obviously wasn't going to let her get away with that. She took a breath, hesitated, then said, "Yes Sir, I understand."

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

She unbuttoned her blouse and took it off, handing it to him. Then she reached behind and released her bra before pulling the bra straps down and off of her arms. After that it was just a matter of pulling it up and out of the front of her shirt. When she handed it to him he put it in his pocket. He reached out and felt of her left breast through her shirt, circling the nipple and then lightly pinching it. Not enough to hurt, just enough to show he could, she guessed. It was very hard for her to keep her hands where they were and not reach to move his hands. When he moved to her right breast her hands actually raised up a few inches but she put them back down right away.

"This is hard for you. I can see it. And you wouldn't believe how much it's turning me on. Is it turning you on, Kendra?"

"Yes... yes, Sir."

He smiled and then 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 back in he told her to fly back up to the walkway and then he fiddled with a bunch of ropes and climbed up and flipped a switch that brought the little boat back up into its little cradle. Once it was safely stowed away he flipped another switch and the huge garage door closed. Taking her by the hand, he walked her downstairs to his bedroom.

"I'm going to go upstairs and get something. While I'm gone I'd like for you to remove your clothes. All of them. When I return I expect to see you standing beside the bed with your hands behind your back and your head lowered. When I come back into the room you will keep your head lowered until I give you permission to look up. Do you understand these instructions?"

"Yes Sir."

Kendra undressed, folding her clothes neatly and putting them on the small sofa by the door and then walking back to the bed and standing beside it. When she heard him coming back down the steps she put her hands behind her back and looked down.

Damn, looking up was harder than she thought it would be. Having her naked and him fully clothed was, well, it forced her to acknowledge that she had handed power over to him. She looked up and looked into his eyes and knew she had the eyes of a submissive when she did it. She'd been on the receiving end of those eyes enough that it was very hard to realize that she was giving them to someone now. But she wanted to be here, with him, doing this. It was hard, but it was turning her on.
He
was turning her on. His strength and control, not to mention she could smell his arousal and hear the change in his heartbeat when he walked in and saw her. Her submission did that to him. Wow, she‘d known there was power in submission, but this was a reminder that submission gave a different kind of power.

He gave her a gentle smile. "I realize that under normal circumstances it isn't safe for a submissive to allow herself to be tied up by someone she just met. But these aren't normal circumstances since you can use your mind thing to call Abbot if you want and then he'd probably kill me, or maybe just make me wish I was dead, if he found out I hadn't respected a safeword. I think it will be easier for you if you are restrained. You are having trouble submitting, and I want to free you so you don't have a choice anymore - not unless you want to tell me about storm clouds, of course. And that's the way it will be if I tie you up, if you say raindrops I will back off on the intensity of whatever I'm doing, but I won't untie you unless you call storm clouds and then the scene will end."

Kendra didn't have a problem with that. It might take her a few minutes, but she could break out of being tied up with rope. She wasn't afraid of giving up control by being tied with rope because rope couldn't really hold her.

Eric continued, "Before you tell me if you are comfortable being tied up, you should know that this is heavy duty rappelling rope meant for rescue operations." He pointed to one of the bundles. "You aren't supposed to put more than fourteen hundred pounds on this rope, but it has been lab tested to hold up to sixty-five hundred pounds." He pointed to the other bundle. "That one has been tested to hold up to nine thousand pounds."

Shit. Depending on how he tied her up, there was a good chance she would not be able to get out of it. And Abbot had warned him not to tie her off to anything, so he'd probably just tie legs to ankles or something to immobilize her. And she figured he'd know how to tie a knot that would hold, considering he boated and rappelled.

"Kendra, look back down at your feet please and listen to me a moment." He waited for her to look down and then continued, "I want to free you from the conflict you feel about submitting so you can enjoy what I do to you - both the painful parts and the pleasant parts. I promise to give you both pain and pleasure tonight, and I promise to respect your safewords. If you need to stop and talk about something we will, if you need for the scene to stop then it will stop. But I think you need help getting jump started into submission. You need to be restrained. Do you trust me to restrain you?"

"I'm scared... but I trust you. Sir."

"I kind of want you a little bit scared, but only scared of the unknown, not scared for your safety. I don't want you terribly afraid. Can you tell me which kind of scared you are?"

"Scared of the unknown, Sir."

"One more question, look at me for this one, please? I should have asked you this before we started the scene. Don't answer this one with Sir, I'm not asking you this question as a submissive, okay?"

"Okay."

"How far do you want me to go tonight? Are you ready for sex? Or should I stop before we reach that point?"

Kendra smiled. "The whole drinking your blood and making our auras mix thing usually happens after sex, so I think it's pretty safe to say if I felt close enough to you to drink your blood the way I did that we're close enough for sex."

He grinned. "Not quite the answer I'd have expected, and certainly one I've never had before. But, I think you are right, that act seemed to be as intimate as sex, maybe even more so. Anything else you want to say before I ask you to you climb on the bed so I can restrain you?"