Safeword: Storm Clouds Page 2

  He studied her eyes, then said, "You work here?"

  She shrugged one shoulder. "Not exactly. There are a dozen or so clubs and restaurants in town that I help manage, as a group."

  "And I just happened to catch your eye?"

  "Yeah. You're, I don't know. Alive. Comfortable in your skin. I could feel your energy from across the room."

  He was quiet again, considering, then seemed to make up his mind. "Alright Kendra. I'll take you on a night flight, but not tonight. I've got rappelling gear for two in my car. You want an adrenaline rush tonight you'll have to live with doing it in a harness hanging off the side of a mountain."

  Her heart did a little flip flop, which was ridiculous, but she didn't argue with it. "Deal. Do we leave now or do you need to spend some more time with your friends?"

  "We were drawing things to a close. They'll be thrilled to see me leave with a woman."

  "Let me grab my purse from the office, I'll be back in a few minutes."

  Chapter Two

  Eric said she'd need to be in loose jeans and athletic shoes so they decided to drop by her house so she could change clothes and leave her car there. They would ride to the rappelling spot together in his Land Rover. Eric had jeans on and said he had shoes to change into in the back of the Land Rover.

  Kendra lived in a house inhabited by a bunch of vampires. A very large house, close to nine thousand square feet, not including the shelter areas built under the yard that were in place for an emergency. She couldn't take him to her private rooms in the house without a bunch of questions since there were several security doors to pass through to make it to the basement living quarters. Needless to say, vampires are pretty cautious about their daytime resting spot. Her living quarters were quite luxurious, but hard to explain. She called the house from her car to tell them she was bringing a human home long enough for her to change clothes and they should make sure there was nothing out that screamed vampire. She told them she'd leave Eric on the main level to talk to them while she ran downstairs to change, and threatened them to be nice. Lucky for her, everyone currently at the house except for Gavin had to listen to her, and Gavin would be nice just because he was that kind of guy. Gavin was Abbot's second in command and he lived there as well. Abbot didn't live in the house, though he kept a room there so he could stay when he needed or wanted to.

  When they arrived only Gavin and Fawne were on the main level. She guessed that Gavin had ran them all away from the main floor until her guest was gone so she wouldn't have to answer so many questions about why so many people lived there. Kendra made introductions and ran downstairs to change. She didn't take long with her super vampire speed so she was back upstairs in jeans and fashionable micro-fleece top and athletic shoes with her hair pulled back out of her face in less than five minutes. She figured if she was too fast it would arouse his suspicions, too.

  When she came back up Eric looked impressed. “That was quick, I didn't even have a chance to talk to your friends."

  She grinned. “Yeah, that was kind of the idea".

  Gavin looked at her. "You'll be back tonight?"

  "Yes. If I'm not back by dawn send a search party."

  That was a joke since the vampires all pretty much died at dawn whether they wanted to or not, and there would be no vampires awake to search after dawn. However, it let him know that she intended to come home tonight. More importantly, it would also give her an excuse if Eric wanted her to stay with him longer than she could. Sometimes she felt like Cinderella, needing to be home before sunrise not because her coach would turn into a pumpkin, but because she would turn into a corpse.

  Once Kendra and Eric were in his Range Rover he asked her about her house and house mates. "You live in a beautiful house. Well, a mansion really, I don't think you can call that a house. And you must have made some interior decorator somewhere quite wealthy. Who do you live there with?"

  "It's kind of complicated. They are like family to me, I guess. There's no kinky sexual arrangements going on between my house mates and I, if that is what you are wondering. Tell me, why has an adrenaline junkie chosen to live in Chattanooga?"

  "Are you kidding? I'm an hour from the Ocoee River, one of the best places to kayak in the country. I'm also an hour and a half from the Lookout Mountain hang gliding launch, one of the best places in the world to hang glide. There are literally hundreds of places to rappel within an hour of the city, possibly thousands. I can make it to a dozen different backcountry wilderness areas from here within three or four hours if I want to hike. There are so many caves in the area it's a caver's paradise. There are enough mountains to climb in eastern Tennessee and northern Georgia and northern Alabama and western North Carolina to last me for the next fifteen years. And the Tennessee River runs right through the center of town. This is an adrenaline junkie's dream come true."

  "What do you do for a living to support your adrenaline habit?"

  He laughed. "I create video games for couch potato adrenaline junkies. I don't need to go into an office for that, I can work from anywhere in the world."

  "Where do you live? What part of town?"

  "Not too far from you at the moment. I live in a yacht currently parked at the marina just down the road from here."

  She grinned. “Why am I not surprised."

  They talked easily as they drove up one of the mountains surrounding the city. Eric was twenty-five years old, and she avoided telling him how old she was by changing the subject when he asked. She'd been twenty-three when she was turned, but she had lived a very hard life and looked more like twenty-eight than twenty-three. Since she intended to eventually tell him she was a vampire, and she didn't want to lie to him, she would avoid questions that required a lie. When he stopped to get snacks she said she'd eaten shortly before she talked to him so she just wanted bottled water. Again, not a lie, she'd had some blood before leaving to go to TBR.

  Once they reached the top of the mountain and drove for a bit he turned onto a dirt road. She looked at him quizzically and he said, "We can't do this on easily accessible public lands because they have rules against rappelling at night. If you're nervous about going into the woods with a stranger though, I'll understand, and we can do something else."

  She smiled. “I think you're safe enough. Plus, you met my friends, they know your name and what you drive. If you wanted to take someone into the woods to do bad things to them I don't think you'd want to meet their housemates first. You'd have said that what I was wearing was fine."

  Once they reached the top of the cliffs and turned the engine and headlights off he asked her if she wanted him to light the area up. She said she’d rather they just did this by the light of the moon, that she thought it should be plenty light enough once they let their night vision get used to the darkness. He gave a smile that told her he approved, and they got out.

  Kendra watched him pull several things out of the back of the Range Rover, and then put what looked like carpet samples around the trees. He wrapped some sort of webbing around the carpet samples, and then attached the rope to the webbing. When he was done, each rope was attached to two trees, not one.

  "What's with the carpet?"

  "Ropes can hurt the bark, hurt the trees. The carpet protects the trees. Most people just use rope around something protective, but I don't like to depend on one tree, and the webbing is easier to work with when you are using multiple anchors. The way I've got everything connected here, with the ‘biners, the rope is pulling fairly equally on both trees so if one tree fails you've still got one tree holding you up. Also, with two trees sharing the weight, they are less likely to fail."

  Kendra hadn't thought about the rope hurting the trees, but if this was a popular spot for rappelling she guessed the trees would eventually take enough damage to their bark that it could compromise them. Damn, this man was just doing more and more things to make her like him. Once he had the ropes ready to throw over the edge of the cliff he retrieved a shorter rope from the Range
Rover and attached it to a big hook that had been wedged into the top of a large boulder, and then he began helping her into the harness, which involved a good bit of touching. She was getting a little bit turned on but was pretty sure she managed not to show it. There was no smell of arousal on him while he worked – he seemed intent on getting the harness right, more intent on safety than on flirting. She was both impressed and a little disappointed.

  With her harness securely arranged, and with a little bit of instruction about how the rope system worked with the harness, he made her go down the boulder he'd attached the rope to. The drop-off of was about ten or twelve feet, and he said she needed to go down it to make sure she had the hang of it and get some experience before they went over the side of the mountain. One side of the boulder was slanted with lots of stepping places so it was easy to go up, the other side was almost vertical so it made a nice place to get the hang of things. She loved the patient and self-assured way he showed her how to maneuver the ropes, and how to use her arms, legs, and body to control her descent. He made her come down the boulder twice by herself and when he saw she'd figured it out he walked her to the edge of the mountain, made sure she was hooked up correctly, and then asked her if she was sure.

  "Of course I'm sure. You first or me first?"

  Once they were over the side and hanging there side by side Eric seemed surprised that she had just gone over without really thinking about it. "Are you sure you haven't done this before? You don't seem comfortable with the ropes, but you aren't afraid, there was no hesitation at all about dropping down and trusting the rope. That's pretty unusual, even hard core adrenaline junkies are usually hesitant their first time, even if only for a few seconds."

  "I've watched you making all of the preparations, doing something and then double-checking it, even making me wear this silly hat. You seem to know what you're doing and you are taking safety seriously. I got an idea of what we're doing on the boulder and it all seems safe enough to me, there is this big strong rope and this harness that I can't come out of. And it's kind of exhilarating to be here hanging off the side of the mountain with the view of the city off in the distance. I like this, now watch me a second and make sure I've got the ropes all where they are supposed to be so I can let myself down."

  She wished she could just say, "I'm a vampire, I can fly. If the rope breaks I'll just fly back up." But it was too early for that.

  They rappelled down a good ways until they were on a natural shelf area and Eric said it was time to get out of the harnesses and hike back up, that if they walked along this shelf a bit it met up with a hiking trail that wound its way up to the top.

  "I figured we'd climb back up the way we came. I was kind of looking forward to it, actually."

  He looked doubtful. “It's possible, but that's more for an experienced climber. It's harder to look for hand and foot holds while dealing with the rope. This is your first time, you did great, but it might be pushing it to try a climb tonight."

  "I'd really like to try. I've done the climbing walls, where you don't have to deal with the rope, someone else does it for you. I was thinking it would be fun to climb back up a real cliff instead of an artificial climbing wall."

  He sighed. “Okay, we'll go up about ten feet and if I think you can handle it we'll keep going, otherwise we come back down and hike up. Deal?"

  "Deal. Thanks Eric."

  He finagled with her ropes a minute, instructing her how to manage them going back up, and then patiently talked her through it as he stayed by her side as she climbed. At ten feet she was figuring out the ropes okay. Climbing was no problem for her, but he insisted she keep working the rope so if she fell the rope would catch her, and that part was a bit tricky. At one point they were near the top and having to pull themselves up by just the rope because the cliff was kind of inverted there, and he pulled her to him and kissed her. Not a gentle first kiss, but a kiss that meant business, it quite literally took her breath away. He wasn't rough, but there was no doubt he was in control of what was happening and she was just along for the ride. When he'd thoroughly kissed her and she had gone from zero to a thousand on the horny scale, he gently let her go, making sure she was situated with her ropes the right way and ready to start ascending again. It took her a couple of attempts to get coordinated again, and when she did the first thought she had was that he'd kissed her like a natural Dom. Hanging in her harness and being kissed by him, with him in control, had practically melted her. She told herself it was just because he was in teacher mode and she was in student mode. She'd never submitted sexually to a human and had no intention of ever doing so. Plus, it would never work for a human companion to be Dominant. Never. She'd need to give him a kiss at the top to balance the scales.

  But that didn't happen. As he helped her get out of her harness and they pulled the rope up from the side of the mountain, she found herself following instructions and she was incredibly turned on by his gentle but quietly commanding voice. She had never submitted to a human and hadn't submitted even to a vampire in well over a thousand years. Vampire society is all about the hierarchy, about how powerful you are. And vampire sex is full of adventure – if you live thousands of years, you've got to make it interesting. But a strong vampire would never submit to a weaker vampire. The two might have vanilla sex, but if sex goes off into a power exchange then it just isn't possible for a weaker vampire to exert any kind of power over a stronger more powerful vampire. With vampires it's not so much physical strength as it is metaphysical strength, and Kendra was incredibly powerful both physically and metaphysically. She could have her own territory if she wanted it, but she didn't want that. She was happy staying with Abbot and helping him keep his power base intact. If she wasn't under a Master Vampire who led in a way she could respect, then she'd have taken on her own territory in a heartbeat. But she respected Abbot and had no problems with the way he ran his territory. She was proud to be his third in command.

  So why in the hell was she feeling like following this human's instructions? Why was she getting turned on by it? Time to take control.

  Kendra quickly stepped closer to Eric and very quickly but carefully picked him up and then laid him down on the ground, being careful to slow down just before he touched the ground so he went down gently. She did it at full vampire speed, so he'd just sense standing there one moment and then laying on his back the next, without it hurting. She sat on his legs and leaned forward and kissed him. And kept kissing him, with no doubt as to who was controlling the kiss this time. When he reached up with his hands to put them around her she gently but firmly took them and put them on the ground beside his head and held them there. About ten seconds later when she felt him start to resist, she smoothly stood up and reached her hand down to help him up.

  He gave her a wary eye and rolled his body up and was standing all in one motion, deliberately not accepting the offer of her hand to help him up. Once he was up he quietly asked, "You were trying to make a point with that?"

  "Did you enjoy it?"

  He closed his eyes for a second or two and opened them, shaking his head and talking in a nice conversational style, still not upset or flustered in any way. "Oh, this is rich. I begin to wonder if maybe I've met someone I might want to have a relationship with and it turns out she's a Domme. Is that it?"

  "You're telling me you're a Dom, too?"

  He turned away from her to walk towards the trees that the ropes were tied off to. "Yeah, and you seemed to be responding like a natural submissive right up until I found myself flat on my back." He stopped at the first tree and turned to give her a lopsided smile. “You sure you aren't a switch?"

  She returned the lopsided smile. "Positive. You still haven't answered whether you enjoyed it or not. You responded like you did."

  "I kissed you back, the kiss was nice, but being dominated didn't do anything for me."

  Damn, he was telling the truth. She'd picked up the quickened pulse and thought it was lust, but it wasn't, it w
as just the rush of it, the adrenaline. He'd enjoyed the kiss for the sake of the kiss, but not because of some latent submissive tendency. She didn't smell the kind of lust she'd smell if he was being turned on by her dominance. But, there had been that adrenaline rush, so she tried that angle. "How big of an adrenaline rush do you think you would have under my control? Isn't that what you liked about what I just did? The unknown? You've never had a woman able to lay you down and take control like that. And when I put your arms down, you didn't fight me. Not at first. As soon as you resisted I pulled back and stood up. I'm not into force, I'll only take you if you submit. But if you submit, I guarantee you an adrenaline rush."

  "And I can guarantee you mind blowing orgasms if you submit. Are you suggesting we switch? You one night and me the next?"

  Kendra smiled. “No, actually, I was just suggesting that you submit to me."

  He shook his head as he disconnected the webbing from one of the trees. "I'm pretty sure that isn't going to happen. Once a relationship is established I might agree to submit to you for one night just for the adrenaline rush, but I'm wired as a Dom and that's the only way a relationship with me will work. I've tried vanilla with people who weren't into power exchange and it's just a road to heartache because it isn't enough for me. I don't date like a normal guy, my only relationships now are with people I know are in the lifestyle before we even start. But something about you made me want to learn more about you. That kiss on the way back up was so I could see if you had submissive tendencies. And you do. Deny it if you want but you responded, I didn't imagine that. You responded to the kiss and you responded to my instructions once we were back up on top."