Present Tense: Pleasure Times Four (Out of the Fire Book 3)

by Candace Blevins

  “And which would you rather be?”

  “The warrior in the garden. It’s a silly question, of course, because those aren’t the only options, but I understand the point he was making. I can be safe and sound inside the heavily barricaded geek offices, but if the worst happens, it’s nice to know I can defend myself.”

  “Everyone in that office can. There’s protocol you’ll learn later, when and how to destroy the computers and data, should the enemy gain entry beyond a certain point. We don’t foresee it ever happening, but that’s no excuse for not making plans in case it does.”

  “That makes sense. Are there plans for what to do if bad people come here? To the house?”

  He looked out to make sure the slave was still stretching before he answered. “There are, and once you’re comfortable with weapons and you’ve passed Drake’s tests, you’ll know where the weapons are placed around the house, and you’ll have access to them.”

  “Okay. While we’re alone, can we talk about the fact Etta’s gone, and I’ll be feeding from James and Fabio again?”

  “I’m the spotter.”

  “There was someone at my former Master’s residence who could feed on an emotion, and she’d been heavily monitored for over twenty years. She nearly killed someone by accident several times while I was there. I don’t understand how I can be left without a vampire to monitor me within days. I don’t want to hurt any of you.”

  “And you won’t. I was in on a conference call with Marco and Etta earlier today, and they told me basically what you just said — that most vampires need from thirty to one-hundred years to gain control of this gift. They gave you a jumpstart by forcing you to kill someone right off the bat, but they both assured us you’re in control enough that a mere reminder will be enough to make you lock everything down and stop feeding, should you forget.”

  And if she messed up, the vampires would handle her punishment. Marco and Etta had been clear on that. He’d asked what they would do, but he hadn’t been able to get an answer.

  “Marco tells me you know what will happen if you fuck up?”

  She nodded and he could smell her fear. No, not fear. Terror.

  “I do, but I can’t talk to you about it. It’s forbidden.”

  “Anything else we need to talk about?”

  “No, but I wanted to thank you for taking on the responsibility of spotter.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Eunice hadn’t wanted to like the cute little vampire, but she’d grown on him. Even now, she wore a t-shirt that said, My Other Computer Is Your Computer, and the knowledge she could take over just about anyone’s computer and use it for her own purposes pleased him. She might not be a bad-ass in the traditional sense, but she was most certainly a bad-ass in the modern one. Information is power, and she was an expert at gaining information.

  18

  The next three days passed without incident. Kelsey alternated feeding between James and Fabio when she rose, and there was lots of sex. During the hours she was upstairs before work, she was present while the sex-slave-in-retraining was treated as one would expect a sex slave on loan to be treated. And then Kelsey went to work.

  They hired a thirty-four-year-old woman to clean the house, take care of their laundry, and handle the grocery shopping. She was human, married to a werewolf in the Chattanooga Pack, and fine with feeding female vampires with no sex involved, but her husband wouldn’t allow her to feed male vampires. She stipulated the extra cost, and the fact it should be a cash payment given at the time, and not billed as cleaning services, which was fine with Kelsey. She didn’t intend to make use of the woman often, but it was nice the option was there, should she need it.

  Someone came to get her twice every shift at Drake to take her downstairs to practice on the pop-up dummies in the range. Added to this, Eunice played a video game with her, where you lost points for shooting a ‘good guy’ and only gained points for shooting one of the bad guys before they had a chance to shoot you or another good guy. She and Eunice worked together, and it was more complicated because she’d get turned around sometimes, and she’d accidentally shoot him. On top of this, she had to do the driving game for thirty minutes a night. If she wrecked, or racked up too many points, the clothespins and clamps came out. The evening before, she’d managed to avoid them, and she hoped that was the case from that point forward.

  On this night, the slave was in a full-face hood, on her hands and knees on a small platform, with a thick, oval piece of wood on her, simulating a table. Kelsey was playing poker with the men, on her honor not to look in their heads to see what they had. They’d each started out with fifty dollars in ones, fives, and tens. Kelsey currently had around seventy dollars, while Eunice had more than doubled what he’d started with. Fabio was out, and James wasn’t far from it. They were playing until two players were out or two hours passed — whichever came first.

  The table started vibrating again, and Eunice grinned at Fabio, who’d taken over the remotes to the slave’s plug and dildo once he was no longer in the game.

  “Is everyone clear on the procedures for the new maid?” James asked.

  “The hampers she wants us to use arrived today,” Eunice said. “I’ll have the cunt-of-the-week make the changes in the kitchen when I bring her back from our morning run tomorrow. We’ve already been making a note on the dry-erase board when we use the last of something, so there’s no change there. She’s fine with taking a picture of that, rather than us using her online spreadsheet.”

  The woman had an extra charge to sort through the pantry and cabinets to put them in the order she wanted them, but Eunice was going to make the sex-slave do it. He’d also been making her clean all five bathrooms every other day. The scent of her resentment had lingered in Kelsey’s bathroom. Must be a real pain in the ass to have to clean other people’s bathrooms when you were used to having the hired help clean your own.

  Three more hands, and James was out. Kelsey ended the night with sixty-five dollars, and she was pleased. The winner of the evening got to pick Friday night’s movie, and she hadn’t wanted that responsibility.

  She sat in her favorite gaming chair and went through the menus to the driving game. Thirty minutes a night, no matter what. Plus, it would help keep her from having to not see what they were doing to the other woman.

  While she drove, they took the wooden tabletop off, stood the slave up, and bent her over the sofa. Before long they had her on one of the floor cushions, and the three of them were using her — three dicks in three holes.

  And Kelsey was more than a little jealous.

  19

  By the time Sunday evening arrived, Eunice was ready for some time with Kelsey without the other two men around.

  The slave had been returned to her owner, but he figured she’d be back in less than six months. If her Master would reinforce the lessons, it wouldn’t be necessary. All he’d have to do would be to give the hired help a week off whenever she backtalked him, and require her to cook and clean, but the client wanted his sweet little thing to behave without needing to punish her and make her. Silly man didn’t realize sending her to be retrained was a much worse punishment than sending the hired help away for a week.

  The slave’s presence had only reinforced, in his mind, how much he enjoyed Kelsey’s company. Kelsey was intelligent, funny, and she was a fan of the same things Eunice enjoyed. It wasn’t just about training her. It was about enjoying her.

  When she fed off of lust, she woke hours earlier, and there’d been plenty of lust in the house for her to safely feed from.

  Somehow, Eunice knew when she woke. He felt it, and he was certain this wasn’t normal, but he didn’t mind. One evening, when he was the only one home and she’d have to wait to feed, he’d gone downstairs and asked how long it’d been since she’d watched season one of The Big Bang, and when she said it’d been a while, the two had sat and watched the first few episodes together, laughing and talking about some of the early h
appenings the writers wove into later seasons and episodes.

  She got him, and he couldn’t remember another woman ever understanding this side of him.

  JB had decorated for Christmas, and he noted Kelsey’s eyes lit up at the blow-up snowglobe outside, and the many strands of lights outlining his house and roof. Inside, her eyes practically caressed the greenery over the mantle, the tree, and the Christmas village.

  A different dungeon master ran the evening’s quest, and when he stumbled, Kelsey subtly helped him out, without stepping on toes. When a question came up about a rule, she knew it off the top of her head. At the end of the night, JB asked her if she’d ever DMd.

  And Eunice sat in shock as his nerd friends pushed for her to DM the following week, once she’d told them she had some experience. They never asked anyone to run a game until they’d been around for months.

  Was this because she was pretty, or because she’d been knowledgeable? Honestly, he thought it might be a combination of the two. If it’d been anyone else, he’d have been worried for them, but he had a feeling Kelsey excelled at anything she put her mind to.

  He was supposed to take her directly to work afterward, but they had a little time, and he wasn’t ready for the evening to end. He exited the interstate and drove into downtown, and she asked where they were going.

  “I thought we’d walk around downtown a bit before I take you to work. You haven’t seen it yet, right?”

  “I’d love that. I’ve seen pictures of your aquarium, of course. An iconic look that in some ways reminds me of the Sydney opera house. Yours is made up of angles repeated in lights, reflected in the water, where ours is arcs repeated in lights, reflected in the water.”

  “I’d never considered it, but I suppose you’re right.” He touched her arm. “But the aquarium is yours now, and the opera house has to be theirs. Focus on the present, not the past.”

  “You’re right, of course. It’s important I find connections here. Walking downtown will help with that.”

  He parked on Broad street, not far from the aquarium, and walked her back to it. They didn’t have hours for him to show her the intricacies in the plaza around the building, but he showed her the high points — the bridge with the lights made from the bottoms of original Coca Cola bottles, since Chattanooga is the home of the first Coca Cola bottling company. The spot where the concrete is broken and angled up, showing two tectonic plates forming a mountain. All the leaves pressed into the concrete, showing that this area has more species of trees than most any other place on the planet — a combination of being both mountains and valleys, and the fact the last two ice ages missed our valley. And the outside of the bathroom buildings, showing the sediment that makes up the local mountains and the valley floor.

  And it was here, in the shadows created by a light that needed replacing, that he pressed her to the wall and kissed her. Lips. Teeth. Tongue — and a hand on her throat. Kelsey simultaneously submitted to the kiss and kissed him back. His pulse thundered in his ears, his heart drummed in his chest, and his cock swelled in his pants. He held her to the wall by her throat, and she folded her arms behind her to keep from stopping him. He pressed himself between her legs, and her hips moved against him. Her scent was all arousal, need, and submission.

  He’d never willingly kissed a vampire before, but these cool lips belonged to Kelsey, not some random vampire. She kissed him back with lips, tongue, and passion. And when she brought one hand out from behind her back, it wasn’t to fight his control over her, but to caress the side of his neck. The spot she’d probably bite if he agreed to let her.

  His dick pulsed in his pants, and he wanted inside her so badly, in every way, he came back to himself a little, and ended the kiss.

  He’d never wanted anyone so intensely before. Always, he was the Dom, in control of himself as well as the submissive, but Kelsey threatened to take him over by stroking the side of his neck while she completely submitted to him.

  She stayed against the wall, utterly still, and he was grateful for it. He also appreciated that she didn’t immediately start asking questions.

  Instead, after about thirty seconds, she made a statement.

  “You didn’t plan to do that.”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to accuse her of being in his head, but he stopped himself from saying it. He’d know if she was. He wasn’t certain how he’d know, but he would.

  “You aren’t in my head.”

  “No. I made a promise not to go there unless someone’s life or safety was at risk — someone I cared about — and doing so could in some way protect them.”

  “How do I know when you rise?”

  “I don’t know. I should ask—” She didn’t want to say Etta or Marco’s name out loud, for fear it might draw their attention. “It feels private between us. Personal. I’m not ready to bring anyone else into it yet. I know they’ll have to be told, but I keep putting it off.”

  She’d shared something with him, and there was something he wanted to share with her.

  “Years ago, I came to terms with the fact I’d likely remain single, training women for others, but never finding someone I could share my life with. I’m a Dom who prefers what the BDSM community usually calls slaves, rather than submissives. However, my enjoyment comes in training them. Once they’re perfectly trained, I lose interest. Eventually, you run out of things to teach, to train, to mold. I assumed that meant I’d never have someone special in my life.”

  “I’ve spent years being trained as a sex slave. Consensual at first, but then, years where consent played no part in my day-to-day life. I agreed to it up front, but once I was turned, there was no longer an escape clause.”

  “I’m aware.” Fuck, he was aware.

  “You don’t do vampires.”

  “And I’m still not offering to feed you.” He put his hands in his pockets, took them out, brushed over his weapon on his hip, under his shirt, and rubbed at his jaw with the outside of the fingers of his right hand. “I like caning you, and I want to do more, but I don’t want you just because you’re submissive, and apparently a masochist. I like the person you are when we’re just friends, when sex isn’t on anyone’s mind.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Promise me there were no vampire powers in that kiss.”

  “There were no vampire powers I’m aware of in that kiss, but you have to remember I’m still what they call a baby vampire. Tell me why you think there may have been.”

  “I’m always in control. There’s always a plan, and sure, the plan can be adjusted based on the submissive’s responses, but I don’t lose myself in a kiss. I’ve never wanted someone so intensely before.”

  And what the fuck was he admitting this for?

  She smiled and finally stepped away from the wall. He wanted to step back, but he planted his feet. He wasn’t afraid of her. This was Kelsey, and he could damned well stand his ground.

  “I like you, too. We have so much in common, and it feels like you understand me on a level no one’s even tried to reach. Ever. I was just a sex toy to everyone who’s been inside me for the last seventeen years. No one has liked me for me since I agreed to be a human sex slave for the Master Vampire of Sydney.” She sighed. “Okay, one person did, but there was never anything sexual between us. He was flaming gay, and I say that with affection because I adored him. He taught me about fashion and makeup and hair, and how to walk and talk so I wasn’t a huge nerd. The Master saw a beautiful woman waiting to blossom out of the total nerdfest I was, and Georgio taught me. Molded me.”

  She brushed her hair away from her face and turned to look at the river. “But even Georgio didn’t understand the nerd parts of me. He held me when I cried, and he helped me learn to deal with the new life I’d agreed to, but he didn’t understand why Tolkien’s world speaks to me, or why forty-two is the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. I tripped over a root once, in the city, in a park, and joked that the tree was jealous of those who are mobile,
and he told me to stop being silly.”

  “You refer to him in the past tense?”

  “He lived in Sydney well over twenty years, and I guess he could get away with it because it was assumed he was having work done to look young, but eventually, he had to leave for a new identity. He’s laying low in this identity, somewhere in the Alps, I’m told. Taking it easy with numerous boy-toy peacock shifters, which just happens to be the animal his magic resonates with.”

  “Your packet says you haven’t found an animal that resonates.”

  “No. They’ve provided feeding time with all the major predators, but none struck me as different. I mean, I prefer mammals to birds and reptiles, but I can drink from any of them. Not every vampire has an animal that gives them an extra boost, but I guess they figure I’m going to be powerful if I ever figure my shit out, so they looked.”

  Eunice was afraid to ask, which meant he had to. “Did they try you with a mongoose?”

  She took a few seconds to answer, and spoke slowly when she did. “Not that I recall.”

  “Could that be why I know when you rise?”

  “Whatever is between us is more than vampire powers or vampire magic or whatever you want to call it. This is friendship between us. I’ve felt what happens when I use my powers to make someone like me, and this isn’t it.”

  He smelled nothing but truth, and it was strong. She believed what she was telling him, and was angry at the very idea their friendship might not be the genuine thing.

  “Okay. I believe you, but it doesn’t mean I won’t continue to question things that strike me as odd.”

  “Good. We should always question anomalous events.”

  He smiled. “Anomalous events. God, Kels, I think I might be falling for you. I might be a little worried I’m the nerd falling for the hot girl, except I remember how you kissed me back.”

  “The truth is that the nerd girl could easily fall head-over-heels for the nerd boy. The problem is that the vampire-woman and the bodyguard-man are no longer the nerd-girl and nerd-boy.”