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

by Candace Blevins

  And it was a healthy safe haven. In Sydney, her agoraphobia had been a living, breathing thing. Here, she preferred being home, but she could leave without being terrified. She drove herself back and forth to work now, in either the Jeep or truck, and she was fine. As soon as she could figure out which car to buy, she’d drive her own vehicle. She’d met Etta at the downtown TBC for drinks one night, and she’d gone to a nearby bar for drinks with coworkers both with and without her men.

  No, it wasn’t her agoraphobia, or the Christmas decorations, that made this home her safe haven. It was the three men who lived there. Wherever they were would be home, and that thought both comforted her and alarmed her.

  Drake Security was home, too. A work home, but still a safe haven. She’d have never expected His Majesty The Dragon King to offer blood, but he had. She’d been able to feel the power in it.

  And then, for him to have come to her and fed her again, her cold heart warmed at the mere thought of his words. She felt a little ashamed, now, that she’d come here in part because she wanted to become friends with Aaron and Nathan. Now that she knew them, she knew their friendship wasn’t for sale. It wasn’t cheap. She respected both men, and that was saying something.

  She’d been in town three weeks, and she felt as if she’d been here three months.

  Her heart warmed even more when the limo pulled into the driveway and up to the house, because the lights were on, and her men were sitting on the steps.

  Waiting for her.

  They walked to the limo, and Eunice opened her door while James went to the trunk to get her bag. Fabio had sent a suitcase for her, so she’d have her things.

  Eunice pulled her from the back of the limo and she went straight into his embrace, and then nearly started crying when Fabio wrapped his arms around both of them.

  Home.

  She heard James thanking the driver and looking into the passenger compartment to make sure she had everything, and then he herded them all into the house. Once inside, they all went to the den, and the men stood close, moved around her, touching her, examining her, making sure she was okay.

  “I’m fine. Really. Healing all of that damage was a bitch, but Marco and Etta helped, along with a few others.”

  “You smell of another grizzly,” James said.

  “And a lion?” Fabio said.

  “Yes, they gave me a wide variety of shifters to feed from.”

  “No,” Fabio said. “You had sex with the lion. Which is fine, but don’t try to pretend you didn’t.”

  She took two steps back and stared at him. “No. I drank lust from him while he—” She shook her head. “I didn’t have sex with anyone. I could’ve, but I hadn’t talked to any of you about where we are, or what the expectations are, so I didn’t.”

  “She smells of truth,” Eunice said.

  “And of a damned lion!” Fabio argued.

  James sat in his favorite chair. “And a grizzly, which should be fine. We aren’t monogamous, and yet, I was troubled when I smelled him on you.” He gave her an almost embarrassed smile. “I may even be jealous, which is silly. Whatever you had to do to heal is fine, tiny vampire.”

  Fabio crossed his arms and looked at James. “Motherfucker. You’re right. I’m fucking jealous. I’ve never been jealous in my life.” He stepped back to Kelsey and pulled her into a hug. “The big guy’s right. Whatever you had to do to heal is fine, but I suppose we’re going to need to have a conversation about our jealousy at some point.”

  “I’m not going to demand monogamy from any of you, and I can’t give it to you. If Marco tells me to have sex with someone, I won’t have a choice, so I can’t make any promises. He didn’t order me to this time, and in fact worked it so I got lust without needing to have sex, but he may not do the same thing next time.”

  “How about, unless it’s an emergency, or for the job, or we have no choice, we all agree to talk to the others about it before we have sex outside of our little group,” Collosa said. “Long term, we may end up with something different, but that feels right in the short term.”

  “I can work with that,” Fabio said.

  “Okay,” Kelsey said. “Mostly, I just don’t want anyone to lie to me. I’m not asking for monogamy.”

  She turned to Eunice, who’d moved away from them and was leaned against the wall, beside the door. He just looked at her, as if waiting for her to ask a question, but she didn’t have one to ask. He hadn’t agreed not to have sex with others, but she wasn’t asking him to. Finally, she asked, “You were the first to hug me. Why are you over there now?”

  “You’re mine. I didn’t see it before everything went to shit and you got hurt. I mean, you’re ours, sure, but you’re mine. I’ve never claimed anyone before. Being away from you hurt.”

  He touched his heart when he said the word hurt, and Kelsey was pretty sure he didn’t realize it. Eunice looked to the other two men and then back to her. “I think I’ve fallen in love with you, but I understand I can’t tell you to stay away from other mongooses. If we’re the animal you resonate with, you’ll want a bunch of us around.”

  She shook her head. She couldn’t deal with the thoughts of other mongooses, she had to deal with the love part.

  “You terrified me, that first night, when I jumped off the porch, but then I fell for you a little when I saw you in the Mordor Fun Run shirt the next evening, and you spoke to me in the language of the elves of Middle-earth. You and I have so much in common. We were friends before we—” She stopped talking, walked to Eunice, and pulled him away from the wall so she could hug him. His arms took a few seconds to go around her, but they finally did, and he kissed her temple.

  “This is home now,” she told him, “and it’s home because of the three of you. I have different relationships with each of you, but I’m coming to love all three of you, and that’s pretty scary.”

  “Eunice has had a hard couple of days,” Fabio said from behind her. “I think you probably have, too. We’d like to hear about your time with the vampires, but only two of us can snuggle with you at a time. I’m doing okay, so let’s head to your room, and I can stretch out on the sofa while the other two get in bed with you.”

  She pulled her head back and looked into Eunice’s eyes. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Now that you’re here.”

  She believed him, but she saw shadows in his eyes. “I respect you too much to go into your head and see what happened. Will you tell me?”

  “I signed papers saying I wouldn’t tell anyone. If you want to know, you’ll have to dip into my head — but only the past couple of days.”

  Was he giving her permission to look? It sounded more like a challenge than an offer. Carefully, she asked, “You want me to know?”

  “I absolutely do not, but I also don’t want you to think I’m keeping secrets from you.”

  “It’s work shit, right? You’re allowed those secrets, so long as they don’t involve me.”

  He sighed. “It was the last of our mission. Tying up loose ends.”

  No. It was more than that. He’d told her he didn’t want her to know, and she needed to respect that, but she had one more question before she could turn away from it. “Will I be in danger if I don’t know about it?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, I don’t need to know, but I appreciate the offer more than I know how to say.”

  Collosa was also worried about Eunice. He seemed to have arrived with a little less of his soul. Collosa had an idea of what Aaron had asked Eunice to do, and Collosa intended to let Aaron know it might be time to retire the mongoose shifter from that sort of thing unless there was no one else available.

  Eunice had once interrogated someone in front of Collosa. Or rather, had started the process before sending everyone out of the soundproof room. A true sadist would’ve enjoyed what Collosa had only seen the beginnings of, but Eunice only got off on hurting people who wanted to be hurt. He was a consensual sadist, not a true sadist, and m
aybe those terms were fucked up, but it made sense in Collosa’s head, so he was sticking with them.

  Fabio got it, too. That was likely why he’d wanted to make sure Eunice stayed in Kelsey’s arms over the next couple of hours, until she went down for the day. Also, Fabio had more of an idea what their friend was capable of, since he’d seen him in action while they were in the military.

  “Okay, downstairs and into something more comfortable, tiny vampire,” Collosa told her. “We’re all in sweats, so maybe we can hear you out without this turning into sex, because it really feels like we all just need to cuddle tonight.” He looked over at Fabio. “And that means all of us, but I appreciate you offering to take the sofa first.”

  He’d swap with Fabio when it wasn’t awkward, but he was going to make sure Eunice stayed in the bed with Kelsey until it was time for her to go into her compartment.

  Aaron had met with her once she was healed enough to comfortably handle a debrief, and they’d all read his report, but they wanted to hear it from her. Plus, they needed to know about her time with the vampires.

  Collosa understood one of the reasons Fabio wanted Collosa in the bed, holding her, was because the grizzly would best be able to keep them on track. The men needed to hear what happened from Kelsey, and then they all needed to know what could be done to help her heal with the vampires that they hadn’t been able to provide.

  He doubted they’d get through everything in three hours, but that depended upon how much she could tell them about her time with the vampires.

  There were no new revelations about the op. She’d worked fast and ignored the action around her while keeping feelers in the brains of a few bad guys. Not all of them, but a few. They hadn’t realized she could hack a computer and monitor brains around her at the same time. Abbott or Kendra could’ve monitored all of the bad guys, probably Gavin and Josef as well, but he wasn’t sure any other vampire he’d met could’ve monitored even some of the bad guys from inside their head while doing complex puzzles. In his mind, this made Kelsey nearly as good as Josef, and that shouldn’t be possible. Collosa knew she didn’t have even a tenth of Josef’s strength. How could she be even close to mentally on par with him? She said going into brains was a little like hacking a computer, could that have given her such a big leg up?

  He decided to ask, and he sensed her anxiety rising as he posed the question, but he asked it anyway.

  “I’m not sure I know the answer,” she told him. “I’m stronger than some of the younger vampires now. They had me kiss one of them, as a test.” She snuggled into him more, as if needing the assurance it was okay. He kept stroking her. Holding her. “If we’d had sex, I’d have had to be the Dominant one. He’s nearly two hundred years old. It still doesn’t put me into even the same ballpark as Etta or Marco, or even Venom, but it’s apparently a huge deal that I’m stronger than pretty much anyone under two hundred, and a few who are still in the two hundreds.”

  “I can see that, but I don’t think any but the five or six strongest in Abbott’s old hierarchy could’ve monitored a handful of brains while doing the puzzle equivalent of hacking and then obtaining information from a highly secured computer.”

  “Oh. Well, I’ve always been able to multitask. Even as a human. The gifts you have as a human are amplified when you become vampire.” She turned on the bed and spooned into Eunice, so she was facing Collosa. One hand went over the top of Eunice’s, on her belly, and the other stretched out to Collosa, to hold his hand. “I’ve known for five years that I can do mental things most vampires can’t do until they’re somewhere between five hundred and a thousand years old. Aaron knows to keep it under wraps, and I need to make sure ya’ll do, too. Other supernaturals see my overall power and assume I’m not a threat.”

  “Who’s Venom?” Eunice asked, his mouth in her hair, close to her ear.

  Collosa started to say they weren’t there yet, but it seemed they probably were. They’d finished moving through the operation, so it was time to move to what happened once she was with the vampires.

  “At first, I thought he was gay. Turns out, he’s pansexual when it comes to sex, but prefers men for relationships. At least, that’s the case this century. He let me feed from his lion while he fucked him, which is why I smell of lusty lion, I suppose. I know he’s been assigned to me as another teacher, along with Etta, and yet, he feels like a friend.”

  “Why is he named Venom?”

  “He comes from a line of—” Her voice shut off, and she gave an irritated growl in the back of her throat. “His secrets. Not mine.”

  “What did he teach you?” Collosa asked.

  “Control. Managing power. I went up another level in power during the event, possibly a couple of levels. I’ve never healed anything so critical before, and that’s part of it, but finding the animal I resonate with likely had a big part in it. Also, drinking from The Dragon King might have. They assumed I’d lose some of the new power, once I worked through his blood, but I didn’t.”

  “So will they want you to drink from him again, to see if that’s part of it?” Fabio asked from the sofa. He was stretched out, comfortable, with one arm behind his head.

  “I believe Marco is negotiating with him for just that. Marco is pointing out that the more powerful I am, the more useful I am. More valuable. Based on a conversation I had with Etta, I’m not certain His Majesty is looking to carry me into battle terribly often, which is a huge relief. I’d really rather stay in the office in the future.” She took a breath. “The truth is, though, I’d go again if it kept Chance from having to go. He’d have died, but I survived.”

  “If you hadn’t known it was about to blow, you’d have likely died,” Collosa told her. “There’s a good chance the explosion would’ve decimated your head, and you aren’t old enough to grow that back, even if the brainstem hadn’t been blown to shit, which it likely would’ve been.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to be able to give you many specifics about what happened in the coterie house. I drank from a variety of shapeshifters, and I learned a great deal about my body, and what it takes to heal it. Growing back pieces of your spinal cord takes some brainpower, not just regular vampire power. They had to strip some of the burned skin off me and then rub—” The magic cut her off again, and she winced. “Suffice it to say, it was painful. Venom helped me with the pain, as you’d expect a seasoned Dom to be able to.” She moved her head and body so she could snuggle into Eunice more. “I was glad to have him there, but I wished Eunice was the one talking me through it.” Her gaze met Collosa’s. “Or you. I’m not sure Fabio would’ve let them skin me. I think he might have taken some of them out, despite the fact it had to be done.”

  “I may have,” Fabio agreed. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

  She shrugged. “It’s done. I was put through a number of tests, once I was well on my way to being whole again.” A sigh. “I have no idea whether I’ll be able to tell you some of this, but I’m going to try. While I was still paralyzed, I was drinking from someone and they pulled away. I levitated, to stay with them, to keep drinking. I was kind of out of it at the time, and I don’t remember doing it. Try as I might, I haven’t been able to levitate with intention. However, it means I’ll eventually be able to. Not all vampires can. If I haven’t managed it by February or March, Etta tells me she intends to throw me off the top of a house. See whether I figure it out or splat. I’m really hoping to figure it out before then.”

  Mostly, what she told them after was snippets of conversation, of thoughts and feelings while she’d fed from various shapeshifters. Collosa hadn’t quite understood that a vampire gets more than the energy and life force from whoever they feed from. She got the power and raw strength from the lion, the passive heat and speed from the deer, the strength and sense of family from the wolf.

  “What do you get from us?” Eunice asked from behind her.

  “Power and raw strength, and a touch of laziness from Collosa.” She
met his gaze. “No, laziness isn’t the right word. Laissez-faire, maybe, but that’s isn’t it. Zen maybe. The ability to be completely still and yet completely alert. I don’t know the word for that.”

  Collosa couldn’t help his smile. “It’s called being a bear. We prefer to lumber, but we can run when something is worth catching.”

  She nodded and closed her eyes. “Fabio gives me speed and heat and sometimes I can feel the hair on the back of my neck bristling when I’m irritated, when I have lots of his blood in me. Also, a bit of arrogance, but again, not in a bad way. Confidence. I had to learn confidence once I went into service as a sex slave. It took a while. It’s always felt like I was pretending confidence. Fabio makes it more real. The lion didn’t. I’m not sure why.”

  “I’m glad I can help you with that,” Fabio said from the sofa.

  She turned again, so now she was spooned against Collosa, facing Eunice. “I don’t know how to explain what I get from you. It’s like I suddenly understand how the Universe works, how we’re really all the same. Lots of spiritual mumbo jumbo I’ve heard other people say, but haven’t understood. There’s also bits and pieces of tunnels, motion, grace, fluidity, intensity, perseverance, and persistence. Tenaciousness. Mongooses kill snakes, right? They’ve been known to stand up to lions. Fearlessness. It’s odd, because none of those things describe me. You’d think that I’d resonate with a being like me, but instead, my powers picked the one who could most give me what I need to be a successful vampire, I think.”

  Eunice stroked her cheek. “I feel like I should be upset, and yet, I’m happy. A month ago, I’d have been pissed that a vampire got anything from me. I’d have felt as if he or she was stealing it.” He trailed his hand down her arm until they held hands. “I’m more than happy to give it to you.”

  “She’s only drank from you under duress,” Fabio told him. “Just wait until it’s done for pleasure.”