“And how do you feel about Collosa and Fabio?”
“They don’t just see the sex-slave. They see the person, or rather, the baby vampire who’s trying to start her new life in a new country. They understand who I am a little because they understand who you are, otherwise I doubt Collosa would even know who Tolkien is.”
“And Fabio?”
“He’s read Joseph Campbell. We had an enlightening conversation about the Hero’s Journey. He gets it, even if he isn’t a big Tolkien fan.”
Eunice’s world went a little dark. Memories of a time he preferred to keep in the past. “Fabio understands the Hero’s Journey because he walked the path of it, complete with dying and coming back to life. I walked it with him, and I have my own journey, but I can’t speak of it, and neither can Fabio.”
“Classified, right? I dug into your records a little, before I came. There’s a whole lot behind walls I decided not to attempt to hack. I could probably get to them, but not from outside of the country. I’d need to be within fifteen miles of the Pentagon’s servers in rural Virginia before I attempted to hack them.”
“Why?”
“It’d be a program written ahead of time, a matter of releasing scripts based on...” She pushed her hair away from her face. “Getting in would mean hundredths of a second would count. I’d need a direct pipe, and a good disguise, because bouncing the signal would create too much lag. A coffee shop in a mall during a shopping frenzy, where I could ditch the disguise and blend in with the other shoppers. Possible, but not easy.” She shrugged. “I enjoy a challenge. If I wanted to know, I’d do it, but in this, I think I’m good with only knowing what you’re comfortable sharing.”
“There are other ways in. Aaron has access, somehow.”
“Right, because he has a backdoor in. He has someone on staff who helped write the code.”
Eunice wasn’t surprised she knew, despite the fact their someone no longer worked in the office, so she hadn’t seen him around. He was semi-retired and worked as a consultant to Drake these days, rather than employee, but he was still pulled in on a few projects a year.
“We should get to Drake Security. I’m supposed to take you downstairs to run the obstacle course with a weapon before you hit the automated range you’ve been practicing on.”
They started walking towards the car, and she said, “That sounds dangerous.”
“Yes, which is why it’s a gun that merely shoots a laser light. The dummies that pop up have laser receivers. The weapon will be in a belly band, since that seems to be the carry you’re most comfortable with. You’ll pull and shoot when someone pops up. You only shoot at the ones with weapons aimed at you. You’ll be timed, and you’ll be expected to run the course quickly while shooting at the bad guys who pop up.”
20
Kelsey had time to consider the kiss while she showered and changed back into her own clothes after the obstacle course. Surprisingly, shooting at the pop-ups had been easier when she’d been focused on not slowing down while she ran the obstacle course. Also, shooting the laser gun was easier than shooting a real gun. She’d need to consider that, but later. The first-person shooter video games didn’t seem to help when she shot real guns, but did when it was a laser gun. This meant the video-games could help with real gun scenarios as well, if she’d get out of her own way and let them.
Eunice had handed her a black unitard to put on, and then he’d helped her put the belly band on over it to hold the gun when she’d come out of the locker room. She’d been annoyed until she saw how filthy she was going to get doing the obstacle course. Time on her belly, wiggling like a snake under electrified wires, and she didn’t know what sadist had put a big mud hole on the other side of the stone fence she’d had to climb, but she’d love to punch the bastard in the balls.
She towel-dried her hair and put it into a high ponytail so it wouldn’t soak the back of her shirt. With that out of the way, she looked in the mirror at her face, scrubbed clean of makeup. The kit in her purse had eyeliner, eyeshadow, lipstick, and a contour pallet, but no foundation. It was designed for touch-ups, not for the whole shebang. However, ten minutes later, she figured she’d managed okay. She looked more vampire than human, but it couldn’t be helped. It looked like she needed to put some foundation and other essentials into her locker at work.
She had instructions to go to Nathan’s office before she headed downstairs to the geek tombs, but she wasn’t certain she could get there from the women’s locker room. With a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right, she headed in the direction she thought it was in, and two turns later, was in the wide hallway just down from what had been the school’s office near the front entry.
His door was open, and he motioned her inside when she stepped into his view. “Close the door, so you can work without distractions. You passed the range portion of the concealed carry requirements days ago, and you watched the video two nights ago, yes?”
“About not drinking, and about the legalities of carrying concealed in Tennessee? Yes.”
“There’s a class you’re supposed to take, but that video has everything in it we’re supposed to cover in the class. Do you have any questions about the video?”
“No, Sir.”
“Don’t Sir me in private unless I’m dressing you down.”
He proceeded to ask her questions about gun laws and then discuss her answers from a legal and tactical point of view.
After a dozen questions, he leaned back in his chair and asked, “What do you do if you’re forced to shoot someone when not working for Drake security?”
“I can’t imagine shooting a human. If they want to mug me or something, I merely need to take over their mind and send them off in another direction.”
“A shapeshifter with a strong mind you can’t take over. It’s you or him, so you shoot. What do you do next?”
She shook her head. “I’d bite him when he got close enough, and then take his mind over. I can’t see myself shooting anyone.”
And then he was over the desk, on top of her, and she was face down on the carpet, her wrists in his hand at the small of her back, his weight pressing her down. “If you don’t shoot them when they’re at a distance, you’ll never have an opportunity to bite them. Now, tell me what you do after you’ve shot them, when you know they are the enemy?”
“Kill them while they’re down if the bullet didn’t do so. Clear the memory of it from any humans who saw, get me and the shapeshifter’s body to safety, and call Drake with a secure connection.”
“Correct. And what do you answer on the test?”
“Call 911. Wait for police. Follow police instructions when they arrive.”
He let her up and held her gaze. “You will shoot a shapeshifter or another vampire who threatens you. You may only have a split second to defend yourself before you are at their mercy.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Damned straight.” He moved back behind his desk and continued asking questions.
Eventually, he handed her a sheet of paper and a pen. “It’s the official test. Take it and I’ll get the paperwork handled for your concealed carry license for the state as well as for Drake’s lawyers and insurance people.”
“So, once I pass this, I’ll have to carry a gun when I leave the house or when I’m at work?”
“Not until the actual license comes in the mail, but at that point, yes. You’ll be expected to carry when you aren’t home, and especially at work, and on your commute to and from.”
She knew the answer to every question, and it didn’t take long to fill out. When she’d turned it into him, he told her, “Eunice and Collosa tell me you had the understanding the weapons portion of your contract didn’t apply to you. Would you’ve still come to us if you’d known they did?”
“I’m not certain I would’ve. No.”
“Do you wish to back out of it?”
“No, Sir. I do not. You’ve been there for me, both as a company and as... people. My h
ousemates, my workmates, and even those who’ve driven me home in the morning, and the various men and women who’ve taken me to the range nearly every shift I’ve worked. You told me the company was run like family, but I didn’t get it. I’m happy to be here, despite the fact I’m so uncomfortable with guns.”
“Are you still as uncomfortable with them as you were?”
“No, but maybe a little in some ways. It’s so easy to hurt someone with them.”
He frowned. “Do you not trust yourself with a gun?”
“That would be silly, wouldn’t it? I’m a weapon, Sir. I can make humans forget they were just bitten by a vampire with barely a thought. I’m a predator now, and I didn’t quite understand that when I wanted to be a vampire, but now that I am, there’s no way around it. My kind was designed to feed from humans and shapeshifters.” She sighed. “It doesn’t feel legal. Holding a gun feels wrong, and carrying one is going to feel as if I have this huge secret that I’m doing something incredibly bad and illegal.”
“You’ll be legal, and you’ll get over it.”
She didn’t think she’d get over it, but she didn’t argue with him.
21
Kelsey was surprised when Eunice came to get her an hour before sunset.
“Have you been up all night?”
“Yeah, I took part of a shift in the control room, helping on an op.”
“You prefer to be in on the action though, don’t you?”
“I do, but right now my primary mission is to bring you up to speed. We need you on the team, and if left to their own devices, my housemates won’t properly dole out punishments when you screw up. I’ll be handling some jobs close to home, but nothing long term and nothing far away for the time being.” He looked at her and then back to the road. “I signed up for it. It isn’t a hardship. I’m looking at it as a bit of a vacation.”
“Anytime you have someone you’re training, you have to take time off, right?”
“I do. I have fourteen weeks of vacation time a year, paid at half my salary when I take it — just over three months. Fabio has the same, Collosa a few weeks less. I don’t think either of my housemates have taken all of their time in years.”
“High stress job, right? I imagine you need downtime. I’m starting out with three weeks after I’ve been with the company six months, and it grows by two weeks a year.”
“You likely could’ve negotiated for more.”
“Three weeks seemed generous, based on what the others were offering.” She took a breath and told him what needed to be said. He’d opened up to her earlier, so she owed him the same. “Since I’ve been here, I’ve enjoyed my time with James and Fabio, but I’ve missed...” Shit, she just needed to say it. “Fuck. I’ve missed having someone take complete control of me. Someone I have to submit to in every way. I don’t want it full time again, and I don’t want it from James or Fabio because that isn’t them, but I’m going to need it every once in a while. I was looking forward to never having to do it again, when I came here, but fuck me dead if I don’t fucking need it.”
She took a breath to say something else, and her chest froze in mid motion. The fuck me dead had come out completely Aussie.
Her already-cold blood turned to ice in her gut.
“Shit.”
“Did you do that so I’d have to punish you?”
“No. Or, I don’t think I did. I didn’t know I was going to say it until it was out. If I did, it wasn’t intentional.” Because she wasn’t a fan of the cane. She’d worked so hard to avoid it.
“Well, since I think it may have been something inside of you wanting it, it’s going to be worse than the cane.” He pulled in a breath. “And when the punishment is over, I’m going to fuck your throat and come down it. I’m not going to go beat off in my room after I’ve punished you again.”
“I understand, Sir.”
He shook his head. “I’m your friend now. I like you. Because of this, I won’t hesitate to punish you when you do something that could put you at risk.”
“And before you were doing it because you were told to?”
“Before, it was for Drake Security. We need you on the team, and I was in a position to help bring you in. Now, I’m still doing it for Drake, but I’m also doing it because I like you.”
“And because you enjoy training people.”
“I do. My training methods aren’t considered politically correct, though, so I rarely get to officially use them. In this case, my training methods are perfect for a baby vampire who needs the structure and reminder of where she is in the hierarchy.”
“I’m nearly always the smartest person in the room. I mean, at times I wasn’t in college, and there are some vampires with millennia of experience, so I wasn’t smarter in a life-experience kind of way, but...” She stopped, and started again from a different angle. “You have things to teach me. And I’m pretty sure Aaron Drake is smarter than me. Maybe he can’t hack like me, but overall, I wouldn’t want to test it. Nathan’s pretty damned smart, too. Half the nerd herd can keep up with me when I explain what I’m doing, and that’s not the norm. I fit here, and I’m grateful for whatever it is you need to do to make sure I keep fitting here.”
“Next question — did you feed on lust since I last saw you?”
She had, but he shouldn’t have been able to tell. “Yes. A group of us were tasked with looking for steganography, and the shots were quite explicit — fisting, watersports, and needles. Some were horrified, but others were turned on. I fed from the room, not a person. It’s fine. How did you know?”
“I have no idea.”
Eunice had to keep a strong hold on his arousal while he unfolded and set up the heavy-duty massage table they’d converted into a bondage table. As sure as he’d known she’d fed from lust the night before, he knew she’d wake in the next thirty or so minutes, and it was barely four o’clock.
Fabio was on a job at the convention center, and Collosa was working out in their home gym.
Eunice had brought rope that would hold a vampire, and the meat tenderizer — a stainless steel hammer with sharp pyramidal points on the hammer’s striking surface. It weighed nearly two pounds, and it was a beast.
He could never use it on humans, but he’d destroyed several clits belonging to shapeshifters, and then made them wait a day or two before he allowed them to change. He didn’t know how long it would take for Kelsey to heal, so he’d keep it to eight strikes today. Or maybe six.
But then he’d have Collosa fuck her fast and hard, further bruising the area, and it would be enough. If it’d been an out-of-the-blue transgression, he’d have stuck with the cane, but the circumstances around it demanded more. He had to make certain she wasn’t misbehaving just for the attention of being punished.
And with that thought, he pushed it back up to eight strikes of the hammer.
He looked up as the steel trapdoor grated on the bricks and opened, but he didn’t smile at her when she rolled off the granite platform and landed on her feet on the hardwood floor.
“Strip and climb onto the table. Face up.”
She took seven seconds to begin following orders. He’d have thought nothing of punishing one of his usual slaves for the hesitation, but he didn’t want to punish her.
Which meant he had to. He couldn’t risk giving her any leeway. A vampire above her in the hierarchy wouldn’t let her get away with it, and neither could he.
“Tell me why you’ll be punished for the seven seconds it took you to decide to follow orders.”
“Because my conformity to rules and submission to your place in the household must be absolute, Sir.”
“Did Georgio allow you to disrespect him?”
She was about to climb on the table, and she faltered before turning to him, shock on her face. “No, Sir. He was a powerful—” She cut herself off and went to her knees. “I apologize for doing so to you. I was happy to see you. I wanted to tell you I’d decided on a quest for Sunday, and how well I
thought it would fit this group. It took me a moment to change tracks, but it wasn’t acceptable.”
“Apology accepted. Bend over the back of the sofa and accept five strikes of the cane without the need to be restrained. One strike for each second beyond what I believe it should’ve taken you to readjust and follow a direct order.”
He didn’t take it easy on her with the cane, and he was impressed she managed to hold her position. Her tears made his dick hard inside his jeans, but he didn’t adjust himself.
When he finished, he ordered her to climb onto the table, and she didn’t hesitate to stand up and move.
While she walked to the makeshift bondage table, he told her, “You may as well feed from the lust in the air while you can. You’ll get no blood today.”
It was within his rights to withhold a feeding for up to three days without checking in with Etta. Longer than five days and she’d need to be housed in Marco’s dungeon — and those rules were put in place before she could feed on lust. He figured she could go a good bit longer with her alternate feeding source, but he’d stick to the rules as written.
Because the table was made to hold humans and not supernaturals, he had to restrain her to herself. He had her put her arms in reverse prayer and then wound the rope around her wrists fourteen times. She was sitting up on the table, and he had her bend her legs and then bend forward, so her body was between her knees. The end of the rope at her wrists went to her right ankle and was wound around it seven times, and then across to her left ankle and wound another seven times, and was finally taken back to her wrists and tied with an expert knot. He put his right arm under her knees and held between her shoulder blades with his left hand, and rotated her up and back, so she was lying flat on her back with her feet up near her shoulders.
Next, he looped a rope around her hips and the table a few times, and tied it off. She wouldn’t be able to get the leverage to break the table or escape her bonds in this position.
Present Tense: Pleasure Times Four (Out of the Fire Book 3) Page 16