Safeword: Storm Clouds(10)

He shrugged. “I started my own company a while back and managed to successfully market a few cutting edge games. One of the larger game companies bought my company for about ten times more than it was worth, and part of the deal was that I'd continue to work for them. I pretty much got to set my pay, so I told them I wanted a salary plus a cut of the profits on any game that was my brainchild, and that I wanted to work from home and not have to come into the office to do what I could do at home. They'd rather have me on their team than as the competition, so they agreed to it without a whole lot of negotiation. Some in the gaming world said that I sold out, but in reality it just freed me up to do what I really wanted to do anyway, create video games. Running my own company was a huge pain in the ass, I only did it because no one wanted to let me just create a game that they didn't want to make all kinds of changes to first. I didn't want to go to meetings about it between conception and creation and argue to try to keep it as my creation and not the product of a bunch of inane meetings. I wanted to conceive it and then create it. Now I get to do that."

They walked into a more casual room, one that looked like it was made for parties and entertaining, and Kendra made a point of looking around before saying, "I don't see a dungeon or a play room, is that downstairs by the boiler room?"

He grinned. “Look at that wall and tell me what you see."

"It looks like some interior designer got creative with those huge chains that I guess they use for anchors. It's an attractive way to decorate that spot of blank wall. Though I personally might not have taken it all the way to the floor, it works, whoever did it had an eye for what would look good in here. Rough chains wouldn't have looked good, but that gunmetal black look ties it in perfectly with the other hardware in the room."

"That wall has been reinforced, and the chain is well secured to the wall. Every link in those chains can be considered a bondage point. I can tie you to it to give the feel of a St Andrews Cross, or a whipping post, or a number of other pieces of equipment. You noted that the bed in the master suite was a canopy bed? The canopy and the struts going across the top have been reinforced. Not just reinforced enough to use as tie-off points, but reinforced enough to use for suspension. There is decorative hardware in the headboard and foot-board and all up and down the sides of the bed that double as bondage tie off points. That bench at the foot of the bed? The legs are adjustable so I can put your knees on it and bend your hips over the back of the foot-board and onto the bed and it's a perfect spanking bench, complete with tie-off points to secure your ankles, knees, backs of legs, lower back, and hands."

Kendra's body went into overdrive on her. She was so turned on by the idea of being restrained in the ways he was talking about that she was sure he could tell. Never mind that his reinforcements couldn't hold her, the idea of it still turned her on.

She decided not to comment on what he'd said. “Let's get some of that wine and sit where we can talk. I had thought that after we talked you could take me for a ride, but now that I've seen how big this thing is, I imagine it's quite a job to get it in and out of the garage."

"It's no problem at all, but I've got a smaller boat we can take out, too. If you want to talk first we can certainly do that."

He brought the wine in a bucket of ice along with two wine glasses. Once he'd opened the wine and poured their glasses and seated them in the more formal living room area she decided to just jump right into it. But first she probed into his mind just enough to put a little beginning marker into it. If she had to clear his memory later she'd clear it from this point forward. She also opened up communication with Abbot so he could hear what she was saying out loud to Eric.

"Eric, there is something about me you need to know. When I first start talking you aren't going to take me seriously, or you are going to think I'm crazy. Don't interrupt, just let me talk for about three minutes and then I'll give you whatever proof you want me to give you."

She took a deep breath. Not that she needed to breathe, other than what was needed for the mechanics of talking, but she wanted to get as much of this out as she could before he interrupted.

"I'm not human. Not anymore. When I was twenty-three years old I was turned into a vampire. I'm very old, even though I don't look it. Hang gliding with you at night wouldn't have been dangerous because I can fly. I wasn't nervous about going over the cliff to rappel for the same reason. I'm very strong and very fast, that's how I put you on the ground so fast you didn't really know how you got there. I have excellent night vision and I can hear about one hundred times better than you can. I can also hear frequency ranges you can't hear. Life is much easier as a vampire now that there are blood banks and we can drink bagged blood. I don't eat food. The only things I drink are water, unsweetened tea, alcoholic beverages, and blood."