"Okay then. You haven't given blood recently to the Red Cross or anything, have you?"
"Not in a few months."
"When you give blood, how tired are you afterwards? How long until you feel back up to speed again?"
"I'm okay as soon as I leave, it's never made me feel dizzy or weak or anything."
Kendra smiled. "Good, because I'm hungry. I won't take as much as the Red Cross though. They usually take around sixteen ounces, I'll only take around twelve. I usually take six or eight at a time, but... since you can handle it, I've had a rough day and twelve would make me feel much better."
He grinned back at her. "If you've had a rough day and it will help, take sixteen if you want. I was thinking you'd take more than they take, not less."
"Okay, sit back down, lean back against the back of your chair and relax. I'm going to come around back of you for this."
She thought that would be better, Abbot wasn't wanting him to get the intimacy of this, and when you took from behind it was easier to ignore the intimacy of it. Stepping around behind him, she pulled his head to the right at an angle to show the length of the left side of his neck. He was incredibly tense so she massaged the muscles just a bit and told him to relax. As he relaxed she moved her left hand down across his chest to hold him in place and immediately let her teeth sink into his neck, injecting the numbing agent first and then the right combination to give him bliss without sexual ecstasy. She gave his bloodstream a second to carry away what she'd injected and then she drank. And drank. She monitored how much she was drinking and stopped at around twelve or fourteen ounces, paying special attention to use her tongue to put saliva on the two marks before she pulled her mouth away, so they would heal. She relaxed her hold on his head but otherwise stayed where she was until he raised his head back up on his own, and then she slowly moved her hand off of his chest and backed up.
She walked behind the bar area in Abbot's great room and opened the mini frig, taking out the orange juice to pour him a glass. She walked to him and set it on a coaster on the table beside him and then went to another chair across from him to sit while he worked on figuring out how he felt and how to begin talking again. Most people didn't recover as quickly as Eric had the other night, but Eric had filled his life with new experiences and he was used to having that adrenaline overdose kick in.
After a few moments Tom's eyes started to focus and he said, "Wow."
Carla laughed and said, "Yes, Wow is a good word for it. Drink your juice, Tom."
"No, not yet. I want to just sit here with this feeling another couple of minutes."
* * * *
When Carla and Tom left, Abbot thanked Kendra for giving him the right kind of experience. "No problem, he was lovely. Just what I needed, you really are the best."
"We've got some time before dawn, let's have some wine and talk."
"Sure."
Once they were seated on the sofa, Kendra leaning up against Abbot with her eyes closed, Abbot wrapped an arm around her and finally spoke about Eric. "Do you want me to fire him, find someone else to do the job?"
"No, he said he'd follow through with it because he wasn't sure about things, and if he wanted to pursue something with me he wanted the proper protections in place. Plus, I think he's just an honorable kind of guy, he said he'd do it, so he will."
"No Kendra, that wasn't my question. If I keep the contract with him he's going to be in and out of your house working on the security system and teaching classes. Do you want to have to keep seeing him? If you were to see him right now the other vampires would smell your pain and hurt and sadness towards him and know something was up with the two of you."
"It shouldn't be too hard to avoid him. And, if it gets that bad I'll take a vacation somewhere. Or if you need to send an emissary for something I can go for you. Speaking of which, you are correct that I'm going to want to stay busy for a while. You mentioned a while back that you wanted to look into putting a small bar somewhere close to the University. If you still think that's a good idea I can start looking for a place, something within walking distance to the new dorms they are building would be good, I think. We could serve cheap food aimed at college kids for lunch and dinner and then revert to more of a bar atmosphere that evening. When I lived in, oh, I forget where, but somewhere I've lived there was a bar near a college campus called The Library, and kids thought it was cool to tell their parents they went to The Library yesterday, because it made their parents think they were busy studying instead of partying."
"Sure, see what you can find and get the contractor and decorator involved if you find something you like. Take it from concept to opening night all on your own and you'll get twenty-five percent of the net profit as long as it remains in business, same as always. Keep me updated on things, I'll want a walk through and a plan from the decorator and cost estimate from the contractor before we sign papers to buy or lease, but the rest will be all yours."