The next night, Abbott followed Kendra to the marina but wasn't obvious about it. The two had talked, and Kendra had decided she'd go for a regular relationship with Eric instead of a traditional human companion arrangement. If he happened to be okay with her drinking his blood, it would just be the icing on the cake.

Abbott would wait until she used their mind connection to let him know she was ready for him before he boarded the yacht to help her explain the whole vampire thing. Strict rules kept humans from knowing about them, and the humans who knew of their existence were metaphysically bound so they were unable to tell the secret. Once she told a human what she was, she'd be required to bind him to her before she could leave his presence. However, a proper binding involved biting him, which she wasn't going to do without Eric's permission.

If Eric chose not to be bound, she'd have to erase his memory, so he wouldn't remember her telling him.

Bindings had to be witnessed, and while Kendra was one of the four people Abbott had empowered to certify a binding, she couldn't authenticate one she created, which was the main reason for Abbott's attendance.

She was having second thoughts about telling Eric, but knew it had to be done sooner or later, and had a feeling that with Eric, sooner would be much better than later. As she exited her car, she saw him climbing some wooden steps towards her, his energy so bright and strong he practically glowed.

"Hi Kendra, I believe you're even more beautiful than I remembered. It's good to see you."

She smiled at the warmth in his eyes. "It's good to see you too, Eric. Which of these boats are we climbing onto?"

He offered his arm, and her hand settled around sculpted muscles and warm human. His heart rate sped at her touch, and she was comforted with the knowledge she affected him as much as he did her.

They walked side-by-side past the area with slips for the boats, to a dock with huge shed-like structures on either side. Eric led her into one of the sheds and Kendra stopped in the doorway and stared at the huge yacht in the gigantic boathouse. The garage-type door to the bay was open on the other end of the boathouse, so they had a view around the side of the boat out into the water.

As they stepped up onto the gigantic yacht, she realized it was bigger than the pirate ship that'd tried to rob the ship she'd sailed on from England to India so many years ago. h.e.l.l, it was bigger than the ship she'd sailed on, for that matter.

When Eric took her inside she was even more amazed - it was a home, not just a boat. He walked her around and she saw three bedrooms, two and a half baths, an impressive office, a living room on one level and more of a party type room on another level, a kitchen area, and even a small dining room.

"Creating video games must pay very well."

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 houses 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 I wanted to work from home. They'd rather have me on their team than as the compet.i.tion, so they agreed without much negotiation. Some in the gaming world said 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 a.s.s, and I only did it because no one wanted to let me just create a game on my own, without letting a d.a.m.ned committee make all kinds of changes before it was even off the ground. I didn't want to go to meetings about it between conception and creation, and argue to try to keep it as my creation. This arrangement allows me to conceive it and then create it, with an awesome team to help with coding and animation, which was the goal all along."

They walked into a more casual room, obviously designed with parties and entertaining in mind, and Kendra made a point of looking around before saying, "I don't see a dungeon or a play room, is it downstairs by the boiler room?"

He grinned. "Look at the wall behind you and tell me what you see."

"It looks like an interior designer got creative with those huge anchor chains. It's an attractive way to decorate the spot of blank wall, and though I 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 worked, but the gunmetal black ties it in perfectly with the other hardware in the room."

"The wall's been reinforced, and the chain is anch.o.r.ed well enough so every link can be used as a bondage point. I can tie you to it to give the feel of a Saint Andrew's Cross, or a whipping post, or a number of other pieces of equipment. You noted the canopy over the bed in the master suite? The struts across the top have been reinforced enough to use for suspension. There's decorative hardware in the headboard, foot-board, and all up and down the sides of the bed that double as bondage tie-off points. The 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 it's a perfect spanking bench, complete with tie-off points to secure your ankles, knees, thighs, lower back, and hands."

Kendra's lower body went into overdrive. Never mind his reinforcements couldn't hold her, she was so aroused by the mere idea of being restrained in the ways he was talking about, she was in danger of self-combustion. Thank goodness Eric couldn't smell her arousal, though she was certain he was aware of it, even without vampire senses.

She rolled a half dozen responses in her head, and decided her best course was to change the conversation. "Let's open the wine and sit where we can talk. I'd hoped you could take me for a ride after we talked, 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 boathouse."

"It's no problem, but I have a smaller ski boat we can take out, and it's more fun for a joyride. If you want to talk first, we can certainly do that."

He brought the wine in a bucket of ice along with two stemmed gla.s.ses. He opened and poured as if he'd done it a thousand times, and nodded her towards a more formal living area.

Before starting, she probed into his mind enough to place a beginning marker. If she had to clear his memory later, she'd wipe it from this point forward. She also opened communication with Abbott, so he could hear her conversation with Eric.

"Eric, there's something you need to know about me, and when I first start talking you aren't going to take me seriously, or will possibly 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 supply."

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, and I wasn't nervous about going over the cliff to rappel for the same reason. I'm inhumanly strong and fast, which is how I put you on the ground so quickly when I kissed you. I have excellent night vision, and I can hear about a hundred times better than you. I can also hear frequency ranges outside of human hearing. Life is much easier as a vampire now that there are blood banks, so we can purchase bagged blood. I don't eat food. The only things I drink are water, unsweetened tea, alcoholic beverages, and blood."

Abbott had come in while she was talking, but Eric hadn't seen him yet.

"This is my friend, Abbott. I was a little nervous about telling you so soon, so he's here to help me explain. Normally, we like to wait until we know someone fairly well before we share our secret, but... you're different. You needed to know sooner, rather than later."

She couldn't tell what Eric was thinking, and didn't want to invade his privacy by reading his mind. However, she could tell he didn't believe her.

Eric glanced at Abbott and then looked back to Kendra, adjusting himself a little in the chair so he could more easily keep an eye on both. "You said you had proof? I think it's time to pull some of it out."

"What would make you believe me? Tell me and I'll do it."

"You can fly?"

There wasn't enough room to fly inside, so she levitated up from the chair and floated across the room and back, sinking gracefully back into her seat. She looked at him the entire time, but he waited until she was seated again before responding.

He didn't get fl.u.s.tered, just calmly said, "Well, that is a neat trick. I thought vampires had fangs?"

She opened her mouth so he could see her teeth, let her fangs grow and stay out a few seconds, and then shrink back to their normal size.

She saw him grow pale, and smelled his fear.

"Please don't be afraid. I won't hurt you, and neither will Abbott."

"I'm not afraid, and I'm not completely convinced yet, either."

"Eric, every human emotion has a smell. I can smell when you're afraid, when you're h.o.r.n.y, when you're angry, when you're happy."

She heard Abbott in her mind. That's not helping, Kendra. Let him get used to the idea of not being able to hide emotions later.

How do I help him not be afraid?

You know how to do this. Sit back in your chair, look relaxed. Drink some wine. I'm going to stay on the other side of the room and be as discrete as I can, for now.

Kendra sat back in her chair, uncrossed her legs and re-crossed them the other direction. Abbott was right, she knew how to make it easier for him. She pulled enough air in to speak, and told Eric, "We don't have to kill to feed. We take less in a feeding than the Red Cross takes in a blood donation, and our bite is much more fun - if I choose, I can make it o.r.g.a.s.mic. However, I've already fed tonight, as has Abbott. We aren't interested in your blood. Very few humans know of our existence, and I'm only telling you because I want to try to have a relationship with you, and, well, this is probably information you need to know, if we're going to date. I wanted to be honest with you up front."

"If you were to bite me, would I turn into a vampire?"

"No. You'd need to be bitten on many consecutive days, and then have your blood drained to the point just before death."

"Then bite me and make me o.r.g.a.s.m. Then I'll believe you're a vampire."

Kendra was shocked, this was the last thing she'd expected.

"I'll step outside for a moment," Abbott said from across the room.

Eric looked over at Abbott. "But you have super hearing, right? So you'll hear us from outside, too."

"Yes, but sometimes the illusion of privacy is better than nothing."

Kendra needed to talk to Eric about binding him. She'd figured he'd need some convincing for her to bite him in order to bind him, but with him asking for it, she needed to get permission now so she wouldn't need to bite him twice.

"Eric, we need to talk about something before I bite you. It's part of the reason Abbott is here. Vampire society has a lot of rules designed to keep our secret and thus keep us safe. The only way we're allowed to share the information with humans is if we perform a little ritual, so we'll be alerted the moment a human even thinks about telling our secret. I won't do it, though, without your permission."

"But, now that you've told me you kind of have to do it, right? So it doesn't matter if I give permission or not."

"No, we have two options. I can make you forget I told you, or I can bind you so you can't tell our secret."

He was trying hard to appear calm, but his scent gave away his anxiety, fear, and shock as he asked, "You can make me forget?"

Kendra nodded. "Yes. Before blood banks, when we fed on someone who wasn't a companion, we had to make them forget it happened. It's an evolutionary thing, I guess, but the point is that you don't have to go through the binding ritual if you don't want."

"You have to drink my blood to do the binding thing. What do you have to do to make me forget?"

"Just look into your eyes."

"And you're telling me because you want to have a relationship with me." His voice was incredulous, disbelieving... and yet he was being forced to believe, as there were no other logical explanations.

"Yes."

"Would this relationship involve the regular taking of my blood?" He was a rich businessman, after all, so he jumped straight to what she might want from him, how he might be taken advantage of.

"Only if you want me to," she tried to a.s.sure him. "As I told you, now that there are blood banks, I'm no longer dependent on finding human sources for blood. There's something called a human companion, someone a vampire keeps around as an intimate source of food, and that's probably how the vampire community will see you - at least at first. However, I'm interested in you, I want to get to know you, spend time with you, and if you don't want the sharing of blood to be part of our relationship, it doesn't have to be. It's a very intimate act, almost more so than s.e.x sometimes, but if you aren't comfortable with it then it wouldn't be pleasurable, so I wouldn't want to do it."

"After you've bitten me and bound me, if I wanted you to make me forget, could you still do it?"

"Yes."

He took a breath and blew it out. "Okay, then. Abbott, go ahead and do your little illusion of privacy thing. Kendra, how do we do this?"

"When I first bite you, I'll need you to say, 'I will tell no one of the existence of vampires or the supernatural world. I will keep your secrets.' Once you've said the necessary words, I'll inject the feel-good stuff. I'm sorry, but I can't make it pleasant from the very beginning this time. I can keep it from hurting more than a few microseconds, but I have to wait until the ritual completes before I can put the feel-good stuff in. Now, repeat back to me what you need to say."

"I will tell no one of the existence of vampires. I won't tell anyone your secret."

"No, the end is 'I will keep your secrets.' The wording is such so that you aren't just promising not to tell with your mouth, but not to give away the secret in any way. Not in writing, not by playing twenty questions until someone guesses, not by leaving hints."

She repeated it again, he said it correctly this time, and she nodded and gave him what she hoped was a rea.s.suring smile as she said, "Very good. Abbott will stay in the room until you've said the words, and then he'll leave. If you don't say it right, he'll correct you and you can say it again, repeating after him."

Kendra walked to the sofa and sat down. "Come sit with me, please?" She wasn't submitting to him just yet, but knew he didn't like to be told what to do.

As he got up and walked to her, she realized why he was doing this. "You're in this for the experience, aren't you? A life experience few get to have?"

He smiled. "Maybe a little. I'm still not completely convinced, but I'm willing to see where this leads."

She grinned back at him. "Adrenaline junkie."

Still smiling, he used the same affectionate tone of voice she'd just used to retort, "Bloodsucking vampire."

He was sitting beside her now, and she leaned forward to kiss him, but changed her mind. She wanted him to kiss her, so she sat back up and asked, "Kiss me?"

He didn't make her say please, and his eyes went dark as he angled his face and lowered his lips to hers, the kiss more demanding than sensual, though it didn't lack pa.s.sion. Dominating her, even for those few seconds, took away the smell of fear and seemed to lift his mood.

When he released her from the kiss, she zeroed in on his neck, smelled and felt and heard his pulse, knew exactly where the sweetest spot would be, and bit, suppressing a groan as her teeth sank into his skin and she got her first taste of him - all sunshine and forest, with a hint of evergreen, as if his pores had soaked in the forest and made him part of it.

He jerked at the impact, but she quickly numbed her entry, and then put the binding agent in as he said the words, "I will tell no one of the existence of vampires or the supernatural. I will keep your secrets."

Two heartbeats after the final word left his mouth, she injected the right combination to make it pleasurable, gave it a second to be carried away from the bite, then added the o.r.g.a.s.m c.o.c.ktail, waited a few heartbeats, and then, finally, she stopped sipping and drank him into her.

As he climaxed, she took on a little of his life force as she felt their auras swirl together. They didn't join, there wasn't enough of a connection, yet, but their energies still danced and twirled in a way that doesn't happen with a stranger.

When she finally pulled back, she ran her tongue across the bite marks to heal them, and then reached to hold him to her. However, instead, he pulled her head to his chest, holding her instead of the way it usually worked after a feeding. Yes, indeed, if they managed to make this work, it would be different than anything she'd ever had before.

Kendra heard Abbott returning and warned Eric, "Abbott's on his way back in."

"Why is he really here?"

"Two reasons, the first is because the binding had to be witnessed and will have to be tested, which he'll do in a little bit. The second is, well, consider Abbott kind of like a big brother figure in my life, and you're the new boyfriend he wants to meet."

Abbott was back by then, and added, "I also want to explain a little bit about our society. If you're going to be in and out of our coterie house, there are things you need to know. First, let's test the binding. Kendra will step outside for a moment for this part."

Eric stood. "Hang on, I need to, ummm, I'll be right back."

He'd come in his f.u.c.king pants, without anyone touching his c.o.c.k. Not even through the d.a.m.ned pants.

He cleaned himself in the bathroom, changed into different underwear and jeans, and looked at himself in the mirror. He could barely see where she'd bitten him, and it didn't hurt at all. s.h.i.t, he hadn't imagined it, though.

Two vampires were upstairs in his yacht, and he was pretty sure he wasn't crazy. f.u.c.k.

Kendra lived in a nice house on a golf course, she'd worn expensive clothes and shoes, and she drove a limited edition luxury vehicle. Unless this was an elaborate scam, she wasn't after his money.

He tried to put together what he'd known last night, before the whole vampire thing. She was attractive, seemed well off financially, had an adventurous streak, and had an icy exterior that challenged him to see if he could thaw her out. She'd responded to his dominance, but also seemed to have a dominant streak of her own.

And he'd thought she was decades more mature than most women her age.

d.a.m.n.

He climbed the steps and stopped in the doorway to look at them - Kendra in white flowing crop pants with a pink clingy t-shirt and a matching pink blouse over the top and unb.u.t.toned. Abbott in a high dollar, probably custom made suit. They looked perfectly normal, and yet... not. Too perfect, and both with the same icy exterior, though Kendra's seemed thicker, harsher.

As he stepped in the room, Kendra gave him a peck on the cheek before walking outside, and Eric turned to Abbott, who removed a small notepad and a pen from his inside jacket pocket.

Eric accepted the pad and pen, and read the page opened to him.

Please turn to the next page and write about what you've just learned. Start the sentence with, "The woman I am dating is a..."

Eric's hand and fingers worked against him as he wrote the V, but his entire arm went numb and hurt as he set the pen down to write the A. He persevered and managed to make the first line of the M, but it was a full minute before he could drag the pen down to make the second line. His arm, hand, and fingers simply would not do his bidding. As he tried to push the pen back up the paper, his entire arm jerked away, leaving a shaky scrawl across the page.

He looked up to Abbott. "I can't. There's this vibration inside me, and it hurts when I intend to write it, plus I can't control my arm - it won't do what I tell it."