Elusive Hero

  "Do you want me to help you approach this in a different way?"

  She paused to consider that from all angles, but at last nodded. His eyes warmed upon her.

  "Let's just walk around together, let you check all this out." He tugged her hair, won a half smile from her. "You're still here as my sub, I'm still your Master, but you're just watching, not participating. Nobody touches you but me. Got it?"

  The biting coil of tension eased. His expression filled with amusement, not unkind. "You high-powered subs are all the same. You think if you can't leap tall buildings that you've somehow let your Master down. The truth is, when you let me know what you can't handle, you've given me exactly what I want. Your trust. Come on."

  He pulled her in to kiss the top of her head. He kept holding her, rubbing his hands up and down her back, over her hips, back up to her shoulders and throat, tipping up her chin to press a lingering kiss on her lips. Warmth spread through her like the memory of sunshine, and when her lashes fluttered up at last, she saw him looking at her with a peculiar intensity.

  "What was that for?" she said, low.

  He touched her chin. "I don't like you being unhappy, my lady. Making you feel better makes me feel better."

  "More manly?"

  "Completely," he said, the crinkling around his eyes pulling at his face scar. "My testosterone just spiked, big time. Follow me."

  She had a request first. He'd said to trust him, after all. "Would you...put the tether back on? I like the feeling that you're leading me."

  He complied. Once the thin chain was back in place, the slack wrapped around his hand, he leaned in, kissed her cheekbone, spoke against it. "It's not a feeling, Kaela. I am leading you."

  SS

  She had the opportunity to see the water tank he'd described, as well as a variety of other wonderful titillating things. She watched some more extensive violet wand displays with fascination, as well as the elaborate work suspension artists did, shaping their submissive's bodies with colorful ropes.

  It helped that she saw other pairings of Doms and subs doing what they were doing, taking in the sights rather than actively playing, letting the visuals feed their own desires for private play later.

  Everyone is different, Kaela. There are Doms and subs who never take it past their own bedroom and are very happy with one another that way. Others that live in full 24/7 scenarios, complete with elaborate authority structures within their homes. "Which is probably somewhat like the typical vampire-servant scenario."

  He said that aloud, and she nodded again, her gaze fastened on a pair of men who had buried another man up to his neck in the garden and formed a frame of petals around him as if he were a plant. They were presently masturbating over his head, splashing their come on his face as if watering the "plant". It was whimsical, somewhat bizarre and ridiculous. Yet it managed to be arousing because of how involved they all were in it. She suspected the "flower' had some type of vibrator inserted in his ass or strapped to the head of his cock, because as they began to come, it was obvious from the contortions of his face that the same thing was happening to him. She wondered how reaching orgasm while fully immobilized, unable to move in any way, felt.

  I'll see if I can't figure out something that can hold my vampire completely still to test that. She responded quite passionately to being bound by rope yesterday. Garron shot her a wicked look. "People liked the dungeon rooms of Club Sin so much, Vardalos had an underground area created out here as well. Would you like to see it?"

  At her agreement, he took her into one of the gardens, to a stone structure that looked like a monolith at Stonehenge. Beneath the arch was a pair of ornate trapdoors, which were pulled back with golden ropes by two hooded, muscular males wearing the same kind of leather pants as the submissive at the entrance to the outdoor BDSM area. As the doors opened, she saw a winding stairwell descending into the ground. A whiff of exotic spices hit her nose. Garron folded her hand into his elbow and started downward, the doors closing over them once his head cleared the frame.

  "Have they ever lowered it too soon and hit you?"

  He squeezed her fingers. "Once. Clay did it on purpose. It was during one of our few maintenance days, when this area was closed to guests. I was going down for an equipment check. He wanted to be a smartass."

  She chuckled at the image in his head of the young man who'd been on the left side, only in Garron's mind she saw him without the mask, all spiked blond hair and merry grey-blue eyes. He'd done his best to evade Garron's pursuit but had eventually been caught. Kaela got a vision of a head lock followed by a quite uneven wrestling match between Clay and Garron. All of it was tempered by her Master's deep affection for the slim young man.

  "You're all family here."

  "Some of us. It's like any working environment. You bond with some people faster than others. They're a part of my life now, and I'll carry good memories of them when the time comes for me to leave. I'll hope to have the chance to come back and visit them now and again."

  You bond with some people faster than others... When he'd told her about being in the wreckage of the explosion, picking up the baby's arm, she remembered feeling a wave of relief, and one, all-encompassing point. He understands. He knows. He'd faced how horrible, fragile and wondrous the world could be. He knew how the threads of all those reactions often twisted together into a rope that could almost strangle the soul when overwhelmed by it all. He knew about that. She'd seen it in his mind, his eyes, his voice.

  He knew everything she'd felt in the past hundred and seventy-five years, at an unconscious level that would never need to be explained. They'd simply feel it together.

  He squeezed her fingers again, a meaningful gesture that she chose not to answer. She needed to stop following those thoughts in her mind to places she couldn't go. So instead she focused on the sounds drifting up the stairwell. Like Club Sin, she heard echoing moans and sharp cracks, the scent of blood, sweat, tears, heat, pain and pleasure.

  Once they reached the bottom of the curving stairwell, she saw open areas marked off by dark stone pillars, the equipment positioned there indicating it was public play space. Garron directed her to a tunnel with an engraved sign over the mouth that read: "Viewing Chambers". The letters were done in a Goth-looking font with a tangle of purple and orange fairy lights around them, as well as coiled whips, an oversized Wartenburg wheel, manacles and chains. Once stepping into that tunnel, another branched off with a similar sign, only this one said "Private Rooms" and there were two staff members in front of a heavy purple and black velvet curtain screening the opening.

  Garron continued along the Viewing Chamber corridor. She could see a scattering of people ahead of them, grouped in front of different spaces that looked like glass windows or cell doors, depending on the spot.

  "The viewing chambers give you the chance to view sessions where the Dom is okay with it being somewhat public, but wants clear boundaries. You can choose a chamber with bars like a cell, or soundproof glass. Or normal glass, where you get some muffled noise from the rest of the club."

  At the first window, she saw fire play in process. A naked man was lying on a massage table much like the one Garron had. Two women dressed in a scant amount of leather straps and chain ran lit torches over his skin in swift, smooth movements that appeared to heat the skin but didn't burn, if his ecstatic expression was any indication. The Dom, a tall, masked male in leather pants, thigh high boots and an open black shirt that revealed a smoothly muscled and tattooed chest stood to the side, watching. A clipped tag at his belt indicated he was a staff Master.

  "That's Louis. He's a master at fire play. What he's doing there is pretty basic, so the session's probably just started or that's the guest's comfort level. I've seen him make a woman come just from doing fire play with her nipples."

  Garron guided her onward. "Club Sin originally was just the one main area with a few private rooms, but Roan, the guy who helped with the design, learned fast that Eden needed far mor
e options, and it just keeps expanding. This underground area was his latest design, with the help of other Sin staff and Vardalos's architects. I think they stole a few ideas from Disney and Universal for special effects and props."

  "I've no doubt."

  They passed a cell where the Mistress had a young woman chained fast against the bars. The girl was dressed like a nature fairy, with a crown of flowers and a gauzy dress that had been ripped to tatters, exposing her small breasts. They were pushed between the cell bars, held there by a rope harness that constricted them, made them look swollen. The Mistress was using a knotted rope to flog her ass and thighs. While she was doing that, a Master stood outside the cell, offering the watchers the chance to pinch or suckle a nipple, or slap the constricted breasts bare handed. As they passed by, the girl came, screaming out her climax. Without a change in expression, the Master stepped forward and shoved a ball gag in her mouth mid-orgasm, buckling it around her head as tears flowed. She continued to come as if his indifferent treatment increased the force of her reaction.

  Kaela realized she was clutching Garron's hand at her waist. Everything said the girl was helpless to their sadism, yet she watched the way the Mistress stepped forward during the orgasm, put her body against the petite girl's back, ran her hand down her abdomen, closed a gloved hand over her pussy to gently massage as she bent, kissed her throat. Cherished, tormented, possessed.

  You're going to cut off circulation to my hand, baby.

  God, it made her knees weak when he called her that. When he touched her back, she drifted forward, past a couple more windows, an enema coupled with cock and ball torture, basic spanking, a flogging. She stopped in front of the next cell, finding the sight strangely hard to resist.

  The Dom was dressed the way most people imagined vampire garb. White poet's shirt, tight black pants and Hessian boots. Bared fangs, long dark hair. He was sucking on his submissive's throat as she lay slack across his lap in a pale white nightgown showing the mauve color of her nipples. Her legs were spread and slack as he worked his hand beneath the wisp of skirt and exposed her, putting black gloved fingers inside her. Rose petals were scattered over her and on the floor. In addition to being an absorbing role play scene, it was involved performance art, the vampire and his victim probably into some type of theater as well as enjoying D/s together.

  As she watched, she became aware of more people gathering at the scene. Garron moved them out of the group, putting some distance between her and them until they reached a window through which she saw a Mistress spanking her male sub with a wooden spoon while he clasped her ankles, his head to her boots.

  "Does it seem laughable?" he asked, gesturing back toward the cell with the vampire.

  She shook her head. "He looked dangerous, like he really would take her blood. Usually it's when they make vampires look tame, like they don't really want to hurt anyone, that they seem ridiculous to me. Because the reality is so different from that."

  "I've noticed," he said gravely. His lip quirked. "I've seen flashes of it in your mind, usually when I mention my past submissives. You suppress the desire to do actual violence, but the impulse seems pretty real."

  "It is. When humans say something like 'I'm going to kill my husband because he didn't take out the garbage', it's something they say, no thought or meaning to it. When a vampire thinks it...we want to do it. We crave doing it, can practically taste the blood as soon as we have the thought. It requires a great deal of effort to learn how to control the impulses, and you're never completely past it. No matter how old or experienced we get, bloodlust can be triggered. When it happens, suppressing makes it worse. We learn how to channel it."

  "Hence the intense sex games with servants? Which I assume would make everything down here look tame."

  A shadow crossed her face. "Yes. If you truly understood that, you wouldn't be pushing to be a part of that world."

  It was the first time she'd acknowledged directly his push in that direction, but the set of her mouth said her bringing up the topic wasn't progress.

  "The sex games and the politics are partial ways to deal with the bloodlust. The rest of it is just what we are. We can't afford to be killing humans without provocation or cause, or killing one another for the same reasons. There aren't enough of us to take those risks. We--"

  Abruptly, Kaela broke off. Garron felt everything in her freeze and lock. Her head snapped up, gaze darting up and back down the corridor as she sharply pivoted, pulling against the tether as if it weren't there. He heard it in her head, the snarl, the shot of panic and rage together.

  No. It's not possible.

  "Kaela, what is it?" He couldn't make sense of it in her mind. When he touched her arm, she wheeled on him, her eyes shooting sparks. Showing him up close and personal that violence they'd just been discussing.

  "He lied to me. Vardalos lied. There is another vampire here. Down here."

  What the fuck? Garron caught from her mind that the threat was coming from the entrance to the tunnels, and it was too late to slip away unnoticed. If she'd detected the other vampire, the other vampire had detected her.

  Amid the storm rising in her, he saw her spurt of relief as she recognized from his own reaction that he'd not been part of any deception against her. He wasn't as quick as she was to accuse Vardalos of malicious intent, but he admitted he was wondering what the hell his boss had been thinking. Not that Garron had intended to hit social media about his vacation with a vampire, but Theodosius had made it clear it was top secret, her life at risk if it leaked out.

  One thing he knew how to do was prioritize in a crisis. At the moment, Vardalos's part in this, right or wrong, didn't top the list. His and Kaela's appearance--him an obvious Dom, her a collared vampire being led by a leash--was a much bigger issue.

  Instinct had made him shy one step farther away from the bomb that had killed his team, an unconscious act that had taken him a long time to get over, a big part of him feeling like he should have died with them. Yet he'd seen enough of what her world was in her mind that he didn't question his instincts now. He had the choker and chain removed from her neck in a blink. Since there was no way that thing was going around his thick neck, he wrapped the choker around his wrist. Stripping off his shirt, he dumped it and the tether into a used toy bin. One of the girls was going by with a tray of toys, and he snagged the item he wanted off of it, sending her on with a curt snap of his hand.

  With no hesitation, he strapped the spiked, two-inch wide leather band around his throat and shifted behind Kaela, despite every instinct that made him want to step in front of her.

  Her eyes were darting about, her mind in turmoil, his presence forgotten as she tried to figure out how to make this work. He wasn't sure she'd even realized what he was doing. One of his other talents was getting a sub to slide into a different headspace, so using that skill now, he put firm hands on her hips.

  "You're the California overlord, appointed by the Vampire Council. You're in charge and you'll kick the ass of anyone who thinks otherwise."

  He said it as well as thought it, and the message penetrated. She started beneath his touch, turned. When she saw the collar, he felt her kneejerk reaction, a howl of protest, but he gave her a fierce look.

  Do you think trappings make me less of a Master, my lady? Or your absence of a collar less my sub?

  Her jaw set, and he gave her a brusque nod. "Your Master is giving you an order. Pull your ass together and show me that backbone of yours. I may give you orders, but no one else in this world does unless they want their throat ripped out." That was what I saw written all over your face, the very first moment you put your hand in mine.

  Damn it, he wasn't getting through. Not enough. Over the past few days she'd given herself fully to her submissive core, guided by him ever farther into that well, and now she was floundering, suddenly drowning and out of her element, because her reality had intruded unexpectedly. She'd trusted in the fantasy and was feeling skewered by betrayal. Her min
d was torn between panic and rage. He could feel that bloodlust reaction rising. Violence was not the proper response to this, but she'd said every vampire had a trigger.

  So did every sub. Sliding his arm around her waist, he pressed his face into her throat, willing her to feel all his strength surrounding her. He exhorted her to remember that first night when he'd covered her with his body while she curled beneath him. I know it takes years to establish the kind of trust between Master and sub that we're going to have to rely on in the next few minutes. But we're inside one another, aren't we? Hell, inside our souls. Trust me, Kaela. It's the hardest and easiest thing you'll ever have to do.

  His certainty about that wasn't just because of countless sessions with other subs, the experience that brought him. Or that the markings had taken them into one another's minds and hearts, bypassing years of communication games normal couples had to struggle with. It was because once they'd touched, connected, it was a fit that clicked, a perfect fit. It wasn't an assumption of perfection. More like finding the perfect place to build a forever home, brick by brick. Everything at first new, but the kind of place where, as the years together mounted, you knew you'd be willing to go through every remodeling, every repair, every unexpected busted pipe in the winter, because it was home. The place where you sat on the back porch to watch a garden grow or the moon rise.

  At least you didn't say watch the sunset, since I couldn't do that with you.

  Hearing her response was like seeing a boxer pull himself back to his feet after a near knockout. He wanted to cheer. He changed position enough to meet her eyes with fierce resolve, showing her how proud he was to be with her, to stand behind her. "I'll sit out there so you can watch it through my eyes, so we're doing it together. The same way we're going to do this together."

  SS

  "Every time I see a sunset, I think of how that was your favorite time of day. No matter where I am, I'm sharing that moment with you."

  It had been in one of Jared's letters. Not his last one, which hadn't been particularly significant. Unlike in the movies where that final goodbye often contained a significant, lingering pause, a final letter contained instructions on how to winterize the barn or asked after old Mrs. Willoughby on the other side of the hill. Or told Kaela what day-to-day things were happening in his camp. The type of beans they were eating, what they were mixing with their tobacco to make it last longer.