Present Tense (Out of the Fire #3) - Candace Blevins Page 0,50
stay in one place until her mid to late thirties, so she could possibly be here around twenty years. She easily pulled off eighteen. She could’ve possibly pulled off sixteen, but then she’d have needed a legal guardian.
“So, is she fair game? You got a problem with me taking a piece of her?”
“Yeah, I do, actually. She’s only been here a few days and I don’t know if things will go anywhere, but she speaks my language, so back the fuck off.”
Eunice was horrified to hear himself making her off limits — especially since Etta and Kelsey would easily hear him, but he couldn’t help himself. He didn’t want anyone else touching her.
He wasn’t entirely happy when Collosa and Fabio did, but he wasn’t pissed at them, at least.
JB held his hands out to the side and backed away from him. “Wow, okay. I didn’t figure her for your type.”
Right. JB was well aware Eunice’s type was a full-on submissive sex slave.
“I don’t know that she is, and I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”
Eunice stepped away from him because he didn’t want to answer any more questions. He liked JB, enjoyed spending time with the human, but he wasn’t prepared to analyze his feelings. Not only wasn’t Kelsey the kind of sex slave he demanded, but she was a bloodsucking vampire.
He’d walked in with a case of beer under his arm, and he went to the kitchen to put it in the fridge. He wouldn’t drink any, but it was easier than bringing food. Someone had made a pot of chili, and there were cubes of cheese to put in it, along with sour cream, nachos, and tons of sweets. He walked back into the main room with his chili, a bottle of water, and a piece of chess pie — and saw Kelsey sitting uncomfortably between two nerds.
“Oh no. The hot chick came with me, and the hot chick sits with me. You motherfuckers need to find your own hot chick.”
Kelsey’s look told him she was grateful, and he sat beside one of the other girls, but with enough room for Kelsey to comfortable sit between them. “C’mere Kels. It’s safer over here.”
She gave the geek-boys an apologetic look, but quickly rose and made her way to Eunice. She introduced herself to the woman on her left, asked about her character, and the conversation seemed to flow from there, as he’d hoped. The woman was a librarian who worked for a suburban high school. She’d see Kelsey as no older than her kids, at first. It wouldn’t take her long to see there was a lot more to her, but by then, they’d have a rapport.
Usually, when you take someone new to an established D&D game, you worry about whether they’ll fit. As soon as Kelsey had told him about her character, he’d known she’d be a perfect fit for this group. A bard with healing powers to act as backup to the main fighters was exactly the kind of personality they needed. Halfway through the night, he was pleased to see he’d been right. Kelsey fit into their group as if she’d been tailor made for it.
He picked up on one accidental use of an Australian phrase — when she proclaimed her character to be knackered after she’d overused her feather-fall spell to save everyone who fell off a cliff.
She didn’t make him wait to guess whether she’d tell him or try to play it off. At the first bit of downtime, as soon as she could without drawing attention to herself, she leaned towards him and said “Okay, that was one, earlier. Knackered just popped right out.”
And he had to respond, so he put his mouth to her ear, rubbed her back, and said, “Good girl for being upfront with it.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll go easier on me since I was good?”
Before he even considered what he was doing, he kissed her temple and told her, “Nice try, but no.”
“Fuck,” JB said. “Okay, so you got the hot girl. We get it. Time to move on.” His voice shifted back to his professional one. “The weight of the darkness makes it hard to breathe in this valley without light...”
Eunice was grateful for JB’s interruption. He’d been too horrified at what he’d done to know what to do next. Kelsey wasn’t one of his slaves. He understood the confusion — he was being asked to train her, to use positive and negative reinforcements to help her