Safeword: Storm Clouds by Candace Blevins

practice of doing, and Abbot has rules about how vampires can and can't use those powers in his territory, so it won't be happening around here. But, the fact is that being bound to Abbot won't give him that ability, he can do it now if he wants. Though he won't. Not unless you need us to prove it to you somehow, and then one of us can."
    "You are telling me that the vampires who live here are all good ? Because a bad... because one who was bad, wouldn't live under Abbot's rules? So they live somewhere else where the vampire in charge has other rules? But wouldn't that mean that there are places to live where it's dangerous to be a human? How can vampires have kept their secret if there are areas where vampires are killing lots of humans?"
    Abbot took this one. "Even a Master Vampire has rules they have to keep their people within. The biggest rule is that there can be no activity that risks exposure."
    "Who keeps the Master Vampires in line?"
    "We can't tell you all of our secrets Eric. Not yet, anyway."
    Eric looked at them a few moments and regrouped. "When I'm at Kendra's house I act like a boyfriend for now, and everything will be fine, right? I only pull my Dom stuff out when we are behind closed doors?"
    "No, for now you'll only be able to do your power exchange activities away from the house. Vampire hearing is phenomenal, anything you do in Kendra's room can be heard throughout the house. Even a whisper. You'll probably also want to make sure you don't have the boat too close to the house, we're up on the cliff a good way but we often hear conversations in boats below on the water. We tune them out most of the time, but if someone heard Kendra's voice they would tune in pretty quick."
    "How soon before you and I do whatever contract you mentioned and we formalize our arrangement?"
    "I will notify my attorney in the morning that I need her to draw something up, unless she is in court all day she will have it to me when I awaken tomorrow evening and you and I can go over it in detail and write our own addendum if there is anything to add or subtract, and then sign it. I will get you a credit card number to use and you can then order the computers and other equipment you will need to teach the classes. You'll have them delivered to the coterie house and I'll set you up in a room that is currently empty."
    Abbot looked at Kendra. "Make arrangements so that when they come in they are delivered to the shelter area, please. Eric can tell you how many people he'll be teaching once he and I have put the contract together. Please show him the table and chair options available in the storage areas and then have Josef oversee his people setting them up as Eric needs."
    Abbot looked back at Eric. "Joseph is my head of security. You will also be working with him to help him use technology for security purposes. We currently use a system of locks that include a key and in some cases a key and a combination lock. I would like for you to work with Josef on some solutions that do not involve keys that can be lost or number sequences that can be shared."
    "A fingerprint scan should work for vampires the same as humans, so we can use something that implements thumb or finger prints. I don't know if iris or retina scans would work since vampire eyes might be different enough to confuse the software. We'd need to do some testing, and it would probably be best not to explain to a factory rep what we're testing for. It might be better to just buy a unit to test with if you want to go that route. You should know that there are times that I'm up against deadlines with my regular work and I won't have time to work for you. I'm in the creative stage with my newest project right now and there are few deadlines during this part of the process so I'll have time to work with you for at least the next two months, but after that I may not be available as much. And there are a few weeks a year that I spend twenty hours a day immersing myself in the