Tempest of Vengeance Read online

  “I wanted to be with you, because I’d fallen in love with you,” I said, turning my head with a little pain to rub my cheek against his scratchy one. He looked down at me, and I kissed him almost chastely. Lash slowed his pace, groaning as he loosened his grip on me. “I wanted to come to you so many times in these past months,” I whispered, turning my head and upper body slightly to kiss him on his neck, and his face, then down his throat. “To tell you I loved you, to tell you I wanted to be with you and not Theo, to let you take all of me that you wanted—”

  Lash was shaking now, and he grabbed hold of my hips roughly and sped up again. “I am taking all of you, right here tonight! As many times as I want to! And no one is going to stop me, not Dev, not Theo, no one!”

  This was just like my fantasy of Lash, the one I’d acted out with Danial. I was just as into it as I’d been months ago, a loud cry of arousal tearing out from between my parted lips.

  Lash looked down at me knowingly with slitted eyes. “You thought about me like this with you, didn’t you?” he groaned, pulling himself almost out of me, and then swiftly slamming himself back in. “You fantasized about it, about how good it would feel, to be with me again, to feel me in you! And it had nothing to do with love! Admit it!”

  I felt him, heard his lust-filled voice, and I gave right in to my need for him. “I fantasized about you for months, just like this!” I gasped. “I wanted you, that day at my house! I wanted you to take me! I want you more than anything! Please, don’t stop!”

  “I’m not going to stop, even after I come,” Lash hissed seductively. “We’re going for a new record, Sar, right here tonight. And you’re going to scream for me every time.”

  “Make me scream for you!” I cried out, loving the feeling of being taken so completely.

  Lash thrust harder onto me, and I trembled under the force of his desire. But he was closer than I was, and in the next second he spasmed hard, jolting me as he came with a harsh cry. He sank down on me a little, groaning as his body gave up his seed to me in a rush of warmth. After, he lay there on me, and didn’t move, though I felt his breathing. Is he ready to pass out finally? In any case, I won’t get a better chance.

  I tried to move out from under him, wanting to get across the table to check on Devlin, afraid Lash had hurt him badly. He’d said he needed to fight Ulysses in a week. But I’d forgotten this wasn’t role playing, that Lash was not Danial. My weresnake grabbed me before I’d gotten free of him, and pushed me back on the table. I tried to get away, but he grabbed me by my legs, and pulled me to him, flipping me over on my back. He curled one hand around the base of my neck, and gripped me. I struggled, but couldn’t move.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Lash hissed, as he crawled onto the table after me, laying down on me again. “You heard what I said! I’m going to have you over and over, right here, and you’re going to beg me for more, like you just did.”

  “Lash, I need to check on Dev—”

  “He’s fine, he’s probably enjoying listening to me have you,” Lash hissed, parting my legs with one knee so he could slide his body between them, as he shoved his pants all the way down with his free hand. “And you’ve got other things to concern yourself with, like this.”

  Lash rammed himself into me again, and I groaned. I’d been sore before, and now I was raw. Just having him in me was a little painful, even though Lash wasn’t really being rough.

  “Scream for me,” Lash hissed, holding still above me with effort. “I want to hear you scream my name. And not my nickname, my real name.”

  The alcohol had finally taken effect. Lash’s eyes were so glazed I was surprised he could manage to have sex. Actually, I was surprised he wasn’t on the floor unconscious.

  “No one’s called me by my real name in more than sixty years, not like this,” Lash said, plunging himself in and out of me. “I want to hear you say it for me, Sar, to know you want me, the real me, not the Lash facade I’ve worn like a mask for so many years.”

  I felt like he’d knifed me in the heart, hearing the longing in his words. Here was the man I’d known that day in the Everglades hotel, the one I hadn’t seen at all since Lash had been in jail. He’d been hiding this from me for months.

  “Make love to me, Tristan,” I said softly, looking up at him tenderly, as I slid my hand up to caress his cheek with my hand.

  He went still for a long moment, looking down at me. “All you ever had to do was ask,” he hissed tenderly, and in a smooth motion, he rolled over on his back, thrusting all the way inside. He moved my hips fast on his, and I could feel the climax building almost immediately, despite that there was slight pain also.

  “Please! Please!” I whimpered, running my hands over his chest scales. “Faster!”

  Lash moved faster, and I climaxed for him hard, screaming my lungs out. “Yes! Please! God, yes! Tristan! Tristan! Oh God, I love you!”

  Lash kissed me deeply as I collapsed on him, panting heavily. But it wasn’t a rough kiss, it was a tender kiss, full of longing, gentleness, and dare I say it, love. “I loved that, that it was the real me you knew was loving you, that it was me you wanted.” He sighed, his speech slightly slurred. “Tell me again you love me.”

  “I love you, Tristan,” I said softly.

  Lash hugged me to him with a tortured sigh. “I wish that you weren’t on the pill, that we could maybe make another baby inside you tonight,” he hissed with a sea of longing in his voice. “I wanted you to have my child, for you to get pregnant from our time together, to come to me and say you picked me, that you wanted me, and not that fucking cat. I knew that I was a fool to even hope for it, but I cared for you, Sar, and I wanted you to care for me, to see that same look in your eyes that you had that night you came to me, when you told me you didn’t want me to die.”

  The words were pouring out of him in a flood, hitting me with all the force of an emotional tidal wave.

  “You’re such a good mother, Sar. And I could be a good father, with you as my mate. You said I wasn’t the man you wanted me to be, and you were right, I’m not good, not nearly good enough for you. But I can be a better man for you, Sar, I know I can, if you’ll help me.”

  “Lash—”

  “I wish things had been different, that I’d been there for you when you needed me that night—”

  “You were there for me,” I interrupted, kissing him. “And I’ll come to you as snake, Lash. I was just waiting for the potion to be ready. I didn’t know you had already gotten Titus to make one.”

  Lash went still as a statue, and tilted my chin up so he could look into my eyes. “Please Sar,” he groaned. “Don’t say it if it’s not true. Just the thought of you like that...”

  “I will,” I said, hugging him tightly. “We’ll finally coil together like you wanted us to.”

  Lash let out a long loud undulating cry full of longing and wanting and needing so deep, it made me shiver in his arms. He rolled back over on top of me, and began thrusting into me fast, his body straining with need. A few seconds later he came, shouting my name.

  “Sar! Mmmph! Uh! Sar! Ah! Uh! Ah! Ah!”

  Lash looked down at me, panting hard, and there was such emotion in his dark gaze I went still beneath him. His eyes were human and they held the same look they had that long ago day in the hotel: warmth, affection, tenderness, and passion. Love.

  “Sar, I...I—”

  Then he let out a shout, jerking on me. “Youch!”

  I yelped, because he was still inside me.

  Lash pulled away from me, his erection slipping out of my body as he went for his knife. Over his shoulder, Devlin stood, pulling a syringe needle out of Lash’s bare ass cheek.

  “You...fuck...” Lash said, drawing his knife partway from it’s sheathe. Then he collapsed on me, unconscious.

  “You couldn’t have waited another second?” I said sarcastically. “He was maybe going to say it, finally.”

  “He can say it to you another night,” Devlin
growled. “We’ve got to get back before dawn.”

  Dev pulled Lash off me, and then pulled Lash’s pants up, and fastened them. He hoisted Lash’s limp body over his shoulders. Looking at him covered in blood and so weary, I understood his annoyance.

  “Get your clothes,” Devlin said, raising his eyebrows as he looked at my naked form. “Much as I like to look at you naked, it’s late. We need to get him back to Hayden.”

  I put on my clothes, save my slashed up pieces of underwear, which I tossed in the nearest garbage, then took us back to Hayden. Devlin let us into Lash’s room with a key. He lay Lash down on a low bed, leaving him dressed. Lash was breathing deeply, but he wasn’t moving other than that. I couldn’t see much of the room, it was too dark.

  “Will he be okay?” I asked.

  “He’ll be his normal nasty self tomorrow, but he won’t remember this. Nothing from Davy’s probably.” His voice turned hard as steel. “You’d better go to him as snake tomorrow, Sar. Tell me now you’ll get the potion from Terian ASAP in the morning, before it’s even light. Or I’ll call Lyssa tonight, so she’s here beside him when he wakes up.”

  “I said I’ll do it,” I cut him off irritably. “I’ll do it, Dev.”

  “Good,” Devlin said softly. “Good.”

  He pulled me outside the room, and locked it behind him. “Now tell me exactly what it was that Lash did for you, in return for you coming back to me.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Sar, tell me, and do it now.” Devlin’s patience had lasted all of thirty seconds.

  “Lash killed the Satar and his men,” I confessed. “They were setting up to ambush Theo. I asked Lash to go watch the fight, to make sure Theo would make it back.”

  “You wanted Lash to kill Robert?” Devlin said, astonished. “You surprise me, Sar. I’d thought you’d be too straight laced to send an assassin to kill Robert.”

  “Lash wasn’t there to kill Robert,” I said bluntly. “He was there to make sure Theo wasn’t hurt by sneak attack, which is what Satar was planning.”

  “Satar bit Lash that night, giving him that wound that turned septic,” Devlin finished.

  I nodded.

  “Lash got you to come back to me as payment for helping you.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to give him a raise for being so thoughtful, in light of the fact that he obviously wanted you for himself,” Devlin said, cracking a smile.

  “Don’t,” I said heavily. “He made me promise never to tell you. I feel horrible I broke that promise to him.”

  “Then I won’t say anything,” Devlin assured me. “As I said, it doesn’t matter to me anyway, why you came back, just that you did. I knew you were going to, Sar, even if you didn’t recover your ability to have children. You needed my protection. It was as simple as that.”

  Without any more talking, Devlin and I both showered, getting most of the gunk off us. I had a fair amount of blood on me from both Devlin and Lash, and once I realized it, I couldn’t get it off me fast enough. Afterwards, Devlin and I lay down in bed.

  My hand reached out and clasped Devlin’s. “Thank you, for trying to defend me.”

  Devlin brought my hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. “I knew he wouldn’t hurt you. But I was and remain pissed that he did what he did, because getting you pregnant would have endangered you again with the other Rulers. I am not the fighter he is, so it wasn’t much of a contest. I knew when I first struck him that I would lose.”

  “All the same,” I said, touching his cheek gently. “Thank you. It had to hurt.”

  “Some donor blood tomorrow will fix it,” Devlin shrugged. “But you heard his words, maybe even others I didn’t hear, when I was out for a few moments. There’s no doubt he loves you, Sar.”

  Yes, hearing what Lash had said had reassured me he had feelings for me, but I didn’t want to talk about that now. “How did he drink so much tonight, and still function, Dev? Three bottles of scotch is a lot, and he’s not a big man. I kept waiting for him to pass out.”

  “Lash has always liked alcohol since he was young. But he started drinking more this year, I’d guess because he found out he was dying. Not a lot more, but enough so I noticed. He’s been drinking heavily since he was in jail, and even before that, this whole fall. Some of it I think was to give up the smoking, after being in jail, but I’d guess that most of it was because it dulled his desire for you. Some of it also is all the stress of Ulysses. Lash drank heavily in Rio, too, those months we were there, when he had to be on guard every second. But then at least he was getting sex every night.”

  The dark woman in the photo. She must have been weresnake. How many women did Lash have through the years? And why had Lash been on guard all the time in Rio? Devlin had had his bears...

  “So his tolerance for alcohol is very, very high,” Devlin finished, interrupting my thought. “But no matter how much he drinks, it doesn’t impede his fighting ability, so I never say anything about it. Anyway, don’t worry about him. My guess is that now you’re going to give him what he needs, he’ll be drinking a lot less. And I think the smoking will probably be easier to quit, too.”

  Devlin moved closer to me, and hugged my body to his. I felt him stir against me.

  “I want you,” he whispered, kissing me. “Tell me you want me, Sar.”

  “We shouldn’t, if you need me to get up early, it’s got to be midnight by now.”

  “Lash will sleep till tomorrow afternoon,” Devlin assured me. “The alcohol will add to the sedative I gave him. But you should get the potion from Terian by noon, no later.”

  I nodded.

  “Are you in the mood?” he said, brushing my neck with his fangs. “I’ll be quick, if you aren’t. But I can’t not have you at least once, Sar, not after seeing you dance like that.”

  “So you liked my dancing?” I teased.

  “Very much,” Devlin purred, kissing up my throat seductively. “I want you to dance for me again, sometime soon. But for now, just lay back for me, and let me do all the moving.”

  Damn you, you’re too hard to resist. “You’ll need to heal me first. I’m embarrassed to say it, but I’m—”

  “Shh, I apologize. I should have thought of that, Love. Hold still.” Devlin kissed down my body, his sensuous kisses bringing soft cries unbidden from my lips. As before, he kissed me intimately, and the dull ache I had been feeling lessened until it disappeared. I sighed with relief.

  “Don’t be sighing yet,” Devlin protested with a sexy fanged smile. “I want all the credit for every sigh that passes your lips, and I don’t want to rush.”

  I laughed, and turned to him. “Then just take your time,” I said with lowered sultry eyes, and pushed his head down once more.

  * * * *

  Getting the potion from Terian went smoothly. I simply showed up in his lab, handed him the money I’d withdrawn from the bank a few minutes ago, and he handed it to me in a glass vial, telling me not to be alone when I took it. “But I don’t guess that will be a problem for you,” he said with a smirk.

  “Thank you, Tears,” I said quietly, tucking it into my purse. “By the way, what do you want for a wedding present? I’m sorry I didn’t ask before now, but usually the invitation or shower tells the name of the bridal registry.”

  “A gift card for a restaurant, or movies, or anything, I guess?” he said, blushing. “But you don’t have to get us anything.”

  “Of course I do!” I exclaimed. “I’m happy for you both. Besides, I owe you a lot—”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” Terian said with an odd look in his eyes. “Not anything.”

  What does he mean by that?

  “But Sun would like that,” Terian added quickly. “She loves gift cards of all kinds. I’m not sure why, but she does.”

  “Then I’ll get one for you both,” I said with a smile. “Take care.”

  I left his lab, and promptly ran into Jenny in the hallway. “Sorry!” I said, and sh
e gave me a smile in return. I gave her one back, thinking while I still disliked her, it wasn’t her fault Theo had left me for her. And this meeting was opportune, as I’d wanted to talk to her. “Walk with me?”

  She gave me a nervous look, but came with me. When we were outside, I stopped, and leaned against the nearest tree. Jenny looked at me uneasily.

  “Do you have your phone?” I asked.

  She gave me an odd look. “Sure, but—”

  “Get it out.”

  Jenny produced her phone, and I began speaking slowly, so she would have time to enter the information as I related it. “Theo’s birthday is sometime in May. He won’t tell you about it, but that’s when it is. Please make him a cake of some kind, and throw a party.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Jenny said abruptly. “You think I need your help to keep him happy? Or are you tired of your vampire, and want him back now?”

  I glared at her. If I tell you the truth, that you’re only alive now because you were practice for me, you’ll be singing a different tune about dear old Theo.

  Be nice, Sar. It’s not her fault, not any of it. And Theo’s been hurt enough. Everyone has been hurt enough. “I care that Theo has a party every year on his birthday, and a Christmas tree, and—”

  “We have a tree,” she interrupted snottily. “I’m sure your children told you?”

  “They did,” I replied, nodding. “I’m pleased you have one for him. Tell me also if you want any recipes that he likes, Cia knows most of them, but—”

  “So now you want to be friends?” Her voice was half anger, half disbelieving.

  “No,” I said coldly, letting all of my anger flood my words. “I’m not your friend. But despite he’s an ass, I want Theo to have what he didn’t most of his life, especially when he’s lost his best friend.”

  “Terian is his best friend.”

  “He is now,” I said in clipped deliberate tones. “Once they were mortal enemies. Danial was his best friend for over a decade.” Until I came along, and ruined everything, anyway. Sigh. “You’re coming into this saga late, Jenny. I’m doing you a favor here. But you don’t want it, that’s fine.” I turned to leave.