Tempest of Vengeance (24 page)

My eyes teared up as I listened to him.

“I told myself as I watched you sleep that
night after we’d gotten back, and we’d made love again that I
hadn’t done anything wrong, that you cared about me, that you were
a good mother, that if I’d gotten you pregnant you wouldn’t hate
the baby, even if it was mine—”

Lash’s voice was vibrating with emotion and I
could do nothing but listen, as the words poured out of him.

“—
that you wouldn’t kill it, even if it
was weresnake, like me.”

Devlin decked him hard, and Lash went down
under the force of the blow. But then he was climbing to his feet,
shaking his head. He had blood trickling from his mouth.

“It’s been a while since you and I danced,
Dev,” Lash hissed, wiping the blood off his mouth as it healed.
“But we’ll go round once, just for old times’ sake.”

Lash went for Devlin, and then they were
struggling, Devlin trying to keep Lash from biting him, and Lash
trying hard to withstand the blows Devlin was landing on him. I was
surprised to see Devlin holding his own. Lash was slightly drunk
though. That had to be working in Dev’s favor. But Devlin was a
lover, not a fighter. And Lash was the best there was. So there was
only one way this fight could end.

Lash sank his fangs into Devlin suddenly, and
Devlin screeched. Lash kept biting him, and Devlin slid from his
grip to the floor, jerking slightly. Then he collapsed and lay
still.

Lash reached over and grabbed his whiskey. He
downed the whole of the mug of scotch, and I was very, very still.
If I was quiet, maybe he’d fall over. His brain had to be pickled
from all that scotch in such a short time.

Devlin lay at Lash’s feet and didn’t move. In
a sudden motion, Lash threw his empty mug against the far wall
where it shattered into pieces with a crash. Then he whipped
around, and began walking fast towards me.

How the hell can he still be upright?

“If you were pregnant, I wasn’t going to
abandon you, Sar! I meant what I said, that I would have brought
you to Hayden to live! And I never wanted you to have a
miscarriage! I felt so awful that night you called me, that you
were hurt, and it was my fault.”

Now his guilt made sense. It was his fault.
But it was my fault, too. I was a big girl, and I could have
insisted on a condom, just for Theo’s sake. I felt a shiver then,
as all the ramifications set in.

“It wasn’t your fault, what happened,” I said
softly, aware that I was here alone with Lash, and Devlin might be
unconscious for hours. “Even if you knew I could maybe get
pregnant, you had nothing to do with the miscarriage, Lash. Don’t
blame yourself for what happened.”

“Can you forgive me, for doing what I did?”
Lash hissed. The alcohol was finally having some effect on him. He
was still moving quickly, but his eyes were glazed, and glazing
over even more as he walked to me. “For not wearing anything? For
not wanting to? For wanting to be more to you than just a good
fuck?”

“Yes,” I said, holding out my arms to him. “I
forgive you.”

“I’m sorry,” Lash said softly as he came into
my arms, tears in his glazed eyes. “I wanted you for myself! It was
wrong for every reason and I knew it, and I did it anyway! Please
forgive me! Please!”

“Shh,” I gasped, holding him as he squeezed
the life out of me. “It wasn’t...your fault...what happened...”
Lash eased up a little, letting me take a deep breath to continue.
“I might have said no anyway, even if you’d said something, about
what you suspected. I still find it hard to believe. And if you had
used condoms with me, I’d probably be having Theo’s child by now,
because he wouldn’t have used anything with me later on, thinking
me safe, and he’d probably still be with Jenny now anyway, it
would’ve been awful—”

Lash wasn’t listening, still trapped in his
guilt. “I’m sorry!” he yelled stridently. “Please forgive me, Sar,
please!”

I hugged him tightly. “I forgive you.”

“I don’t,” Devlin rasped, as he grabbed Lash,
pulling him the floor. Lash let go of me, and then he was trying to
bite Devlin again, his fangs dripping venom.

“Don’t bother,” Devlin said, hitting him
again and again with all his force. “I took some anti-venom before
Sar teleported us. I knew you’d try to bite me sooner or later, you
fuck! Your bite is painful, but that’s the most it’ll do to
me.”

“Fuck you!” Lash hissed. “Let me up, or I’ll
cut you, Dev! I’ve been nice till now, but don’t push it!”

“Sar was fucking
mine
, you asshole,
and you knew it! You tried to sire your child on
my
Oathed
One! Forget Theo and Danial, you fucked
me
over!”

“She wasn’t Oathed to you then, shit for
brains!”

Devlin growled “That doesn’t matter!” and
punched him some more. Lash was a mass of blood before long, but
his torn and bruised flesh healed almost as soon as Devlin drew
back his hand to hit Lash again.

How is this helping anything?
“Stop
it, Dev!” I yelled. “It doesn’t matter anyway!”

Lash drew his knife in a smooth sinuous
motion, and stuck it into Devlin’s chest, right through his
heart.

Devlin went still, and looked down at Lash in
utter rage. “Bast—” he grunted, and then he fell backward off Lash
to collapse on the floor

“I deserved a beating at your hands, for what
I did to you,” Lash hissed down at Dev. “But that’s enough, and I’m
not taking any more.”

Lash drew out the knife, got to his feet, and
came toward me again. I backed away, and he stopped, looking at me
with confusion. Then he saw my eyes on the knife in his hand, and
he resheathed it, after cleaning it on Devlin’s prone form.

“You’ll take me back, Sar?” he hissed
hopefully. “Be my lover and my friend? I love being with you.”

But you don’t love me.

Lash saw my face, and his expression went
cold in an instant. “You know, there’s a pool table right here
beside us,” he hissed, his eyes flat and cold. “And I feel like
walking down my fucking memory lane tonight.”

He swaggered toward me, his eyes locked on
me. But a second later, he went down sprawling again on the floor.
Devlin had been hurt badly, but he’d managed to heal the knife
wound while Lash was talking to me, and he’d grabbed him around his
legs.

Now that Lash was down, Dev was trying to
crawl up him to punch him some more. But Devlin wasn’t quick
anymore, he’d lost too much blood. He clung to Lash, and while he
succeeded in keeping him from getting to me, he couldn’t do much
more than that. And while Lash was intoxicated, he was also fully
healed.

Lash kicked Devlin off him, and got to his
feet. In a swift motion, he reached down and picked Devlin up by
the throat, lifting him so Devlin was at his eye level. Lash held
him there with one hand, and looked at him. Devlin hissed at him,
baring his fangs, but he wasn’t strong enough to get away from
Lash, hurt as he was.

“This time I’m leaving the knife in,” Lash
hissed meaningfully, and he drew it out of its sheath, flipping it
up and grabbing it out of the air to get ready to stab Devlin with
it. “You won’t die, but you’ll stay out of action until I pull it
out, Friend. Because I’ve got another tool of mine I want to
sheathe in
your
Oathed One, and that business is going to
take the rest of the night.”

I had to stop this. Things had gotten way out
of hand. And I had only one thing to use as distraction:
myself.

I stripped my shirt over my head, and prayed
that the song would keep playing. This was going to be hard enough
to do with a beat to work with. There was no way I could do it
without any music. Thank God, I still felt slightly tipsy, or I
wouldn’t be able to do this at all.

“I think I want an apology, Dev,” Lash hissed
meaningfully, his knife still in his hand. “Why don’t you tell me
how sorry you are that you’ve been such a prick all fall—”

I stripped off my jeans, and strolled up to
Lash, shaking my body to the beat.

“—
keeping me away when she visited,
telling me I couldn’t touch her—”

He wasn’t paying any attention, he was
focused on Devlin. But Devlin looked over, and his eyes went
wide.

“—
keeping us apart, you fucking
vampire—”

Irritated that Devlin wasn’t paying
attention, Lash glanced in the direction Devlin was looking. His
eyes went wide, too.

The song suddenly stopped.

Fuck!

But in a second, it started again. Relieved,
I gyrated my hips, thinking this was not a sexy song, but maybe
that was relative. Did men care about songs anyway, when they went
to see strippers? Probably not, was my guess. I’d see shortly. I
kept my hips going, and slid down my bra straps, then I unhooked my
bra, and let it fall. Lash and Devlin were motionless, watching me,
their mouths open.

I ran my hands over my breasts, and squeezed,
letting my head fall back, as I rolled my head to finally look up
at Lash through my fall of blonde hair. “Do you want to fight him,
or have me?” I said, rolling my hips, running my hands over my
mostly naked body, licking my lips suggestively and smiling a
come-hither look at Lash. “I’ll be over here, if you decide on me.
But maybe you’d rather beat on him than make love to me on a pool
table?”

Lash looked at Dev, then back at me. Then he
slugged Dev hard, knocking him to the floor. He ran to me, wrapping
his arms around me. Lash kissed me, reaching his long tongue so far
down my throat I gagged a little. As he had that night in the
Everglades, he tasted of hard alcohol, but this time he also tasted
of cigarette smoke.

Ugh.
I tried to pull back from
him.

“It’s okay,” he said huskily, drawing back
from me suddenly. “Any poison left in my mouth from biting Dev is
long gone, Sar, I shifted enough to lose my fangs, after biting
him, so it’s okay.”

Shit! I hadn’t even thought about
that
.

Lash was kissing me hard, backing me towards
the table, holding me tightly so I couldn’t get away. “That night,
you wanted me to take you like I did Cin,” he hissed raggedly, as
he kissed down my neck. “But I didn’t treat you as I had treated
her. I was never gentle like that with her, Sar. I never went down
on her. But it’s past time I gave you what I used to give her.”

Lash swiped his arm over the table as he had
that night months ago, knocking all the pool cues and balls in a
crash to the floor. Lash flipped me around, and bent me over the
table, holding me there by the back of my neck. I heard the
metallic hiss as he unsheathed his knife, and with two deft cuts,
what was left of my underwear fell to the floor. A second later, I
heard him unzipping his pants, and felt him rubbing himself on me.
In spite of everything, or maybe because of it, I was eager to feel
him enter me, and I let out a little cry as I felt him push inside
me.

“God, I love how you always want me,” he
hissed, his tone pure lust.

Lash rammed himself into me, bringing a cry
from his lips, and a gasp from mine. He held me down spread-eagled
over the table with force and pounded himself into me, putting
himself in to the hilt every time.

“You wanted this from the moment you first
saw me, for me to put it to you like this,” Lash hissed in my ear.
“You knew what I was, how many people I’d killed, and the more you
heard, the more you were turned on! Admit it, Sar!”

“No!” I gasped. “I didn’t!”

“You knew who I was, what I was, that night
you met me! Theo’s probably been filling your head with horror
stories about me for years!”

“I didn’t know anything, just your name, from
Dev,” I gasped. “I only knew you were snake, that you were cold,
and I wanted you to be warm!”

Lash seemed to lose his rhythm momentarily,
then he resumed with a hiss. “You wanted me to fuck you! That was
all it ever was to you, all I ever was to you, just someone to
fuck, to take your mind off your problems!”

“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.