Tempest of Vengeance (25 page)

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.”