Tempest of Vengeance (17 page)

“My answer is yes. But give me this week to
plan,” I said finally. “I would like you to arrange for some
special food and wine for us. I also want to be with Lash as a
snake one time, probably this Friday, if Terian can get the potion
made fast enough. On Saturday night, I’ll give you your Oath, with
him present. And you will give me yours.”

“Wonderful!” Devlin said in rapture,
squeezing me tightly. “That is acceptable to me. I will also get
you something suitable to wear, for Saturday.” Then he stopped.
“Sarelle, we cannot do it on Saturday night,” he said, his voice
annoyed. “Your mother expects you for holiday celebration, doesn’t
she?”

My God, how did I forget Christmas? And I
do have to be there Christmas Eve. There is no way around it.
None.
“Sunday night, then,” I amended.

“Sunday it is,” Devlin said, his expression
pleased, and reached for me.

I got out of bed, eliciting surprise mixed
with annoyance from the man I’d just agreed to bind myself to. But
when I explained that I had something to do that could not be put
off he just nodded, and told me to get going.

* * * *

I went first to the main house, and knocked
at the door. No one answered. I tried my key in the lock, and
realized that in the short time I’d been gone, the locks had been
changed. Finally, I called via my cell, and got no answer.

Furious that I could not see Elle, I stalked
to the werecompound, looking for anyone to give a piece of my mind
to. I encountered only Cia, who told me stonily that Elle had Jenny
watching over her, and had asked that no one disturb them. Angry
that Theo was using this situation as yet another power play
between us, yet comforted that Elle was not alone, I asked Cia to
please have Elle call me at Hayden later, then headed to Terian’s
lab.

Asking the half faerie-half demon sorcerer
for the shapechanging potion was awkward in the extreme, especially
telling him exactly
why
I wanted to be a snake. “This is for
sex?” Terian exclaimed, incredulous. “To have sex as a snake with
Lash?”

“I can pay if you’d like. Otherwise, I’ll go
to Titus or one of your competitors,” I said bluntly. “You said you
owed me one, though, so I came to you to ask.”

Terian looked at me, his glowing red eyes
bleeding through his tinted contacts, and stayed silent.

“I trust you, though. I’d rather you were the
one who made it.” That and going to Titus for it would result in a
huge fight, because he would know immediately what it was for. I’d
never had my stepfather tell me he hated my choice of men; Chris
just wasn’t like that. But Titus would do that and more. He might
even go after Lash with some of his magic. I didn’t want Lash hurt,
just because we wanted to be together.

“You never asked me for a potion to make you
a lioness, so you could be with Theo,” Terian said, turning his
back on me. “You always said you loved him, Sar, yet you—”

“I’m sorry I came. Forget I asked,” I said
curtly, and left his lab immediately.

Terian caught up with me as I left the
building. “Stop, Sar!” he called, but I kept walking.

Finally, he teleported in front of me, and I
ran into him. I tried to go around him, but he grabbed hold of me,
and wouldn’t let me go. “I’m sorry, Sar. It’s not my business to
judge you.”

“No, it’s not. But it’s true that I made it
your business by asking you. So forget it.”

“I’ll make it. What kind of snake is
Lash?”

“A cottonmouth.”

“What type?”

Type?
“Florida type, I’d guess?”

“All right,” Terian said, writing that down
on a piece of paper from his pocket. “I’ll have it ready for you to
pick up Saturday morning. It will take that long to make it.”

“How much?” I said with more than a little
gratefulness. “I’ll pay you for it.”

“About five thousand dollars,” Terian said
softly. “That’s the lowest I can go, Sar. I hate to charge you
anything, because I told you I owed you. But the ingredients are
really expensive. It retails for about thirty grand. I can eat the
cost of the demon blood, but I need a few...other things I’m going
to have to buy, and that is how much they are going to cost. You’ll
really be a snake, for about three hours or so. You’ll be able to
move as one, though I wouldn’t recommend eating anything. But I
don’t think you’ll have time to, with Lash.”

He’d said that last bit with pointed humor.
“That’s fine!” I said irritably. “I have some savings. I’ll bring
you the money—”

“Forget what I said earlier, Sar, about Theo
and you,” Terian said gently. “Even if I could have made you a
cougar, you wouldn’t have been were. Theo would have been a lot
stronger. Lash won’t hurt you as a snake, it’s not forceful or
anything, having sex as a snake. But Theo would have probably hurt
you, having you like that as human.”

I flushed, remembering sex with Theo in his
lion form.

Terian saw my flush, and went a deep
crimson.

I left him immediately and teleported back
home to Hayden, because I couldn’t say anything, and by then, I was
red as a beet myself.

* * * *

I got back just in time to run into Lash as
he was walking in the front door of Hayden. “Where were you?” he
asked curiously.

“Looking for you,” I lied, unwilling for some
reason to tell him the truth about the potion, and Terian. “Ready
to shower?”

Lash pulled me close to him, and kissed me,
groaning. “More than ready. Come on.”

Lash and I showered, but I mostly stood
there. He wouldn’t let me do anything, after I washed my hair. In
the time it took me to take care of that, he had completely gotten
clean.

He soaped my torso up slowly, caressing my
skin in long possessive strokes, and kissing me. Before long, he
was pressing me to the shower wall, kissing my mouth over and over
so hungrily, as if he were trying to crawl inside me. I ran my
fingers over his body, loving the feel of him under my hands.

“Do I feel good to you?” Lash hissed,
breaking the kiss.

“You always felt good,” I groaned.
“Always.”

“So did you,” he groaned, slipping his hand
down to cup my thatch, and push two fingertips inside.

“Feel me,” I breathed, taking hold of his
hand and pushing his fingers deeper into me. “That’s all you, my
desire for you.”

Lash let out a groan. “Teleport us to one of
the guest rooms as soon as we’re dry. I want to scream, and to hear
you scream, and we do it here, we’ll wake Dev for sure. I want you
all to myself.”

Lash shut off the shower, and we hurriedly
dried off. I threw aside the towel and grabbed his hand,
teleporting us to the green and gold room. Lash gave me a knowing
grin on my choice of rooms, then eased me back on the guest room
bed, spreading my legs.

“I love to feel you beneath me,” Lash said
passionately, as he pushed inside me. “To feel your skin against
mine, your heart beating so fast, to hear you scream my name. God,
you don’t know how often I fantasized about you like this in jail,
Sar.” He began pumping into me immediately in long, deep strokes as
I wrapped my legs around him, my hands on his ass keeping him deep
within me as he moved.

We didn’t last long. I came first, screaming
his name, and he came a second later, screaming mine. I looked up
at him, breathing hard atop me, and my mouth opened without even
thinking. “I—”

I clamped down on the words before I uttered
them, realizing I was afraid to tell him I loved him. I’d never
been afraid to say it before in my life, but for some reason, I was
now. I felt like I’d been here before with him, like a sense of
deja vu, and that the previous time it had not ended well. But that
was crazy. I’ve never been in this room with Lash, though I’d
fantasized about it once or twice.

“What?” Lash said, immediately alert, holding
my face with his hand. “You what?”

“I...I’m glad to be like this with you
again,” I stammered, kissing him gently. “I missed you very much.
You weren’t the only one who had fantasies.”

“I missed you, too,” he said, grinning
widely.

“Do you want to eat lunch?” I offered

“You making it?” he said hopefully.

“I was thinking of soup—”

He grabbed the closest bed pillow and gave me
a light whack with it. I laughed, and went to run off, but he
grabbed me with a growl, and pulled me back to the bed.

“I’m going to kiss you until you agree to
make something else,” he teased, hugging me tightly. “No matter how
long it takes. I never want to see soup again, ever! Especially not
vegetable soup.”

“That’s not much incentive for agreeing,” I
laughed.

“Maybe that’s the idea. I win, either way,”
Lash said. He let out a laugh, then kissed me hard, exploring my
mouth with his tongue. I reached down for his prick, and felt him
hard and ready.

“Answer me a question,” I said, pulling back
to look in his face, but not releasing him.

“Sure. What?”

“Why can weres go so many times in a row?” I
said, stroking his erection with my hand. “Dev said he learned to,
with practice, but—”

“But Danial wasn’t like that, and neither
were the human men you knew before,” Lash finished, his tone husky.
“But Ol’ Theo was, right?”

“Yes,” I said, flushing.

“Because we are part animal,” Lash answered.
“Animals mate for hours sometimes, when it’s the right season to
rut, depending on the species. A were female needs that from a were
male, not just to have that much sex, but in that way, repeatedly.
Were females often can’t get pregnant from being with human males,
though the opposite happens quite easily—”

I grabbed the pillow to hit him again, but
Lash stopped me, laughing.

“It’s a proven fact! Anyway, that’s why we
can. But because we are part human, too, we don’t have a specific
season, like animals do. The result is that weres are very sexual
creatures, we think about sex a lot, and we need it a lot, to be
content. So, that’s why Serena has her job, and also why I’m going
to have you again, right now.”

Lash rolled me over on my stomach, and slid
inside me with one continuous motion, uttering a long low moan of
contentment. He slipped his hands under me, squeezing my breasts in
his hands. He bit down lightly on my neck, gently sucking, and
began moving fast almost at once. In a minute, he was spasming
again within me, holding me tightly as he screamed out my name.

“God, Sar, you felt good,” he said, kissing
me as he withdrew. “Do you want to go again, or have lunch?”

“If I say ‘no’ now, can I say ‘yes’
later?”

Lash almost fell off the bed, he laughed so
hard. “Yes!” he gasped out finally. “We can be together like this
whenever you want. Just tell me, when you’re with me, or call me on
my phone, if you aren’t. I’ve been leaving it on all the time
lately.”

“Then lunch,” I said happily. “But really,
breakfast for lunch. How about bacon, eggs, toast, sausage,
and
pancakes?”

Lash was salivating by the end of my
sentence. He handed me a silvery grey terry robe from the back of
the bathroom door, and got into one himself. I took it from him,
but didn’t put it on. Holding it, I remembered I’d bought these for
guests, and each guest room had two. I looked at him uneasily.

His eyes shifted to snake in response.
“There’s no one out there to see us together, or scent us,” he said
flatly. “I hear no one. I won’t say anything, if you prefer I not,
though there will be talk if I keep spending my nights in Dev’s
room.”

“It’s not that,” I said, putting my hand on
his arm. “I just don’t want to run into Venus. She’s old enough to
have questions, and you remember Elle, what happened with
her...”

I trailed off, because Lash was looking at me
skeptically in obvious disbelief.

Maybe he’s right. Why should we be
embarrassed, to walk around in our robes? This is my home now, or
shortly it’s going to be, for good. Everyone has to know where he’d
spent last night, and even if they are slow to catch on, Lash is
right that it’ll be obvious to everyone in a week where he’s
spending his nights. They’ll know he isn’t there for sex with Dev.
They’ll know we’re lovers again.

This wasn’t like it had been with The Lust,
when I’d had a torrid affair with him. There wasn’t any shame on my
part. I was going to be with him and Dev, to live here with them.
And Danial, if he ever woke up, though every day that possibility
seemed less likely.

“You’re right,” I said decisively, nodding,
putting on the robe. “Everyone will smell that we’ve been together,
including her. Maybe it’s better to let her see us together when
she’s younger, so she accepts you and me being together. It’s not
like Elle, in that V likes you very much.”

Lash just looked at me with his cold snake
eyes.

He thinks I’m embarrassed to be seen with
him, to have Serena and the others at Hayden know he’s my lover
again. Does he not get why I was embarrassed the first time, that
it was because I was married, and also because I was compelled,
that it wasn’t been my choice? That that is the reason I’d asked
him to keep our being lovers then a secret?

Maybe he didn’t. But it was my choice now, to
be with him. He was my choice. The time for secrets was finished.
“Come on,” I said, kissing him chastely. “I’ll make you lunch,
Lover.”

Surprised, Lash took my hand, walking me to
the kitchen. He got out the meat and eggs, and I began cooking the
bacon and sausage, glad I’d made a run a few days ago with Titus to
restock the fridge. The supplies I’d gotten in November had lasted
a while, but nothing lasted forever.

“You joining me?” Lash asked in surprise.
“You’re making more than you did last time. Or am I remembering
wrong?”

“I lost some weight this past month,” I
disclosed. “I can afford to splurge a little.”