Tempest of Vengeance (43 page)

“Ah! Ah, God!” Lash cried as he thrust up
into me, almost choking me as he spasmed inside me. I swallowed him
down, still moving on him as his body gave up his seed, his muscles
contracting and releasing again and again. He collapsed back on the
bed with a final groan, panting hard. I slid his still erect penis
out of me with a last kiss, and then I began to kiss my way up his
body again.

“Fuck me, that was wonderful,” Lash moaned.
“You felt so warm and wet.”

“I wanted you to feel me around you,
caressing you,” I whispered. “I want you to know you are loved,
that you aren’t alone anymore.”

“Sar,” he hissed softly, his dark eyes full
of emotion, “I never doubt it, when I’m with you. I feel your love
for me, how strong it is. It warms me more than the sun ever
could.”

I hugged him, and he rolled over on me,
sliding himself into me with a grunt of passion. “I love to feel
you beneath me, my Mate,” he hissed softly, as he moved on me,
kissing down my neck. “To feel us joined together.”

“We are joined, body and soul,” I pledged
lovingly, arching my back to push my body closer to his. “I’m
yours.”

“As I’m yours,” Lash hissed tenderly. “Now
hush, and let me love you. It’s your turn to cry out for me.”

“Drink from me, like you did before,” I said
quickly.

Lash stopped completely, in shock. He looked
down at me for a long moment before speaking, his expression
serious. “It might hurt, if I do. You’ve got to have bad memories
of the pain you felt when you saved me, Sar. I’ve hurt you enough,
in the time you’ve known me. I never want to hurt you again.”

“You never took very much. Take it, as you
love me. Just a little. I want you to.”

Lash kissed me, and then his serious
expression evaporated, becoming a huge grin of mirth he couldn’t
contain. “You’re so twisted!” he chuckled, his dark eyes shining.
“I love it, that you think the way you do.”

“No one has ever gotten me the way you have,”
I said, smiling up at him happily. “I think I care about you most
of all for that, that you understand who I am, and like it, and
don’t think I’m strange, for the way I think and the things I
say.”

“Oh, I think you’re strange,” Lash hissed, as
he began to move on me. “But it’s a good strange, like me. We’re
the same, Sar. We care about the same things, like the same things.
And I like the things you say. I like that you’re like me, that you
say things out of the blue, and sometimes they are so funny I can’t
stop laughing. No woman’s ever made me laugh before, not like you
do.”

Lash kissed down my neck, and with gentle
pressure, he slid his hooked fangs into me. They were so small they
didn’t hurt much, and he was very careful, as he always had been
before, not to tear my skin. He gently drank from me as he loved
me, and I caressed him, loving the feel of him inside me
completely.

A minute later, Lash gently withdrew his
fangs, pausing his lovemaking. “I love the taste of you, the smell
of you, the feel of your body,” he hissed, kissing my face, my
neck, and my lips in tandem. “I love your strength, and your
softness, your passion and your tenderness. I love everything about
you, Sarelle McGarran.”

Lash paused in speaking, then continued. “I
love that you said ‘yes,’ that you wanted to be my mate, that you
saw the man inside me, that you loved me even when everyone told
you there was nothing good in me,” he hissed, his voice choked with
emotion. “I love that you believed in me, Sar. No other woman ever
has. You believed in me enough to risk your life for me. I care
about you most for that, for believing I could be more than
everyone thought I was, including me.”

I kissed him deeply in reply and he stroked
me gently with his tongue. Lash pulled back, and looked down at me,
as he began moving his body rhythmically on mine once more. “Cry
out for me, my Mate,” he hissed affectionately. “Tell me you love
me.”

I crested the wave, and Lash felt me begin to
come. He thrust into me hard and deliberately, turning my soft
moans into loud screams as he deepened my orgasm. And this time, I
said to him what I knew he most wanted to hear, what he’d been
hoping to hear from a woman for years. “Oh, Tristan!” I screeched
in pleasure. “I love you, Tristan! Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Lash faltered when he heard me call him by
his real name, and then he was shaking over me as he thrust rapidly
into me, sucking my neck gently as he began to jerk, climaxing in
my arms. He shouted my name as he came, clutching my body to his so
hard he bruised my skin. As our orgasm ebbed, he sank down on me,
breathing hard, our skin covered with beads of sweat.

Lash was trembling in my arms. I held him
close, stroking his hair, feeling his fangs brushing my neck
.
What I’d said to him moved him so much he partly changed to
snake.
“Shh, it’s okay.”

“I...I love you, Sar,” he hissed softly, his
face buried in my neck, still timorous. “I feel what you feel, all
of it. God help me, I love you so much I’m drowning in it. And if I
was dying, I’d want to die just like this, here with you.”

“Shh,” I said tearfully, overcome myself. For
a few minutes we didn’t speak. Part of that was my shock—that Lash
had finally said the words I’d waited for so long.

“I never told a woman that before,” he said
finally, clearly uneasy. “I feel like I’m lying at your feet
helpless, and offering you my underbelly, waiting for you to crush
my head with your foot. It was part of the reason I held off for so
long, telling you the words, because I knew I was going to feel
this afraid.”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said
emotionally. “I love you. I’m glad, that you love me, too.”

“It’s like a fire in my veins, what I feel
for you,” he murmured. “It’s with me all the time, every time I
think of you, see you, or smell the scent of you. I always thought
Dev was a hopeless romantic, to waste so much time writing poetry,
or composing songs. I never understood why he bothered, or what the
point was. But I get it now. He was trying to give the feelings
form, to share what he felt in a way the person he cared for could
understand.”

I held him to me, his breathing slowly
quieted, and he rested his head on my shoulder. We didn’t speak,
but it was like the other times we’d spent together like this,
where it was okay we weren’t talking, because it was enough to just
be together, holding each other.

“I was always on the outside looking in,” he
whispered. “I’ve never felt like this, that I was part of
something.”

“You’re part of me. I’m only sorry I didn’t
tell you how much you meant to me months ago, Tristan. That night
in the hotel room, when you first changed for me—”

“I saw it, in your eyes,” he interrupted.
“And no matter what I told you, no matter how much I denied it, I
know you saw it in mine. I hadn’t had human eyes for so long, Sar,
I’d forgotten I needed to hide my emotions, how easy it was to see
what I was feeling in my eyes. I didn’t mean for you to see what I
felt, I didn’t want to complicate your life any. I meant what I
said later, that you had enough men that loved you.”

I remembered what he’d admitted to me and
Devlin in Davy’s, and knew that was a white lie. He had meant to
complicate my life, he’d wanted to get me pregnant, so he could be
with me instead of Theo. But I left it alone, because it was past,
and it didn’t matter. And the absolute truth was I had briefly
considered asking him to use protection that day. But when he had
told me that he’d not been with anyone but me, I’d decided not to.
Because, like him, I really hadn’t wanted to use any, either. I’d
wanted to feel his skin on mine, in mine. And I deserved my share
of the blame for that. “You were the one I wanted to love me,” I
murmured. “Because the moment I knew you were dying, all I could
think of was getting to you, to save you.”

“Hold me in your arms,” he asked softly. “I
want to be in your arms, Sar.”

I held him to me, and hugged him, running my
fingers through his hair as I kissed him.

“Tell me again you love me,” he whispered,
clutching me.

“I love you, Tristan,” I said tenderly. “I
love your fierceness, your wacky sense of humor, your air of danger
you always seem to carry around you, your tenderness, your strength
and speed. I love your silence, that sometimes it’s enough for you
to be with me and not talk—that words between us aren’t always
necessary.”

Tristan, my Tristan, looked into my green
eyes with his dark ones, and then he kissed me very, very gently.
He gave me a soft tender smile, and caressed my cheek with his
hand. Then he nestled himself in my arms, and soon after, he
drifted into sleep. I held him as he slept, stroking his hair,
thinking that maybe we were both a little crazy. But I realized
something, too, holding him there in my arms.

I was happy. Not content, not satisfied, not
okay. I was happy, groundbreakingly happy, earth-shatteringly
happy, as I hadn’t been since that long ago spring with Theo,
before he’d been taken and everything in my world had changed. And
I was holding the reason for that happiness sleeping in my
arms.

“This is what I wanted from my life,” I said
softly, looking down at him. “This is all I ever wanted, just to be
this happy, to love someone, and to have someone who loved me, the
real me. And you’ve given that to me, Tristan.”

Maybe I hadn’t been the best person I
could’ve been. I’d made mistakes, but screw it, so did everyone
else. And I was going to let it go, all the things I’d done wrong,
because ruminating about it for the rest of my life wasn’t going to
change anything.

I had Tristan. We had each other. It was
enough that he was with me, that I had him here in my arms, and
despite all I’d lost, I hadn’t lost him.

About the
Author

Tara Fox Hall’s writing credits include
nonfiction, horror, suspense, action-adventure, erotica, and
contemporary and historical paranormal romance. She is the author
of the paranormal action-adventure
Lash
series and the
vampire romantic suspense
Promise Me
series. Tara divides
her free time unequally between writing novels and short stories,
chainsawing firewood, caring for stray animals, sewing cat and dog
beds for donation to animal shelters, and target practice.

Other works by the author with
Melange Books, LLC

Return To Me

Surrender to Me

The Origin of Fear
in
Spellbound 2011
Anthology

Night Music
in Midnight Thirsts II
Anthology

Partners
in Midnight Thirsts II
Anthology

Kink
in Wicked Christmas Wishes
Anthology

The Oath
in Wicked Christmas Wishes
Anthology

Bedtime Shadows
Anthology

Make Me Behave Anthology

Latham’s Landing, An
Anthology

The Oath

Her Frozen Heart,
in
Frozen Anthology

Night
Music
, a Novella

The Promise Me Series

Promise Me, Book 1

Broken Promise, Book 2

Taken in the Night, Book
3

Taken for his Own, Book
4

Promise Me Anthology, Book
4.5

Immortal Confessions, Book
5

Her Secret, Book 6

Point of No Return, Book
7

Lost Paradise, Book 8

Dark Solace, Book 9

Eye of the Storm, Book
10

Coming Soon

Sundown-Serena—Promise Me Series,
Book 12

The Perfect Moment,
in
‘Propose To Me’ Anthology

Turn the page for more books
available
from Melange Books

Also Available
From Melange Books

Atlantis Vortex

by Sultry Summers

Did Atlantis exist? Had she found an
entrance? Discovering a small, ancient Egyptian pyramid in a most
unlike place, Southern Florida, Archaeologist Jessica Carter is
confronted with history alerting questions. Excavating the
mysterious entrance Jessica becomes the nexus of a series of life
threatening incidents. Each event grows more baffling, as do the
interventions that save her. Finally an earthquake collapses the
pyramid, followed by a hurricane that buries it, ending her
excavation, and the military providing security, recalls her to
active duty. Jessica fears her career is over.