A/N – Nothing to say. Unless you want to know that I just spent the last six hours going through a horror/gore movie marathon. Thanks for those who took the time to not only read but type out a review.
Chapter 14 – The Beast Within
A shoulder collided into her own.
By sheer force of habit, Tara allowed her body to react to the unexpected assault. She executed a perfectly stumble, her body jerking slightly in feigned surprise as she allowed the touch to propel her back a fraction. The vampire even went so far as to allow a small gasp of indignation to flit out from dark pink lips.
It was an act, nothing more. Centuries of living in a world dominated by humans had taught the vampire that sometimes, blending in with the sheep proved more advantageous than prowling cockily about like the beast she actually was.
"I beg your pardon, good s..."
The apology, initially delivered with genuine sincerity, tapered off as a pair of deep-set whisky colored eyes fell onto Tara.
Tara righted herself, readjusting the felt derby hat propped slightly askew on her head as she silently bore the stranger's rapidly critical gaze with thinly veiled patience.
The man who had bumped into Tara assessed his unexpected victim with a gaze that was quickly filling with disdain, a sneer begging to appear on his lips.
Tara eyed him in return, frost creeping over midnight eyes as the air around the stranger grew shrill with derision.
The stranger was handsome, almost classically so. He wore a face that was all high cheekbones, a strong jaw and winged eyebrows. Deep set eyes the color of whisky held a distant sort of arrogance that could only come from one of wealthy stock and his lips were tumid enough to offer a sort of cruel sensuality that no doubt sent many a woman swooning.
He was tall. Not ungainly so but enough to allow him to carry himself in a manner that bespoke of a confidence that bordered on egotistical. Underneath his upper class garments, all of which were neatly pressed, he boasted an athletic physique of carefully nurtured musculature.
In short, he was the physical embodiment of the kind of romantic, heroic character found in romance novels.
And he was well aware of his harshly masculine beauty, judging from the way he smirked superciliously at Tara, as though he were waiting for her to press a hand to her heart and bat her eyelashes at him.
Tara was decidedly unimpressed.
Not because she had a fierce inclination towards the fairer sex but because the haughtiness oozing off this stranger was irrevocably off putting.
As was the blatantly disparaging look in his eyes.
"Begging your pardon...miss."
The apology was mocking, transparently so, the word "miss" constructed in a manner that was meant to sound insulting rather than polite.
Tara's fangs instinctively snarled, making its displeasure known by sending a ripple of pain to explode down her guns.
The vampire did not know whether it was her cisvestitism, the color of her skin or a potent combination of both that resulted such an expression of disdain to paint stark colors over his face.
Frankly, she didn't care. Not when the beast within howled for retribution for such rude an engagement.
Tara cinched her jaw.
She forced her beast to heel, wrestled it back into a cage Tara carefully constructed out of civilized clothing, astute manners and sheer, obstinate will.
She acknowledged the man's address with a curt nod, face impassive. Sidestepping the stranger, whose whisky-soaked eyes followed her sinewy frame with deep scrutiny, Tara's right boot had only just managed to hover over the bottom step of the brothel when a sudden gust of wind blew directly in the stranger's direction.
Tara froze.
She froze, for in the wind, came a scent that by now, she knew better than her own.
Lavender and honeysuckle.
That achingly beautiful strand of melancholic vanilla.
Pam.
Tara's fangs snapped down with a vicious click, cutting into the inside her lip.
The coppery tang of blood sang its sweet victory into the air around the vampire as Tara brought her foot down on the bottom step with more force than was necessary, leaving a visible crack.
Control.
She would have it, come hell or high water.
The vampire took another step until she was standing on the bottom step and off the sidewalk.
She would have made it up to the second step had the wind not blew a second petulant gust at the stranger and therefore at Tara.
Blood.
She smelled blood.
Blood that came laced with the bouquet of lavender, honeysuckle and vanilla.
Tara's reaction to smelling Pam's blood on this stranger was virulent, unhinged.
Control – what little the vampire had of it the second she realized that this stranger had recently come from the warmth of Pam's bed, from her arms – snapped.
Tara moved in a fashion too quick for human eyes, her body all but an odd blur as she redirected herself down the steps towards the stranger who had taken to walking down the sidewalk at a languid amble.
He even had the nerve to whistle.
Tara grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and sent him careening into the side of the brothel building.
The side of his face met the hard structure with an unpleasant thud.
Something cracked.
Tara hoped it was a bone.
The man let loose a string of expletives that turned the air blue at Tara's rough assault. He struggled against the vampire's grip, was flabbergasted when he found that he couldn't break the vice-like hold Tara had on him.
"I say!" he spoke instead, turning his outrage into a vocalization. His voice was rich, cultured and plummy.
The voice of the aristocracy.
Tara pushed him further into the wall.
"What is the meaning of this?" the stranger demanded, wincing slightly as the coarse texture of the wall scraped abrasions against his cheek.
"What. Did. You. Do?"
Low words. Dangerous words. Etched in steel and fortified by a low rumble that boiled up from deep within Tara's chest.
"I demand you unhand me at once!"
Tara pulled him back towards her then slammed him back up against the wall, eliciting a pained gasp.
"Answer the question, stranger."
Tara could barely formulate coherent words. Growled spilled over full lips that were parted to allow sharp incisors to rest dangerously over plump, vulnerable flesh.
The vampire's entire sinewy frame was nothing short of organic steel, thrumming with a rage that sought to find an outlet in the man she currently held captive.
She wanted to kill him.
She wanted to kill him for daring to wear Pam's scent and blood like badges of honor.
The beast within her purred with approval, salivating at the thought of tasting the stranger's blood .
"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about," the man hissed, still managing to adopt an air of righteous indignation despite the way Tara kept his body pressed painfully up against the side of the brothel building.
Tara growled and spun him around so that his back was to the wall. She kept her fangs concealed but knew she didn't need them to incite terror into this stranger.
Not when she could feel the burn of her anger scalding her eyes.
The man, now able to see his attacker, narrowed those whisky-colored eyes as he took in the sight of Tara.
"Negro bitch."
He spat at her, the wad of spittle landing on a dark cheek.
Tara didn't react to the racial slur. Words were words, only given razor edges and ammunition when the receiver allowed such hurtful decoration.
Tara didn't.
Instead, she calmly wiped off the spittle running down the side of her face. Then, she drove a fist into the stranger's stomach, using not even a fraction of her vampiric strength.
No. She wanted him alive.
Pulverizing his innards would be a satisfaction that would prove all too brief.
And she needed answers.
Tara watched, unmoved as the stranger's body jackknifed, his upper torso doubling over from the force of the punch and the shrieking notes of pain that exploded out from his sternum.
"Don't make me repeat myself, stranger."
Tara's tone was low, chillingly cold. Power throbbed in the air around her, curdling its molecules until the vampire's energy was almost sentient, tangible.
The man righted himself as best he could, one hand clamped over his abused stomach, his breath sawing erratically in and out of his parted mouth.
Tara was almost bemused when he swung out a fist, intending to clock her in the jaw.
She called forth the speed afford to her as a vampire and blurred off to the side.
"What..."
The man turned around, jumping violently when Tara reappeared at his left.
Tara smiled, revealing slowly, the fangs she had so carefully kept concealed.
The man took one look at those lengthy incisors and made a strangled sound in his throat. He stumbled backwards, almost tripping in his haste to widen the distance between him and Tara, eyes wide with alarm.
Fear. The man stank of it and the pungent aroma of his terror only served to act an aphrodisiac for Tara's beast.
The vampire didn't allow her prey to go far.
The stranger had barely taken five clumsy steps before Tara was back in front of him, grabbing a rough fistful of the lapels of his frock coat and throwing him back up against the wall.
His back hit the wall with an unpleasant thump, his feet dangling inches from the ground as Tara held him up by his neck.
"W-what are you?!" he managed to choke out as he clawed futilely at the dark fingers that were akin to bands of steels wrapping around his throat.
"Your executioner should you continue to delay this conversation," Tara snarled, tightening the grip she had on the stranger's throat.
He let loose a wet gurgle and wheezed in a manner that sounded painful if pathetically pitiful.
"I...I don't know what you mean."
Any bravado the man held in his possession slipped like mercury through his fingers as Tara released the full extent of her indomitable power.
It fairly screamed through the air, causing the molecules that engineered the cold, crisp atmosphere of San Francisco to throb with energy. It was almost palpable, unavoidable and absolutely undeniable.
And Tara focused it all on him.
The man whimpered and tried to curl in on himself, feeling as though multiple hands were pressing on all sides of his body, threatening to contort him into a space that felt far too small. His head buzzed like a nest of angry hornets and whether this phenomenon was from fear or something otherworldly, he did not know.
"P-please. Have mercy," he whimpered, still trying in vain to pry those immovable fingers off his neck.
"Did you patronize Ms. Beaufort this evening?" Tara demanded, loosening her hold a fraction, enough for the man to articulate a response.
"My whore?"
The brutal slap came out of nowhere, Tara's hand but a blur as she brought it up to collide with almost vampiric force against his cheek.
Blood sprayed out of the man's mouth, both his upper and lower lip splitting open like dry cracks in the ground. The skin on his cheek exploded with red, the capillaries beneath his sun-kissed skin starbursting with blood.
Something inside of his mouth was jarred loose.
The stranger groaned in pain.
"She is not your anything!" Tara hissed, vehemence coating her Southern lilt as she shook him violently, the fingers she had around his throat tightening almost fatally before she forced them to loosen. "And don't you ever, ever call Ms. Beaufort a whore in my presence again."
The man nodded, as much as he could from under Tara's vice grip. Pain and horror were graven onto his face, blood pulsing out from the wounds on his lips.
Tara glared at him. She was shaking so hard from rage that the air around her fairly vibrated with her lividness. Her face was an exercise in terror, lips pulled back into an ugly snarl, her fangs glistening under the auric glow of the lamppost nearby.
"Answer. The. Question." Dark eyes zeroed in on whisky-hued ones, hard chips of obsidian that had the promise of death stamped all over them.
"Answer. Or tonight will be your last, stranger," Tara added warningly.
"Y-yes. Yes, I patronized the...Ms. Beaufort this evening," the man confessed, his answer barely intelligible given the manner in which the words practically stumbled out of his mouth in a panic slew.
Tara leaned in, growls intensifying in sound and ferocity. She took a precursory sniff then snarled in a fashion that caused the man jumped violently in Tara's grasp before he took to resuming his fearful study of the vampire's very sharp, very fatal looking fangs.
"I can smell her blood on you," Tara rumbled, her voice barely resembling that of a human's. "You wear not only her scent on you like a second skin but also her blood."
The ancient part of Tara, the part that still subscribed to antiquated notions such as honor and justice, was outraged. Outraged and downright insulted that this man, this stranger, had the audacity to brand a woman with the marks of violence, to break skin and call forth the crimson liquid that sustained life.
Tara snarled and it was a terrifying, feral sound. Her vision reddened and something dangerously primordial sparked in the deep recesses of her eyes.
"Did you hurt her?" Tara growled as she lowered him so that their noses were almost touching. She glared into eyes that were petrified beyond understanding, daring him to lie to her.
"ANSWER ME!" Tara bellowed when the man refused to answer. She shook him once, threw him like a rag doll against the wall and watched, with no trace of satisfaction as his head snapped back and met the hard structure with a sickening crack.
"No! No, please! Please, stop!" the man gasped through pained wheezes. He tried valiantly to struggle out of Tara's grasp, a futile effort on his part but his actions were born out of instinct, a need to survive.
Tara leaned in and pressed her sinewy frame against the length of the man's front. "If I find that you were lying, that you lied to save your pathetic hide, I will find you." She took a deliberate inhale of his scent, committing the combination of citrus and rum to memory. "I will find you and make you regret that you ever learned how to draw breath. I will make your worst nightmare seem like a child's fairytale. Do you understand?"
The man nodded, too petrified to do anything but comply. He swallowed, his eyes darting back and forth, looking anywhere but the terrifying image that was Tara's inhuman face.
"Yes," he rasped, voice high with fear. "Please. Please, I beg you. Let me go."
Letting the stranger who had dared laid his ungrateful and unwanted hands on Pam was the last thing Tara wanted to do.
But to kill him would be to cross a line.
A line that would open up a distance between Tara and Pam.
Tara's beast howled as it felt the beginnings of a retreat back to civility. It retaliated, spitting a noxious vat of bloodlust down Tara's veins, causing her fangs to ache with want of blood.
It would be so easy. To bend down just a little more. To snap the man's head sideways, exposing his carotid artery. To see it engorged, pumping with life giving blood.
Sinking her fangs into his neck would be nothing short of glorious.
But she wouldn't do it.
She wouldn't do it for Pam.
"Look at me." Tara released the hold she had on the man's neck, used the same hand to grip his chin in a not so gentle hold. "You will not lay violent hands on Ms. Beaufort, physically, emotionally or sexually. If she tells you to desist, you will desist. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes," came the monotonous reply, the man easily sinking under Tara's thrall.
"You will have no recollection of this encounter. For all you know, you had too much too much to drink and engaged in a barroom brawl. That is how you sustained these injuries of yours."
"Drink…" the man echoed distantly, eyes glassy from being under the influence of Tara's glamor.
Having successfully implanted a new series of memories into the stranger's addled mind, Tara dropped her hands from the man and pushed away from him, disgust seeping from her pores. "Leave this place. Now."
The man took off at a jog, his frock coat whipping slightly behind him like a pair of wings.
Tara watched him go, her body so overcome with the need to take off after the man and rip out his throat that every inert muscle in her tense body shrieked with unholy pain.
Tara ignored the call of her primitive self and forced her fangs into a stubborn retreat back into the sheath of her gums.
She allowed herself a moment in the dark, the thin fingers of fog curling around her, shielding her, as though it sensed her pain, her anguish.
And when her body had finally stopping quivering like a plucked string, her blood not on a hard boil from bloodlust and the need to exact murder in honor of Pam, Tara turned and blurred up and into the brothel.
xxxxxxxx
Tara burst into the arousal choked room, almost tearing the door off its hinges.
Pam, who had been sitting in front the vanity, jumped violently, long fingers of snow immediately reaching out to curl around the handle of a sharpened letter opener sitting close the vanity's mirror.
The blonde turned, blade in hand, only to find Tara standing by the open door, eyeing her with a hawkish intensity that simultaneously made her feel protected and anxious.
"Tara?"
Instinct forced Pam to keep a hold on the letter opener she still had in her tight grasp and although she knew that Tara wouldn't harm her, the almost manic and feral look in those midnight eyes sparked off a deep sense of self-preservation.
"Tara…"
Her vampire didn't answer, didn't look as though she could formulate a coherent sentence. She stared at Pam from where she stood framed by the threshold of the door, fists clenching where they hung on either side of a sinewy frame that was altogether too tense for Pam's liking.
Then, Tara moved towards her. Her gait resembled that of a sleek jungle cat that had its quarry in sight, long limbs stretching out in an almost lazy, predatory prowl.
Pam shivered as Tara came to a stop in front her, dark eyes unreadable, her entire body coiled with tension. A small gasp escaped from crimson smeared lips as Tara's power kicked in.
It was raw. Savage.
It manifested itself in the form of a tingling caress of dangerous energy, burning lightly over alabaster kissed skin. Not hurting, but warning that the owner of such indomitable power did not suffer fools or idiots lightly.
Pam shuddered as the air in the room turned gluey, tangible. She forced herself to put down the letter opener even though some dormant, primitive part of her was reluctant to relent its steely grip around the silver handle.
Then, she gazed up into a pair of tumult obsidian eyes.
Tara stood before Pam, her breathing labored, an odd presentation in of itself for it as a known fact that vampires did not need to breathe.
However, it wasn't the human act of inhaling and exhaling that made Pam's breath catch.
It was the look in Tara's eyes.
There was a raw, petrifying kind of violence in the vampire's eyes. It was like an inferno, blazing hot and bright behind a curtain of ebony, glinting off those midnight pools and lending them a savage glow.
Staring into such enraged eyes was akin to standing in the eye of a ruthless storm. Pam could feel its rage, its chaos, its need to rent and tear and destroy revolving around her, deafening her with its war-cry for blood and retribution.
She should have been afraid to be near such raw destruction.
Instead, she found that there was something dangerously attractive about the heated anger in Tara's eyes.
Pam reached out a hand, the appendage shaking slightly as she extended it slowly towards Tara.
She flinched when Tara dropped heavily to her knees in front of her, effectively kneeling between her legs.
The pale arm retreated, folding back to Pam's side as Tara reached out with both hands and alighted them on either side of Pam's face. Dark fingers began walking over the aristocratic features, each sweep and caress openly and unapologetically proprietary. They were also probing, searching.
For what, Pam didn't know.
But she remained rooted to the bench, Tara's touch rendering her in a state of paralysis.
Tara's fingers possessively roamed the landscape that was Pam's face. They traced the celestial slope of Pam's nose, the delicate arches of her eyebrows. They ran alongside her hairline and down to sculpted cheekbones before tracing the side of a jaw. A thumb brushed over her full lower lip, growls immediately spilling with quick succession out from dark pink lips as they grazed over a sundry cut, barely discernible but still marring the otherwise tumid flesh.
"He hurt you."
Tara's voice was gravelly, as though she were attempting to speak around a mouthful of rocks. Dark eyes flashed with renewed violence, the bloodlust that had barely begun to cool in her veins suddenly finding a second wind.
When Tara moved her traveling fingers down to the column of Pam's throat, the blonde flinched slightly, causing dark eyes to immediately wander down.
The second Tara caught sight of the beginnings of a contusion in the shape of a finger, she recoiled from Pam as though the blonde had burned her.
The vampire shot to her feet, power screaming off her in waves, so much so that Pam shrank back in response.
"Tara..."
"I am going to eviscerate him," Tara snarled, malice screeching from each letter as she pivoted in an almost violent fashion before stalking back towards the open door, every step etched with rage. "I will make him regret the day he was born."
She had barely taken a step over the threshold when Pam ran up to her, clamping a hard grip over Tara's wrist and tugging desperately.
"Stop, Tara. Stop."
Tara swung back to glare at Pam who suppressed a visible flinch at the livid look in Tara's eyes. She tugged at Tara's wrist again, her action urgent, the expression on her face pleading.
"Please." Blue eyes were wide and whether they held fear, worry, anxiety or an awful concoction of all three, Pam didn't know. All she knew was that if she let Tara go, it would break something between them.
"Please," Pam whispered again. "Please, Tara."
Tara cinched her jaw, creating such a dreadful pressure on her teeth that they howled for respite. Dark eyes were wild, feral as they vacillated between the small graze on Pam's lip and the barely there bruise on the side of her neck.
"He adorned you with the banners of violence." Tara's voice was an aria of agony, as though it hurt her to articulate each word. "He hurt you. I want him to pay."
Pam tried for reason, though she knew, deep down, it would not be well received. "Superficial injuries occur during the height of passion, Tara. It is nothing more than an occupational hazard."
Tara snarled and shook Pam's hold off of her wrist, scared than in the heat of her rage, she might exact on the blonde, her own terrible mark.
"He had the audacity to saunter out of your chambers, head held high, whistling when he knew he was in possession of the knowledge of having broken and bruised your alabaster flesh."
Tara was shaking, her entire body vibrating with the need to hurt, to spill fresh blood.
The beast was close to the surface. Dangerously close.
And it only had blood on its mind and murder in its heart.
Pam slamming the door to her room shut momentarily snapped Tara out of her rage-induced stupor.
The vampire turned to find Pam leaning heavily, defiantly against the door, going so far as to cross her arms over her generous chest.
For the first time since she had barged, uninvited into Pam's chambers, Tara suddenly registered the state of undress Pam was in.
The blonde wore nothing but a sheer satin negligee.
Tara suddenly turned around so fast that she not only gave herself whiplash but she fell out of Pam's visual radar for a split second.
Any thoughts of wanting to rip out the throat of the stranger she had unfortunately encountered outside of Pam's establishment fell away in favor of the fact that she had just rudely imposed on the blonde's modesty.
"My apologies, Ms. Beaufort."
Dark eyes trained themselves intently, furiously on the floor, Tara's entire posture one tense, coiled muscle. "I beg your forgiveness for my rude intrusion. I'll let you get dressed."
Eyes still glued to the hardwood floors, Tara began to edge around the silent blonde, freezing when Pam once again reached out to encircle long fingers of ivory around her wrist.
"Stay."
Pam leaned in, feathered a light kiss to a dark cheek then studied Tara for a moment. When she was sure the vampire wouldn't leave, Pam made her way back to the vanity.
Tara kept her back to Pam, refusing to allow perfidious eyes to roam anywhere near the nearly naked blonde. She was furious with herself. Furious for her lack of control. Furious for barging uninvited into a woman's chambers like a drunken scoundrel.
Furious for allowing Pam to see her so unhinged.
Sensitive ears picked up a soft rasp of silk against soft skin. It was followed by a slightly louder whisper of silk sliding against silk as Pam tied the sash of her kimono styled robe around her waist.
"You can turn around, Tara."
The vampire hesitated but then did as bade, schooling the immortal features of her face into a mask of abject apology as she pivoted.
"I beg your humblest apologies, Ms. Beaufort," Tara began, her voice contrite and low with regret, projecting these emotions over the simmer of an anger that still burned through her veins like acid. "I did not mean to impinge upon your modesty. Please accept my deepest regret and forgiveness."
"Tara."
Tara didn't respond to the exasperated manner in which her name was conceived from those tantalizing lips.
Instead, she turned and walked towards a six-peg walnut coat rack standing sentinel by the side of the door. She plucked the black felt derby hat off of her head and hung it on a peg before shrugging off her charcoal-black frock coat.
Tara was still itchy with anger, her skin feeling far too tight over her bones. She unbuttoned the black brocade waistcoat, tugged fitfully at the thin tie adorning her neck as though it were personally trying to choke her.
A pale hand alighting on her shoulder almost made her jump.
"What happened tonight, Tara?"
Tara allowed herself a second of indulgence from that warm hand. Then, she shrugged off Pam's touch, not needing to turn around to see the hurt look that flashed across those wintry features.
She could feel it.
It curled in the air, Pam's upset over Tara's rejection of her touch, like a lingering, unpleasant scent.
Tara hated that she had coaxed such an emotion from the blonde.
But she couldn't bear to face Pam.
Not yet.
Not when her eyes still smoldered with bloodlust and the beast within rent deep, bleeding groves directly under her skin, snarling for release.
Tara turned her attention to the modestly opulent brass bed with its intricate swirls that made up the headboard.
Rumpled sheets and dented pillows greeted her ink-soaked gaze, instantly conjuring up a scenario that made the possessive beast in her roar with fury.
Pam had recently come from that bed.
And she had shared it with another.
Another that wasn't Tara.
The vampire gazed at the bed with equal parts maddening jealousy and fierce yearning. With her superior sense of smell, which was currently unfortunate given the way the room was heady with recently spent sex, Tara could almost visualize the wisps of arousal steaming up from the rumpled bed.
Arousal that whilst was predominately engineered with the aroma of citrus and rum, also came peppered with the faintest notes of lavender, honeysuckle and vanilla.
Tara tore her eyes away, unable to withstand the prolonged visual evidence of Pam's earlier activities. She took purposeful strides to the window, threw it open and stuck out her head, drawing deep, greedy breaths of the frost-bitten briny air, shoulders almost sagging as it helped to bat away the smell of sex and desire.
"You met with Lord Milton."
It wasn't a question and Tara turned briefly to allow her eyes to settle on a pair of azure eyes that were cool and distant if slightly concerned.
"If you speak of the client you recently entertained in your chambers this evening, then yes," Tara replied, her voice even. She turned back to look out into the street. "Briefly in passing."
"What did you do, Tara?"
The vampire let loose a wry chuckle at this. Once again, she was confounded by how easily Pam was able to read her in the short months they were together. The blonde had an uncanny ability to gauge her moods, to divine if she were withholding information or in the process of producing a tidbit.
For a guarded person such as her, Tara was continually astounded by how Pam managed to read her like an open book.
"I nearly killed him."
There was a sharp intake of breath and Tara turned so that she was facing Pam once more. Dark eyes were unapologetic as they met with a sea of winter-blue.
"Why?"
It was an asinine question. Pam knew it the second the sentence had unfurled out from between her lips but she it released anyway. Anything to feed the staggered conversation between her and Tara.
The snow-kissed skin on Pam's arms broke out with goose bumps as Tara barked out a harsh, bitter laugh.
"He wore your scent like a badge of honor." Full lips curled, a vicious sneer threatening to slash a line over that luscious mouth. "He dared spill so carelessly the crimson liquid that gives you life." Tara latched a dark gaze onto Pam's face. "Did you really think I would simply walk past him without exacting some form of retaliation?"
Pam sighed, carding fingers through her thick mop of corn silk hair that was in a slight disarray from her earlier activities. "You can't use my clients as vehicles for your personal vendetta, Tara. It's not right."
"I am vampire. I am obliged to comport myself as one."
Pam bristled beneath the thin veneer of her propriety. "If you've a care for me at all..."
"I care for you so deeply it wrecks me," Tara interrupted, her tone brusque. She pushed off from the window sill and walked towards Pam, her gait stiff, body coiled with tension she had yet to shed.
She stopped in front of the blonde, reached out and traced the small cut on Pam's lip.
"Do you have any idea what you do to me?" Tara's voice was awash in anguish as she followed the sensuous arc of Pam's upper lip. "How much allowing you to your affairs flays my heart with jealously and drowns my soul in failure? This –" she returned to touching the small cut. "– this is a physical manifestation of my failure to protect you from harm." Dark fingers ghosted down Pam's throat, caressed the light contusion marring the otherwise flawless alabaster flesh. "This, is a mark of violence. I allowed such injustice to brand your skin. I failed you."
When Tara attempted to turn her head away, shame coloring the features of her face, Pam cupped the cheek shrouded in shadow and used it to turn the vampire's gaze back to her.
"Look at me."
Tara looked, helpless as always to deny Pam anything.
"I love you."
Tara inhaled sharply as though she had just been delivered a blow to the gut. Midnight kissed eyes widened and her jaw dropped slightly as Pam's words registered with her brain.
Pam smiled at her dark savior's flabbergasted reaction, her expression slightly bittersweet. "I'm sorry. Truly. It is selfish of me to continue to ask so much of you, to love you as I do." Long, slender fingers of ivory caressed a smooth, dark cheek. "But I do, Tara. I love you. With every fiber of my being." She bent, placed a soft, barely there kiss to the corner of Tara's mouth. "All I'm asking for is time. Give me time to close this chapter of my life so that I can start anew with you." Another kiss, this time to soft, full lips that whispered cool breath onto her warm mouth. "Don't you want that too? A fresh page. Unsoiled by the ink of my burdens. Untouched. Clean."
Tara reached up and around, curling her fingers over the back of Pam's head and pressing gently down on it so that Pam was obliged to lean forward.
Their lips met, softly at first, almost tentatively.
Then Pam's tongue swiped over Tara's full bottom lip and Tara growled into her mouth before deepening the kiss, her sinewy frame shaking as she fought against the urge to snap down her fangs.
Fangs that wanted to mark, wanted to claim Pam as their own. They wanted to brand her, not with violence but with pleasure.
It was a deeply intimate act of primal possession Tara knew Pam wasn't ready for.
She slowed the kiss, tapering off the wet, carnal open-mouth assault of lips and tongue into soothing, butterfly brushes of full lips against full lips.
"I would wait an eternity for you," Tara whispered raggedly over Pam's mouth. She dropped a fleeting kiss then pulled back to look deep into turbulent pools of steel-blue and winter gray. "Should you wish it of me, I would walk out into the sun for you."
Pam reached behind Tara and rooted about her head for the thong that held Tara's ocean-kissed hair in a simple queue. Finding the knot, she undid it with expert fingers, allowing the vampire's hair to cascade down her back and over her shoulders like ebony silk.
"I'm not asking for eternity," Pam murmured as she tunneled careful fingers through that glorious mop of heavy supple silk, blue eyes enraptured by the ink-soaked tresses with its highlights of ocean blue and green. "I'm simply asking for a little more decorum and time."
Tara sighed and leaned into the soothing caress of Pam's fingers gently moving up to massage her scalp. "The former is easier said than done, my Princess. I'm not above jealousy. I can't be when it comes to you."
Pam pressed a kiss to a soft cheek, then another to the line of Tara's jaw. "Try. Please." She tilted her head, captured Tara's lips in a soft but lingering kiss. "For me," she added, whispering her plea against that sinful mouth.
"For you," Tara echoed softly, resignedly. She plucked the hand Pam had found purchase in her hair and lifted it to her lips. She pressed a kiss to the inside of the blonde's wrist. "Only for you," she repeated, voice barely audible.
"Thank you."
Pam brushed a last kiss to Tara's lips then turned and made her way back to the vanity, feeling the vampire's midnight gaze following her every move. She sat and picked up a hairbrush, intending to return some semblance of tidiness to her currently unruly flaxen locks when Tara was suddenly behind her, her close proximity and the way low levels of raw energy humming through the air, undeniable.
"Allow me."
Taking the brush from Pam's grasp, Tara took it upon herself to restore order to the disarray Pam's golden mane had gotten itself into.
The vampire was unfailingly gentle as she ran the brush slowly through thick waves of flaxen tresses, each stroke speaking of tenderness and care.
And when she was done, when she had turned that heavy supple mass of flaxen curls into soft silk that in the muted light looked like spun gold, Tara swept Pam's hair aside to expose her smooth alabaster neck.
Tara bent and pressed cool lips to snow-kissed skin, directly over a steadily beating pulse that tripped and quickened in tempo at her lingering kiss.
"Mine," Tara murmured lowly.
Pam shivered at the timber of Tara's voice.
There was as much warning as there was affection in the possessive declaration and though the openly unrepentant claim Tara just bestowed upon her was disquieting, Pam was startled to find that she wanted nothing more than to be Tara's.
She turned and fell into a pair of eyes that gleamed like black jewels.
"Say it again," Pam whispered as she stared deep into a midnight abyss that looked at her as though the moon and stars rose and set at her behest.
Tara lowered herself until she was at eye level with the blonde. She reached out, palmed an impossibly soft, warm cheek kissed by snow. "Mine," she repeated solemnly, resolutely. There was no hesitation, no doubt as she gazed into an endless ocean of pure, deep sapphire.
"You're mine."
TBC