Pam pulled away quickly returning to her seat. This time Tara couldn't stop her no more than Pam could wipe the smug smile off the dark vampire's face.

"Was it as good for you as it was for me?" Tara asked.

Pam shifted. She didn't offer a rebuttal and the rest of the forty five minute ride was spent in relative silence. It occurred to Tara she didn't ask where they were headed. She had blindly followed the woman with hopes of connecting with her. When she first saw the car she considered this as her in, in a matter of speaking. However, the beginning of the ride, while pleasant, hadn't ended in the way she had hoped. If anything Pam disliked her even more.

When they reached a warehouse parallel to a bay Pam got out of the car without saying a word. If Tara hadn't opened the door when she did the vampire would have locked her in via her remote. Tara kept her distance, but she was close enough to discern how her shoulders tensed and rolled in an excruciating pattern.

"Need help with that?" She sped behind Pam with her hands at the ready.

"You remember when you had your hands on my ass in the car?"

"Yea."

"Is it a vivid memory?" she stopped walking and whirled around on the younger vampire with the quizzical look.

"Pretty vivid," Tara smirked liking where this conversation was going. Pam's fingers trailed along the line of her neck to the vampire's collar bone. Tara shivered.

"Pretty?" Pam encouraged. "That the best adjective you could come up with?"

"You're making it hard to think," Tara shared honestly.

She slid her hand down over Tara's shirt and her fingers grazed her right nipple with a taut limb. "I wouldn't want to do that. Especially since that pretty vivid memory is all you're going to have until our wedding night."

"That night's getting even better in my bed."

Pam scoffed, "the things I could do to you can't be considered for someone who has only been with….humans and fairies." She spat. Tara's answer was cut short by a large man holding a door open for them. Pam gestured for Tara to go in first.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"What the fuck Tara," she heard Lafayette say. She paused long enough in the throng to let Pam to pass her. When she did she mirrored the sure strides that seemed to part the crowd. She examined the woman with an appreciative look and she wondered, not for the first time, if this woman could truly be a vampire she could spend eternity with.

"Relax."

"Fuck relaxing," he moved through the crowd easy enough. Fangs were drawn as they passed and the looks Tara was getting weren't helping ease his uncertainty about this club. The music was loud. Pam stopped without warning and gestured around the room.

"Why don't you take a look around, I'll only be a minute," she shared before she left not expecting to followed any further.

Dark hands shoved in her jeans. She studied Pam when she ascended stairs. The attractive line that made an attractive package Tara couldn't take her eyes away from. When she reached the top of the stairs a large man in black and a ponytail led her to the back and the younger vampire lost track of her.

"How are we feeling about this?"

"Well well well," someone behind Tara hummed.

Dark hands withdrew from her jeans and clenched in a fist. She didn't turn. She didn't need to. She didn't even need to hear Lafayette's anxious exclamation. That voice had been one of the last she remembered before she went insane. And that could only be if Franklin had in some way or another been involved in her year of hell.

He drew closer smelling pleased with what he smelled. "That delicious scent never gets old," he stated sincerely. Franklin would have embraced her like an old friend if he knew he would be risking a limb. Tara tended to harbor extensive grudges. It was a character flaw he could ignore, but he wasn't foolish enough to believe that his betrayals hadn't come with a cost.

"Fuck you."

He frowned circling around until he stood in front of her.

"Bitch if you don't kick his ass by the end of the night I'll disown you."

Tara didn't acknowledge her cousin's comment. Her eyes her body responded to Franklin's presence. She wouldn't let her connection with Lafayette blind her to the fact that her former lover had and always will be a cunning killer. He manipulated easily without remorse and she wondered how he could ever believe that he was capable of love.

"That word," he pursed his lips. "You've an extraordinary vocabulary and yet you waste it on vulgar words Tara." He forgot himself and reached for a hand hanging in his face.

She hit his hand away.

His eyes widened going wild and then they fell into a dark wounded glint Tara took pride in. "Is that the way you treat your hero?"

"My hero, you fucked me," she growled.

The line of his mouth curved upward in memory. "I did didn't I."

"That's not what I meant asshole," she looked him over.

He wore a black button up hanging open at the first two buttons. He cut his hair. His hair had always been curly and she remembered running her fingers through them at the precipice, but that was a long time ago. When she didn't know any better and wanted to shut everything including her bothersome cousin out. A relationship with Franklin had been the unfortunate outcome of her recklessness.

A wounded frown folded his face replacing his reminiscent smile. "I know what you meant. Have we really stooped to petty name calling?"

"And that doesn't even begin to share how I fucking feel."

He tilted his head. His eyes were drawn to her lips, "you've always felt nice. But I'm biased," he shrugged, "I loved you the first minute I saw you."

Her feelings were too raw to consider her next response. Tara swung with her right connecting with his jaw. He flew to the side and into a couple and their human. Lafayette pumped his fist, "that's right bitch," he encouraged.

Lafayette instinctively disliked Franklin. His strained relationship with his cousin was even worse when she started acting out and hanging around the type of people Lafayette had warned her to stay away from. It had occurred to him that she didn't listen just to spite him.

Franklin shoved the human away meaning to barrel into Tara, but she had anticipated the move and caught him around the neck with her fist when she side stepped his assault. Fangs were out and her hand gripped the curls she had once stroked tender. She pulled his hair back and her finger dug into his neck stilling his movements.

"Tara!"

The dark woman refused to release him. Brown eyes burned into him. Franklin answered her glare with one of his own.

"Tara," Pam repeated. The duo was surrounded by a wary group of vampires enjoying the show.

The dark skinned woman squeezed before she threw him to the ground. Franklin held his neck rubbing it. He wondered about this woman who had a hold on Tara. He thought surely tonight when he saw her across the room, would be the night he was going to die. If there were going to be killed by someone he would prefer it to be someone he loved. The pale vampire couldn't appreciate Pam's intervention especially when she possessively pulled Tara along with her.

He glared at their hands together and scurried to his feet wiping at his shirt following them outside. The blond wasn't happy and Tara hadn't replied yet.

"Aren't you going to introduce us Tara," he shouted after her.

Tara stopped and Pam stopped as abruptly she Tara would no longer be pulled along.

Franklin satisfied sucked in the cool air, "I know you don't like to be bothered with these like giving me the benefit of the doubt. I fed you for that year in that morgue," he confessed.

Pam tightened her grip on Tara when the dark woman tried to speed toward him. They were simultaneous blurs and Franklin hadn't moved as if he knew Pam would reign in his former lover. He continued. "You would have been found out Tara. How special you are."

She jerked away from Pam she needed to get as far away from Franklin as possible if she wasn't allowed to kill him, she didn't want to hear him.

"Then you would have gotten yourself killed," he still shouted. Tara paused at a car down the street waiting on Pam to unlock the car to try to shut him out.

"The true death would really look good on him." Lafayette glared over his cousin's back toward the vampire Pam now spoke to.

"Not yet."

"You waiting on another year locked away feeding on dead corpses? Kill this motherfucker now," Lafayette insisted.

Tara shook her head and then Pam was beside her and Franklin was gone. "Where'd he go?"

"Do you know who he is?" Pam asked harshly.

Tara didn't like the tone and pushed off the car she was leaning on. "Yes."

The blond shook her head while her hands rested on her hips, "you didn't understand the question Tara. Do you know who he is?"

"I know," she insisted. She knew him well and more than she was comfortable sharing. The discomfort drew her eyes downward.

Pam pushed her against the car, "no you don't because if you did you wouldn't have embarrassed me like that."

"What?"

"You've been a loner for who knows how long," she resented this needed to be explained to someone whom her father arranged for her to marry. "Family is everything. Sure vampires can survive by themselves and most prefer it like that. Which makes sense because most vampires are stupid, the power comes from influence. You can't go around hitting a prominent member of a vampire family just because he locked you up for year and fed you dead bodies. Kill your nieces and nephews," she waved them off, "fine, in the vampire world we chalk that up as a family crisis, and it's handled within the family. Anything outside of that causes alarm."

"You're a fucked up bitch you know that?"

"I'm a practical bitch. You would have killed them and the next night we could have had to go to war."

Tara frowned.

"This is what you're marrying into. Not just the vampire who barely tolerates. There's a world we live in and one you have to get used to if you're going to have a fighting chance at a semblance of revenge."