Chapter 41 – A Vampire's Kiss

Soft lips rasped against a bare shoulder, lingering long enough to induce a visible shudder before it moved to torpidly trace the well-formed contours of a shoulder blade, the appendage in question immediately juddering and straining against its confines of flesh and muscle as it sought to prolong the feel of those sinful lips caressing it with barely there kisses and warm exhales.

Pale fingers followed, indolently chasing after lush crimson lips that were busy mapping territories across the midnight canvas that was Tara's muscular back, painting teasing lines over dark flesh and leaving flash fires of desires to go skittering erratically over the vampire's skin in its wake.

Tara shivered, blunt teeth clamping down on a full bottom lip and worrying the tumid flesh as Pam dragged those same fingers up the side of her neck, the act deliberately tardigrade, almost somnolent in its languidness though there was no mistaking the seductive intention behind Pam's touch. Tara shivered anew, thighs clenching beneath the sheets in a futile attempt to quell the growing ache between her legs as Pam slipped her warm questing fingers beneath her thick curtain of atrous hair spilling messily over her shoulders and down her back like a meandering waterfall of India ink. The blonde paused in her ministrations to finger a silken lock, sifting dark tresses tinted with those enigmatic hints of ocean blue and green between her thumb and forefinger and marveling at the silky softness she found beneath her fingertips before she swept aside Tara's clove scented hair, exposing the back of Tara's neck to a covetous, thirsting glaucous gaze.

Spurred by the visual temptation of unchartered flesh, Pam allowed her hand to journey upwards, the pads of her alabaster fingers playing an unapologetically proprietary sonata over the gently protruding ridges of Tara's vertebrae present on the back of her neck, her actions procuring from the prone vampire another tremor along with a low moan that sent a slab of heat to settle in Pam's stomach.

Power pierced the air, wild, savage and indomitable, disturbing an intimate atmosphere fueled by muted candlelight and the heady, humid scent of dusky feminine arousal as Pam shifted against Tara, unfurling her lithe frame only to then boldly press her naked front up against Tara's equally naked side. The sensuous act resulted in a growl that reverberated deep in the bowels of Tara's throat and the coppery tang of blood to momentarily spice the air as Tara clenched her right hand into a tight fist, nails digging so deeply into the palm of her hand that it sliced open vulnerable flesh the color of black gold.

Tara relented the pressure immediately, feeling the wounds close as soon as she retracted the bite of her blunt nails but her body remained tense, tauter than an overstrung bow and ready to snap under the seductive spell her mate had taken to casting over her supine frame. She gritted her teeth against Pam's tentiginous onslaught, fighting desperately to collar her raging beast as Pam shifted once more, her mate's erect, aroused nipples grazing the side of her ribcage, the act unintentional as Pam continued to pay assiduous attention to her back by way of butterfly kisses and fleeting caresses but inducing in Tara, a deep need to claim, to take control, to turn over, maneuver Pam flat onto her back and brand every inch of that delectable body of snow with fingers, fangs, teeth and tongue.

The vampire did nothing however, choosing to allow to Pam to lay claim to her body. She lay compliant beneath her mate, allowing the blonde to her chore of memorizing in great detail, the exotic geography that was Tara's body. It was her right, as Tara's mate, to expiscate every nook and cranny of Tara's sinewy frame, every ebb and flow of beautifully sculpted muscles and currently Pam was making no qualms about exercising that right.

The blonde curled a possessive hand over Tara's nape, fingers digging into tense muscles, nails biting into dark flesh with just enough pressure to skirt the borders between pain and pleasure. Tara growled at this, a low, dangerous warning sound that had no effect whatsoever on Pam as she skimmed a kiss to the juncture between Tara's neck and shoulder, lingering until she was satisfied that her mouth had left a perfect, searing impression of the curvature of her lips onto Tara's tepid skin.

When Pam suddenly bit into the corded muscles of Tara's bunched shoulders, blunt teeth closing territorially over midnight hued flesh, Tara's fangs protracted with a subtle click, elongated incisors protruding like ivory daggers from under her upper lip. The vampire snarled into the pillow, hips jerking violently at the unexpectedly rough treatment as feminine segments of her became almost embarrassingly rageescent.

"You are testing my patience, Pamela," Tara warned, her stalwart Southern drawl so contralto that it sounded as though she were attempting to speak through a mouthful of rocks.

As vampire, Tara understood the intention behind such an act – it was Pam marking her as hers, claiming Tara in the most plainly primitive manner as one could but the effect of it was only serving to fans the flames of an arousal Tara knew was already burning out of control. Another undertaking like that from her mate and Tara's control – already fraying at the edges and slipping like water through her fingers – would snap.

"I know," Pam murmured, voice distorted as she indulged in holding Tara's dark flesh between her teeth for a long moment, relishing in how the primitive act was inducing in her mate, all sorts of violent spasms and low, rumbling growls. Reluctantly, she released the bit of flesh, watching mesmerized as the neat impressions her blunt, human teeth left on Tara's skin immediately smoothed back to its usual flawlessness.

Pam sighed and nuzzled at the skin she bit, a damp, warm tongue snaking out to stoke away the sensual hurt of her bite even though the accelerated healing properties afforded to vampires had already preceded her. Still, Pam licked at Tara's cool flesh in between kisses, the hand she curled around the back of Tara's neck relaxing when she felt her mate's body going pliant beneath hers once more, a subtle snick echoing faintly through the air alerting her to Tara's retraction of her fangs. Pam grazed her lips to cool skin in reward then trailed her fingers up into Tara's hair, tunneling through the satiny strands of India ink, gently scratching at Tara's scalp as she went and smiling into Tara's flesh when her ministrations tore a loud purr from her mate's throat.

"So responsive," Pam whispered, approval an evident jingle in her husky rasp. She peppered slow, strategic kisses up to the hollow behind Tara's ear, brushed a fleeting kiss to a dusky earlobe then allowed her lips to meander down to kiss the tip of a thin, faded scar, one of many that ran weeping lines down the expanse of Tara's back.

Tara had nary a clue as to the origins of these scars, nor an inkling of what she had done to incite such punishment but Pam knew that sometimes violence needed no reason or rhyme. Swallowing the instinctive anger that the sight of Tara's scars invoked, Pam settled instead for anointing the scar beneath her mouth with a reverent, cleansing kiss. She put her fingers into play, journeying them down the undulating topography of Tara's back only to then outfit them with the task of mundifying each and every scar it came across with a soothing, calming caress.

Tara sighed audibly as Pam continued to pay homage to the blueprint of violence some unknown individual or individuals had scored onto her back. She remembered with vivid precision, the night Pam had discovered them, remembered how rage and sorrow immediately began vying for dominance over the aristocratic, hiemal features on her mate's face as she sat astride Tara's lap, fingers reaching around the vampire to trace and shape the upraised, violated flesh.

Tara couldn't help but presently tremble as she recalled the manner in which the anger in Pam's stormy azure gaze began seething out of control, the need to exact vengeance, to lash out at the individual who had dared mar her mate's skin backlighting a furious sapphire gaze until Pam's eyes were so vivid a blue the color was almost hyperphysical. Sitting astride Tara, Pam had exhibited all the signs of a powder keg itching for an open flame and it had resulted in kicking awake Tara's deep-seated need to soothe Pam, to tend and care for her mate.

"It's alright, angel," Tara had whispered softly when Pam looked at her with epiphoric eyes, her lithe frame shaking from the force and vigor of her indignation and wrath.

Pam shook her head, incensed almost that Tara was daring to justify the violence whipped into her flesh.

"Nothing about this –" She pressed the pads of her fingers into one of the more brutal scars running parallel along the line of Tara's spine, trembling anew with rage as she felt the puckered, savaged flesh kiss her fingertips "– is alright."

Pam had shaken her head in abject dismay, bitter rage transmuting to a deep sorrow that unfurled like a bittersweet perfume in the air. "Someone used your skin as parchment, a whip as a writing implement and scored their appetency for violence and inflicting pain into your flesh. Nothing about such barbarism is alright, Tara."

"It was a long time ago, Princess," Tara had responded, her voice quiet, purposefully susurrant. A dark hand lifted, two limber fingers tucking themselves beneath Pam's chin. Tara lifted Pam's head until a turbid but still furious cerulean gaze collided with her steady, calming orbs of obsidian. "Do my physical imperfections make you love me any less?"

"They make me love you more."

Tara was snatched from her ruminations when she felt something wet and hot splash onto the small of her back. A second, similar sensation baptized her dark flesh, which was then promptly succeeded by a soft sniffle. It prompted the vampire to turn immediately beneath Pam, an expertly executed maneuver too quick for human eyes and before Pam knew what had transpired, Tara had sat up, pulled Pam onto her lap and enclosed her grieving mate into the safe cage of her arms.

"Pamela." Tara's low alto emerged on a palpably distressed note, low hums of energy stabbing into the air in reaction to her mate's tangible pain. She tightened her embrace when Pam's lithe frame shook against her, muscular arms wrapping around that supple body kissed by snow like bands of steel, Tara immediately turning her head to press her lips pacifyingly into Pam's hair when she felt Pam's tears fall to wet her clavicle. "Shh…"

Pam sniffled and buried her face into the crook of Tara's neck, desperately breathing in her mate's unique blend of musk, cloves and sandalwood even as her fingers continued to play a soothing aria over Tara's scar riddled back. "I'm so sorry this happened to you," she whispered brokenly into dark flesh. "I know you don't remember but…"

"I know." Tara rocked Pam in her arms, lips dragging across flaxen locks to graze a kiss to a warm temple. She breathed in her mate's powerfully feminine scent – lavender and honeysuckle, that lone strand of vanilla twining listlessly after the two more predominant bouquets, then moved down to tenderly kiss Pam's cheek. "It's alright," she whispered, repeating the words she had spoken to Pam the first night they were intimate and Pam had uncovered the tragically beautifully canvas that was Tara's scar riddled back.

Pam splayed her hands over Tara's back, running fingers up and down upraised flesh, committing to memory, the line and texture of each scar, her mate centering her currently overwhelmed sensibilities by simply holding her close, establishing tactility between their naked bodies, the act less to incite arousal and more to maintain a state of calm.

The pair was quiet for a long moment, Tara simply cradling Pam to her, their naked fronts flush against each other, Pam's fingers in constant motion as they roamed and learned the scarred topography of Tara's back, Pam breathing in Tara's scent as greedily as Tara breathed hers.

It seemed an age before Pam finally spoke.

"Tara?"

The vampire in question pulled slowly back, an undertone in her mate's voice prompting the need for Tara to establish an intimate connection with their eyes. When orbs fashioned from obsidian collided with turbid chips of sapphire, Tara couldn't help but swallow as she took in the hauntingly powerful vista that was Pam's tear-stained face and beautifully sorrowful expression.

Tara reached up and tenderly thumbed away tears that clung to Pam's pale cheeks like displaced diamonds then moved down to lovingly cup the side of her face. "Pray, what is it you wish to say, Pamela?"

Pam leaned into the calloused hand, eyes lowering half-mast when Tara immediately reciprocated, playing those lean, strong fingers over her cheek in a gesture that was affectionate as it was proprietary.

"I want to ask something of you tonight," Pam whispered almost silently, the sudden hiss of a sputtering candle snatching away her voice before it could fully establish into the air.

But Tara was vampire, and Tara heard every word, every soft plea Pam's muddled cadence chained to each letter.

"Ask me." Tara shifted the hand palming Pam's cheek, used it to guide Pam's head further up so that their eyes were level with their mates. Energy dripped from the vampire like rain as she awaited Pam's request, staining the air with its savage, immortal potency. "Ask me, Pamela," Tara prompted softly when the blonde remained silent, chewing contemplatively on her lower lip, blue eyes shying away from its midnight counterparts. Tara applied gentle pressure to Pam's cheek, gently encouraging the reconnection of their eyes.

"Have I ever denied you anything?" the vampire questioned, her voice at a deliberate lull. She trained a tenebrific gaze onto brumal features, intently studying the manner in which Pam's eyes fractured into those thousand shades of blue and gray whenever her emotions overwhelmed her.

"No," Pam whispered. She turned and brushed her lips to the heart of Tara's palm, a small smile gracing her lips when her kiss elicited a shiver to go running up the beautifully sculpted arm. "Never."

"Then ask me."

"Yield to me," Pam finally obsecrated. Her courage finally finding second wind, she turned and bore a suddenly determined and unyielding cobalt gaze at Tara. "Just for tonight. Yield to me, Tara."

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"Tara."

Tara blinked, using the mundane act to clear away the mental fog clouding her senses and ballooning her vision out of focus. She pivoted her head and found her mate standing in a wedge of lamplight, the glow of artificial aurulent light turning alabaster skin almost translunary, as though Pam were glowing from the inside out.

"My apologies, angel." Tara brushed imaginary lint off her breeches covered thighs then stood in a fluid motion only an immortal could achieve. Tara fashioned a series of quick, confident steps that brought her to a perfectly executed stop inches before Pam. Unable to resist, she leaned in and brushed her lips softly against her mate's, sighing when Pam reached around and curled an insistent hand around the back of her head, applying pressure until Tara deepened the kiss, opening her mouth just slightly to allow Pam's full bottom lips to slip between the seam of her mouth. She suckled at the sweet flesh, sipping indulgently at the sweetness that always seemed to linger on Pam's lips.

"You are a million miles away tonight, sweetheart," Pam observed, voice emerging husky and low when she finally, reluctantly relinquished the sensual assault her mouth had bestowed upon Tara's.

Tara's responding smile was decidedly bittersweet as she slipped an errant lock of corn silk hair behind Pam's ear. "Yes," she agreed quietly. She sighed, closed her hand into a fist then carefully ran her knuckles down a shockingly smooth cheek, marveling at the warmth she found, the impossible softness.

"I know this is hard for you," Pam revealed, her voice equally quiet, deliberately soft so as to not puncture the weighty atmosphere blanketing her and her mate. She stepped closer to Tara and slipped her arms around Tara's neck, smiling tenderly when Tara immediately curled an arm around her waist, anchoring Pam to her macilent frame, the act protective as it was openly possessive. "If there was any other way…"

"There isn't." Tara sighed and it emerged as a sweet, mournful sound, her immortal power humming almost audibly amidst the brumous San Franciscan weather, disturbing the wisps of fog laying horizontally abeyant in the air like shredded curtains. She glanced up at the caliginous sky speckled with an array of stars that looked like diamond dust then back down into eyes the color of a stormy, tempestuous sea.

"Why tonight?" Tara inquired softly as she reached up once more to gently stroke the side of Pam's face, quietly observing her mate with an expression that could only be described as openly venerate. Dark eyes softened, immortal features only gods and angels saw fit to possess and wear relaxing when Pam instinctively tilted her head, indulging unashamedly in the vampire's tender caress.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to enlarge upon that cryptic inquiry," Pam murmured distractedly as she pushed her cheek further into Tara's calloused palm, her body molding further into Tara's embrace, the bold alchemy of musk, cloves and sandalwood combined with her mate's close proximity almost rendering her to insensibility. "Your close proximity makes it very difficult for me to think."

"Tonight," Tara elucidated over a small smile her lips curved into upon Pam's easy admission of how Tar so easily rendered her incoherent. She dragged Pam further into her embrace, took a much needed moment to duck her head and nuzzle into the side of Pam's neck, inhaling deeply, the bouquet of lavender, honeysuckle and vanilla, savoring Pam's natural warmth before she reluctantly reemerged to allow her eyes to find temporary residence in a glaucous gaze currently tinged with curiosity and embranglement. "You pressed for this undertaking to occur in August. Why?"

Clarity dawned in Pam's gaze at Tara's spiel. "Do you remember what you divulged to me, at the infant stages of our courtship about the receding days of summer?" She leaned in and kissed the corner of Tara's mouth, smiling once more when Tara immediately turned her head, lips chasing lazily after Pam's, seeking a kiss. Pam acquiesced, allowing her mouth to be captured and explored by a pair of dusky pink lips that kissed her with the expertise of a highly skilled lover.

"Illuminate me," Tara husked against that sweet mouth, well aware of what she had disclosed to her mate, but curious to see how much knowledge and memory Pam had retained from those early nights where their courtship had barely begun fruition.

"You said that the receding days of summer always 'pickled you with nostalgia,'" Pam murmured, heart clenching in her chest as she recalled the melancholy staining Tara's dark gaze. She pressed her lips to Tara's cheek. "I engineered for this undertaking to occur tonight in hopes that it might translate into a memory that would counteract your melancholy that this time of the year afflicts you with." Another press of lips, this time to the line of a strong, stubborn jaw before Pam pulled back slightly to peer hesitantly into a pair of eyes that in the moonlight glowed like black jewels set aflame. "Did I do wrong?"

"No, my beautiful angel." Tara splayed her fingers over the small of Pam's back, using the act to draw her mate impossibly closer to her. "How could such a carefully constructed thought be wrong?" She kissed Pam again, overwhelmed by her mate's disclosure. "Thank you, for being so considerate of my well-being, for loving me, for being mine."

"I'll always be yours," Pam declared fiercely, almost brokenly. She locked a turbulent Prussian blue gaze onto a pair of eyes that rivaled the night sky. "Always, Tara. We promised each other forever and forever we shall have."

"No more let life divide what death can hold together," Tara recited memoriter, her voice immediately dipping into maudlin waters as she verbalized the magistrate's words to her, words that were a permanent, persistent, unrelenting reminder of what was to come for her and Pam. The words had a momentarily vertiginous effect on her senses before realization sank in and Tara audibly swallowed a gut-wrenching sob as the burden she was about to voluntarily bear came down hard to weigh heavily on her shoulders.

Pam felt her heart break behind the wrap of her ribs as a rich crimson tear sundered Tara's cheek, tears of her own acting like hot needles behind her lids when the vampire turned a beautifully broken tenebrific gaze onto her. Pam reached up and thumbed away the hematic tear then cradled Tara's face lovingly in the palm of her hand.

"Be strong, beloved." She leaned in and placed a soft, sweet kiss to Tara's lips. "For one last night, be strong for me," Pam whispered against Tara's mouth, the vampire shivering as her mate's warm breath shattered onto her tepid flesh. "Then tomorrow, I promise to weather and any and all tribulations with you equally."

Tara swallowed another sob, but with her pain and fear so great, it manifested in the form of two scarlet lines that meandered slowly down her cheeks. She clutched desperately, frantically at Pam's back with one hand, the other trembling almost violently as she lifted it to alight her palm on a soft, warm cheek.

"I don't want to hurt you," Tara almost whimpered, her voice hoarse with tears. "Taking your life…it's abhorrent, to both the human and vampire in me. I don't want to outfit myself as your executioner, Pamela. The very thought is enough to destroy me."

"I'll follow you and make a heaven out of hell," Pam narrated, briny tears of her own spilling down her cheeks, her voice cracking under the onslaught of tears, Tara standing before her looking so forlorn and shattered heightening her own grief. "And I'll die by your hand, which I love so well." Blue eyes luminous with unshed tears sought for orbs of pitch that were rimmed with red, the presentation of her mate's tears so stark and evident before her almost succeeding in careering her will off its tracks. But she had to be strong. She had to be strong in order for Tara to be strong.

And so she pressed on, guilt a festering wound on her soul and a toxic agent in her blood as she pushed forth from her lips, words that she knew was going to splinter and tear the already cracked and bleeding fragments of Tara's broken heart.

"Tara, you're not taking what I wouldn't gladly give. Please, beloved. Don't make tonight anymore uphill than it already is. We both know that you would not have engaged me to bring me into your orbit had you not possessed the will and strength to overcome this hurdle." Pam ghosted a kiss to Tara's lips, lingered to allow Tara's spicy, earthy scent to skate over her tongue. "Be strong for me," she pleaded against dusky lips. "Be strong."

Tara inhaled deeply, albeit needlessly, tears of a rich, dark vermilion sundering her face in eager droves but she made no attempt to conceal them, choosing instead to wear them as badges of honor as she took a deliberate step back from Pam, her arm dropping from around her mate's trim waist. She took in what she now knew was going to be the very last vista she'll ever obtain of Pam as a mortal being.

As such, she felt herself entitled to allot these few precious minutes of studying with deliberation and method, the manner in which Pam's cheeks were florid from exerting her emotions, the crystal clear tears that dotted her cheeks like displaced diamonds, parted crimson lips releasing warm exhales that manifested in small, billowing plumes of condensation. She imprinted to memory, the throb of her pulse currently tapping a staccato tempo against the side of her pale neck, the healthy rush of blood chugging through the network of veins beneath Pam's skin, the steady drumming percussion of her still beating heart.

She observed intently, methodically, almost obsessively, obtaining any and all intelligence of Pam as her natural, mortal self, cataloging each piece of evidence into her vast mind, committing each fragment of knowledge to her memory.

Then, unable to stave off the inevitable, she slowly unfurled an arm and held out a trembling hand. "Come here to me, angel."

Pam stepped forward and took the proffered hand, grasping tightly, reassuringly at Tara's fingers, long, slender fingers of snow tangling with strong, lean fingers of midnight, the contrast of the different hues of their skins as lovely and as perplexing as the individuals they belonged to. Pam allowed Tara to lead her towards the epicenter of her manor's gardens, choosing to remain mumchance even though she could feel the tremors running down Tara's arm into her own, see the rigid line Tara's shoulders had taken to shaping, the ramrod stiffness of her muscular back and the jerkiness of her calculated gait deep into her flowering, verdant garden.

When they had reached their destination, Tara paused, eyes scanning the scene in front of her, her incredibly tense back kept to Pam. A dark head bowed, dark hair temporarily shielding a face currently housing immortal features twisted with pain and stricken grief. For a long moment, Tara stood frozen. Then, a visible shudder ran through her sinewy frame as she attempted to come to terms with her current predicament before she finally, slowly, pivoted, locked a devastated tear stained gaze onto Pam and used their attingent hands to draw the blonde into her arms.

"Look at me," Tara bade quietly, her low alto rough with emotion, the torrent of tears not yet shed almost distorting her softly spoken command.

Pam immediately obeyed and looked. She gazed deep into twin pools of midnight and obsidian, flecked with those barely discernible chips of earthy brown. She expected to feel fear, apprehension, even a toddick of doubt but as she stared openly and unapologetically into Tara's eyes, Pam knew that any attempt at such trivial emotion was futile. Here, residing in the safe harbor of Tara's arms, surrounded by thick waves of wild, indomitable energy and the alluring, unique blend of musk, cloves and sandalwood, Pam didn't know how to feel anything but love, cherishment, affection, devotion and tenderness. She was safe with Tara; she knew this down to the marrow of her bones. She was safe, safe and endlessly protected in the confines of those beautifully sculpted arms currently twined around her, holding her steady, holding her close, never letting go.

"I love you, Tara," Pam whispered devotedly, truth a most melodious note in her husky inflection. She reached up and tucked a lock of atrous hair behind Tara's ear, her open, unhesitant declaration of love sending a fresh trail of bloody tears to descend from the corner of Tara's eye. "I love you," she repeated softly.

"I love you too," Tara replied in turn. Understanding that they were finally at the point of no return, that retreating was all but impossible and improbable, Tara leaned in and placed a reverent, painfully tender kiss, just one, to Pam's tumid lips. Then, she pulled back, took a deep shuddering breath and looked straight into the bathic depths of her mate's eyes comprised of those thousand shades of blue fleck with gray.

"You will feel no pain," Tara spoke in a low, crooning monotone as she weaved her particular brand of compulsion over Pam, her words flaying off a sliver of her soul as she actively impinged upon Pam's autonomy of free will. "You will feel no fear and I promise, with all that I am, to catch you when you fall."

Pam nodded, brows creasing slightly as Tara's influence slithered into her cognizant mind, settling its hooks into her.

Tara swallowed and caressed the side of Pam's face. "Close your eyes." Those ivory lids sliding obediently over azure orbs was akin to a silver stake in her heart. Tara's knees trembled and she ran her quivering knuckles down Pam's cheek, knowing that after tonight she would never again feel that euthermic warmth emanating from soft, magnolia-white skin. Her sinewy frame shaking like a leaf in the wind, Tara bent and brushed her lips to Pam's. "Good night, sweet angel."

Heart breaking to jagged smithereens in her chest, her very soul aflame with agony and regret and with tears streaking down her face, Tara stole one last, fleeting glimpse of Pam's face.

Then, she distended her fangs and struck.

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A/N – Tara quoted Percy Bysshe Shelley and Pam quoted Shakespeare. And I'm wrapping up, promise. Just one more chapter. Bear with me.