Sundown & Serena (11 page)

“I still want you to stay, you ass! I care
about you,” I said angrily.

Lash’s arm darted out and he pulled me close,
kissing me more deeply than he ever had. In the kiss, his forked
tongue slipped into my mouth, and licked me. It felt a lot like a
large, warm, live worm moving around in my mouth. I shivered before
I could stop myself.

Lash pushed back from me, scowling. “You
don’t,” he hissed angrily, disentangling himself from me. “You’re
human, and I’m snake. You can’t care for me, because as soon as you
feel how different I am from you, all you can think of is getting
away from me as far away as you can.”

“Come back,” I said, reaching for him and
trying to be brave. “Kiss me again. It’s not that I was disgusted,
it’s that your tongue feels so different, like nothing else I’ve
ever felt. And I wasn’t expecting it. You never kissed me like that
before.”

“No, I’m leaving now, Sun,” Lash said
angrily, heading for the door.

After all he’d done for me, I wasn’t ending
it like that between us. I went after him, putting my arms around
his neck, and bringing his lips hard down on mine. Lash kissed me
back, then moved to draw away. I licked his mouth with my tongue,
probing gently at his lips. Instantly, his mouth opened on mine,
his tongue caressing my lips, then sliding deeper.

Though I felt a mental shiver, I didn’t pull
away. In fact, I kissed him harder, willing myself to relax,
telling myself his tongue was just a part of him, and it wasn’t
going to hurt me. I hesitantly licked at his tongue, and he licked
me back, his tongue winding around mine. I brought his tongue into
my mouth, and sucked on it gently, caressing it with my tongue and
lips. The sensation was strange, but not unpleasant. I teased and
prodded, telling myself what I was doing wasn’t that odd, it was
just a different kind of oral sex.

Lash sighed in satisfaction. When I took his
hand and moved to draw him back towards the bed, he came with me
eagerly. There was no more talking between us that night, though
there was a lot of kissing, moaning, and gentle caresses.

* * * *

The next morning, we lay there in bed,
hugging each other. “I can’t stay here, or take you with me, Sun,”
Lash hissed regretfully, “Even if you still wanted to go, which I
suspect you don’t, last night notwithstanding.”

“You’re right, I do still love Terian,” I
said grumpily. “Damn it to hell.”

“Then talk to him,” Lash advised, stretching
happily. “He seems reasonable from what I’ve heard, though I’ve
never met him face to face. He must still care about you, to not be
with a woman in all this time. That or he’s really gay, and he’s
harboring a crush on Theo.”

I wanted to remark that not all men went from
one woman to another like stepping stones on a path, but held it
in. He’d get testy for sure.

“I’ve got to go,” Lash said with a little
groan and a lot of reluctance. “We are supposed to leave on Monday
at first dark. It’s Saturday morning. Fuck, I’ve got so much shit
to do.”

“You sure?” I said teasingly, kissing his
neck. “I don’t have to work tonight, so I could stay in bed for
another ten hours or so.”

“You must be part were,” Lash said in awe as
he got out of bed. “I never met a human woman who liked sex as much
as you do.”

“You must have not known many human women
then,” I replied, laughing.

He laughed too, but his eyes were sad. “Not
many,” he said almost inaudibly. “Mostly other weresnakes.”

“I need to ask a favor,” I said quietly,
changing the subject.

Lash looked at me expectantly.

“Can you keep it to yourself that we were
intimate? I don’t want Devlin to know I’m back here, even if he is
leaving.”

“Sure,” Lash said, nodding. “But it’s not
really him you’re worried about, is it? You never asked me to keep
it to myself I was meeting you for drinks these last months, though
I knew not to say anything to him. You just don’t want Terian
finding out about you and me, now that you know he’s
available.”

Damn, why couldn’t he be
oblivious like every other man I’ve ever known?
“That, too,”
I said, nodding. “He won’t understand. He’s never had sex with a
friend; he’s just not that way.” That was an understatement. What
I’d done casually with Lash would be appalling to Terian, with his
strict moral ways, even with Lash being more than a friend to
me.

“Then it never happened,” Lash said flatly,
reaching for his pants. “No one will know but you and me.”

I got up and hugged him. “It was good with
you, both nights,” I whispered. “Don’t think I regret it, because I
don’t. I’m glad I was with you, that we were together. And I still
wish you were staying, and not leaving. I’ll miss talking with
you.”

I hugged him close.
Fuck
it.
“I’ll miss what might have been between us,” I said
very, very softly.

Lash hugged me, and let out a breath. “I’ll
miss you, too,” he hissed tenderly. “You’ve been a good friend,
Sun. You were the best human lay I’ve ever had. That’s saying
something, all the years I’ve been alive.”

I laughed and he did, too, as we located our
clothes here and there around the room.

“So are you going to call him?” he said,
pulling on his clothes.

“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “What
should I say?”

“Tell him you want him, that you missed him,
and you’re waiting here in bed naked for him to come to you,” Lash
advised, buckling on his weapons. “It’d work for me and most men I
know, if a woman called them and said that. It will certainly work
on a half-demon. They like sex as much as weres do as a rule,
though maybe not as much as weresnakes.”

My grimace became a smile against my will. He
had a good sense of humor, Lash did. “Okay. I’ll do that.”

“But shower first and wash your sheets,
before you call him,” Lash hissed in warning. “Or he’ll smell my
scent on you and be pissed off. Demon’s noses are as good as weres
and snake scent is the strongest, especially the scent on you now
from being with me all night.”

I nodded, appalled. Like I’d call Terian up
as soon as Lash was gone.
Men...
“Got
it.”

Lash came over to me, tilting my head up. He
gave me a last kiss, then a hug, caressing my cheek gently.

“Going to call me an angel?” I said, figuring
he wouldn’t get the old reference from a Juice Newton song more
than thirty years old.

To my surprise, he smiled knowingly, baring
one fang. “A morning angel,” Lash hissed with affection, then
kissed me one more time. “I most likely won’t see you again, though
I hope to someday,” he said gently. “Take care of yourself. I hope
it works out with Terian and you.”

Then he was gone, the door closing behind
him.

Chapter
Eleven

I called Danial’s business again that night,
and left a message for Terian with a woman who said her name was
Monica. Although I waited a week, Terian did not call back.

In anger, I went again to the bar where I’d
met Lash all those weeks, hoping for another night with him to ease
my despair. Though I stayed until closing, he never showed.

I was debating calling Terian again when I
got a Fed Ex delivery. It was a first class plane ticket from my
father, which could only mean one thing. But instead of the
jubilant note I expected, I found this:

Sunny,

Please come to me when you get this.
Sheryl’s dead, she died last week. I need you, Baby
Girl.

Love, Dad

My father had never said he needed me in his
life before.
Weird and also very strange.
I told my boss I’d be back in a few days, and got a cab to the
airport.

* * * *

I rented a car at the airport, and drove to
the house that had been Sheryl’s. I wasn’t surprised to see a “For
Sale” sign on the front lawn.

I next drove to the lot where the old trailer
we’d lived in used to be. Sure enough, there was my father. He was
sitting in a lawn chair in a bathrobe, drinking a Bud Light. There
were several empty cans at his feet.

“Baby Girl,” he said happily when he saw me.
“You came!”

“So where’s all the cash, Dad?” I said
mockingly. The trailer behind him was a newer one, but it was still
a wreck, and clearly at least twenty years old.

“She left it to her two daughters down
south,” he said angrily. “She left me a measly ten grand! Ten
grand, for a year and a half of my life! Bitch!” His expression
cleared. “But at least she left me the house. I’ll sell it soon. It
should bring a half mil easy, or so the realtor tells me.”

“Then why do you need me?” I said angrily.
“Your dreams have come true. You don’t need me.”

“Because I’m dying,” he said sadly.

I gaped at him in shock. “Dying?”

“She didn’t have cancer,” he said bitterly.
“She had AIDS; got it from her philandering husband. She told me
she bruised easily, that she had diabetes, that’s why all the drugs
and the marks on her skin.”

I grabbed onto a nearby tree branch for
support.
This is poetic justice, sure, but
God...

“Anyway, the doctors say I could live a
while, but I’ll need help—”

“So you thought of me?” I interrupted
flatly.

“Sure,” my father said. “You’re my daughter.
I need you.”

“So what?” I said nastily.

My father gaped at me for a few moments, then
became enraged. “You know all the nights I had to deal with your
kid shit? So many nights I wanted to be out, and I had to be home,
because your mom was in one of her depressions, and couldn’t get
past the bottle to give you yours—”

“I don’t remember that!” I yelled back at
him. “I remember you fucking Natalie! I remember her crying, and
you leaving and Mom dying—”

“So what if I had sex with her? She wasn’t
any blood relation to me! It’s not like I had sex with you!”

With a disgusted shudder that ran down my
spine like icy water, I backed away from him. “You abused us all.
We turned out the way we did because of you.”

My father held out a hand. “Now calm down,
honey. I’m telling you, your mom was cold, and she never wanted me,
not after you were born. And Natalie, she’d been having sex long
before she came to stay with us—”

He was saying my foster sister had wanted
what he’d done to her. “Don’t say another word!”

“Sunny, I need you! Please, I’m sick and I
really need you!”

“What about when I needed you?” I whispered.
“What about all the times I was alone, with some woman you left me
with? Do you know one of them locked me in my room for a day,
because she was tired of me asking her to play with me?”

“Sunny, if I’d known—”

“You did know!” I screamed. “You didn’t care!
You never cared! You only ever cared about yourself! You still only
care about yourself!”

“Honey, that’s not true!”

“Good-bye, Dad,” I said, wiping away my
tears. “You won’t see me again.”

“Baby Girl, I need you! Don’t leave me here
alone—”

“You’ll find someone,” I said, walking away
from him without a backward look. “You always do.”

* * * *

I kept to myself for the next few months. I
picked up the phone several times to call Terian, but always put it
down. That woman named Monica had surely given him the message. He
just didn’t want to talk to me.

But I did make a vow to respect myself a
little more. I hadn’t slept with anyone since Lash, and I decided
to keep it that way, turning down all offers from my appreciative
patrons, even the ones that would surely have been pleasurable. I’d
had enough of sex that didn’t mean something. I’d had enough of
being with men to whom I didn’t mean anything. I’d lived a lot of
my life viewing myself as just someone trying to live. That was no
longer enough; I wanted a good life, one that made me happy, with
relationships that mattered. I wanted friends I could count on, and
a place that was a home, not just a place to sleep. Maybe I’d never
have a white picket fence, or someone to wake up with and share a
good morning smile. But I deserved that as much as anyone else did.
It was time to go after that happy dream, and try to make it my
reality.

* * * *

At Christmas, I didn’t send my father a
Christmas card. He didn’t send me one, either. That wasn’t a
surprise. I did drink a bottle of wine by myself though, and got
trashed. But hell, I’d been good for months. I deserved a little
downtime.

For New Years, I went to the bar where Lash
and I’d met all those nights, and toasted him. I hoped he was
having a good time down in South America. At least he wasn’t
freezing his ass off like I was. All that week, I built up my
courage to make a second try to contact Terian. The next day,
January eighth, I decided to finally call him. Again, when I
called, the person who answered said he wasn’t in.

I was done being nice and leaving messages.
“Listen, Asshole, I need to talk to him. Where is he?”

“He has guard duties,” grumbled the gruff man
who’d said his name was Brian.

“When will he be back?”

“Around four, or so today.”

“Will you remember to tell him, or should I
call back then?”

“I’ll tell him,” Brian growled back. “But
call back if you want.”

I hung up, realizing I needed to get to
work.

I got done around seven, and went back to my
place. On my machine was a message from Terian.

“Hi Sun.” Pause. “I was glad to get your
message. I tried calling you at your old place, and stopped by, but
they said you’d left town more than a year ago. And when I stopped
by your work, they said you’d left town, too—”

I’d asked Hunter and the other guys to tell
that to anyone asking for me, in case Devlin ever came looking for
me. I’d never thought Terian would come looking for me.
Shit.