Her tongue found that pulse, and her body stiffened with need, the room
a swirl of colors as her vision seemed to change, from colors to heat.
She could taste the metallic tang of blood beneath skin, and she wanted
it in her mouth, Tina’s blood, Tina’s life, everything that was Tina,
consumed in one swallow, two, or three. Her eyes snapped open, and she
pushed Tina away.

“I’mI’m sorryI can’tit’s not it’s not safe for youfor mefor
us.” With panic in her green eyes, Shane disentangled herself from
Tina, bolted for the door, and out through the club, leaving Tina
gasping and stunned. And filled with a need she’d never known before.
In that moment, she would have given Shane anything, everything.

“What the fuck is happening to me?” she whispered to an empty room.
There was no answer, just a painful realization that things were not as
they should be.

~*~*~*~*~*

Susan pushed back into the room that Alice and Lara were in; she saw
Alice at the foot of the small bed, a hand on Lara’s foot. She was
guarding her, just as she’d asked. Susan felt a pang of something for
the blonde reporter. Then she shoved it away, what was with the
feelings as of late?

“Has she woken up?” Susan asked and Alice shot off the bed, seeing the blood and the bruises.

“Who did you tangle with? Bubba Sparks?” Alice almost yelled and Susan
brushed away the hand that touched her bruised and battered face.

“Francesca.” Susan said in one quick statement and Alice’s dark eyes
went wide. Susan knelt next to Lara, pushing her matted dark amber hair
from her face.

“You can go, Alice.” Susan ordered in a soft voice, and Alice nodded,
tucking tail and moving from the room. She wasn’t staying around for
this show. She was curious, but not dumb.

“You have to wake up.” Susan ordered Lara but there was no change in the woman who’d once been her own.

Once. Susan had to admit it to herself, to the world that Lara was no
longer the drugged out submissive that had so willingly and unwillingly
served her in the past. Susan felt drops of blood falling from her
face, knowing that no amount of makeup would cover up the damage that
Fran had inflicted on her.

“You’d have wanted to have seen it, Fran tossing me around like a bent
rag doll. Raking me and scraping me with her ring, that fucking ring.
How I remember it vividly. I never told you, but those marks you once
asked about on my legs, they were from her ring. She’d cut my flesh,
just for the pure pleasure of it.” Susan said, sitting down on the
floor, her back to Lara, listening to her breathing.