by Aja James
She didn’t protest, he was pleased to note. If only she’d been equally quiet during the gathering.
How dared she touch him in such a way in front of a formal audience! How dared she claim him so blatantly!
But because there was an audience, and he had a point to make, he couldn’t in any way verbally or physically gainsay her. He didn’t want to pretend that she was his Blood Slave for reasons he’d shared with her. By demonstrating the dual-binding nature of their Contract, however, Eveline had made him look weak.
He detested weakness of any kind, especially when it pertained to himself.
Even so, he knew that nothing would have prevented Anya from tossing down the Challenge. He knew from the moment their eyes met when she’d stepped forth that she was pursuing a specific course of action no matter what he did.
He’d expected it. He even welcomed it.
But he hadn’t expected the rash boldness of his supposedly level-headed little librarian.
When they were in his apartment and the heavy doors were closed, he literally tossed her onto his bed with a mere flick of his wrist.
She landed on top of the covers with a startled squeak, as if she hadn’t been prepared for so much strength. After all, he’d only had her by one arm. She had not even an inkling of the power he possessed.
She’d soon learn.
Dazedly, she blinked at him, but otherwise remained silent.
He stood glaring at her with hands on hips, chest slightly heaving as he took deep breaths to calm his temper.
She stared back.
After long minutes, he uttered, “Sausage muffin.”
Slowly, she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth.
Why did she have to look so fucking adorable when she did that?
Something like amusement warred with his anger.
“Well…you called me little sprite. I told you I don’t like it.”
Her voice was quivering and on the high end of her range, so he knew that she felt nervous. But the stubborn tilt of her chin told him that she was far from cowed.
“Would you prefer I called you Stud Muffin instead?”
There it was. She was definitely not cowed.
“Or Sugar Bear?”
He drew in a deep, deep breath.
“King Kong?”
He let it out slowly.
“You don’t like gorillas?”
Enough!
“You put your hand on me,” he barked out.
“You made me sit at your feet,” she retorted.
“We have a Contract. You agreed to behave accordingly.”
“Which does not include being reduced to a pet at your feet.”
“So you grab my cock in front of court instead?” he exclaimed with incredulity.
“I barely grazed it,” she sniffed. “Queen Anya was looking at your crotch like it was hers, and I was just reminding her that for the duration of our Contract, it’s not.”
“No part of my body is yours either,” he reminded her, advancing upon the bed. “We do not have that kind of Contract.”
“Well, she didn’t know, did she?” the Pure One had the gall to look pleased at this.
Ramses stopped at the foot of the bed, both confounded and amazed.
Again, he stared at her for long moments, trying to make sense of her actions and words.
And then he asked, “What do you hope to accomplish by claiming me in public?”
She scrunched her nose—again—adorably.
“I wasn’t trying to accomplish anything,” she muttered. “I wasn’t claiming you, as you say. I was just warding off presumptuous hussies like the gaudy blondie.”
“Gaudy blondie,” Ramses echoed disbelievingly.
Anya was widely known as one of the most beautiful vampire queens in the world, second only to Jade Cicada.
“Really, she should invest in some push-up bras,” Eveline said as she cupped her own meager chest in demonstration. “All that hanging out there so freely could give her back problems in the future.”
There had been nothing “hanging” on Anya’s well-muscled torso. Her generous assets were bouncy and firm.
Ramses could attest to this personally. But he didn’t say so.
He narrowed his eyes instead, studying the small fairy on his bed like a species of wild creature he’d never encountered before.
“I rather like the way Anya looks,” he said slowly, testing the waters.
“Hmph.”
“Perhaps I didn’t want her to be warded off.”
She rolled her eyes subtly, but he still saw it.
The little librarian was jealous!
Of Anya?
Because of him?
Ramses wasn’t sure what to do with this realization. But the truth of it was staring him right in the face.
It wasn’t that females hadn’t shown jealousy over him before. Because they had. In spades. But the one female he’d wanted—needed—to care about him never had.
It was just that he hadn’t expected Eveline of all people to get proprietary over him. She’d made it clear when they met that he wasn’t her type. They’d exchanged no physical intimacies thus far that should warrant such possessiveness.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about it.
Suddenly, she snapped her head up to look at him.
“Did I screw things up? Is that why she challen—”
“No,” he said immediately.
Then kicked himself internally for not drawing out her guilt a little to punish her for bad behavior.
But since he’d already answered, he continued, “She was going to challenge me no matter what. The only thing that might have prevented it would be if I’d declared you to be my Blood Slave and joined her faction to start a war.”
Eveline’s shoulders slumped visibly in relief. Clearly, she was not worried about the Challenge.
He wondered whether that was because she had absolute confidence in his ability to win, or she simply didn’t care about the outcome.
Ramses didn’t like the latter possibility.
She looked at him with genuine puzzlement.
“Then why did you drag me here in such a huff?”
He quirked a corner of his lips at her. But it wasn’t the beginnings of a devilish smile. It was more like a feral snarl.
“You don’t touch a male like that without consequences, little sprite.”
Her eyes rounded with alarm.
“But I was just making a point. I—”
She broke off and started scuttling backwards on the bed when he sank one knee, then the other, onto the mattress, as he prowled on all fours toward her.
“I won’t tolerate a cock tease,” he warned her, his voice low and husky, his arms and legs caging her small body beneath him, not stopping his advance until he knelt directly over her face as she squeezed herself as deeply as she could into the mattress.
But there was nowhere to go.
“You make it hard for you…” he growled, bracing one hand on the headboard, and smoothing his other hand down his chest, over his abs to cup his crotch.
She gulped as she stared up at him with owlish eyes. Eyes that were fully dilated with both fear and undisguised lust.
Which exponentially enflamed Ramses’ own.
“You take care of it,” he finished.
A thousand things flitted across her face as she stared up at him. He couldn’t interpret them.
But the expression she finally landed on he understood clearly.
Stubbornness.
She was donning her metaphorical battle armor. She was preparing to fight him.
Which was why he almost fell back on his ass in shock when she wet her lips and said:
“Okay.”
*** *** *** ***
He’d poisoned her blood with the venom in his fangs, she was sure of it.
Why else would she be behaving in this deranged, nymphomaniac manner, Eveline asked herself?
She really, really,
wanted to eat his cock.
Well, not masticate it in her mouth (in her friend Aella’s words), but rather suck and lick and kiss and have her wicked, wanton ways with it.
And, too, there was the part of her that figuratively rose up to his challenge out of sheer stubbornness.
Eveline was peaceable and complacent most of the time, but she possessed an extremely contrary, obstinate streak. When someone told her she couldn’t do something, she always did it to prove that she could. When people underestimated her because of her small stature and quiet calm, they’d learn to regret it.
And when she received a challenge, a dare, as directly as the one the Dark King had issued just now, well, she’d take it and raise the stakes even further.
His eyes had widened with shock when she agreed to “take care of it”—his thick, long, rampantly erect cock, to be precise. And then those thickly-lashed obsidian orbs narrowed with calculation.
He didn’t believe she’d do it. He was going to call her bluff.
Eveline grinned gleefully on the inside, though she kept up her innocent, doe-eyed expression on the outside.
He’d learn soon enough: she never bluffed.
Keeping their gazes intensely fused, he let go of the headboard and rose up a little on his knees.
Slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, he untied the sash of the flowing black trousers at his waist. Then, he undulated his hips smoothly, just once.
Good gracious, the male could move!
Eveline’s heart thumped faster and pumped flaming hot blood through her veins to all of her erogenous zones on that one little hip action alone.
The loose material caressed his skin as it wisped down, catching slightly on his jutting sex, before falling past his upper thighs to pool around his knees.
Eveline blinked at the convenience of his wardrobe.
No underwear.
Just glorious, honey-bronzed skin and crisp, dark hair.
Mmm. She liked.
She almost wished he’d pull up his trousers and tie the sash again so she could be the one to pull it loose, like tugging the end of a ribbon knot that would unwrap and reveal the most exquisite present.
He grasped the headboard with one hand again, while the other hand wrapped around the base of his intimidatingly large member.
And Eveline thought irrelevantly that it was also intimidatingly beautiful, just like the male himself.
With a slight nudge of his hips, he brought his engorged manhood to her mouth, until the plump, round head, dewy with his essence, kissed her sensitive, waiting lips.
“Yes?” he rasped low, rubbing himself against her closed mouth, marking her with his pre-cum, filling her nostrils full of his musky, earthy, intoxicating scent.
Even now, he expected her to back down, she could see it in his wary, hooded black eyes. In posing a question, rather than forcing her to open up and take him, he was giving her a way out.
Eveline somehow knew, down to the deepest depths of her soul, that this male would never force a female to service him. One, a magnificent male like this never needed to. Any number of females would be clamoring to worship any part of his body. He practically dripped liquid sex and ecstasy out of every pore.
And two…
There was a flicker of vulnerability in the heat of his obsidian gaze that she almost thought she imagined.
But it was there.
He was giving her a way out with his words, but he was offering himself to her with his actions, literally bringing the most private part of him to her mouth with his own hand.
When was the last time this male had offered something so intimate to another being? Not for anything but his own pleasure?
Eveline was nothing if not observant.
In the short time when the Dark King had held his court, she’d seen the calculation, hunger and avarice in the eyes of the queens and nobles when they looked upon him. She’d seen intimate knowledge of his body in some of the females’ eyes, and the desire to acquire the knowledge in others.
But she’d also felt, as she leaned back against him sitting at his feet, the steely tension in his frame, as if he was bracing himself against the onslaught of their covetous, greedy gazes. He hated the way they looked at him. She was certain, too, that he hated the way they used him.
Even though he used them back. And she knew that he did. She was not naïve. He was not a male who could be had unless he specifically allowed it. Even so, he hated it. She felt it.
Yet now, with her, he was offering himself. He was offering it for “free.”
And because he was silently giving her the right to refuse him, he was bracing himself for her potential rejection. It would hurt him, she instinctively knew, even if it was only a little sting. She had the ability to hurt this powerful, proud, warrior male—a bloody King—with her rejection.
As unbelievable as it seemed, she comprehended with sudden clarity that this was a male who knew the pain of being rejected.
“Yes,” she answered unequivocally.
And showed him she meant it with her actions.
First, she parted her lips just slightly, so that he could feel her hot breath on the most sensitive part of his body. She nuzzled his silky crown with her mouth and wet her lips again with her tongue, accidentally-purposely wetting him too.
His breathing stuttered at the gesture, and his eyelids fell to half-mast.
Lord, but she loved that slumberous expression on his gorgeous face.
Next, she placed her small hands on his big, muscular thighs and slowly smoothed them upwards, her thumbs dragging lightly over his tender inner skin.
Up, up, up, she went, her fingers stretching to touch the defined V of his lower abdomen and the delicious strip of muscle just above his hipbones. Smoothing down over his hips as he flexed a little to grind the head of his sex inside her mouth.
Eveline hummed in the back of her throat, letting the sound vibrate through her vocal cords and mouth, to tease his sensitive cockhead.
He stilled completely, his dark eyes glittering, awaiting her next move.
He was hesitant with her. He didn’t know, and he didn’t assume, that she wanted to taste him more than her next breath.
Eveline was rather amazed at the fact herself. She didn’t know it either, until just now when she had the thought, that she wanted him more than her next breath.
Intoxicated. He’d definitely done something to intoxicate her, fill her with the irresistible urge to have him.
She needed to have him. And so she would.
Without further ado, Eveline placed her hot little hands on each one of his muscular, perfectly rounded buttocks and squeezed, at the same time pulling him closer so that he sank another inch into her pliant mouth.
He huffed a surprised breath at her initiative and braced both hands above her on the sturdy headboard.
For long moments, he simply held there, the tip of his cock pulsing in her mouth, while she learned his unique flavor, lapped him up with her tongue, swirling it around his swollen head, then sucking him gently with her lips.
Dear Goddess, but he tasted soooo gooood.
Eveline had done this a few times in the past. She never enjoyed it before now. She’d never craved a male’s scent and essence the way she craved Ramses.
At best, she didn’t mind their smell. But the taste of their seed and the stuff before it had always been unpleasant. Something to muddle through if she was feeling particularly generous. Their taste was usually bitter, and the consistency of the fluid was quite a bit like snot. Rather disgusting, actually.
She liked it fine when the males performed oral services on her, but sometimes she got too impatient and skipped directly to full-on penetration. Oral sex the other way, where she was the one doing the work, was simply a chore. She dreaded it.
But here, now, with Ramses, Eveline was so turned on by the feel, smell and taste of him in her mouth that, further down, her core shuddered and wept with jealousy.
&nb
sp; She pulled him deeper into her mouth by exerting pressure with her hands on his perfect ass.
He complied, letting her suckle him and loosen her jaw to take him into her throat.
Even so, only half of him fit, and already he’d hit the back of her throat.
There he stayed, unmoving, simply letting her throat muscles convulse around him, letting her mouth squeeze and milk him, an expression of determination and frustrated pleasure-pain on his face.
She pulled off him, and he shifted to move away, obviously thinking that this was as far as she was willing to go this night.
“Don’t hold back with me,” she said quickly, and by the look on his face, she’d surprised him yet again.
“I want everything. I make it hard; I will take care of it. I want to take care of you. I want you. Give it to me.”
Give me you.
He held her gaze for a few heartbeats, and then a satisfied, fundamentally male smile curled his lips.
Darkly, he said, “As you wish.”
And totally let her have it.
“They call us conquerors. They call us demons. Other Kinds fear us for our natural dominance and thirst for power. But this is simply who we are: Dark Ones. We thrive in the night when the most basic, primal senses come alive. Touch, taste, smell, sound. We revel in the intensity of pleasure and pain. We gorge on blood and sex. It is what we are made for, it is who we are—rulers of the night… ”
—From the Ecliptic Scrolls
Chapter Seven
She couldn’t know the animal she’d unleashed with her innocent command:
Give it to me.
But there was no going back now.
He’d give it to her. He wouldn’t hold back.
In a smooth elongation of his torso, Ramses reached behind his back with one arm and pulled his shirt off, leaving his body from knees up completely bare.
He grasped the headboard with both hands again and looked down into Eveline’s blue-gray eyes, locking their gazes.
“Open,” he commanded rough and low.
And the moment she obeyed, he surged into her mouth with a hard pump of his hips, making her gag and choke around his steely length.
