by Aja James
“A potential ally and informative source,” he finally said.
Eveline nodded. It must be hard work navigating the complex web of politics Ramses dealt with on a nightly basis.
“Do you know whether Ramses will be long with his guest?”
Again, Devlin paused before answering, weighing his words.
“Depends on the success of their… negotiation.”
“Negotiation,” Eveline echoed.
“Yes.”
“What kind of negotiation?”
Devlin’s bright blue eyes twinkled with something like mischief.
“The kind between a powerful female and a male she desires.”
Eveline’s own eyes sharpened and narrowed.
She didn’t like the sound of that.
“Devlin, I think I left something in the throne room from the, uh, the other night. Can you please let me in to retrieve it?”
“You want to interrupt Ramses’ negotiations to retrieve something,” Devlin clarified.
“It’s terribly important.”
“Indeed?” The Hunter arched a golden brow. “Perhaps I can get it for you, save you the trouble.”
“Oh no,” Eveline demurred, “I don’t mind the trouble.”
“You know, temporary Keeper,” Devlin leaned in to speak in a lowered voice, “there’s a reason why the doors are closed. The negotiations could turn quite…heated.”
Eveline let her own brows elevate.
“All the more reason for me to slip inside and retrieve my, uh, important something before things get out of control.”
“He’s going to have my head for letting you in.”
Eveline stretched on tiptoe and patted Devlin’s gorgeous blond hair.
“It’s such a pretty head. Not to worry, I promise I won’t let you lose it.”
He quirked a corner of his mouth and turned to the guards, indicating with a tilt of his pretty head that they should open one of the double doors.
“Hold on to your own lovely head, Lady Eveline,” he said, gesturing with a bow that she could enter the throne room.
“We have a tendency to lose our Keepers in that gruesome manner.”
How wonderful, Eveline thought with an internal shudder.
But she pressed on.
Squaring her shoulders like the Greek demi-god Heracles embarking upon the first of his twelve daunting labors, she entered the mighty lion’s den.
*** *** *** ***
Ramses tried to concentrate on the task at hand—seducing the beautiful Thirteen Stars Queen, Valentina.
Or being seduced, rather.
He hadn’t had much interaction with her since he’d taken the throne, focusing most of his time on quelling the murmurs (now earthquakes) of unrest in the northern and western territories that surrounded the New England hive.
Valentina held jurisdiction over the original Confederate southern states of the U.S. She’d come into power before the Civil War, and she’d supported the secession plans during that time. Slavery, regardless of Kind, was something she never had an issue with.
However, as Ramses was quickly learning through this private interview, Valentina was a business woman first and foremost. Slavery back in the day had been good for business. She had no ideological biases one way or the other. And now, as she witnessed the brewing tensions between hives, amongst Dark nobles, and between races, all she cared about was continued economic prosperity and stability.
In particular her own.
“Munitions, armies, logistical networks, and of course my own influence, you can have it all at your disposal, Ramses. I shall travel to the Western Frontier hive myself to speak with Queen Valeria. She and I have a sisterly bond that harkens back hundreds of years. I am also a favorite with Queen Aurelia of the West Coast hive. Together, the three of us, with your allies in Canada, can more than subdue would-be usurpers north of the Mexican border. As to our friends down south, they are too preoccupied with civil affairs to interfere or take sides.”
While he appeared to be considering Queen Valentina’s words, Ramses wondered what Eveline was doing at the moment.
Probably nose deep in some ancient text in the library. Without fail, he found her there every night, and well into the morning, passed out over scripts. Everyday, he carried her to his chambers and slept with her in his bed. He, naked; she, fully clothed.
Since the first time he slept with her, he couldn’t resist the need to hold her again. Since the first time he lost control with her, he did resist the desire to do it again.
And again. And again. And again.
But the effort of avoiding her while she was conscious was taking a toll.
He watched her often on video surveillance. Wherever she was, whoever she was with, he knew. He watched her get absorbed into research, roll up her sleeves to organize the library. He saw her interact with other members of the Cove, how her warm, inner beauty was slowly revealed like a rose unfurling its protective petals. He watched her chat, smile, laugh, and make all kinds of expressions she never made with him. She was no longer guarded with the Chosen and their women.
He couldn’t stop looking at her when she was herself. Like a pyromaniac mesmerized by flames.
He had to stop this obsession. It was getting out of hand.
“What do you say, Ramses,” the beautiful vampire queen purred as she came to stand between his open thighs, while he sat back in a deep-seated sofa, his arms spread casually on the back of it.
“Do we have a bargain?”
Fuck.
He’d missed what she wanted from him in return for her proposal. He decided to negotiate anyway.
“Half,” he threw out. “I’ll consider giving you half.”
She came closer and wrapped her arms around his neck, squashing her generous double-D bosom against his chest.
“Half of you? Shall I bring a saw and start cutting?”
Oh.
That.
He’d managed to avoid whoring his body out over the past five days; it was probably overdue. He tried to treat it as he always did, with impersonal nonchalance, but acid flooded his throat at the mere prospect, and his chest squeezed painfully.
Determinedly, he swallowed down this unfamiliar hollow feeling and tilted his lips up at Valentina.
“I’m not for sale, Valentina, you know that very well. I rule alone. But if it’s the temporary loan of my body you are seeking for your cooperation, you have one hour to make the most of it. I’ll be generous and allow you access to the lower half.”
“Hmm,” she hummed against his ear, licking his lobe, “but I like the top half so very much. Give me three-quarters instead of half.”
She tried to kiss her way from his jaw to his mouth.
He turned his face away before she could.
“Keep negotiating, you’ll get one-quarter, and it might not be the quarter you want,” he warned. “You better get busy. The clock is ticking.”
With alacrity, she got busy, straddling his thighs, while her hands tore at his trousers.
Ramses willed himself to get hard, even as more acid spread through his throat, making it hard to swallow and breathe.
He didn’t understand what he was feeling. It was just his body. His cock. His sex.
It didn’t mean anything.
Unbidden, the image of Eveline lying beneath him, their eyes locked, her face flushed with rapture, flashed before him. The way she looked when he’d selfishly taken his pleasure in her mouth would forever be seared into his memory.
She’d loved it. She’d wanted him. Not just his body. His cock. His sex.
She’d craved him.
He’d wanted her too. So much, he couldn’t control himself. He’d let her inside him, as he’d never done with anyone before. In more ways than one.
He didn’t want Valentina. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want her eyes, hands or mouth on his body. He steeled himself against the reflexive revulsion.
It was business, he r
eminded himself. It wasn’t personal.
“Perhaps I need to kiss it awake,” the vampire queen said, a hint of displeasure in her tone.
Shit.
His staff refused to rise. It wasn’t even half hard. As this had never happened before in the whole of Ramses’ experience, he could only blink down at himself, nonplussed.
They were both looking down at his exposed, uncooperative manhood when a none-too-subtle throat clearing made them snap their heads up in unison.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” Eveline said from a few feet away, her squinty eyes and militant expression saying exactly the opposite of her words—
She so hoped she was interrupting.
“You are,” Valentina barked out, her beautiful face lined with annoyance.
“Get out.”
“What do you want, Keeper?” Ramses spoke at the same time.
Eveline’s brows lowered at his reference to her temporary title.
Did she want him to call her “little sprite” instead?
“I heard there were important negotiations going on. I thought I could help.”
“You can. Get out,” the vampire queen repeated.
Ramses shifted his body so that Valentina was essentially bucked off of him, but left his trousers undone, his groin partially exposed.
Eveline’s eyes zeroed in on his crotch, as the expression on her face turned downright murderous.
Fascinating.
“How do you propose to help?” he asked curiously, though the short hairs on the back of his neck tingled with warning.
Run away! His sense of self-preservation practically shouted. The Wicked Witch of the West has arrived!
Ramses frowned at himself and shook his head to clear it.
Surely, he was not feeling threatened, was he? Not by a slight slip of a red-headed female. And a librarian at that!
Eveline slowly turned toward Valentina, who was now sprawled angrily on the sofa beside Ramses. The Pure Ones’ Seer curled her lips rather scarily into the fakest smile Ramses had ever seen.
“Well, I notice that your lady friend has a severe case of Superba Tetraodontiformes, also known as the swelling pufferfish syndrome,” Eveline explained to Ramses, though she kept her dagger-like glare on queen Valentina.
“W-what?” the other woman croaked, holding a hand to her throat.
Eveline drew closer until she stared down into the concerned queen’s eyes.
“Oh yes, I’m afraid I smelled it all the way beyond these thick, oak doors as I was passing by. I believe it’s caused by your exposure to phallus elephantas, a rare incompatibility disorder of a sexual nature.”
Ramses broke into a fit of hacking coughs to cover up his surprised bark of laughter.
The vampire queen narrowed her eyes with suspicion.
“You’re making this up.”
Eveline rounded her own eyes innocently.
“If only it were true, my lady,” she deplored. “But the signs don’t lie. Can’t you smell the fishy foul odor in the air?”
Even as she spoke, the stink of rotten fish wafted around them, its center of gravity concentrated around the queen’s impeccably attired person.
Ramses couldn’t help but scoot a foot away on the sofa.
“I-I- this is ridiculous!” Valentina exclaimed, even as she squeezed her arms to her sides and shrank her body into a tight ball on the couch, as if this would help reduce the emission of noxious fumes.
“The next to go are your lips. They puff up like a blowfish. So swollen they block your nostrils from taking in air.”
As Eveline spoke, the queen’s full, red lips began to swell, expanding until they indeed took up half her face.
“Rrrggg ccannnntttt breaeeeee!”
“What’s that? You can’t breathe? Well I told you, didn’t I?” Eveline said unhelpfully, standing over the other woman as Valentina shrank further into the couch cushions.
“You have to hold your lips apart with your hands and breathe through your mouth,” she instructed.
Valentina hastened to do so and gulped in oxygen while drooling uncontrollably.
“Now listen to me carefully,” Eveline said in a raspy voice that would frighten grown men. “If you do exactly as I say, you might still be able to be cured.”
The Thirteen Stars queen nodded vigorously, weeping openly, tears streaming down her flushed cheeks.
“You must go home straightaway and stay in bed for three days and nights.”
More vigorous nodding.
“Every morning when you go to sleep and every night when you wake, stick a straw in there and drink exactly two quarts of crushed beetle juice.”
“Bwweeetttlll juuuuu….!”
“Dung beetle, to be precise.”
Valentina’s eyes grew so large, her eyeballs were on the verge of falling out.
Eveline nodded with emphasis.
“Beetle juice. Then, you have to make a mask out of the dung itself and cover your entire face with it. I’ll give you the recipe. You must lie flat in bed with the mask on your face all day, even when you sleep.”
The queen was sobbing uncontrollably now, clearly hysterical.
Ramses winced, debating whether and how to intervene.
But Eveline wasn’t done.
“This last part is most important, pay close attention.”
She slapped—actually slapped—the vampire queen’s cheek to ensure that the female concentrated on her every word, even though Valentina couldn’t possibly have looked away, downright terrorized as she was.
“Never, never, look upon, touch, smell, or in any way, shape or form, come into contact with phallus elephantas again.”
Eveline jabbed a furious finger in the direction of Ramses’ crotch.
Ramses forbore to point out that said phallus elephantas wasn’t quite as elephantas as it normally was in these situations. Probably cowed by Eveline’s dire threats just like the vampire queen was.
Valentina nodded again, blubbering all the while.
“It’s a good thing I got here when I did. A moment too late and you would be forever stuck with those lips. You’d have to surgically remove them from your face.”
More disconsolate blubbering.
Eveline reached over to pat the queen as if she were a small child.
“There, there. I know you’re scared. If you do as I say right away, you can still overcome this exposure.”
The queen shuddered with relief.
Until Eveline said, “But be sure to fulfill your part of the bargain with Ramses. I might not recall the correct dung patty recipe if you don’t. And you wouldn’t want to be stuck with this condition indefinitely, would you?”
Vigorous shaking of the head.
“Just so,” Eveline soothed. “I know you’re a woman of your word. I will keep mine as well.”
She pulled Valentina to her feet and shoved her none too gently toward the doors.
“Hurry. Time is of the essence. Once you fulfill your bargain, I will send you the dung recipe.”
“Rwwrddjjjjkkkrrrrrr!” the queen gurgled in a panic as Eveline pushed her out the doors.
“You have five days before this becomes permanent. Plenty of time. Run along now, and best of luck!”
With that, Eveline slammed the doors shut with a resounding bang.
And turned slowly towards Ramses.
As their eyes met, he had one fleeting thought:
Flames.
Her irises were lit with flames.
And, like a pyromaniac, he couldn’t look away.
Even if the inferno burned him to a crisp.
“Beasts are fierce and passionate, innocent and loyal. Deeply devoted to their Mates. Otherwise, they are by nature solitary creatures and shun the company of other Kinds. Elementals are cool and serene, like the surface of a placid lake. But as with all things in the natural world, when riled, they can unleash the might of heaven and earth…”
—From the lost oral histories of
the Zodiac Scrolls
Chapter Nine
Eveline was pissed.
She didn’t know exactly what caused her immitigable condition of pissed-ness, but there it was.
As she stared unblinkingly at Ramses, who hadn’t moved from his insouciant position on the sofa—his muscular arms spread across the back of it, his long legs casually open so that one’s gaze was naturally drawn to his unbuttoned trousers, where his groin was on partial display—Eveline reflected on the causes of her current, almost uncontainable wrathfulness.
Surely, she wasn’t jealous?
Ha! The absurdity.
She had no claim on Ramses, and he had no claim on her besides the blood they’d Contracted. She’d never felt the remotest of jealous emotions over any male in the course of her existence. Over any thing, for that matter. She was a calm, logical, learned female. In other words, she was not someone who was ever at the whim of baser impulses.
She was certainly not jealous.
However, as she was first and foremost an honest woman, and this included taking stock of her own feelings, inclinations and prejudices, she could not avoid cataloguing the following observations:
She was feeling extremely wroth, as in foaming at the mouth, smoke coming out of the nostrils, blood vessel-bursting kind of splenetic fury. She was inclined to not only curse every sexually-predative female who got within a ten-yard radius of Ramses with much worse than the swollen pufferfish syndrome, but also to encase the male himself in an airtight medieval armor with a triply fortified cock cage to which only she had the key to open.
Ergo, above truths pointed to the possibility that Eveline was both a jealous and an obsessively possessive female.
This realization did not sit well with her.
And she might be severely prejudiced in her view of the world, but she felt it was a rotten shame, a crime against humanity and Immortal Kinds, an injustice of the highest order, that a male like Ramses would ever use his body like currency. Eveline had a lot less going for her than the magnificent male laid out like a feast on the couch, but she had pride. She knew her own worth. And she knew that she’d never trade any part of herself so cheaply.
Well, she’d overheard what Queen Valentina offered in exchange for an hour of fornication—it wasn’t insubstantial—but in Eveline’s biased view, the person of Ramses was priceless.
