by Aja James
Priceless!
And he should treat himself as such.
Furthermore, the blankness in his eyes when he’d thrown out his “lower half” like a sack of gold on the metaphorical negotiation table nearly broke Eveline’s heart.
Instead, she got spitting, fighting, snarling mad!
On his behalf but also at him.
If he didn’t care, if he was a…what was it Aella called it? A manwhore. If he was that, if he enjoyed passing himself around like a baton to females of every variety, more power to him. Eveline might not agree with his approach to life, but it was his life and everyone should be able to do what they want as long as it didn’t harm others.
But she saw very clearly and felt it keenly that Ramses did not enjoy these exchanges.
Then why do it?
Surely there were other ways to get what he wanted from political negotiations.
She didn’t realize she’d spoken her last thought out loud until he answered her.
“It’s expedient,” he said, his expression just as nonchalant as his pose on the sofa.
“Sex is the world’s oldest currency, and I have an endless store of it.”
But Eveline was watching him closely, and because she did so, she saw the brief flash of pain and self-loathing behind his obsidian eyes.
She considered him for long moments and chose her next words carefully, speaking slowly.
“Somewhere in this world is your Destined Mate,” Eveline said, her burst of righteous rage giving way to a strange kind of sadness.
“I think she would be heartbroken to see you use yourself this way.”
A corner of his mouth lifted in a derisive snarl.
“This pearl of wisdom from a spinster Pure One who’s never even been tempted?”
Ouch. He didn’t pull any punches.
Eveline braced herself at his sinful, low voice and ruthlessly barbed words. She refused to back down from her convictions. Even if they were based on her own assumptions and observations rather than substantial proof.
Perhaps he saw the pugnacious look in her eyes, because he continued.
“You know nothing, Keeper. I know. I had a Mate once. And if I had allowed it, she would have exploited the…gifts…at my disposal with far greater frequency and fervor than I have ever done.”
Eveline raised her chin in a stubborn tilt.
“Then she wasn’t your Destined Mate. This only proves my point.”
He chuffed a short breath, laden with sarcasm and disbelief.
“Spoken like a naïve, innocent little sprite. Don’t you know that vampires revel in blood and sex? If you charged in here, curses blazing, to save my unspoiled self, you’re several millennia too late.”
“I wasn’t trying to save you…” she murmured, floundering, trying desperately to organize her thoughts to express just what exactly she was trying to do.
“Could have fooled m—”
“I was jealous!” she blurted finally.
He merely stared at her as if she’d sprouted two heads.
Eveline began to pace a small circle a few feet away from him, thinking out loud.
“If you truly don’t mind…using yourself in negotiations, I’ll certainly not talk you out of it. I just think there are other ways to get what you want that are just as expedient.”
“Such as?” he prompted, “War? Murder? Dismemberment?”
“Well, no—”
“Curses? Witchery? I am not a sorceress like you.”
Eveline paused in her pacing to glare at him.
“Stop interrupting me. If you’re set in your ways, I’ll leave you to it. I’m just asking for a little time.”
He frowned too.
“What do you mean?”
She licked her lips and went back to pacing, head down, trying to unravel her thoughts.
“Maybe it’s because we have the Blood Contract. I feel…attached to you. And while there is no ownership between us, there is nevertheless a connection. I didn’t realize before that I can be a jealous, possessive person, but all evidence points to the fact that I am. At least, in this instance. Perhaps this is the side effect of a Blood Contract. I honestly wouldn’t know since I’ve never entered into one before.”
“Have you?” She asked and looked up to see if he’d share any words of wisdom on the subject of Blood Contracts. Like perhaps these side effects were normal. That they happened all the time.
But he simply stared at her, staying silent this time.
She didn’t know what to make of it.
“In any case, this is how I feel. I don’t like other females looking at you, touching you, and certainly not anything else more…invasive than that.”
He continued to regard her in that unfathomable way.
“I think we need to append some clauses to our Contract.”
“Clauses,” he echoed softly.
She nodded, getting into the spirit of it.
“For the duration of the Contract, we should be exclusive, so to speak.”
“Be specific,” he ordered, his eyes glinting rather dangerously.
Eveline frowned again. She thought she’d been pretty clear and open about what she wanted.
But okay, she’d spell it out for both of them so that there were no misunderstandings or misinterpretations.
“You take blood only from me. I’ll give blood only to you. You don’t share your body with any other person over the course of the Contract, and if you need help with negotiations, I will do everything I can to support.”
He arched a brow.
“With the threat of curses?”
She shrugged.
“And actual curses, as the case may require.”
“You are asking me to refrain from sex.”
He made it sound like she was asking him to starve himself for a hundred years. It was just sex, for heaven’s sake! It was not a necessary component of life!
“Just with other people,” she clarified helpfully and smiled encouragingly at him.
He stared at her for an uncomfortable length of time.
Before he growled in that husky deep voice:
“So I’m supposed to fuck my own hand for ninety fucking days because my temporary fucking librarian feels jealous and possessive after I took her blood, have I got that right?”
“I think you might have missed a ‘fucking’ in there somewhere.”
Was it just her imagination or did his eyes get even blacker?
Eveline couldn’t be entirely sure, but it seemed that this conversation wasn’t going as well as planned. Perhaps because she hadn’t really planned it.
When he stayed ominously tight lipped, she pressed on.
“Um…It’s really just eighty-five days or less, as seven days have passed since the start of our Contract. You’ll barely notice it.”
“No.”
She rightly interpreted his “no” to mean “no” to her proposal, not “no,” he wouldn’t notice three months of abstinence.
“But I’ll help you with all of your negotiations,” Eveline offered. “I’ll make sure you get what you want. I—”
“No.”
Eveline chewed her lip.
“I’ll behave myself in public from now on. I’ll even sit at your feet and keep my hands to myself.”
“No.”
At wits end, she threw down the gauntlet.
“Fine. I’ll have sex with you whenever you feel the need!”
His entire face became even more disturbingly unreadable.
Eveline winced internally.
Maybe he was laughing at her in his mind for that outrageous suggestion. Maybe he preferred his own hand to her.
But she powered brazenly through.
“For the duration of the Contract, that is.”
It was so eerily quiet in the throne room, that Eveline thought she could hear the air crackle with tension.
Finally, he said silkily, “I thought you refused to be a Blood Slave.”
> “That’s not what I’m offering. I—”
“I thought you refused to include your body as part of the Contract.”
“It’s not technically part of the Blood Contract. It’s just a special condition because I want a special concession from you. This clause wouldn’t be invoked unless you were in need of sex—”
“I always am,” he said darkly.
She cleared her throat and wet her suddenly dry lips.
“Well…if that’s the case, then I’ll try to always be ready to fulfill those needs,” she said with more self-assurance than she felt.
“You’ll try?”
She inhaled a fortifying breath.
“I will be ready.”
“So you’ll whore yourself out to me just so I won’t whore myself out to others?”
Eveline scowled fiercely.
“That’s not what I’m saying at all. You’re purposely confusing my words.”
“Then explain clearly and do it fast. My patience runs out,” he commanded, and Eveline could almost hear the crack of a whip at his words.
She came to stand between his spread legs with hands on hips. She was mighty worked up herself by now and no longer minced words.
“How about this for clarity: While I am providing blood from my body to you, I don’t want you to share your body with anyone else but me. I don’t know why I feel possessive of you, I just do. I don’t like the feeling, and I’m willing to go to extraordinary lengths to avoid it. Like cursing every female who comes near you. And when I say I want to be the one you assuage your sexual appetite with, it’s because I want to.”
His eyes widened slightly at her boldness, but Eveline wasn’t done.
“I wanted you five days ago when you fucked my mouth. I wanted to taste your seed, hear your groans and see you come undone. And I don’t want to share that experience with anyone else for the duration of the Contract.”
Eveline could practically feel lightning bolts shooting from her eyes as she stared down the Dark King. She couldn’t contain it. Just like she couldn’t restrain her obsessive, possessive desire for him, blasted it all!
So she finished her tirade in a near shout—
“Is that clear enough for you?”
*** *** *** ***
Ramses surged up so fast in a powerful motion, Eveline couldn’t track him.
Before she knew what had happened, he had her backed against the nearest wall, his arms caging her shoulders on either side, his legs corralling hers together, his torso an impenetrable barricade against any attempt at escape.
She gulped visibly but didn’t cower, staring up, way up, at him as he bore mercilessly down on her.
“You offer things I can easily take,” he said, his voice dangerously soft. “From any female, including you.”
“But you won’t,” she whispered.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” she rebutted firmly, though she didn’t raise her voice.
He leaned in even closer, crowding her space until every molecule between them, around them, was charged with his essence, pregnant with his scent.
But he didn’t quite touch her.
For his own sanity and self-control, he couldn’t touch her.
Not yet.
“What do you hope to get out of this exclusivity, hmm?” he murmured beside her ear, his rough rumble making her whole body shiver.
“Your undivided attention,” she answered calmly, despite the rash of goosebumps popping out all over her fine, porcelain skin. Up her neck and across her bare shoulders.
She was wearing some kind of boat-necked sweater today, leaving more of her uncovered than he’d seen thus far. His eyes flared with triumph at the evidence of her increasing arousal.
He did that to her—made fire crackle and dance beneath her skin.
“And the obvious,” she added. “I get you.”
He refocused on her eyes.
He loved looking into her wide, clear, blue-gray eyes. But that didn’t mean he’d let her get away with anything. He’d been generous in their previous negotiations. Overly so. He’d make sure she knew her place by the time they were done this go-round.
“I thought I wasn’t your type of male, Keeper,” he reminded her.
“You’re not,” she said immediately, and he barely hid a reflexive flinch.
“But we have…I guess we have chemistry,” she stated the obvious.
“So it’s a no-strings-attached fuck fest you want, Pure One?” he decided to test her mettle.
She frowned up at him, searching his eyes, which he kept casually hooded, belying the intensity he felt as he awaited her answer:
“For these three months, I am the one who will feed your blood needs. Is it so hard to believe that I also want to be the one who gives you pleasure?”
Ramses held back a shudder by sheer force of will.
Gods! Her words! So simple and forthright, yet so full of meaning. He almost stepped back from her guileless sincerity.
Instead, he turned the tables on her and went on the offensive.
“You want to please me, little sprite?” he asked in his most seductive voice.
She shivered again as if she couldn’t help it, but she maintained her verbal barbs.
“Stop calling me that. Unless you want me to call you names that you might not like too, Yogi Bear.”
A muscle ticked in Ramses’ jaw, whether from frustration or amusement, he didn’t even know himself.
“It pleases me if you’d stop talking,” he informed her.
“Not the kind of pleasure I was referring to, Big Daddy.”
He exhaled deeply for patience.
“Do you even know what you’re saying?”
“Of course. I have a book on modern slang that I’ve almost completely memorized. I do cross reference some of the terms on the Internet though, as I want to make sure I have the most current phrases at my disposal.”
Ramses didn’t know whether to groan or laugh. This female was driving him insane!
He grazed the tips of his fangs along her throat and growled.
“Silence. I wish to take my pleasure in silence.”
With alacrity, she pressed her lips together.
Slowly, as if he was doing a vertical push up against the wall, against her, he pressed his body fully along hers, branding her with his hardness and heat, before lifting away from her with his hands pressed to the wall beside her head.
She stayed mostly silent, but an erotic little sigh slipped out.
Ramses had been in a state of arousal since the moment Valentina left the chamber, leaving him and Eveline alone. Now, hearing that small sound, knowing how easily he turned her on, his “phallus elephantas” practically jumped to live up to its reputation.
“You make me so hard,” he rasped, unable to stop himself from grinding his cock into her soft belly.
She practically melted against the wall in a boneless heap, but he kept her centered where he wanted her with the support of his own body pressing strategically into hers.
“Feel.”
She felt, all right. Her rose-red lips parted at the hot, hard brand of him against her willing, quivering softness.
She cleared her throat and croaked, “Permission to speak.”
“Speak.”
“If I make it hard, I should take care of it.”
He lifted her up with one arm around her waist and anchored her with his erection fitted into her warm, skirt-encased notch.
“Oh, you will,” he promised, pumping his hips in hard little bursts against her.
Even fully clothed, he knew he hit her just right, rubbed her where she needed it, by the increased agitation in her breathing, little more than shallow gasps.
“Perhaps you should remove our clothes,” she instructed in a scholarly tone. “That might make ‘taking care of it’ easier.”
“Silence,” he commanded again.
She swallowed back her commentary with a strangled gurgle bu
t said no more.
Instead, she locked her arms around his shoulders and held on tight.
He slowed his rhythm to longer glides that started with the base of his cock in the V of her thighs, to the length of his column against her core, to the plump, swollen head of him grinding against her clit with every pass. He made certain that she felt every stone-hard inch of him through their clothes.
He felt her too.
So small. So soft. So fucking tight. She’d feel like a hot, wet heaven inside. She’d clench around him until he saw stars.
He knew this beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Within seconds, the friction he created between them with his knowing, rocking hips, triggered her first orgasm.
Her eyes rounded with surprise as he stared into them, as if she wasn’t expecting it to sneak up on her so fast.
Then, as if in slow motion, a sheen of euphoria glazed over her irises, and her lids came down. Her lips parted on a breathy moan, and her head flopped back against the wall as if the bones in her neck had turned to jelly.
He seized that moment to penetrate her jugular vein, drinking in her orgasm-effervesced blood, like the sweetest bubbles fizzling in the finest champagne.
At his first deep draw, her soft moan deepened into a full-blown, guttural groan, the venom in his saliva multiplying her arousal with his own.
He stilled against her, pressing as deeply into her as their clothes would allow.
Pulsing.
Throbbing.
So hard, a diamond couldn’t cut him.
But he didn’t let go.
No, this was about exerting control over a situation—a female—that had gotten out of hand.
She’d seen too much of him before. He’d given away too much. She’d grown too bold, too ready to challenge him.
It was time to put her in her place.
He shifted her until she was almost straddling his thigh instead of sitting on his groin. With his free hand, he cupped her beneath her skirt and felt her wetness through the thin material of her panties.
Drenched.
She was drowning in liquid desire.
Deftly, he pushed aside the fabric that covered her core until he had her soft, naked heat cupped in his large palm, his thumb pressing directly against her clit.
