by Aja James
“…Look at you…only me…”
As delirious with pleasure as he made her, she somehow still managed to cling to the fiery wrath of her possession of him, her eyes intently melding with his. One of her hands dug into his hip as she held him tightly, the other hand lowering to wrap around the root of him, too thick for her fingers to entirely encircle, though it didn’t stop her from squeezing him with enough strength to make stars burst behind his eyelids.
“…This…mine…only mine…never going to serve anyone but me…MINE!”
Whoomph.
His entire body felt as if it was just set on fire, starting from the root of his sex to every cell and nerve ending. He thought for certain even his hair was smoking as he burned up from the inside out.
Holy shit! Did she just put a curse on his cock?
And yet, instead of feeling panicked or furious, Ramses only felt the deepest sense of calm settling over him, blanketing his cold soul with warmth, melting the stone fortress around his heart into red-hot lava.
She wanted to own his sex? She could have it. It was hers regardless. She didn’t have to bespell it. Or him.
He was hers.
He picked up the pace even further, his thrusts becoming less controlled, the friction between them slicked with their mingled juices and dripping sweat.
He held her lower body slightly apart so that he could fuck up into her like a power drill, and maneuvered her down on him every time he hit home with a breath-stealing twist so that her clit always ground against the hard, satiny root of him, still clutched in her relentless grip.
“Ramses…” she moaned with abandon, no longer able to keep her heavy eyelids up.
“Alend…Alend, Alend, Alend…”
She chanted his name with a helpless desperation that tore through him, making him equally desperate to fulfill her, to give her everything she wanted. Everything he had.
He arched up into her one last time, locking into the place that no one but he would ever reach.
She came apart on a silent scream as he held there, his sex throbbing uncontrollably within the tight clasp of her body, triggering an endless explosion of bliss from deep within her, making her squeeze him rhythmically everywhere, but especially there.
So fucking tight.
He clenched his teeth and held on as long as he could, until finally, her fisting core could be denied no longer, and he erupted with a roar inside of her, flooding her with his thick, molten seed.
Their climax went on and on, one orgasm rolling into another like wave after crashing tidal wave, each one higher than the last, drowning them in unimaginable ecstasy.
And then he felt it.
Her mouth at his throat as she tucked her face into the crook of his neck. She was trying to bite him again with her tiny teeth. Except this time, he felt the sting of something sharper—
As her Pure female fangs sank into his jugular vein.
*** *** *** ***
More.
Mine.
Mine! Mine! Mine!
The words pounded through Eveline’s veins to the maddened beat of her wildly leaping pulse as her newly-grown fangs punctured Ramses’ taut, sweat-salty skin, sinking smoothly into his jugular like they’d always belonged there.
She was finally home.
Inhaling deeply through her nose, she breathed him in as she drew the first pull of his rich, hot, spicy-sweet blood into her mouth.
Oh gods!
His taste! A million flavors exploded upon her tongue, all of which she loved, but never knew before now. And all of her clamored for more!
How could he quench her burning thirst while simultaneously make her feel starved? Being hopelessly, helplessly addicted to him didn’t begin to describe what she felt. Always more. It was never enough with him.
She wanted him endlessly.
She impaled herself further onto his enduringly rigid cock by grinding even closer down on him as she grabbed onto the side of his neck to push her fangs deeper into his throat.
Ah, sweet, dark, decadent possession.
She loved owning him his way. She’d wanted it from the first time she beheld him, though she hadn’t known it for what it was at the time. She knew that only his Dark Mate had tasted his blood before. Somehow, she knew. But Ashlu had wasted the honor he gave her. Like a person suffering from ageusia presented with a three-star Michelin experience.
He’d allowed no other to penetrate him like this. She could feel it; she could taste it. It was in the sweet burst of innocence in his blood, like a virgin shyly revealing his secrets, as each flavor unfolded into another, like the opening of petals on an infinitely kaleidoscopic rose.
Eveline chased those secrets to their vulnerable, tender, pulsing core, until it was him she was drinking, not just his blood.
Her other hand still gripped the base of his throbbing sex, still felt the pulse of his cream as he poured himself into her, just as his blood flowed hotly into her mouth, down her throat, igniting all of her heretofore dormant taste buds.
All hers.
Every part of him.
His smooth, golden-bronze skin. His big, stone-hard, muscular body. His intense, obsidian eyes. His magnificent, steely cock.
All of his cream.
All of his blood.
All hers!
She wanted to lay him back on the cavern ground like an endless feast. She wanted to command him to her will, make him offer himself up like a sexual banquet, feed her his every vein. She wanted to give him pleasure so incomparable, everything he’d ever known before her would be obliterated into immemorable dust.
And just as she thought these things, he was suddenly lying back upon the cool, slightly damp ground, taking her with him, since she refused to relinquish her tight grip on his throat.
“Eveline…” he rasped low, his voice guttural and raw.
She pulled out briefly to look down into his eyes, even as she tracked the slow trickle of blood that leaked out of the small punctures she’d made in the corner of her own eye. She was so intensely aware of everything about him. Every breath and sound. Every sigh, every pulse.
So that was when she saw that the other tears in his throat from the Challenge had knitted together entirely. Not fully healed, but they were no longer bleeding. Boldly, she pushed up his shirt and noticed, too, that the dark bruises all over his torso seemed to have lessened, though she couldn’t be sure, not having his heightened vampire sight in the darkness of the cavern.
It was working! Her blood was healing him!
Her blood, and perhaps her sex as well. For Eveline knew what it meant to grow Pure female fangs for the first and only time in the course of her millennia-old existence.
She’d found her Eternal Mate.
She hadn’t been looking, certainly not within a ten-mile radius of a male like Ramses. But here he was anyway. Defying and reinventing all of her expectations. And now that she knew of his existence, now that she’d tasted his intoxicating seed and blood, it seemed as if this was what she’d always wanted. He was who she craved.
No other.
He stared back at her with unrestrained passion swirling in the dark depths of his incredible obsidian eyes as the impact of her epiphany rocked through her.
Suddenly, Eveline felt indescribably vulnerable and panicked, her armor of logical equanimity evaporating like insubstantial steam.
While everything about Ramses seemed just as impenetrable and invincible as always.
Just because she tagged him as her Mate didn’t mean that he had to reciprocate. Even if he were Pure, there would be no guarantee.
But he was a Dark One. And a King besides. He could have anyone he wanted for Mate. Why would he choose a small, red-haired librarian beyond the duration of their Blood Contract? She wished they were equal in this uncomfortable feeling of helplessness and nakedness. She wished she could take some of his mythical control and dominance into herself. She wished—
Even before she finished her thought, h
e spread his legs wide on either side of her body, giving her ready access to whatever she wanted. Verily, it looked as if he’d been restrained to the ground by invisible bonds.
“Eveline, are you…?”
She comprehended his question before he completed it.
He’d lain back and opened his body to her not by his own will just now, but because she’d commanded it with her thoughts. She was in control. She had dominion over him.
Fascinating.
Keeping their gazes locked, his own eyes blazing with heat and…surprise, he slowly took his arms away from her and folded them beneath his head.
As he did so, every vein on his body raised to the surface of his skin. She saw them clearly everywhere. Like pale green lightning streaks forking and splitting across his flesh, pulsing for her attention, begging her to penetrate every single one of them.
Take him.
The insistent words echoed in her mind again.
“Is this a spell?” he gritted out, snapping her eyes back to his. “Is this how you’re controlling me?”
“I just thought…”
She licked her lips, scooping an errant drop of his blood from the corner of her mouth inside.
Ambrosia.
She wanted to gorge upon him until she was too full to move.
Whether or not he returned her Claim on him, at least she didn’t feel the ravaging effects of the Decline. She didn’t think it was because he loved her, because she wasn’t entirely certain (Pure female fangs notwithstanding) that she loved him. Pesky, irrational emotion, love was. Even if she felt it, she wasn’t necessarily ready to accept it.
Perhaps it was simply a physical thing that fused them together like powerful magnets. Perhaps a Pure One and a Dark One had different chemistry, so the Cardinal Rule didn’t apply.
Perhaps she should just “let her hair down” and enjoy Ramses as mother nature intended—by riding him into the cavern ground.
Mine! Mine! Mine!
“Yes,” she finally answered, realizing it was true. “I thought about wanting you displayed like a pagan offering just now so that I could feast upon your body.”
Said body flinched and shuddered beneath her like the beginnings of an earthquake.
Her eyes flicked to his, uncertain of his reaction, yet determined also to get her way.
“Do you mind terribly?”
She was asking him to cede control to her, and she saw from the understanding in his eyes that he knew she’d release him from her spell if he didn’t want it too. She’d never take from him without his permission.
But…
With his blood spreading like wildfire throughout her system, his cock still buried deeply within her, she reveled in the glorious, unparalleled power of commanding him. Of having him at her mercy.
Of having his trust. A kind of trust she was certain he’d never gifted to another.
His dark eyes glittered as he held her gaze.
“Do it,” he rumbled low. “Take what you want.”
“Take all of me.”
*** *** *** ***
Ramses’ heart pounded in deafening booms as he ceded all control to his little sprite.
True, she was commanding his body using her own powers, but he knew that she’d release him from this invisible imprisonment if he showed any doubt.
He had no doubt.
In fact, if she asked him to hold himself in check, he would have done it for her. And had they the time and tools, he would have submitted to being chained down just to see that dangerous, predatory, erotic possessiveness flare brightly in her eyes. Far better than the uncertain vulnerability he’d seen earlier.
Did she still not understand that he was hers? Totally and completely? Or perhaps she understood but hadn’t yet fully accepted the irrefutable truth. Still sore from his recent rejection of her.
But he was raw and uncertain too, despite the bone-deep imperative to Mate with her. He’d chosen poorly once, and it had destroyed not only himself but the world around him. So many people suffered because of his stubborn, foolish choice. He couldn’t afford to make another mistake. What he felt for this female…could it be trusted? Could he trust her to not use his weakness against him and destroy him once and for all?
Ramses swallowed back his fear and pain, even as his newly melted heart thumped with doubt and warning. As well as a kernel of fragile, wounded hope.
“Do it,” he uttered huskily, his voice frayed and hoarse from barely checked emotions.
“Take what you want. Take all of me.”
He saw the moment when that familiar stubborn determination blazed in her eyes, the possessiveness and passion, drowning out all doubt and hesitation.
Challenge accepted.
She’d take all of him, all right. She’d devour every morsel, every drop.
Ramses raised his hips in invitation, plowing deeper into her, torturing them both with the exquisite, slick, yet oh-so-deliciously tight friction.
A corner of her mouth quirked as she stared down at him, an unpredictable impishness entering the usually innocent blue-gray.
Slowly, as if she had all the time in the world—and perhaps time had frozen too, just for her—she ran her conquering hands from the side of his naked hips to his waist, her thumbs tracing the defined V of his torso where it met his hipbones, scratching across the internal iliac veins of his lower abdomen. Everywhere she touched, his flesh caught fire, the air crackling with sparks that singed the fine dark hairs dusting his skin.
“Pretty,” she murmured, her eyes rivetted to the starburst of dancing sparks, as much as his naked skin beneath.
Those restless hands stroked up the middle of his stomach, making his muscles bunch and tighten into corrugated steel, to the deep groove that bisected his pecs, then spread across them until one small palm held still directly over his thrashing heart.
As if she was holding the bloody, newly resuscitated organ directly in her hands.
Ramses deepened his breathing to calm himself, but he couldn’t control his rapidly leaping pulse or the flare of his nostrils like that of an animal cornered. He couldn’t tamp down the fear of being hurt. More than hurt, if she so wished it. It was in her power to destroy him with one look. One word.
And that was when she lowered her clothed torso onto his exposed one, the movement making her lower body clench around his sex tightly in a nearly agonizing, voluptuous twist.
Breathe, he told himself, just breathe.
She laid her ear against his heart and listened.
“It’s beating so fast,” she whispered. “So strong and commanding, like battle drums. Do you know what it’s saying, Alend?”
Gods! She slayed him whenever she said his name. “Rock” or “stone” was its meaning, a name he’d chosen for himself to remind him of who he was, who he’d been born to be before he lost his way.
“No,” he rumbled in answer.
He could feel her lips curl against his heated skin.
“It vows it’s mine,” she declared confidently, but the hitch in her voice told him of her bravado.
“Then it must be yours,” he agreed, his own voice gravelly.
She worried his beaded nipple with her thumb almost absentmindedly as she sighed.
“I love this sound. I love this vow. I want to hear every part of you declare my Claim.”
Fuck. Her words were driving him insane with lust. With the undeniable need to answer her Claim.
“Then you better keep moving,” he reminded her evenly, even as his body shuddered with strain.
“There’s a lot of me to cover.”
She raked her nail across his nipple almost in chastisement, making him gasp. Then, she soothed it with her small, warm tongue, making him groan.
“Mine,” she punctuated finally with a playful nip that Ramses felt all the way in his full, heavy balls.
As if she knew it too, one of her hands snaked down his torso to his groin, her fingers wrapping around his scrotum in a tight, unyiel
ding grip.
“Mine,” she practically growled.
“Yours,” he gritted out, her fiery touch branding him.
Keeping her hold of his rocks, she moved on from his tortured chest to nuzzle her face in the crook of his neck, along his jaw, before inhaling deeply under his arm where his scent was concentrated.
“Hmm,” the sound vibrated through her throat, “I love the way you smell.”
Ramses tried to shift beneath her, his body burning from her daring, devilish touches and tantalizing words. But whatever magic she used held firm, keeping him unnaturally still. Save the arch of his spine and the nudge of his hips.
All he could do was feel. And hear. And smell. But he couldn’t really move.
It was killing him not to move. Not to take control.
And then, she pushed his shirt as far as it would go with his arms still trapped behind his head. She pushed the fabric over his face, until they almost hid his eyes.
She paused and looked down at him, a bright blue fire in her normally serene gaze.
“Now, Alend Ramses, I will take all of you.”
Her core muscles clenched strongly around him, while her hand squeezed his heavy pouch.
His spine snapped taut at the torturous, delicious burn of her command, his hips bucking to seek relief.
But she merely tightened her grip and refused to relinquish control. He couldn’t achieve the friction he needed imprisoned like this. Pleasure or pain, she would be the one to give it to him. He could only lie there and take it.
Chest heaving, he returned her challenging gaze, drowning in the dark pools of her fully-blown pupils. He blinked once in acquiescence and watched the thin blue ring of fire around her pupils burn even hotter.
His blood in her veins, his heart in her hand, his cock in her core, his soul in her eyes—she took all of him.
Both hands kneaded strongly across his body as she began to ride him in earnest.
She squeezed his bulging biceps and traced the raised veins.
“Mine,” she growled.
“Yours,” he answered.
She thumbed his nipples and raked her fingernails down his sides, leaning low without losing her slow, deep rhythm to lick a wet strip from sternum to chin.
