by Aja James
Aglow with her returning powers, all but humming with energy fueled by his blood and body, Jade stayed wide awake while her male succumbed to a light doze.
She shifted slightly to hold him deeper inside her, his sex still hard and pulsing within her core.
They lay on their sides facing each other, his arms wrapped around her torso possessively, one of her hands on his chest above his heart, the other idly playing with the short waves of his hair at the nape of his neck.
No male had ever pleased her as he did over the past however many hours he’d Nourished her body with his own. They’d been locked in her chambers together for at least forty-eight hours.
A deep sadness penetrated her thick, post-coital haze at the thought.
Already two days gone.
Sixteen left.
She felt like she had only sixteen days of life left, the thought of him leaving her was so abhorrent.
Though she’d had countless lovers in her long existence, she’d never trusted anyone so completely with herself, never held anyone in her arms, let alone inside her body, while they slept.
He knew about her tears.
The ones she never shed when awake, the ones she didn’t remember shedding when asleep.
Somehow, she felt both stronger and more vulnerable because of his knowledge.
He was her greatest weakness and her greatest strength. When he left her, she would feel bereft. If he stayed, she would be invincible.
She knew this about him even three years ago, though she might never have admitted it to herself. She’d let him go, then, because she was too afraid of her weakness. But now that she knew the full power of his Nourishment, her absolute need to have him, keep him, trumped her fear.
But how to convince him to stay beyond the sixteen remaining days? How to keep him forever?
Jade couldn’t think of one single thing in her possession that could tempt him enough to tie his life to hers for eternity.
He was a male who knew exactly what he wanted, what he believed in, and nothing could sway him from his decisions.
She rejected the idea of enslaving him by force—she didn’t want that.
She wanted him to choose her.
Reluctantly, she thought of his human wife.
Based on his description of her, Jade compared very poorly. Perhaps she might have the advantage of physical looks, but without his love, it didn’t matter.
His love.
Jade’s mood and self-confidence lowered even further. She hadn’t felt this uncertain of herself since she was an innocent babe.
She knew all about driving males mad with lust, but she knew nothing about love.
Real love.
If indeed the chimera did exist.
Apparently, it existed for Seth, but never for Jade.
She just wasn’t made that way. She didn’t evoke those sentiments in males, or females, for that matter. Somehow, she only aroused their basest urges, and she saw them the same way.
Once upon a time, she might have yearned for different things. She might have tried harder to believe in the unattainable, if for nothing else than to give herself hope.
But she’d lived too many years, hundreds and thousands of years, with disappointment. She’d learned to accept the truth:
Love was a fiction, at least for her.
Except with Seth, she wanted more.
After all he’d given her already, she always wanted more.
Even the fucking had been different.
He’d said he was “loving” her.
She hadn’t been so delirious with orgasmic bliss that she missed hearing him.
He’d made certain she was paying attention, after all.
Jade was familiar with all sorts of terminology, euphemisms and slang for hard core sex. She didn’t delude herself that what he called it made what they did together special.
Except it felt special.
Because it was Seth.
She tried to press even closer to him even though their bodies were already entwined so tightly they breathed as one.
She was desperate to keep him. That much she knew. The whys behind her ravaging need for him she might never figure out, and she wasn’t sure she cared.
She needed him. And she’d never needed anything before in her life.
But how to convince him to stay by her side?
Softly, she brushed her mouth across his. He needed his rest after all she’d taken from his body, but she couldn’t help herself.
She was addicted to his ecstasy.
When she licked her tongue along the seam of his lips, he stirred and sighed, his arms tightening around her.
Oh, the sounds he made…her lust spiked sharply at just that soft exhale of breath.
With a sudden twist of her torso, she rolled him onto his back and braced her weight on her arms above him, clenching her core muscles to squeeze his sex tightly in her silken fist.
His hands moved up her legs to grasp her thighs as he opened his eyes a fraction, the gray orbs turning to dark slate from the shadow of his thick, bristly lashes.
She stared intensely into his eyes as she began to move upon him, riding his tortured arousal long and slow and deep.
He locked his gaze with hers but didn’t speak and didn’t move, except for the subtle roll of his hips in counterpoint to her movements to increase the exquisite friction of their most intimate parts.
Whereas he’d dictated and dominated her pleasure before, he now let her take the lead, let her take what she wanted from him.
She wanted everything.
Jade quickened her pace and rode him roughly, surging in an explosive rhythm that stole his breath.
His nostrils flared as he continued to hold her glittering, possessive gaze, as she pushed both of them closer and closer to the zenith.
When her orgasm blazed through her body like wildfire, she arched her spine and threw her head back in helpless abandon, her cry of completion tearing through her throat.
But before she’d crested the peak, he suddenly reversed their positions until he was on top, and she was on her stomach beneath him.
She opened her mouth to protest his withdrawal, but a half second later, he was pushing back inside from behind, his thickness and length all but overwhelming her from this angle.
Oh, but how she loved it!
She reveled in the strength and power of him, the way he knew exactly where to touch her, how deep she needed him, when to drive her crazy with a hard pounding and when to make her burn slow.
He spread her thighs apart with his knees and held her hips up with his hands to drive down into her at such a devastating angle, she thought she felt him all the way in her throat.
She was going to feel him for years after this—for eternity.
Even after he left her, she’d always feel the phantom heat of his body over her, around her, inside of her.
No male would ever be able to take his place.
No male would ever fill the well of longing he carved into her.
Only two thrusts in, and she was caught in the throes of another crisis, even more explosive than the first.
She buried her face in the pillow to muffle her screams.
The reduced airflow magnified the intensity of her sensations until every hair tingled with electric energy, until her entire body from head to toe, inside out, flushed with a euphoria so keen it bordered on pain.
It was the knife’s edge that she balanced on, between pleasure and pain, that made her rapture grow exponentially.
Her core clenched and convulsed around him greedily, savagely, trying to milk him for the Nourishment of his seed, the life force that would feed her powers to even greater heights.
Instead of releasing into her, he slowed his thrusts and ground into the deepest part of her every time he shoved to the hilt inside, triggering one orgasm after another, until the incredible pleasure made her entire world spin.
Her sight faded to black, then blinding white,
then black again, as if she were a flickering lightbulb on the verge of short circuiting.
Before she lost all consciousness and control, she used the last of her strength to push herself up enough to reach a hand down between them, grasping the root of him as he pumped agonizingly slowly into and out of her.
He was so hot and satiny and slick, his girth exceeding the circumference of her fingers and thumb, that she shuddered with a rush of excitement at the physical proof of his power and dominance.
But two could play at this game.
She squeezed him with her hand and funneled her powers into the possessive touch.
A fractured moan tore from his throat as the blast of sexual heat and energy from her hand around his shaft blazed through every vein in his body like a shot of lightning, making him tighten everywhere to the point of excruciating pain.
She was using her powers to command the release of his Nourishment.
He couldn’t fight it, no matter the tremendous force of his will or the unyielding reins of his control.
He couldn’t deny her.
All at once, he unleashed his crisis, pushing into her as deep as he could go, deeper than either of them thought possible, and flooded her womb with continuous torrents of scalding cream.
She insatiably absorbed it all, pushing her ass against his crotch, her sex literally eating him up in ravenous gulps and merciless clenches.
Until his strength was all but depleted, and he collapsed heavily onto her back, one arm taking some of his weight off of her.
She didn’t mind. She reveled in his enervation, growling with satisfaction and bliss beneath him.
After an incalculable amount of time, silent but for their rough breaths of sexual exhaustion, as he poured wave after wave of himself into her, he exhaled deeply.
With a shaking hand, he took hers from his still pulsing erection and wrapped both of his hands like manacles around her wrists, trapping them beside her head as he trapped her body beneath his.
“Don’t touch me like that again,” he rasped low and guttural beside her ear.
“But—” she started to protest.
“Don’t,” he commanded her gruffly. “You receive the pleasure I give you, that is our deal. You do not rape me of it.”
Stabbed with hurt at his words, she tried to twist around to see his face, but he held her down with his much greater weight.
“That’s not why I used my powers,” she muffled into the pillow. “I just wanted you to feel the pleasure I feel. I just wanted—”
“You wanted my release and tore it from me against my will,” he ground out, his voice husky with an unnamed emotion.
She quivered with vicarious pain all over just to hear him.
Was she wrong to want him to share their pleasure?
But she knew that it was also because she wanted him to lose control, just as he so easily made her lose control.
Was that why he was angry with her?
Jade wriggled a little, uncomfortable that she’d displeased him. Even more uncomfortable that she cared so much about displeasing him.
“Don’t,” he whispered against her ear this time.
Immediately she stilled, focusing on the tone of his voice, the pained hitch in his breath, the shivers that racked his body on top of hers.
She’d been certain she’d given him pleasure so intense he’d never forget it. It was her power, after all, to reduce her lovers to mindless bodies addicted to the sexual pleasures only she could provide.
Why wouldn’t he let himself enjoy their contract for all it’s worth? Why did he insist on holding back?
Mutely, she gave a nod, as much as she could move her head still pressed into her pillow.
She promised not to use her powers on him again.
Painstakingly, he pulled out of her, away from her, until she felt nothing but cool air on her damp, too hot skin.
When she finally gathered enough strength to roll onto her back and sit up, he’d already pulled on a pair of loose trousers, the drawstring left untied, the waistband riding low on his lean hips.
He was sitting on the chaise by her bed again, just as he’d done when she first awakened after her recovery from Katerina’s ice poison.
“You should attend your duties, my lady,” he said in that low, calm voice, his expression impassive.
Jade didn’t want to attend any duties. She wanted to devote every second of the time she had with him to pleasure. The world around her could crash and burn for all she cared at the moment.
As if he knew what she was thinking, he reminded her quietly, resolutely, “My terms, Jade.”
She scowled.
She so rarely did so that her forehead didn’t know how to arrange itself at first, giving her a slightly quizzical look.
“You said you’d be mine whenever and wherever I want,” she argued rather mulishly.
“You took from me without my permission,” he retorted without heat.
“Are you punishing me?”
Clenching his jaw, he lowered his eyes, but not before she saw the flash of agony that twisted his features for a split second.
When he looked at her again, his face was once more an unreadable mask.
“I will be here when you return,” he said as if to appease her. “You can have me then. Allow me a few hours of rest.”
He quirked his mouth in a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“I am not invincible, after all. You have used me too well.”
Finally, his explanation seemed to satisfy her, and she efficiently got dressed for her queenly duties.
Before she left the chamber, she came briefly astride him, settling in his lap and looping her arms loosely around his neck.
“You will pleasure me when I return,” she demanded, though her words were soft against his lips as she kissed him lingeringly, almost chastely.
“Yes,” he murmured.
She kissed him hard then to remind him of her possession, and he sucked her tongue into his mouth willingly, letting her take what she needed as reassurance.
When she was gone from the room, Seth couldn’t hide the pain any more.
His body contorted in wave after wave of undiluted agony, sending him crashing to the floor of her chamber in an uncontrollable seizure.
The Decline came differently upon every Pure One who suffered it, who loved with everything they had but didn’t receive equal love in return.
But Seth knew exactly what it was; there could be no mistake.
Since the first time he released into her when she’d been delirious from poison, he’d felt it—
The higher her pleasure soared, the more her powers fed off of him, the more debilitating the pain he endured in the aftermath.
He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t utter a sound, for the agony that gripped him now, burning through his blood and ravaging his soul.
He’d promised her eighteen days.
He’d lied.
At this rate, he wouldn’t last half as long.
Through it all, he focused every bit of strength he had left on Jade.
He had to do everything in his power to make her strong. To protect her from the enemies that lurked in every corner.
Soon, much sooner than he planned, he wouldn’t be able to see to her safety personally. Before that end, he had to find another way.
Even if it meant delivering her into the arms of another.
*** *** *** ***
Anastasia whistled low as she took in her queen’s glowing countenance, not only a dramatic contrast to the last time she saw Jade in the jaws of death, but also a marked difference versus her appearance over the entire past three years.
The vampire queen was practically shooting stars out of her eyes!
Whatever magic potion Jade was taking, Ana sure could use some for herself.
Though she knew very well that the Pure One’s Consul was the source of Jade’s revitalization. Ana just didn’t know whether it was simply the sexua
l feast he provided or something else, something far more potent.
Her bet was on the latter.
“Convene the others,” Jade commanded, shutting down Ana’s speculations with a pointed glare.
“I want to crush the traitors before they can regroup.”
After all of the Chosen gathered in the command center, videoing in Ramses who was still abroad, Jade took the seat at the head of the large conference table, the first time she’d taken the position in three years.
“I’m not waiting for our enemies to make the first move any more,” Jade began without preamble. “I’m taking the fight to them.”
She looked to Maximus.
“Who’s on our suspect list?”
The Chosen’s Commander rattled off the names of a dozen Dark noble houses, of which some were outside their jurisdiction, belonging to the Great Lakes and Mid Atlantic Hives.
Jade gave a quick decisive nod.
“How much progress have you made, Sage?” she asked of Ramses over the distance.
“Enough,” he answered, and the wireless link was so strong, it was as if he was in the room with them, sitting at the table.
She waited for him to elaborate, but he was silent after that, his expression stoic and unreadable.
Under different circumstances, Jade would have been concerned with his reticence.
She liked Ramses. She cared for all of her personal guard. But she also understood that his current icy aloofness had something to do with his intentions toward her. Intentions that she wouldn’t return.
If she’d never met Seth, perhaps she and Ramses could have forged a closer partnership. She might have even considered him for her Consort, as Maximus suggested.
But it was all moot now.
No male would ever be enough to satisfy her, save Seth. If only she could convince him to stay by her side permanently.
First thing’s first—taking care of business so she could go back to him as quickly as possible, lose herself in the ecstasy of his blood and body.
“Any unusual movements detected?” she threw out the question at large.
“I triangulated some chatter on the net,” Grace Darling said, “but lost the trail at a particular nightclub, or day club, or whatever. It seems to be open at all odd hours and is extremely exclusive.”
“That’s where I picked up the trail,” Devlin continued, “and tracked a few hand-delivered notes amongst a network of humans, who are linked, either knowingly or unknowingly, to some of the Dark nobles on Maximus’s list. A gathering of some sort is about to go down.”
