by Aja James
For a moment, he looked as if he wanted to argue with one or all parts of her statement. But then he shrugged without actually shifting his body.
She rather envied his ability to do that. Convey so much with so little.
“What do you propose we do, then, Pure One? What would you do if you were in my shoes?” he asked, and surprisingly, he looked at her as if he cared to hear her answer.
Eveline took some time to consider seriously.
While she did so, he startled her by wrapping his arms around her, stepping so close, their torsos touched lightly, but not quite pressed together.
“Wha-what are you doing?” she stuttered, her thoughts scattering like marbles.
He leaned closer still, his much larger body enveloping her all around, his head inclining toward hers so that those full, succulent, sinful lips grazed the top of her head.
“Untying you,” he murmured against her hair.
His closeness, his clean male musk, his low, rough-edged voice—everything about him made her dizzy with sensory overload.
Her body involuntarily leaned into him.
In that moment, she liked him just fine. At least her body did.
In fact, she liked him a little more than a lot.
*** *** *** ***
Nothing personal…This isn’t about you and me as individuals…
He admired her logic and business-like attitude. But he didn’t like it.
With any other female, Ramses would have appreciated this no-nonsense approach a lot more. It certainly would save him extensive headaches and inconvenience.
But for some inexplicable reason, with this female, he wanted things to be personal.
He wanted to understand her as an individual, and perhaps even allow her to understand him in return.
“I shall give you another option,” he murmured against the top of her head, his arms lingering around her body even though he’d already released her bindings.
“Instead of accepting you as my Blood Slave and declaring war on your Kind, and instead of rejecting you as a symbolic gift from one of my nobles and stirring up more civil discord, I can simply make you… disappear.”
She jolted slightly at his soft but menacing words, even as her body continued to soften and melt into him.
“Dis-disappear?” she squeaked.
“Turned to stardust,” he elaborated in the same, almost soothing, tone, belying the fact that he was contemplating murder.
His loose, seemingly affectionate embrace of her added to her confusion, he was sure. It was what many predators did in the wild—lure their prey into a false sense of comfort, safety and complacency—before the lethal strike.
“I can make it quick and painless,” he purred. “Even pleasurable. You won’t suffer.”
“I-I…” she stuttered, her eyes drifting closed of their own volition before she forcibly snapped them back open.
“How would you explain my disappearance?”
“Simple,” he assured her. “To your kinsmen, I will blame it on the vampire nobles who kidnapped you. I will then pretend to search for the culprits, and after a reasonable period of time, declare a dead end. To the nobles, I can say you tried to escape, something went awry, you decided that this fate is worse than death, et cetera. With the end result of no living female to enslave. They will think of other ways to test me, no doubt, but for the time being, their plot would be foiled.”
“I’m not liking where I end up in this scenario. Being dead, that is,” she remarked placidly.
“Hmm,” he murmured, skimming his fingers from the tantalizing indentation of her waist, up the graceful curve of her spine.
“It’s not personal, little sprite,” he lobbed her logical words back at her, to which she grunted in both acknowledgement and chagrin.
“At least yours will be a sacrifice for the greater good. Your death will avert war and countless casualties. Don’t you Pure Ones live for martyrdom?”
Slowly, she stepped back from him, bestirring out of the sensual fog he’d woven around her.
He let his arms fall to his sides rather than tighten them to keep her trapped. He could have ramped up the seduction and kept her in his thrall, but he wanted to see what she would do. What she would say.
She surprised him, this little spitfire of a female. Logical and calm under immense pressure and danger. With an intense passion burning just below the surface.
He could feel it viscerally, her innate sexuality and hunger.
She didn’t seem to be aware of this side of herself. Or, she purposely repressed or ignored the inferno within her. She was a study of contrasts that fascinated him.
’Twould be a shame to end her. But he would pull the metaphorical trigger without hesitation if he had to.
“I, for one, never wanted to be a martyr,” she declared. “And as appealing as the pleasurable death you describe sounds, I prefer to remain in this world for the foreseeable future.”
“Then offer me another solution,” he challenged, folding his arms across his chest.
“You won’t just let me go?” she tried.
“No.”
“Well, I won’t be your Blood Slave,” she stated firmly, her tone nonnegotiable.
Ramses gave her his most seductive smile.
She shivered, but she didn’t acquiesce.
“How do you know you won’t enjoy it? I can be a most generous and attentive Master.”
“Had a lot of practice, have you?” she squinted disapprovingly at him.
“Mmm,” he hummed noncommittally, letting her interpret that how she would.
“I value my freedom too much, I’m afraid,” she said staunchly. “No…generosity and attentiveness, as you put it, will make me give up myself.”
Ramses’ jaw clenched involuntarily at her words.
Words he’d once boasted himself. But then, he’d Fallen, hadn’t he? He’d given all of himself. His body, heart and soul.
His very freedom.
How easily this Pure female scoffed at the possibility that she could lose herself to a greater temptation. She’d never been tempted.
And suddenly, irrationally, he wanted to teach her a lesson she’d never forget.
But forcing her to his will wasn’t the way. She had to choose him. That was true enslavement—when you chose to relinquish everything you were to another person.
When you became nothing more than their possession.
“Offer me another solution,” he repeated quietly, “and I will consider allowing you to remain in this world.”
She narrowed her eyes at him threateningly despite the imbalance of power between them.
“Stop trying to intimidate me. You can no doubt snuff me out with a flick of your little finger, but I can and will curse you to endure untold misery for the rest of eternity before I ‘disappear.’”
Again, she surprised him.
Ramses arched one bold eyebrow.
“Indeed? Do tell.”
“Believe me, you don’t want details.”
“I disagree. I am unutterably curious.”
“Well…” she considered him thoroughly from head to toe, a rather worrisome glint entering her very fine eyes.
“I’d probably curse your male parts. Unman you, so to speak. Isn’t that what males like you fear the most? Impotence? Peanut-sized equipment? Burning pain down there? Your tender bits overgrown with puss-oozing sores that never heal?”
Ramses blinked disbelievingly at her.
She stared calmly back at him, not batting an eyelash.
And continued to rattle off additional curses that sounded worse than death.
“How about the worst kind of constipation? Where every time you…go, during the rare occasions that you could, you feel like you’re birthing a flaming sword through your anus? Or gigantic, itchy, hairy balls? Or shriveled little raisins that produce only enough testosterone to make you sound like a five-year-old girl?”
She was certainly imaginative, he�
�d give her that.
“I can curse you with all those ailments sequentially, all together at once, and worse. And if you kill me, you’d be cursed forever. Never-ending torture. Still want to make me ‘disappear’?”
The gall of this female!
Was she actually threatening him? She looked dead serious about it too, and she didn’t seem like the sort to bluff.
He’d met very few sorceresses in his existence. Immortals and humans who could wield magic were extremely rare. He didn’t know how powerful Eveline Marceau was, but if she truly was a sorceress, he knew better than to invoke her wrath brashly.
It also meant that she had some affinity for the Elements, which made her even more intriguing. For both personal and political reasons.
But intriguing or not, fine blue-gray eyes notwithstanding, he was a busy male. He wanted this wearisome night to end, and with the present problem solved.
“I can’t and won’t simply let you go,” he growled, his earlier amusement devolving into frustration and impatience.
She folded her arms as well, mimicking his pose unconsciously.
Thinking.
Plotting.
Giving him unease.
An intelligent, resourceful, logical female was the most dangerous kind.
Finally, she squared her shoulders and said, “I have a proposal to make.”
“I am listening.”
“I will stay with you at the Cove for a period of time voluntarily, so that you can be seen by your nobles as having accepted their gift. I will let the Dozen know my plans so that they won’t worry.”
“No good,” he bit out. “If you are simply a guest, that’s a clear confirmation of an alliance between our Kinds. Even worse than my rejection of the nobles’ gift. You must submit to me in some way, if you are not my Blood Slave.”
She narrowed her eyes, her glare both resentful of the predicament and of him.
“I won’t be your Blood Slave—” she repeated, and immediately flashed her palm at him to gesture for his silence when he opened his mouth to interrupt.
“—but I will consider entering into a Blood Contract.”
It was Ramses’ turn to narrow his eyes, seriously considering her words from every angle.
“I offer to supply all the Pure blood you desire for the next three months,” she continued like the most unflappable but determined corporate litigator, “in exchange for unlimited access to your library.”
His library? No female had ever asked for that from him before.
“I understand from Jade that the Cove houses one of the most comprehensive archives of Dark and even Pure histories,” she went on. “Some of the Zodiac Scrolls and other important written records were destroyed in the attack on our Shield a few years ago. I am working to rebuild our knowledge of the past.”
Ramses was not expecting such a proposal.
A Blood Contract was as binding as law for a vampire. Even more enforceable and irrevocable, for the contract was programmed into the very fiber of a Dark One’s existence, like DNA. If he agreed to a Contract with her, he would have to fulfill his part of the bargain on pain of death or worse.
What she was proposing was extremely tempting. But it wasn’t enough to compensate for what she was asking in return.
“Your blood alone is not enough,” he told her. “Perhaps if you also committed your body…”
“No,” was her adamant response.
He quirked his lips.
“Then no bargain. Offer me something else.”
She was quiet for a while, maintaining his stare while she racked her brain.
“You are lacking a Keeper, Inanna mentioned. The previous one turned out to be a traitor?”
Ramses simply stared back, waiting for her point, while a muscle ticked in his jaw.
He didn’t like how much knowledge the Pure Ones had of his hive. Between Inanna and Jade, as well as Ava and Ryu, who visited the Shield regularly to collaborate with Rain, the Pure Ones’ Healer, on genetic research, they knew almost as much as he did about his own dominion. In some ways, they knew much more. Because Jade had ruled over this hive for hundreds of years, while he’d only taken the throne a few months ago.
But he had other kinds of knowledge that no one else had. He just didn’t know how to use it.
Leveraging the New England hive’s resources, networks and the Chosen’s skills was a first step, but it was like searching for a needle in a haystack. Or worse, a grain of sand in the desert.
He’d thought about digging into the Cove’s archives to see if answers or clues could be found in the histories, myths and legends of the Dark and Pure Ones. But when would he have the time? He couldn’t even ask Grace or Devlin to search the records with an AI program because you had to know what you’re searching for and provide parameters.
He didn’t know what he was searching for, and even if he did, he wasn’t going to share it.
He trusted no one.
Ramses regarded the Seer and Scribe of the Pure Ones with a gleam of calculation in his eyes.
“I do indeed lack a Keeper. Are you volunteering for the role?”
“Certainly,” she answered without hesitation. “For three months, anyway. I am very accomplished at organizing, deciphering and keeping records. I imagine your library is already very methodically kept, but if there is any particular area you want me to look into…I’d be more than happy to do it. I won’t share anything I learn with anyone else unless you give me permission. That will be part of our Contract. I am also a handy secretary. I help Seth daily in his work.”
All of this she said without the slightest hint of boasting, merely confidence in her own abilities. Ramses rather liked that, too, about her.
“You will have access to only the sections of the library that I deem appropriate,” he stated.
“That seems awfully lopsided in terms of a Contract,” she argued. “I give my time and service, and my blood whenever you want it, and all I get in return is access to what you allow me access to?”
“Or you could simply disappear.”
“Or your penis could rot off, never to be regenerated.”
“Or you could voluntarily become my Blood Slave and prevent war between our Kinds.”
Her eyebrows lifted clear to her hairline.
“I already told you I’m not a martyr.”
“Then take what I offer and be satisfied.”
“So you accept the Blood Contract?”
“Are you done negotiating?”
She was silent again for quite a while.
Ramses waited much less patiently than before. He wanted this night to be done.
“Will I be free to move about in the Cove?”
“Yes. You will not be able to enter areas that have restricted access in any case.”
“May I interact with whoever I choose?”
“Yes.”
He closed the space between them again and gripped her jaw lightly.
She seemed to be prepared this time, her body naturally accepting his touch. Though her skin still lit up with sparks and crackles, as if there was a mini lightning storm brewing beneath the surface.
“But let’s be clear,” he growled low, “you are mine for the duration of the Contract. You will behave in public and in private accordingly.”
“Only my blood,” she retorted, not the least bit cowed by him.
“And your time.”
“But only to work in your library.”
“And whenever I drink from you.”
She shivered and licked her lips unconsciously, as if already anticipating his fangs sinking into her veins.
“I reserve the right to renegotiate this Contract,” she said somewhat breathlessly.
“Only if you offer me something compelling will you get different terms.”
Her eyes drifted to his mouth and locked in.
“I’ll think of something,” she murmured.
“Do we have a Contract then?” he pressed.
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She swayed into him, her back arching, exposing her smooth, white throat.
“Yes. We have a deal, Dark King.”
“The fiercest of Immortals were those Gifted with the primal instincts of animal spirits. Like animals, they were loyal to their own and mistrusted others not of their Kind, The most powerful of Immortals were those Gifted with the magic of Elements. But there were very few, their magic diffused to keep the Balance. The strongest of Immortals were the Pure Ones, for theirs was the strength of heart, mind and soul. Last, there were the Dark Ones…whose thirst for dominance could never be quenched… ”
—From the lost oral histories of the Zodiac Scrolls
Chapter Three
Eveline considered her new surroundings a little deflatedly.
King Alend Ramses was not quite what she expected.
For all his overt sexuality and dominance, when they sealed the Blood Contract at the cabin in the woods, he only took the barest of sips from her throat before lapping the small wound closed and pulling back from her. And except for the shallowest penetration of his fangs into her jugular vein, he hadn’t touched her anywhere else.
From there, they rode back to the City in a gigantic, armored black SUV that was waiting for them on a deserted road half a mile from the hideaway. For the entire length of time that they walked through the woods and during the ride in the vehicle, Ramses said not one word to her. Moreover, he maintained enough distance between them at all times that she could barely feel his body heat.
It’s as if he purposely banked the flames of his internal furnace. Or maybe she’d somehow doused it. After all, she wasn’t the sort of female males like him pursued.
Logical, sensible, plain, boring.
And what had her new-old friend, life-of-the-party-Amazon-warrior-supermodel Aella called her recently?
Uptight.
Put that way, Eveline well understood why she might not be a viable candidate for seduction.
Nevertheless, she was extremely put out.
She didn’t know why she felt so disappointed by the Dark King’s sudden reticence after he’d stirred her feelings to uncomfortable heights. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? For him to stay far away from her? So that she could remain her sensible, even-keeled self.