by Aja James
Those graceful, small hands that teased Seth to the point of madness every night, they could easily turn the pleasure she gave into acute, devastating pain.
And yet, over the month he’d been with her, he’d also seen her regard the members of her personal guard, the Chosen, with an abiding respect and deep, but seldom expressed, affection.
Seth saw it all, because he looked. He didn’t have much to do besides looking and learning and servicing her blood needs.
He saw her frown of worry when one of the Chosen returned wounded from a hunt. She’d tended to him personally, her hands giving soothing pleasure to blunt his pain. He saw her smile of sisterhood whenever Inanna, the Angel of Death, visited her private chambers. And the two females would share brief moments of true friendship that he’d never seen Jade share with anyone else.
In her own way, the vampire queen was steadfastly honorable. She always kept her promises, and she always admitted when she was wrong.
Take their bargain, for example.
Though she teased and taunted him with both her body and her words, she never tried to seduce him, to force from him that which he’d refused to give.
And when she curled herself into his body at night, their nakedness melding together until they were one and the same, he somehow felt cherished within her soft embrace.
Needed. Wanted. Trusted.
He was willing to bet his life that the number of people Jade Cicada trusted in her long existence were fewer than the fingers of both hands.
But that trust was a double-edged sword.
It made him want to trust her in return.
It made him want to forget that what they shared was merely a transactional bargain, nothing more. That the way she coveted him was no different than how she hungered for a tantalizing treat or an expensive jewel.
Perhaps this was the real seduction—not to manipulate his body into acquiescence but to lay siege to his fortified heart.
Sometimes, deep in slumber, she wept silently in his arms, against his throat, as the sun reached its zenith in the skies.
His defenses cracked wide open then, as he helplessly brushed comforting kisses across her brow and tightened his arms around her, holding her so close the only way he could be closer was to be inside of her.
They never spoke of the anguish and sorrow that haunted her dreams.
She awoke every night famished for his blood, eager to take what pleasure he allowed her from his body. It was as if the tightly entwined lovers that slumbered through the day were two different people, not the vampire queen and her contracted Blood Slave.
“You may look now,” her sultry voice reached him now from a distance away, slightly muffled by the silk curtains around her bed and her own languorous tone, as if she was drunk on pleasure.
“My playmates are just leaving.”
Accordingly, the enervated but thoroughly satisfied harem of beautiful vampire males and females slowly paraded through the double doors before they were shut by her guards behind them.
“Come to bed, Pure One,” the vampire queen beckoned. “I am starving for your delicious blood.”
And then she added when he approached and sank one knee onto the towering mattress, “Perhaps I’ve over-exerted myself this night, but the dulling of one appetite only sharpened the other.”
Seth removed his loose robe with a smooth stretch of muscles, climbed into bed, and lay on his back beside her.
She often took her time deciding where she’d penetrate him. She liked to have him displayed like an uncovered feast before her.
He did not meet her eyes as she looked intently down at him, levered up on her elbow and lying on her side close enough that her body heat made a fine sheen of perspiration pop out all over his naked skin.
A vampire’s temperature was several degrees hotter than that of a Pure One, which was in turn, slightly cooler than a human’s.
But Seth’s internal temperature was climbing to volcanic joules the longer her lazy perusal of his painfully aroused body went on.
“There’s no penetration, you know,” she said casually, as if speaking about the weather, though her words were so startling his gaze finally crashed into hers.
“I don’t let them come inside me,” she continued in the same careless tone.
“Just touching and kissing and sucking and grinding. I have toys for the penetration I need.”
He did not misunderstand her.
A great weight seemed to ease off of his heart, and he released a breath of frightening relief.
Frightening, because he couldn’t fathom his emotions around this female. They were as foreign and incomprehensible to him as an alien calligraphy.
He was a male well in tune with his emotions and thoughts. He read himself as easily and as naturally as he read others. He’d always been an easy-going, calm and collected male. The more stressful the situation and the higher the pressure, the calmer and more focused he became. Perfect for his role as a human diplomat in ancient Egypt and for his current role as the Pure One’s Consul.
And he’d always known how he felt and what he thought when he engaged in flirtations and affairs with the opposite sex before he courted his wife and wedded her. They’d shared a brief but uncomplicated marriage, defined by laughter, friendship, respect and caring. His pleasures with females and his comradery with males had always been an easy relationship, and he was in control of all of his feelings at all times.
But with the vampire queen, Jade, he was in control of nothing.
“But only since you arrived,” she murmured, lightly touching the dimple in his chin with a finger, her eyes fixated on said indentation as if it were the most fascinating wonder she’d ever beheld.
“What was it that movie star Paul Newman said? The actor from the Golden Age of Hollywood who’s famous for being devoted to his wife?”
How should he know, Seth pondered. He didn’t have time to watch human movies. He didn’t even know what the Golden Age of Hollywood referred to. He was rather shocked that she did.
“‘Why fool around with hamburger when you have steak at home’,” she quoted, then just as casually draped her naked, heated, silken body on top of his until her wet, opened core rode the throbbing ridge of his painfully engorged erection.
“If only the steak would let me eat it,” she growled a little playfully, a tad desperately, and snapped her teeth just a hair above the tip of his nose.
“You have command of my blood whenever and wherever you want,” Seth finally spoke, his voice gravelly and deep.
“Hmm,” she made the kittenish sound in the back of her throat while she nuzzled her face against his jaw and throat.
“But taking your blood without your body is like perpetually smelling and seeing the succulent steak without actually tasting it. Not one. Single. Succulent. Morsel. When will you give in to me, Pure One? What shall I do to break you?”
Chapter Three
She could have said “break your resolve,” “break your control,” but no, her words were chosen with purpose.
She wanted to break him wide open, so that she could possess all of him, own him body, blood and soul.
Little did she know that she was already dangerously chipping away at the armor around his heart. With her soft, girlish smiles and her direct, commanding gaze.
Seth decided to turn the tables on her. He decided to chip at her armor for a bit.
“Why do you cry sometimes when you sleep?”
There.
He’d spoken their secret out loud.
He was absolutely certain that no one else knew. He didn’t know how he knew. He just did. She’d trusted only him with her tears.
He watched her closely for her reaction. Would she let him in a little or would she push him away?
For a while she simply breathed. Silent and still.
Then she said, “We all have some unpleasant memories. Don’t you?”
“Not particularly,” he replied, “My human life wa
s quite blissful while it lasted, and my Pure existence has been rewarding in many ways as well.”
“Even though you died a violent death at the hands of an invading army?”
She was now cuddling along his frame, her head pillowed upon his chest, her sex still feverish upon his below, though she didn’t move to take him inside.
“It was quick,” he lied.
“It was drawn out over two days and nights,” she retorted.
“You’ve done homework on me, have you?” he noted without heat.
“Do you expect anything less?”
He shrugged as much as he could with her on top of him like a warm, lusciously proportioned female blanket.
“It could have been longer. They could have taken weeks or months to draw out the torture. At least my death sealed the peace pact between Ramses II and the Hittites. They respected the manner of my sacrifice, those ancient Anatolian invaders. My people enjoyed a long period of peace and prosperity afterwards.”
“You speak of your own brutal death as no great thing,” she said, her voice vibrating deep with an unknown emotion.
“I’d do it again to protect the ones I love,” he responded calmly.
“Death is but the doorway to the afterlife, in my people’s religions. I have had over three thousand years of fruitful afterlife as a Pure One. I count myself lucky to have walked the path I’ve walked.”
“If you were mine, there would not have been peace,” she said darkly, her sharp fangs scratching the skin above his jugular.
“If you were mine, I would have razed the Hittites to the ground to avenge you.”
He cupped her face with his hands and brought her up to meet his gaze.
“That was not what I wanted. I would have died in vain.”
Something soft and wistful entered her dark blue eyes, chasing away the savagery that glinted there before.
“You loved your wife very much,” she stated quietly.
“Yes,” he replied just as quietly, holding her curious gaze.
“I loved my friends and family too. And most of all, my little girl, Masika. I would have died a thousand times to protect the ones I love.”
“That’s a pretty name,” she murmured, stroking her thumb across his mouth in a barely-there caress that did more to enflame him than the intimate press of their bodies below.
“What does it mean?”
“A girl who was born during the rain,” he replied gently in remembrance, “When the Nile rushes with life-giving water from heavenly rain, it’s a gift to cherish for everyone. And if you are born during the rain, your life is said to be blessed by the gods.”
“You love them still,” she whispered, staring deeply and unblinkingly into his eyes.
“I will always love them,” he said. “I will always carry their love inside me.”
Abruptly, something shifted in her countenance, something dark and possessive.
“Is this why you will not give all of yourself to me?” she demanded in a deceivingly soft voice. “Because you do not want to betray their memory?”
His hands fell from her face as she sat more solidly upon his groin, purposely grinding down upon his swollen sex.
“Why do you want all of me?” he asked in return, “I am not an object to add to your innumerous playthings. I am not a strip of land to be conquered and ruled. I am a flesh and blood male who thinks and feels. You cannot take from me what I refuse to give.”
“Oh Pure One,” she whispered silkily, rotating her hips against his aching staff, wetting him with her juices, the friction between their most intimate parts slick and satiny, drenching them both with breath-stealing, mind-numbing pleasure.
But it was not nearly enough to satisfy them.
“You will give in to me,” she promised. “They all do. For I am a conqueror, and I will conquer you.”
He gripped her hips tightly and purposely ground her down upon him until he entered her just barely, making her gasp at the fullness and steel of him.
But just as abruptly, he pushed her back and locked his jaw.
“Try me,” he ground out, defying her to do her worst.
With a hiss, she struck, biting deep into his jugular vein, clutching him with all of her body as she gorged upon his hot, sweet blood.
His body hardened to the point of breaking, his sex weeping precum, as she fed voraciously at his throat, taking great, continuous gulps of his blood.
His hips wanted to rise up and grind into hers. His penis screamed to be fisted within her velvet core. But he forced himself to stay still beneath her through sheer strength of will.
She was staking her claim, but he was also taking his stance. She could take what he gave her. She would never have what he denied her.
With a sudden, sloppy jerk, she pulled out of his throat and barely licked the jagged puncture wounds closed before she moved down his body to crouch between his thighs.
“No,” he rasped, when he realized what she meant to do.
“Your blood is mine, per our agreement,” she reminded him mercilessly, a savage glint reigniting her irises once more so that the blue blazed hot and bright.
“Your veins are mine,” she continued in the same nonnegotiable tone. “Anywhere I want, Pure One. Anyway I choose.”
Without warning, she went down on him, sinking her fangs deep into the dorsal vein of his cock at the same time she took him fully into her throat.
A harsh moan of exquisite pain and burning pleasure escaped Seth’s lips as he fought to keep his hips from bucking against her onslaught.
She used no finesse with the most vulnerable, sensitive, intimate part of him, until the pleasure from her mouth was drowned out by the seething, angry, reckless way her fangs abused him.
He bled into her so profusely, his blood rolled out of her mouth and down her chin. She didn’t even try to drink it all.
This was about dominance.
This was punishment.
She wanted to hurt him. She wanted him to know that she could.
And Goddess above, she did.
But it was more than his body she hurt.
His heart…his heart was bleeding too.
Seth fisted and unfisted his hands at his sides, trying valiantly to get control of himself, to contain the agony she wrought upon him.
When he placed one hand on top of her head, his fingers threading through her hair, she looked defiantly into his eyes as if to say, try it. Try to dislodge me. I will only hurt you more.
Instead, he cradled his palm gently around her skull and rasped huskily, holding her intense blue gaze, “Stop…… please.”
It was the plea that undid her.
A plea that in no way weakened him, but instead increased his power over her. And she was helpless not to obey him.
With infinitely more care, she lapped the vicious puncture wounds closed and meticulously bathed his cock with her tongue, licking away all the blood, all traces of her savagery, her hands gently wrapping around the base of him, softly kneading his length until a numbing pleasure replaced the blinding pain.
After long moments, when his wounds had healed fully, both the pain in his throat and in his sex subsiding to a throbbing ache, she continued to pet him, as if she couldn’t stop, interspersing her hand play with long suckles with her mouth.
It was as if she were apologizing for hurting him without words, a look of contrition in her eyes, calm once more after the storm.
“Don’t do it again,” he said quietly, his voice deep and raspy with emotion, watching her tend to his tortured staff.
“I will do it again,” she replied resolutely, “I will take my fill of your blood from whichever vein I choose.”
More softly she uttered, “But I will heed your words next time. I will not take you against your will.”
Her eyes lowered from his as she gave his cock one last, lingering squeeze.
He pulled her with his hands around her ribs upwards so that she was draped on top of him again, her
head settled against his shoulder.
“Good,” he said simply, and involuntarily pressed a brief kiss on her forehead, as if to reward a feral little savage when she learned some kindness.
“I will still have all of you one day,” she vowed stubbornly, without heat, only determination.
He didn’t reply.
For he knew deep within that she was right.
It was only a matter of time.
*** *** *** ***
Present Day
Jade watched the warrior come to wakefulness slowly, his eyes rolling beneath his closed lids.
The blood infusion and her healing hands had treated the worst of his wounds. He’d still be sore from the mending tissues and bones, but he was whole and recovering.
His deep chest inflated with a long breath and depressed in an equally hypnotic motion. Painstakingly, he supported himself into a sitting position on the mechanical bed and shook his head as if to clear it.
The bedsheet had fallen from his torso to pool around his lean hips. The head of his half-erect phallus prodded unabashedly beyond the sheet as it rested against his upper thigh.
“How long was I out?” Alend Ramses, the newest member of her Chosen guard rasped in his low, sinful voice.
Everything about Ramses was sinful, Jade had noticed since the night he’d arrived at the Cove, the base of the New England vampires.
From the haphazard curls of his raven’s wing hair, to his bold black brows, to his deep set lushly-lashed gold eyes. And his mouth…
His mouth conjured all sorts of wicked fantasies.
But they were not her fantasies, more’s the pity.
Jade’s eyes roved both admiringly and disinterestedly up and down his chiseled body, as she wondered why the hell she wasn’t attracted to this magnificent male.
“A couple of days,” she finally replied, and slowly let her gaze travel up his well-defined pectorals, his long, smooth throat, the severe V of his jawline, to his glowing golden eyes.
When she finally met his stare, she realized that he’d noticed her leisurely and appreciative perusal of his body.
How could he not.
A corner of his sensual lips quirked, and heat flickered in his brilliant irises.