by Aja James
“How can I repay you for healing me, my queen?” he murmured silkily, a low purring growl of a sound.
She surprised him by suddenly grabbing the back of his neck, her fingers clawed into the hair at his nape, as she pulled his head to hers and took his mouth without preamble.
When she thrust her tongue aggressively between his lips, he thrust right back at her, his own much larger hand cupping the back of her head too, almost completely eclipsing her skull, bringing her closer to devour her more fully.
But just as abruptly, she pulled away, releasing her hold on him, as he did the same to her.
“You’re welcome,” she said coolly, as if she hadn’t just attacked his mouth with hers.
Ramses narrowed his eyes.
“I am not one for such games, my queen. I don’t take kindly to a cock tease.”
Her eyes shifted to his fully exposed erection.
And a stupendous erection it was. A gorgeously ridged, thick column of flesh that rose to his navel, pulsing with aggression and tantalizing veins.
She shrugged and met his eyes again.
“My apologies, Sage,” she said, and meant the words, “I was merely curious. I needed to prove something to myself.”
Instead of telling her he didn’t appreciate being her experiment and getting an unsatisfied boner in the process, he asked instead, curious, “Did you find your answer?”
Her slant of a smile was full of self-derision and wryness.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
All seriousness once more, she said, “Thank you for saving my life. Your bravery is only matched by your skill with the scimitar.”
She turned to depart from the healing chamber, but he caught her wrist before she could leave.
“I can ease the ache inside you, Jade, if you but give me the chance.”
He pulled her inexorably closer and cupped her hand around his erection, letting her learn the feel of him, the strength and power of him.
“I can make you want this. Make you want me.”
Gently, she took her hand away from him, looking deeply into his glittering golden eyes.
“Perhaps,” she conceded, for he was undeniably beautiful and magnetic, no matter the race or Kind.
“But it would only be my body that you could teach to want you. Yet, you deserve so much more than carnal desires, Alend.”
She stared harder into his eyes.
“Even if you don’t believe it.”
He released her wrist and let her go, assessing her ruefully.
“One day, you might regret your choice, my queen,” he murmured, that knowing quirk tilting the corner of his mouth.
“No,” she replied as she turned away.
“There is no choice for me.”
The ability to choose her own Destiny had been taken out of her hands from the moment she first beheld him.
Jade strode both purposefully and carelessly down pristine white, winding corridors to the Great Room where members of the Chosen usually gathered when they needed to discuss important matters.
She was purposeful because she wanted to confer with Maximus about the ambush, and she was careless, because she honestly didn’t care much that her life had been mere inches away from being snuffed out. She only cared that Ana was safe, and that Rameses was on the mend.
Life had dulled to grayness since his departure.
Food had become tasteless. Blood trickled down her throat liked diluted wine when she took it. And fleshly pleasures had been all but impossible to obtain.
She’d almost mounted a male fully during one of her—now rare—sumptuous orgies. But she couldn’t bring herself to take him inside. She’d made the mistake of looking into his face at the last second. A face that was not the one she wanted to see. A body that was not the one she wanted to love.
Make love to, that was.
No—fuck.
Just pure and simple fucking.
She heaved a frustrated breath.
Three years!
Three years she’d been without sexual intercourse. Over one thousand one hundred days of celibacy.
Well, not entirely, if she counted her female partners and oral sex, but she’d almost never invited another male into her chambers.
Except for that one morning when she’d been truly desperate.
The young vampire had looked enough like Seth to be his long-lost brother. The resemblance had been almost an exact match, down to his wide, gray eyes.
But they weren’t mercurial gray, Jade had the misfortune to take note. They didn’t change from stormy to slate to almost crystal clear, like a raindrop in a darkened sky, with the unfathomable thoughts and emotions of their owner.
No, they were simply a dull, flat gray that reminded her of the mundane concrete sidewalks that lined the city streets.
She’d clambered hastily off of him when she’d realized her error, her stomach roiling with the blood she took from him. It wasn’t the blood she desired.
Craved. Needed.
And now she’d assaulted one of her own Chosen guard, just to see if she could ignite a spark of attraction for another male.
But she felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Just a mash of mouths and teeth and tongue. Just another thick dick in her fist.
She was starving for the sexual energy that fed her powers. She was utterly going mad from the lack of it.
Lack of him.
Enough!
With more force than she’d ever entered a room before, her frustration getting the better of her, she banged into the conference hall, slamming the double doors against the wall.
Maximus and his familiar, Simca, looked up with identical worried expressions, almost pitying.
“Did you discover the vermin behind the attack?” Jade demanded without preliminaries, throwing herself inelegantly into one of the leather swivel chairs that surrounded the gigantic mahogany table in the middle of the room.
Her behavior was so uncharacteristic of her usual poise and control, even when it was deadly and dangerous, that the Commander arched a brow.
He’d never seen his queen so frazzled before. She’d been disconnected, disenchanted, disengaged over the past years since the Pure One’s Consul had gone from the Cove, but she’d never shown such outward discomfiture. Verily, she seemed on the verge of some sort of breakdown.
“Are you all—”
She waved the rest of his inquiry away.
“I’m fine. Just feeling the need to end some traitorous lives. The more violent their deaths, the better.”
The Commander gave her a long look. She glared back impatiently, ready to get on with it.
So Maximus relented and relayed, “We believe the attack could have been instigated by the House of Corvinus. Though there is no definitive proof to date.”
“What makes you think so?” Jade queried, for the time being pushing away her disturbing obsession and focusing on the issue at hand.
“I would have picked Varna or Katerina, the conniving bitch, for such a calculated ambush.”
“I don’t count Andor Varna out of a concerted mutiny if it came to that,” Maximus admitted, “but he doesn’t have the balls or the manpower to act on his own. Countess Katerina, I am watching closely. She visited the Ivanovs the night before us.”
“And the Ivanovs themselves?”
Maximus shook his head.
“If they were involved in the assassination attempt, they were mere, unsuspecting pawns. Goran is known to be a Pure sympathizer, since his Mate used to be one of them before she was offered the choice of Darkness over death.”
“Why do you suspect Corvinus?” Jade asked, though she had her own suspicions.
“He’s always boasted about his lineage, a direct descendent from the very first Dark One, though there are no records in any surviving scrolls to prove it. And he’s made no secret of his hatred of you, for having once been a Pure One, the lowest of the low in Dark society.”
She shrugged.
Corvinus was a self-important ass and could go suck wind.
“Lots of vampires hate me,” she said carelessly. “But they all fear me too much to piss me off.”
“Not this time,” Maximus pointed out grimly.
“No,” she agreed with a dose of seriousness. “Not this time.”
“The assassins were a mix of Medusa’s mind-controlled army and just your average Rogue killer-for-hire,” Maximus continued.
“She’s branching out,” Jade nodded, “Maybe she wants a bid at the throne herself.”
“I don’t have the answers,” he growled impatiently. “Even the lead on Corvinus is tenuous at best.”
“Well,” Jade said with her usual careless ennui as she started to rise from her seat, “keep me posted, as I’m sure you will.”
“And the guard rotation?” he reminded her.
He’d suggested, strongly, that they double the guards at her side, as well as minimize her outgoings until they could ascertain and mitigate the threat.
She shrugged.
“I am fine with Ana and Alend, and whoever they decide to bring with them. Ramses will be fully restored within a couple more nights, and we will be more prepared next time with this…misadventure…behind us.”
“Take Simca with you, at least,” Maximus urged. “You should have included her in your team for the visit to the Ivanovs.”
“And deprive you of her feline company?” Jade teased with a small smile, that revealed a glimmer of her old self, the one before him.
“She cannot accompany me to the human investigation agencies,” Maximus said seriously, her teasing sliding off him like water off a duck’s well-oiled feathers.
“I’d only get more questions I have no intention of answering with a black panther at my side.”
Said panther looked rather longingly at her male, then stretched forward on her massive front paws and arched her back, her whip-like tail fully extended behind her.
Like a well-trained pet, Maximus immediately scratched her behind her ears and under her chin, then stroked his large hand absently down the graceful arch of the feline’s spine.
Jade wondered whether her Commander ever joked or laughed. He was such a solemn sort. Very unlike the rest of the Dark Ones in her acquaintance. Maybe he only let go of his mighty control in the middle of weeks-long orgies.
Not that he’d ever let on he had any.
She tilted her head to consider him in a way she’d never considered before.
Here was another specimen of male virility and gorgeousness. She even thought about him and sex in the same sentence just now.
And yet her thoughts did not wander to what it would be like to have him in her bed. They never had, in fact. Something about Maximus set him apart from other Dark Ones.
Something primal and…other.
She made to rise again.
“You should consider taking a Consort, my queen,” Maximus said carefully. “A powerful ancient Dark One who would solidify your rule.”
“You mean legitimize,” she retorted softly.
“He would not only Serve your needs but also provide more intimate protection. With his connections, his powers—”
“Sounds like you have someone specific in mind,” she murmured.
“Ramses is at least three thousand years old, though I suspect he harkens from an even earlier time. He could very well be a True Blood,” Maximus plunged on as if afraid she’d interrupt.
“And he has already proven his loyalty. He’d do everything in his power to protect you.”
“Why don’t you take him as Consort if you like him so much?” she teased wryly, her sarcasm brimming with humor rather than resentment.
“Even the Elders among our Hive respect him. And he has vast networks beyond our borders, beyond even the continent,” Maximus persisted. “Just think about—”
“No.”
Her refusal resounded with finality for all its quietness.
“I will not tether myself to any male. While I have the throne, I will rule alone.”
“My queen—”
“No. You will not insult me by bringing it up again.”
Maximus bowed his head at her admonishment and clenched his jaw.
She knew that he was only thinking of her safety. She knew that he was worried about her like all the other Chosen.
But he would know her displeasure if he overstepped his bounds again.
She would never take a Consort. Never have a Mate.
Never fall into the trap of deceitful, treacherous, ruinous love again.
Chapter Four
“Why are you still up at this hour, Sophia?”
Seth did not expect to find the newly Awakened Pure queen in the library on the top floor of the Shield’s new location at almost four o’clock in the morning. Still wide awake and obviously absorbed in one of the thousands of tomes of ancient history collected and preserved over many millennia.
She appeared not to have heard him, her eyes unblinkingly poring over the fragile, spider-web-thin scrolls, barely held together by some stubborn reed threads.
“Sophia?”
“Don’t want to sleep,” she rasped out, as if her voice was rough from disuse. “Too many memories. Can’t control them. Can’t fight them.”
He laid a reassuring hand on her increasingly bony shoulder.
She’d lost a lot of weight in the months since her abduction and subsequent rescue. Her cheeks had hollowed out. Her eyes and mouth overlarge in her small, oval face, now more triangular than oval, given the sharpness of her chin.
Her youthful curves and healthy glow were nowhere in sight. Her large winter sweaters disguised some of her frailty, but they still hung off her frame like heavy drapes.
He wondered when was the last time she’d taken a shower, much less brushed her hair. Not that she gave an iota of thought to her appearance.
They all worried about her, the rest of the Dozen.
“What are you looking for?” Seth asked gently. “Maybe I can help you.”
There was a time she held him in awe, the same way she’d been in awe of Orion, their fallen Scribe, and Eveline, the Seer. He supposed the duties of the Consul were either too boring or too incomprehensible to the young. Their interactions had been mostly limited to her education when she was a child, and then the serious application of policies, treaties and laws.
Pure Ones were generally an easy race to rule, though the Dozen existed more to protect than to rule. They guarded the Universal Balance as well, and the secrecy of the races.
Now that Sophia was older, in her last months of college, Seth realized that he’d perhaps not paid as much attention as he should have to her coming of age.
He’d not protected her enough.
“You can’t help me,” she said tonelessly, simply stating a fact, not faulting him. “No one can.”
He gave her thin shoulder a slight squeeze and sat down beside her on the long bench that ran down the length of the twelve-foot oak table.
“Why don’t you tell me some of your memories,” he suggested. “I’m very good at listening. Perhaps we can unravel them together.”
At that she looked into his face, her sunken, bloodshot dark eyes probing his with an intensity that gave Seth a sense of terrible foreboding.
“Do you know what I am?” she asked in that hollow voice. “Did you know when you sent him to me?”
Seth understood somehow that she was not using “you” to refer specifically to him. She meant the Dozen, her friends and family for the duration of this incarnation. Just as he knew that by “him” she meant Dalair, the missing Paladin who was last seen in Medusa’s mind-controlled army, though no one knew whether he was now dead or alive.
“What should we know about you, Sophia?” Seth asked in genuine puzzlement.
The Dozen had searched for the reincarnation of Sophia’s Pure soul, the soul of the first Pure queen who’d inspired thousands of enslaved Pure Ones to fight for their freedom along
side the mythical General Tal-Telal.
After Tal’s disappearance in the Great Siege, the Pure queen, Ninti, gathered the people to her, sharing her light, her hope, and her wisdom. They’d survived many turbulent times in the ensuing years, these newly freed Pure Ones who had to reconstruct their lives without the protection of their Dark masters. Ninti had led them steadfastly through it all.
This was about as much as Seth personally knew, though Eveline might know more, having taken over the responsibilities of Scribe since they’d lost Orion.
But Sophia was not forthcoming, focusing back on the scrolls before her, as if she never asked him the earlier question.
“Sophia—”
“I’m tired,” she said as she re-rolled the scroll and tied it loosely.
“I’m going to bed.”
Seth waited until she was out of sight beyond the sturdy library doors before untying the scroll again and scanning the contents.
He frowned a little in incomprehension.
The scrolls were not about Pure history, as most of the documents in the library were. It recounted a tempestuous time during the Persian Empire, a time of war, famine and disease.
It recounted the fall of one of the mightiest empires in history.
And laid the blame at the feet of an avenging Peri, a beautiful angel of wrath and destruction.
*** *** *** ***
Anastasia Zima, Jade’s head of security, tilted her profile slightly to the left to pick up the faint movement in the corner of her eye.
The human warrior moved so quietly, with such controlled power, that he seemed one with the night, a dangerous predator, just like her.
He was dressed in a form-fitting black leather jacket, turtleneck, and jeans, but he wore no gloves.
Ana’s eyes immediately strayed to the bit of skin on display as he wrapped those large, vein-streaked, long-fingered hands around the top of the railing overlooking the waterfront in Stuyvesant Cove Park.
No rings on any of his fingers, she took note, especially the third finger of his left hand, a typical location for humans who chose to wear their mated bands.
This human male was yet untaken.
Ana barely suppressed a growl of satisfaction.