by Aja James
“Yes.”
“I thought you didn’t fuck on command.”
His eyes narrowed.
“I don’t. I won’t be your Blood Slave. You may demand my services, but I control the pleasure and pace. You will receive whatever I decide to give you. That is the deal.”
“You can’t dictate more terms,” she cried, taking umbrage at his continued maneuvering, “you can’t—”
“Sevent—”
“Fine!” she all but bellowed to cut him off.
She couldn’t stand to lose another day. Already, she flagellated herself for the ones he so carelessly shaved away in the course of their negotiation.
Every day was twenty-four hours. One thousand four hundred and forty minutes in his absence. Eighty six thousand four hundred seconds of missing him.
Desperately longing for him.
How could he take them away so ruthlessly? Every millisecond with him was more precious than diamonds. More vital to her than blood and food and water and air.
“Give me your word,” he commanded calmly.
She glared at him long and hard, but he didn’t appear the slightest bit cowed.
“I could take your blood and body against your will, if I want, Pure One,” she hissed vehemently, revealing her gleaming, elongated fangs, her strength of old returning full force to meet the challenge he presented.
“You are in my domain. You are under my power. You dictate your terms only because I allow it.”
“Is that what you want? To take me against my will?” he asked quietly, holding her ferocious, desperate stare.
Her fangs quivered in her mouth, so torn was she between her wild, primitive drive to dominate and conquer, and the fraction of a remnant of conscience that held her back.
And then there was the submerged, ignored part of her that wanted simply to be his.
To surrender herself totally and unreservedly to his will. To beg shamelessly for whatever morsel of affection or pleasure he might toss her way.
Her chest heaved with her roiling, confounding emotions, until finally, she said, “I swear. I will grant you three requests, whatever they may be, in exchange for unlimited access to your blood and body for eighteen days.”
“Are you satisfied?” she asked with deceptive solicitation.
“Yes.”
All at once she leapt from the bed and threw herself at him bodily, though his arms opened just in time to catch her against his chest.
“Then let our contract begin,” she growled against his mouth.
“Now.”
*** *** *** ***
Seth caught her mouth with his as she all but attacked him with everything she had.
Her hands were everywhere upon him, tearing at his clothes. Her legs scrabbled to gain purchase around his hips, hooking behind his calves.
Her mouth devoured his in a rough clash of lips and teeth and tongue. He could feel her ravenous hunger for him fuming from her skin in punishing waves of lust and savagery.
She’d been starving for blood and pleasure for far too long.
He knew she’d lied when she said earlier that she indulged in orgies every night. She wouldn’t have been so weak and frail if that were true.
It still pained him immeasurably that she might have taken other males into her body since the time his original blood contract had ended, but he knew he had no right to feel this way.
She’d never made him promises of fidelity, never so much as hinted that she cared for him.
If he hurt, it was his own fool heart twisting with unrequited love, something he was helpless to give her, whether she wanted it or not.
He let her take what she wanted now, kissing her back with as much aggression and ferocity as she kissed him.
He would be the only male to Nourish her for the next eighteen days, and he would make damn certain he gave her everything he had to give.
As her shaking hands tugged and tore impatiently at his clothes, he took her wrists and put her palms on his face, so that he could take over the task of undressing with more surgical efficiency.
She was already naked, hot, and wet against him, riding the ridge of his erection through his slacks, desperately clawing to get closer, growling in the back of her throat with impatience.
When he finally opened the fly of his pants, she immediately shot down a hand to grasp him.
But he pushed her hand away and lifted her bodily as he stood.
To avoid falling backwards, her hands clutched his shoulders instead, as her legs wrapped tightly around his waist.
But before she could lock him in place, he grabbed her thighs and pushed her off him in one smooth motion, throwing her, flailing limbs and all, onto the bed.
Momentarily stunned by the manhandling, she bounced on the mattress and sprawled inelegantly on her back.
When she scrambled to a sitting position, he was stepping out of his trousers and pulling his shirt over his head at the foot of her bed.
Jade’s mouth went desert dry for a split second before overflowing with saliva as he revealed, line by line, inch by inch, his satiny golden-bronze skin stretched taut over unyielding muscle and sinew.
And most beautiful of all, his proud, ruddy, monolith of a manhood, glistening with his precum at the plum-like head, weeping prettily for her undivided attention.
She got on all fours and came at him, but before she could pounce, he effortlessly pushed her back onto the bed with a hand to her chest, as he sank one knee and then the other onto the mattress, spreading her thighs wide with his hands and making room for himself between them.
She arched up and tried to grab any part of him—his arm, his chest, his shoulder or neck, but he pushed her back again, taking hold of both her wrists in one of his large hands and pinning them above her head.
“No,” she shook her head impatiently, “I want—”
“I know what you want,” he rasped beside her ear, his hard jaw rubbing against her starving mouth.
Bluntly, he demonstrated by pushing his engorged staff against the apex of her sex, hitting her pearl like a bull’s eye.
She writhed beneath him and shuddered with acute pleasure, moaning with abandon at the perfect pressure, right where she needed it.
But she needed him inside even more.
Her vagina clenched on emptiness at the very thought.
“I want, I want, I want…” she was chanting like a blithering idiot at this point, so desperate and ravenous for his sex, beyond caring that she was all but begging.
She’d do anything to take him inside.
“Say it,” he commanded.
His voice was perfectly calm and in control, his hand holding hers immobile.
The weight of his torso pressed her into the bed, his spread thighs forcing hers to splay open and exposed beneath him, quivering helplessly with anticipation.
“Fuck me,” she growled.
“Fuck me now. Fuck me hard. Fuck me deep. So deep you become a part of me. So deep I possess you entirely. Don’t you dare stop until I tell you to.”
With brutal force, he shoved himself deep inside of her with one long thrust, his thickness plowing through her tight tunnel almost painfully, but not quite.
The pleasure was so sharp, and he filled her so full, she keened low and bit her lip hard, breaking the skin.
Immediately, her core convulsed around him, milking his sex voraciously, pulling at him and squeezing him with a vicious, uncompromising strength that left him breathless, making perspiration pop out all over his shoulders and back.
With herculean effort, he pulled back.
She whimpered and struggled beneath him.
And he thrust hard, even deeper this time, taking him to the hilt, his heavy sac hitting her perineum in the mind-numbing aftershock.
His face a mask of determination above her, he began a relentless, pounding rhythm, surging harder and harder within her, pushing deeper and deeper each time, reaching higher and higher, until she thought she could
feel him touch her heart, fill her lungs, and her mouth opened on a silent scream as the most powerful orgasm she’d ever had crashed through her in tidal waves of ecstasy.
He covered her mouth with his own and caught her long cry of completion as she shuddered and shook beneath him, a butterfly pinned to the altar of his passion.
His kiss was infinitely tender and heart-wrenchingly sweet, his tongue gentle and lapping in her mouth in stark contrast to the way he plundered her ruthlessly below.
“Look at me,” he instructed, when her eyelids fluttered closed from satisfied exhaustion in the aftermath of her “little death.”
“Look at me,” he commanded again when she didn’t obey him, his teeth nipping lightly at her neck to chastise her.
She opened her eyes in a fog of euphoria so thick she could have cut it with a knife.
“Who am I?” he demanded, pulling his erection slowly out of her, so that she felt every luscious, steely inch.
“Seth,” she whispered as she focused her gaze on his, her breath hitching when only the plump head of him remained inside her.
Just as slowly, inexorably, he pushed into her again, jolting her hard as he rammed all the way home.
She moaned with delirious pleasure, every cell in her body feeling the shock of him against the bundle of nerves deep inside where she hungered for him the most.
“Who is inside you now?” he rasped, and pulled almost all the way out again, tormenting her to no end.
“You…” she mumbled, beside herself with insatiable need, “Seth…”
He rammed all the way back in again, hitting her just right, pushing her beyond reason, beyond anything she’d ever known.
She levered herself up despite his weight pressing her down, his hand still holding hers captive, and bit his mouth.
Staring intensely and unblinkingly into his eyes she growled, “Mine. You’re mine. My Seth.”
He undulated voluptuously within her, stroking her—
Long. Hard. Deep.
So deep, so thick, so hard, she knew she’d feel him long after he left her.
She’d never forget this feeling, nor would she ever have it with anyone but him.
“Yours,” he admitted, his voice reduced to a guttural vibration deep in his throat. “And while I’m with you, inside you, loving you, you’re mine too.”
“Say it.”
With equal parts rapture, longing and fear, she stared up into his beautiful face, her pupils eclipsing her irises.
Somehow she knew that he was asking her for something.
He was asking her to give up something.
But she couldn’t concentrate on fighting him when he drugged her to incoherence with the ecstasy he stoked continuously within her, taking her higher and higher until she felt like she was weightless and soaring.
She never ever wanted to come back down.
So with breathless abandon, she involuntarily replied, “Yours. I’m yours. Only yours.”
And then she watched in timeless precision, every second etched indelibly in her memory, as he broke apart for her piece by piece.
His body clenching tight.
A groan torn from his lips on a shuddering sigh.
His face contorting in a beautiful agony—
As he released his life force in scalding torrents against her womb.
Chapter Ten
Maximus toweled off his hair, coming out of the bathroom fresh from his shower, letting the rest of him air dry under the blast of the central AC.
His internal temperature was still overheated from an impromptu wrestling match with Ramses, before the male set off to Europe to negotiate on their queen’s behalf.
But who was he kidding.
The real source of his rocketing blood pressure was a tidbit from Grace just as Maximus was returning from the training halls—the FBI special agent he’d been successfully stonewalling thus far just got a critical breakthrough, as Grace deduced by intercepting one of the agent’s encrypted emails.
Ariel Kyles was her name.
Middle name Pain-in-His-Ass.
Five foot six, one hundred thirty-five pounds. Black hair, green eyes. Left-handed.
Black Belt First Degree in MCMAP when she used to be in the Marine Corps. Black belt in Kung Fu, and Master Black Belt in Krav Maga.
In other words, the woman lived to fight and could probably kick his ass, lowly human though she was.
She was also a chemical explosives expert, spoke French, Russian, and Spanish fluently in addition to English, and graduated at the top of her class.
She had five scars on her body—one appendectomy, two bullet wounds, one long knife slash and ten stitches cutting through her right eyebrow from a street fight gone bad.
No living relatives. Grew up locally in the Little Flower Orphanage until age six. Then, she was shuttled from one foster home to another, but none of them stuck. Until finally, she enlisted in the military at seventeen, having forged the parental consent as well as her identification papers. She’d actually been sixteen and a half.
Now, at thirty years-old, she lived alone in a tidy apartment in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.
She had no hobbies, no friends, and didn’t seem to sleep.
Twenty-four-seven, she was dedicated to her job, and she was so good at it, she turned down offers from other agencies on a regular basis.
But none of the offers were promotions. Everyone wanted her in the field. It’s where she thrived, it’s where she shone.
She’d never taken on an assignment she couldn’t ace. Never met a target she couldn’t hit.
As Maximus thought—
Pain. In. His. Ass.
And if she shared the intel she gathered with the right people (or worse, the wrong people), all investigative, law enforcement, military defense and national security agencies in the human world were going to come after vampires with a vengeance.
If not to eradicate, then to harvest for experiments and to build living weapons of mass destruction.
As if he didn’t have enough metaphorical explosives to diffuse.
Maximus threw his towel viciously across his room, the dampness from his hair adding weight to the material to increase its velocity as it landed with a smack on Simca’s face.
The black panther yowled in surprise and swatted the towel off with a massive paw, then looked peevishly at her warrior and narrowed her eyes.
“Sorry,” Maximus bit out reflexively. “I wasn’t aiming at you.”
Hands on hips, he continued to fume, his chest heaving with pent-up frustration, his mind whirling with contingency plans.
Simca attempted to distract him from his black mood by rolling playfully onto her back, upside down on his bed so that her head dangled off the foot of the massive platform as she blinked at him with her adoring greenish golden eyes.
Don’t be mad, my warrior, the feline seemed to communicate. Come play with me instead. I could use a good scrubbing on my belly.
She wiggled back and forth to make her point.
Reluctantly, a corner of Maximus’s mouth quirked, and he strode over to do her bidding, sitting beside her on the bed and stroking his fingers into the wiry softness of her fur.
She luxuriated in his touch and purred loudly for a good long while before attempting to catch his hand and arm with her paws in a mock skirmish.
He chuckled softly and wrestled with her, man and beast in perfect harmony.
At last he lay flat on his back with his hands stacked behind his head, the tension and stress that had overloaded him earlier chased away by Simca’s playfulness, as she’d no doubt intended.
The feline lay mostly on his torso, as she was wont to do, her paws on his chest, her tail flicking and curling happily to and fro.
Occasionally she dipped her head down to bathe his face and neck with her sandpaper tongue, whether out of affection or because she thought he hadn’t washed himself thoroughly enough, he couldn’t tell and didn’t care.
He lov
ed these quiet, private moments with his partner, his friend.
His steadfast, eternal companion.
She’d saved him from many a hairy situation. Risked her life countless times for his.
Most of the time he preferred her company to any other. Running with her in the night, honing his battle skills with her, hunting Rogues with her, sleeping with her curled warm and comfortable against him.
She was the perfect female, as females went.
Beautiful. Strong. Courageous.
Loyal. Affectionate. Adoring.
With the added benefits of not talking much (though her yowls and meows and purrs and growls might count as some sort of speech), not being particular about his habits and manners, and having no expectations beyond his loyalty and care in return.
Verily, she’d be his ideal Mate if she weren’t a different species.
As to that, unfortunately, he was bipedal and had a tremendously healthy sex drive.
The problem was that he didn’t have many opportunities to indulge in his sexual cravings because Simca was extremely jealous of his company.
If he wanted any relief, he’d have to arrange rendezvouses away from the Cove, away from Simca’s vigilance.
It was a lot of work. Often leading to results that didn’t justify the effort.
Hence, though he was a hot-blooded warrior vampire male, he didn’t actually get to see a lot of action of the female variety.
Some males were married to their work; he was that, and he was also married to his eternal familiar.
“What am I going to do with you, love?” he murmured as he scratched Simca behind each ear and under her chin.
She rubbed her nose and jaw against his face and neck and purred so loudly the whole bed seemed to vibrate.
Hope you never have to find out, she seemed to say with a long swipe of her tongue from his chin to his brow.
He sighed and closed his eyes.
Despite the pressures of his command, despite the stress of looming threats, despite having perpetual blue balls, he couldn’t complain.
With Simca by his side, he was content.
*** *** *** ***
He was ecstasy incarnate even while he slept.