Dark Possession - Aja James Page 0,10
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