Chosen, leaving her to take her rest, exhausted as she’d been. He finished the debrief as soon as he could, hurrying back to his apartment, eager to rejoin his female. He’d expected to find her waiting for him in bed, probably still asleep. He imagined tucking her into his naked body as he got some much needed shut eye himself, before waking her up with a slow, worshipful loving.
But she hadn’t been there. She’d gone back to her own apartment and was passed out fully dressed on her own bed.
Something inside him had involuntarily clenched in pain. It was borne of a deeply buried fear that what they’d shared when he was wounded was simply a fluke, a temporary thing. That, in the light of day, she decided she didn’t want him as much as he wanted her.
Needed her.
Dark Goddess! How he needed her.
Ramses’ newborn heart, with its stone-casing melted away, thumped naked and vulnerable in his chest, not knowing how he should interpret her behavior. He hated this vulnerability. Hated the dependency on another being. Hated knowing that even if he pretended to the world he didn’t care, it didn’t change the fact that he always would.
He cared.
Eveline Marceau owned him in ways no one, including the mistake of his Dark Mate, ever had and ever would.
So, instead of demanding her attention, he’d let her be. He watched her go about her days as she had before, spending all her waking hours in the Cove’s library, truly loving her job as the temporary Keeper. He knew that she visited her friends—Clara, Grace, and now Ava, from video surveillance.
But she never sought him out.
And when it was time to sleep, when she stumbled out of the library, yawning so hard he could hear her jaw crack even on video, barely able to keep her eyes open, she went back to her own apartment, crashing on her own bed. As if Ramses didn’t even exist. In the end, he couldn’t resist carrying her back to his chambers where she belonged. He’d taken her in his arms and held her tight against his naked body, hers still fully clothed.
He didn’t take her blood though, as much as he wanted to. As much as their ongoing Contract invited him to.
Fuck the Contract.
She had become so much more to him than that. She was everything to him.
But how did he get her to agree with him? How would he ensure that she stayed beyond the three months of the Contract? How did he make her commit to an eternity?
He pulled her rather forcefully into his apartment as the door automatically locked shut behind them.
Immediately, not giving her time to react, he caged her in against the nearest wall, his arms braced beside her head, his legs spread on either side of her thighs, knees slightly bent so that he could stare full-on into her eyes when he looked down at her, despite the difference of their heights.
“What do you want, Keeper?” he growled, close enough that his breath puffed against her face, fluttering the silky tendrils of hair beside her ears.
“E-excuse me?” she squeaked.
Though her voice had a thin, nervous edge to it, her eyes were perfectly bold. Daring. A fiery, rebellious little sprite.
His.
“You said you were hungry,” he rumbled, accidentally-purposely brushing his mouth against hers as he formed the words.
A shaky exhale deflated her chest at the brief contact.
“What do you need to satisfy that hunger?”
“Umm…”
He was painfully hard already, had been since the moment she entered the throne room in that tantalizing librarian attire, ready and willing to serve her needs. But he needed her to be certain. He needed her to choose him.
“Tell me,” he commanded, undulating his swollen, jutting sex into her notch through their clothes.
He wanted her to choose him, but he wasn’t above using a little inducement to help his cause.
“Uhn,” she grunted, her small hands going reflexively to cup his ass, her nails digging in.
“Which part of me do you want to possess the most?” he rasped into her ear, softly biting the tender lobe.
“Which part of me do you hunger for the most?”
Her busy little hands gave his buttocks a hard, thorough squeeze before curving around his hips to grasp his manhood through his trousers in one fist while the other took a firm hold of his balls.
He shuddered against her and ground into her grip, fucking her hand in short bursts until his pre-cum leaked profusely from the head, wetting her palm even through the