Dark Possession - Aja James Page 0,11
one bold eyebrow.
“Indeed? Do tell.”
“Believe me, you don’t want details.”
“I disagree. I am unutterably curious.”
“Well…” she considered him thoroughly from head to toe, a rather worrisome glint entering her very fine eyes.
“I’d probably curse your male parts. Unman you, so to speak. Isn’t that what males like you fear the most? Impotence? Peanut-sized equipment? Burning pain down there? Your tender bits overgrown with puss-oozing sores that never heal?”
Ramses blinked disbelievingly at her.
She stared calmly back at him, not batting an eyelash.
And continued to rattle off additional curses that sounded worse than death.
“How about the worst kind of constipation? Where every time you…go, during the rare occasions that you could, you feel like you’re birthing a flaming sword through your anus? Or gigantic, itchy, hairy balls? Or shriveled little raisins that produce only enough testosterone to make you sound like a five-year-old girl?”
She was certainly imaginative, he’d give her that.
“I can curse you with all those ailments sequentially, all together at once, and worse. And if you kill me, you’d be cursed forever. Never-ending torture. Still want to make me ‘disappear’?”
The gall of this female!
Was she actually threatening him? She looked dead serious about it too, and she didn’t seem like the sort to bluff.
He’d met very few sorceresses in his existence. Immortals and humans who could wield magic were extremely rare. He didn’t know how powerful Eveline Marceau was, but if she truly was a sorceress, he knew better than to invoke her wrath brashly.
It also meant that she had some affinity for the Elements, which made her even more intriguing. For both personal and political reasons.
But intriguing or not, fine blue-gray eyes notwithstanding, he was a busy male. He wanted this wearisome night to end, and with the present problem solved.
“I can’t and won’t simply let you go,” he growled, his earlier amusement devolving into frustration and impatience.
She folded her arms as well, mimicking his pose unconsciously.
Thinking.
Plotting.
Giving him unease.
An intelligent, resourceful, logical female was the most dangerous kind.
Finally, she squared her shoulders and said, “I have a proposal to make.”
“I am listening.”
“I will stay with you at the Cove for a period of time voluntarily, so that you can be seen by your nobles as having accepted their gift. I will let the Dozen know my plans so that they won’t worry.”
“No good,” he bit out. “If you are simply a guest, that’s a clear confirmation of an alliance between our Kinds. Even worse than my rejection of the nobles’ gift. You must submit to me in some way, if you are not my Blood Slave.”
She narrowed her eyes, her glare both resentful of the predicament and of him.
“I won’t be your Blood Slave—” she repeated, and immediately flashed her palm at him to gesture for his silence when he opened his mouth to interrupt.
“—but I will consider entering into a Blood Contract.”
It was Ramses’ turn to narrow his eyes, seriously considering her words from every angle.
“I offer to supply all the Pure blood you desire for the next three months,” she continued like the most unflappable but determined corporate litigator, “in exchange for unlimited access to your library.”
His library? No female had ever asked for that from him before.
“I understand from Jade that the Cove houses one of the most comprehensive archives of Dark and even Pure histories,” she went on. “Some of the Zodiac Scrolls and other important written records were destroyed in the attack on our Shield a few years ago. I am working to rebuild our knowledge of the past.”
Ramses was not expecting such a proposal.
A Blood Contract was as binding as law for a vampire. Even more enforceable and irrevocable, for the contract was programmed into the very fiber of a Dark One’s existence, like DNA. If he agreed to a Contract with her, he would have to fulfill his part of the bargain on pain of death or worse.
What she was proposing was extremely tempting. But it wasn’t enough to compensate for what she was asking in return.
“Your blood alone is not enough,” he told her. “Perhaps if you also committed your body…”
“No,” was her adamant response.
He quirked his lips.
“Then no bargain. Offer me something else.”
She was quiet for a while, maintaining his stare while she racked her brain.
“You are lacking a Keeper, Inanna mentioned. The previous one turned out to be a traitor?”
Ramses simply stared back, waiting for her point, while a muscle ticked in his jaw.
He didn’t like how much knowledge the Pure Ones had of his hive. Between Inanna and