Dark Possession - Aja James Page 0,47

innocent and loyal. Deeply devoted to their Mates. Otherwise, they are by nature solitary creatures and shun the company of other Kinds. Elementals are cool and serene, like the surface of a placid lake. But as with all things in the natural world, when riled, they can unleash the might of heaven and earth…”

—From the lost oral histories of the Zodiac Scrolls

Chapter Nine

Eveline was pissed.

She didn’t know exactly what caused her immitigable condition of pissed-ness, but there it was.

As she stared unblinkingly at Ramses, who hadn’t moved from his insouciant position on the sofa—his muscular arms spread across the back of it, his long legs casually open so that one’s gaze was naturally drawn to his unbuttoned trousers, where his groin was on partial display—Eveline reflected on the causes of her current, almost uncontainable wrathfulness.

Surely, she wasn’t jealous?

Ha! The absurdity.

She had no claim on Ramses, and he had no claim on her besides the blood they’d Contracted. She’d never felt the remotest of jealous emotions over any male in the course of her existence. Over any thing, for that matter. She was a calm, logical, learned female. In other words, she was not someone who was ever at the whim of baser impulses.

She was certainly not jealous.

However, as she was first and foremost an honest woman, and this included taking stock of her own feelings, inclinations and prejudices, she could not avoid cataloguing the following observations:

She was feeling extremely wroth, as in foaming at the mouth, smoke coming out of the nostrils, blood vessel-bursting kind of splenetic fury. She was inclined to not only curse every sexually-predative female who got within a ten-yard radius of Ramses with much worse than the swollen pufferfish syndrome, but also to encase the male himself in an airtight medieval armor with a triply fortified cock cage to which only she had the key to open.

Ergo, above truths pointed to the possibility that Eveline was both a jealous and an obsessively possessive female.

This realization did not sit well with her.

And she might be severely prejudiced in her view of the world, but she felt it was a rotten shame, a crime against humanity and Immortal Kinds, an injustice of the highest order, that a male like Ramses would ever use his body like currency. Eveline had a lot less going for her than the magnificent male laid out like a feast on the couch, but she had pride. She knew her own worth. And she knew that she’d never trade any part of herself so cheaply.

Well, she’d overheard what Queen Valentina offered in exchange for an hour of fornication—it wasn’t insubstantial—but in Eveline’s biased view, the person of Ramses was priceless.

Priceless!

And he should treat himself as such.

Furthermore, the blankness in his eyes when he’d thrown out his “lower half” like a sack of gold on the metaphorical negotiation table nearly broke Eveline’s heart.

Instead, she got spitting, fighting, snarling mad!

On his behalf but also at him.

If he didn’t care, if he was a…what was it Aella called it? A manwhore. If he was that, if he enjoyed passing himself around like a baton to females of every variety, more power to him. Eveline might not agree with his approach to life, but it was his life and everyone should be able to do what they want as long as it didn’t harm others.

But she saw very clearly and felt it keenly that Ramses did not enjoy these exchanges.

Then why do it?

Surely there were other ways to get what he wanted from political negotiations.

She didn’t realize she’d spoken her last thought out loud until he answered her.

“It’s expedient,” he said, his expression just as nonchalant as his pose on the sofa.

“Sex is the world’s oldest currency, and I have an endless store of it.”

But Eveline was watching him closely, and because she did so, she saw the brief flash of pain and self-loathing behind his obsidian eyes.

She considered him for long moments and chose her next words carefully, speaking slowly.

“Somewhere in this world is your Destined Mate,” Eveline said, her burst of righteous rage giving way to a strange kind of sadness.

“I think she would be heartbroken to see you use yourself this way.”

A corner of his mouth lifted in a derisive snarl.

“This pearl of wisdom from a spinster Pure One who’s never even been tempted?”

Ouch. He didn’t pull any punches.

Eveline braced herself at his sinful, low voice and ruthlessly barbed words. She refused to back down from her convictions. Even if they were based on her