Dark Possession - Aja James Page 0,61

didn’t even bother to keep up the original pretense that she loved him, not even a little.

It had taken Ramses a very long time before he began to admit to himself, though never out loud, that Ashlu had never loved him at all.

She certainly didn’t help him learn this lesson quickly, because she played games just to torture him. For a time, sometimes months and years, she’d act as if she’d forgiven him. She’d treat him sweetly like she used to do in the early years. But just when he settled into peacefulness and complacency, she’d lash out again.

Sometimes, she pulled away from him slowly, acting as if he’d done something specific to displease her, that it was all his fault. Other times, she’d upend his world abruptly, spewing hateful words and using his physical and emotional need for her against him. Because they were Mates and depended on taking each other’s sex and blood for survival, Ramses was confused even more.

How could a female take him into her body, the female that he loved above all else, to whom he gave everything of himself—how could that female not feel anything for him in return? Not even a little affection and care?

She certainly used him well. Hating him and craving him coexisted in parasitic harmony. The more she desired the pleasures of his body and blood, the more she hated him. Conversely, the more she hated him, the more insatiable her appetites.

Thus, sex became a weapon to him, to be used against him, and which he used against her to make her crave him more, even if he could never succeed in making her love him.

Three thousand years…

Their destructive push and pull played out like a farcical Greek tragedy. The gods themselves could not have been so stubborn (on his part) and bitter (on her part). He helped her build her empires, so she “kept him around.” But she was quick to remind him that he served only two purposes for her: One, to do his duty and support her bid for becoming the Queen of all Kinds. And two, to wait upon her pleasure so that she could fuck him and feed from him whenever she wanted.

She’d destroyed all records of his origins and removed all details about her Dark Consort from the history tomes. She even executed the Consul, the Commander, and all other witnesses who knew of how she acquired him in the first place when he was still a babe.

He’d helped her do it.

He thought that if he erased all trace of his ignoble Pure and freakish Elemental lineage, Ashlu would eventually forget his origins as well. Perhaps over time, she’d look upon him without disdain at best, hatred at worst.

But she never forgot or forgave.

Because she knew how to hurt him the most, she flaunted an endless parade of males that she took to bed. She fucked them right in front of him sometimes. Such scenes always ended in blood and ashes when he killed the males she rutted with, but she only laughed at him when he resorted to violence. She could always recruit more.

At some point, Ramses’ heart began to calcify and harden against his Mate’s endless schemes to humiliate and hurt him. Toward the end, he no longer killed every male who touched the queen. There was no point.

And when they came together, when he spent himself inside of her to give her body what it needed, when he took her blood and she took his, these moments of intimacy became a rote, clinical task to carry out for the sake of prolonging both their lives. He no longer cared for her pleasure, and she had hardly ever taken care of his.

In so many ways, he existed simply to feed her and fight for her; he no longer lived.

Then, one day, he discovered that not living was still different from wanting to die. It was the day she brought home a particular Pure Blood Slave that taught him this—

A Blood Slave who looked exactly like the disguise he’d taken that day when he won her.

A Blood Slave she looked upon with an unquenchable lust he’d never before seen in her eyes. For it was accompanied by something both softer and fiercer and infinitely possessive—something like love.

He recognized that look, because that was the way he used to look upon Ashlu himself.

Thus decided, that death was preferable to witnessing the only female he’d ever given himself to, give herself to someone else, he’d