Dark Possession - Aja James Page 0,85

heart pounded in deafening booms as he ceded all control to his little sprite.

True, she was commanding his body using her own powers, but he knew that she’d release him from this invisible imprisonment if he showed any doubt.

He had no doubt.

In fact, if she asked him to hold himself in check, he would have done it for her. And had they the time and tools, he would have submitted to being chained down just to see that dangerous, predatory, erotic possessiveness flare brightly in her eyes. Far better than the uncertain vulnerability he’d seen earlier.

Did she still not understand that he was hers? Totally and completely? Or perhaps she understood but hadn’t yet fully accepted the irrefutable truth. Still sore from his recent rejection of her.

But he was raw and uncertain too, despite the bone-deep imperative to Mate with her. He’d chosen poorly once, and it had destroyed not only himself but the world around him. So many people suffered because of his stubborn, foolish choice. He couldn’t afford to make another mistake. What he felt for this female…could it be trusted? Could he trust her to not use his weakness against him and destroy him once and for all?

Ramses swallowed back his fear and pain, even as his newly melted heart thumped with doubt and warning. As well as a kernel of fragile, wounded hope.

“Do it,” he uttered huskily, his voice frayed and hoarse from barely checked emotions.

“Take what you want. Take all of me.”

He saw the moment when that familiar stubborn determination blazed in her eyes, the possessiveness and passion, drowning out all doubt and hesitation.

Challenge accepted.

She’d take all of him, all right. She’d devour every morsel, every drop.

Ramses raised his hips in invitation, plowing deeper into her, torturing them both with the exquisite, slick, yet oh-so-deliciously tight friction.

A corner of her mouth quirked as she stared down at him, an unpredictable impishness entering the usually innocent blue-gray.

Slowly, as if she had all the time in the world—and perhaps time had frozen too, just for her—she ran her conquering hands from the side of his naked hips to his waist, her thumbs tracing the defined V of his torso where it met his hipbones, scratching across the internal iliac veins of his lower abdomen. Everywhere she touched, his flesh caught fire, the air crackling with sparks that singed the fine dark hairs dusting his skin.

“Pretty,” she murmured, her eyes rivetted to the starburst of dancing sparks, as much as his naked skin beneath.

Those restless hands stroked up the middle of his stomach, making his muscles bunch and tighten into corrugated steel, to the deep groove that bisected his pecs, then spread across them until one small palm held still directly over his thrashing heart.

As if she was holding the bloody, newly resuscitated organ directly in her hands.

Ramses deepened his breathing to calm himself, but he couldn’t control his rapidly leaping pulse or the flare of his nostrils like that of an animal cornered. He couldn’t tamp down the fear of being hurt. More than hurt, if she so wished it. It was in her power to destroy him with one look. One word.

And that was when she lowered her clothed torso onto his exposed one, the movement making her lower body clench around his sex tightly in a nearly agonizing, voluptuous twist.

Breathe, he told himself, just breathe.

She laid her ear against his heart and listened.

“It’s beating so fast,” she whispered. “So strong and commanding, like battle drums. Do you know what it’s saying, Alend?”

Gods! She slayed him whenever she said his name. “Rock” or “stone” was its meaning, a name he’d chosen for himself to remind him of who he was, who he’d been born to be before he lost his way.

“No,” he rumbled in answer.

He could feel her lips curl against his heated skin.

“It vows it’s mine,” she declared confidently, but the hitch in her voice told him of her bravado.

“Then it must be yours,” he agreed, his own voice gravelly.

She worried his beaded nipple with her thumb almost absentmindedly as she sighed.

“I love this sound. I love this vow. I want to hear every part of you declare my Claim.”

Fuck. Her words were driving him insane with lust. With the undeniable need to answer her Claim.

“Then you better keep moving,” he reminded her evenly, even as his body shuddered with strain.

“There’s a lot of me to cover.”

She raked her nail across his nipple almost in chastisement, making him gasp. Then, she soothed it with her