So, folks -- I've been writing frantically, getting LOVE BITES ready to turn in. I just finished the book yesterday, so today I'm nursing a writing hangover and getting ready to do a radio program called ON POINT on NPR at 11 a.m. Eastern. http://onpoint.wbur.org/2014/02/12/romance-novels-business-best-sellers
It's a call in show, so I hope some of you will call in and ask questions that make me NOT sound like a Southern fried bimbo. Anyway, here's the first chapter of OATH....
The bald leather-clad man hauled the plump,
pretty blonde across his lap and flipped up her short PVC skirt to reveal lacy
stockings, a garter belt, and no panties at all. Growling, he gave her a dozen
ruthless swats that made her yelp and buck. When he finished, the blonde
collapsed over his thighs with a moaning sigh that sounded far more like
pleasure than pain.
A flare of longing flashed through Morgana le
Fay. She looked hastily away from the sated sub. It was far too easy to imagine
herself draped across a man’s lap. Not the bald dominant’s, but his.
Keep your mind on the job, witch, she told herself
firmly, forcing her thoughts away from the knight who’d been an obsession for
too long. Somebody’s murdering these people, and using magic to do it. You
don’t have time for kinky fantasies if you want to stop the killer.
And it would be far too easy to get distracted in a
place like Club Penitent, which seemed designed to rouse the forbidden needs
she fought so desperately to ignore.
Especially
tonight, on a day her ghosts paced and moaned, tormenting her until she had no
business going out on any mission at all.
The
only thing more unacceptable was to allow her team to go into battle without
her. No other witch could protect them as well as she could, because no other
witch had her raw power.
Just keep your mind on the job, Morgana. Stop the bastard. Concentrate
on that. Forget everything else. Ignore everything else. All the ghosts. All
the need. None of it matters but the team and the killer’s victims.
She
swept another glance over her surroundings. Club Penitent was one of New York's
most exclusive nightclubs, whether devoted to Bondage, Domination and
Sadomasochism—BDSM—or to more vanilla activities. The membership leaned toward
upwardly mobile, if kinky, professionals: doctors, lawyers, bankers,
stockbrokers, even a celebrity or two.
The place accordingly had an air of expensive
seduction, between the long, massive bar and the surrounding tables and chairs,
all of them dark oak carved with gothic crosses to go with the club’s
Inquisition theme. The bar area was surrounded by a ring of smaller
"dungeon" rooms equipped with St. Andrews crosses, spanking benches,
and other assorted gear designed for tying people up and doing painfully erotic
things to them. The overall result was an air of sensual menace, rather as if
Torquemada had decided to run a bordello between torturing alleged witches.
Gregorian chants filled the air with deep
masculine voices instead of the usual deafening rock du jour of other clubs.
Given Morgana's sensitive Maja ears, she approved, though the reminder of the
Church’s witch-torturing history made her twitch.
She'd come entirely too close to getting
hanged by a fanatical priest once. It hadn't been erotic at all.
Though if Percival was doing the torturing...Stop
that.
Involuntarily,
her gaze flashed across the bar to the rear booth where her team sat. The three
men looked ready for battle at a moment’s notice, between their holstered 9mm
SIGs and the long swords they wore diagonally across their backs. Illegal
weapons, of course, but also invisible to mortal eyes, thanks to the spells
Morgana had cast.
While
the club’s Masters wore everything from monk’s robes to biker leathers, her
teammates needed no special regalia to look like dominants. Instead they’d
chosen clothing that would allow them to blend without hampering their ability
to fight: leather vests over bare chests, faded jeans and tooled leather boots,
perfectly broken in.
Looking at them lounging in their booth like
a trio of lions on the veldt, Morgana couldn’t deny their effect on her. But
then, if a woman didn't feel a tingle at the sight of Percival, Cador and
Marrok looking ready to break all Ten Commandments, she needed to check her
pulse.
Someone who didn't know them would probably
register Marrok first. He appeared the most menacing of the three, being
six-five and brawny as a bull, with a lantern jaw, deep-set brown eyes, and a
lazily sensual mouth. His crooked nose had been repeatedly broken during
childhood by his abusive prick of a father. Despite the air of brutishness, he
was a laughing, genial soul who often played peacemaker between his
hot-tempered teammates.
Which made what happened if you managed to
truly anger him all the more shocking. His berserker rages could make even
Arthur Pendragon step softly. He’d been known to cut through enemy forces like
a plow through a wheat field, leaving broken bodies and barren earth in his
wake.
Then there was Cador. At six feet, he was
shorter than the others, but that only made him look more like a muscular male
wall. Which was something of a natural result given that all three spent hours
a day swinging battle-axes and broad swords.
In contrast to Marrok’s short dark hair, Cador
wore his long, braided tightly for combat. At the moment, though, it tumbled past
his shoulders in a curling mane. The eye-catching effect was intensified by its
color, a rich, dark auburn, glossy as a fox’s pelt.
His features looked as if God had calculated
every angle for maximum impact on anyone with estrogen in her veins. Thick auburn
brows dipped over laughing eyes the striking turquoise blue of the Caribbean.
His nose was straight and knife-blade narrow, while his wide, mobile mouth was
prone toward deceptively charming smiles.
Deceptive, because Cador had a sadistic
streak as broad as the Thames. He was not the kind of man you wanted to meet in
combat, particularly if you'd done something to piss him off. He and Morgana
often locked horns; he had a cutting, cynical sense of humor she found
irritating. For his part, he called Morgana arrogant, though she preferred to
think of it as natural self-confidence.
All right, she supposed she was a little
arrogant.
Last—but hardly least, since he was the
trio's leader—there was Percival. At six-three, he was a bit leaner than the
others, with all the muscular power, explosive speed and hypnotic grace of a
puma. His broad-shouldered, elegant body was marked here and there by scars
from spears, arrows and swords—reminders of his mortal life fighting Arthur
Pendragon’s wars.
As if to emphasize all that stark
masculinity, Percival had the kind of face that called ancient gladiators to
mind: angular, square-jawed, with a flaring swoop of a nose that just missed
being too long, and a pugnacious cleft chin. The overall effect was softened by
a wide, lush mouth that Morgana had hungered to kiss for a very long time. His
deep-set gray eyes were cool and watchful, heated by flashes of erotic cruelty
she wished she didn’t find so intriguing. One of his blond brows was bisected
by a thin scar, a reminder of a wound that had almost cost him his right eye.
He wore his thick, honey-gold hair just barely long enough to curl. Morgana
longed to run her fingers through it, but it wasn’t a good idea to give into
temptation where Percival was concerned. He’d take ruthless advantage of any
weakness she handed him.
Percival wanted her. Had wanted her for years—centuries—though
she doubted the desire he felt was anything more than physical. If she wasn’t
damned careful, Morgana knew she’d end up the latest in his parade of hapless submissives.
The really galling thing was that she’d probably love every minute of her
subjugation—until he moved on to the next sub, leaving her heart in ruins. Dangerous
ruins.
The kind with nuclear land mines.
Yet sometimes when she gazed into those
demanding gray eyes, Morgana wanted to confess all the secrets she’d kept so
long. She knew better, though. She didn’t dare let Percival discover how close
she skated to the edge—or how far she had to fall.
She’d been skating along that edge for
fifteen hundred years, since becoming one of the immortals tasked with
protecting mankind. That was when the wizard Merlin and his enchantress lover
Nimue had appeared at King Arthur’s Camelot court, where Morgana had been a
Druid healer.
Merlin had told the king those who drank from
his enchanted Grail would gain immortality and vast power—if they could pass the couple’s tests. For the knights, that meant
duels to prove their strength and courage.
For Camelot’s ladies, the challenge was
mental rather than physical. Nimue’s psychic spells forced each woman to
confront her worst fears, while giving her the illusion of vast magical powers.
The enchantress then evaluated her response to determine whether she could be
trusted with real magic.
But when it was Morgana’s turn, even Nimue
was astonished at the results…
###
Morgana balanced on a stool on the tips of
her toes, her rope-burned, bloodless wrists bound in front of her, dark spots
dancing before her eyes. She couldn’t draw breath for the pressure of the noose
around her neck, its taut rope looped over the hook in the cottage’s ceiling.
A little boy screamed, his voice ringing high
with terror. Morgana’s blood chilled as a man in a priest’s robes dragged the struggling
dark-haired child into the room. “Mamma!” the boy shrieked. “Mamma, help me!”
“I can give you the power to save your son—and
yourself,” a bodiless voice whispered in
her mind. “Will you accept?”
Desperately fighting to suck in a breath past
the strangling noose, Morgana wheezed, “Yes. Horned God, yes!”
Energy poured into her, a flaming wave of it
that seared its way up her spine. Magic such as she’d never known, effortless
and blazing. It made the power she was used to wielding feel like a feeble
trickle.
She sent that blaze shooting down to her
bound wrists and up to the noose around her neck. When her new power hit the
loops of rope, it burned them instantly to floating flecks of ash. Sucking down
a relieved whoop of air, Morgana fell off her tiptoes, rocking back down onto
her heels so suddenly she almost toppled off the stool.
As the sensation of suffocation lifted, she
looked down at the priest who’d just forced her shrieking son to the floor.
Rage flooded her with the blind need to kill. Her hands began to burn, casting
a furious yellow light over the dark, dirty little cottage with its stink of
piss and terror.
The priest stared up at her, his eyes widening
at the sight of her blazing hands.
She stepped off the stool. Bennett leaped to
his feet and backed away, his watery blue eyes darting beneath his balding
pate, his thin lips peeled back from yellowed, crooked teeth. Morgana’s hands
shot out, seized the sides of his face and jerked him close. The old man jerked
against her grip, fighting like a rabid fox in a wolf trap.
“Enough!” she snapped. “Be still!” Her will
blasted him, paralyzing him where he stood and locking his terrorized mind in winter
ice. The need to kill lashed within her like a flaming snake. He deserved it
for what he’d done to her, to Mordred.
And yet… killing left a stain on the soul.
He’d taught her that. Better to leave the bastard alive — but make damned sure he
never did to anyone else what he’d done to them.
But more, he needed to suffer for his crimes,
share the pain and terror of his victims, feel the weight of his betrayal of
his God and his flock.
Morgana’s will slashed Bennett like a
steel-tipped flail, forcing him to experience the full horror of his sins. By
the time she was done with him, she knew he’d never harm another innocent as
long as he drew breath.
###
“You are not like the others.”
Morgana opened her eyes to find the girl
studying her, a frown on her too-young face. Nimue looked fifteen at most—a
delicate nymph with waist-length blonde hair and eyes as black as a night sky.
Eyes too ancient and wise to belong to any mortal, much less a fifteen-year-old
child.
“You don’t seem to have the magical
limitations the others do,” Nimue told her thoughtfully. “That could be
dangerous; the human mind is not equipped to deal with power without limit. And
yet...” Her gaze flicked as if studying something in the distance, and she
paused, appeared to debate herself.
At last the enchantress shrugged. “But your
power is needed, despite the risk. You will simply have to take care.”
The girl gestured, and the Grail appeared, a
delicate filigreed silver cup. The potion it held glowed and bubbled gently,
misted by shimmering tendrils of blue smoke. “Will you drink from the Grail and
become an immortal witch? Will you use your skills to safeguard humanity, even
from itself?”
“Yes,” Morgana said.
Accepting the cup, she swallowed liquid fire.
###
It had been fifteen centuries since that
night. Morgana had never told anyone of the potential she had for power greater
than what any other witch could claim.
And yet… when Percival looked at her in that
way he sometimes had, her heart insisted, You
could give him control. You could trust him. He would never betray you.
No, her fear hissed. Stop it, Morgana.
You can’t take the chance.
Not with her demons.
###
A Celtic-pale redhead strutted past, clamps
swinging from her generous breasts. They looked damned painful, judging by the
swollen red nipples they gripped. Heat rushed into Percival's groin at the
thought of capturing another woman's nipples in such clamps...
“God, I’d love to put a pair of those on
Morgana,” Marrok murmured, saying exactly what Percival was thinking.
Snorting, Cador took a swig of his Corona.
"She’d geld you with a fireball.”
“Yeah, but it'd be worth it.”
As the clamped girl jiggled past Morgana, the
witch’s eyes slid to her bare breasts, then directly to Percival's face. Her spring-green
eyes darkened with need. His cock hardened to its full length in a searing
liquid rush.
In the middle of a fucking mission to keep a
werewolf from eating more women.
And it hadn’t even been the first time
tonight. Something about this club was definitely shooting Morgana’s concentration
all to hell. Even worse, the effect was contagious. He and his knights seemed
to be suffering too.
Which wasn’t unusual. During the years they’d
worked together, Morgana had been equal parts temptation and frustrating pain
in the arse.
True, most of the time she was an invaluable
addition on any mission. Percival, Marrok and Cador had worked with a number of
witches over the centuries, but Morgana was the most powerful of them all.
She
was also as fearless as any male warrior, and damned near as good with a sword
as one of the Knights of the Round Table.
What’s more, Morgana never admitted defeat.
She’d do whatever it took to succeed, refusing to yield to physical or mental
exhaustion. She pushed herself so hard that she'd won the respect of all three
knights, even Cador, who personally disliked her. Percival had seen her keep
casting spells to defend the team when she was so badly wounded, he was
surprised she was even conscious. Again and again, she'd proven she was willing
to die for them—as they, in turn, would die for her.
Which didn’t mean she couldn't royally piss
them all off.
For one thing, Morgana only went on the most
tricky and dangerous missions, and insisted on leading most of the ones she
went on. She steadfastly refused to bow to any authority but her own. If
Percival tried to assume control, usually because things had gone to hell, her
reaction was often bitchy in the extreme.
That wouldn’t drive him half as mad as it
did, except his dominant instincts insisted she was hiding a submissive streak.
At times she seemed to be deliberately bratting—the BDSM term when a submissive
tried to earn a punishment from her dominant by acting out like a bratty child.
Except in Morgana’s case, it was worse than
obnoxious behavior, because she sometimes gave him and his team painful magical
jolts.
The powers given to witches and vampires complimented
each other; vampires couldn’t work magic beyond self-healing and
shape-shifting, while Majae weren’t as physically powerful as their
counterparts. That meant a vampire couldn’t overpower a witch’s spells, just as
she couldn’t overpower his strength.
A Maja could, however, use her abilities to
give a vampire a nasty jolt if he forgot himself and tried to take her blood by
force. Most Majae were careful not to abuse that power, but Morgana never
seemed to hesitate. Percival had sworn he’d one day give her bare arse a swat
for every zap she’d dealt him and his team.
A woman cried out from one of Club Penitent’s
dungeon rooms, her voice spiraling high with a blend of arousal, pain and
pleasure. Perhaps from the application of nipple clamps or a riding crop or a
demanding kiss.
For the second time in less than a minute,
Morgana’s gaze slid back to the three knights.
Percival’s temper began to steam, burning all
the hotter because he was as angry at himself as he was at her.
Passing his thumb over the heavy gold enchanted
ring on his right hand, he activated the spell that allowed them to communicate
during missions. “Get your head out of your cunt and on the fucking job,
Morgana. If one of these women dies because of you, I swear to Merlin I will
bend you over the Round Table and flog you with a buggy whip!”
“You forget yourself, Lord Percival,” she replied in that cool contralto voice of
hers. “I lead this mission.”
“Then lead it,” Percival snarled, “and quit turning it
into fucking amateur hour.”
A white-hot stiletto of agony stabbed between
his eyes, so savagely intense it almost tore a gasp of pain from his mouth. He
bit it back.
“Goddammit Morgana!” Cador growled in the link, “’Rok
and I didn’t do anything. Why hit us?” Morgana’s spell must’ve
caught the pair as it traveled through their mission rings. Morgana made no
reply; she'd evidently closed communications.
“Sorry,” Percival growled.
Cador grunted and took another deep swallow
of his beer, auburn brows dipping in a frown. “I don’t like the way this is
going. I’ve never seen Morgana so far off her game.” He glowered. “I’m
beginning to wonder if we should work with her again. We may have reached the
point of diminishing returns.”
“Bullshit.” Marrok glowered at him. “Name one
witch with as much raw power as Morgana le Fay. I’ll admit she can be a pain in
the arse…”
Cador smirked. “Sometimes literally.”
“…But we’ve never failed to achieve a mission
objective when we worked with Morgana. That’s not always a given when we work
with other witches.”
“You know, it doesn’t have to be just one
Maja," Cador pointed out. "Two or even three…”
“Might be equivalent to Morgana’s power, but
they wouldn’t her experience or skill in magical combat strategy."
Percival rattled the ice in his glass impatiently. "Nobody is as good in a
magical fight as Morg. Except maybe Kel, and he’s a dragon.”
Cador pursed his lips, considering.
"Gwen's pretty damn good.”
“True, but Arthur is hardly going to let us
have Gwen, is he?” Marrok leaned in, his jaw taking on a familiar stubborn jut.
As the two knights began arguing about which
Maja would make a better addition to their partnership, Percival’s gaze drifted
back to Morgana. He'd known the witch fifteen centuries now, years of desperate
combat, furious arguments, and steely friendship. She’d been driving him insane
for most of that time.
Centuries ago, the four of them had been
among the first twenty-four people to drink from Merlin’s Grail. The potion it
contained had magically transformed them all. The twelve Knights of the Round
Table had become Magi—vampires, in other words. The twelve ladies of Camelot's
court, including Morgana and Queen Guinevere, became witches, or Majae.
In the centuries since, those twenty-four had
become ten thousand, as their descendants joined them in the battle to protect
humanity against its own self-destructive impulses. Collectively they were
called the Magekind, sworn to use their impressive abilities to hunt those like
the magical killer who was their target tonight.
Today they all lived in Avalon, an enchanted
city of immortals located in the Mageverse, a parallel universe where magic was
a universal force like gravity or electromagnetism. Which was why that
universe’s version of Earth was inhabited by everything from fairies to
dragons.
This Earth, meanwhile, was home to werewolves like the one they were hunting
today.
Though most werewolves were basically decent,
this one was a thoroughly nasty bastard. Over the past two months, seventeen
women had vanished from nightclubs around the country, only to be found the
next day as piles of gnawed bone. He'd evidently eaten them.
The mortal authorities had yet to realize
what was actually going on. Because the victims’ bodies had been reduced to
skeletal remains so quickly, law enforcement had assumed they'd been dead much
longer than they actually had been. This made identification basically
impossible. Police needed some idea who a victim might be in order to obtain
dental records to compare skulls to, and they’d excluded anyone who’d been
missing less than a month.
Unlike the police, however, Percival and his
team had Morgana. Last night the witch had a vision that some kind of magical
predator was abducting, murdering, and eating women. Women who’d been taken
from nightclubs. Merlin's Grimoire—an enchanted talking book—had produced
articles from newspapers around the country dealing with skeletal remains said
to be the victims of animal attacks. When Morgana described an image from her
vision—a hand holding a whip outlined in red neon—Grim had identified it as
the logo for Club Penitent.
Which explained why the most powerful witch
on the planet was dressed in red corset, matching thong, lacy stockings, and
high heels. The costume displayed every gorgeous inch of her elegant body,
long, toned legs, and full breasts—and made Percival's dick want to sit up and
beg.
She also looked like just the sort of submissive
the killer liked to hunt. Morgana played bait the way she did everything else:
to the hilt, prancing around on those crimson stilettos, drawing the eyes of
every straight man in the place, whether dominant or sub.
Percival couldn’t blame them for drooling.
The witch had a long-boned, elegant face with a narrow nose, full lips, and
delicately chiseled cheekbones. Her large eyes were a green so vivid, they
reminded him of spring leaves, and her black hair fell in a silken waterfall of
ebony curls to the small of her back.
All in all, an irresistible target for the
killer.
Which was why the three knights were
undercover as sexual dominants. If the killer was a werewolf, as Morgana
believed, she’d need the backup. Werewolves were not only eight feet of fangs,
fur and claws, they were invulnerable to magical attacks. That would leave her
with no way of defending herself; she'd be almost as helpless as the mortal
victims had been.
True, Morgana was stronger than human, not to
mention good with a sword—given fifteen hundred years of experience, she should
be—but that might not be enough to let her fight off a monster. Percival,
Marrok and Cador, with their vampire strength, would more than balance the
scales. Considering what the killer had done to those seventeen women, the
fuzzy fuck deserved everything they could dish out.
The bastard couldn't even claim to be a
victim of animal instinct. Unlike the movie version, real werewolves were no
more driven to murder than real vampires. This prick was just a serial killer,
fanged and furry or not.
“Morg's got another nibble,” Marrok said.
Percival tensed as the strange dominant
approached Morgana. He was a handsome man, tall and blond, with blue eyes so
piercing the color was evident all the way across the room. Dressed in black
jeans and a navy blue polo shirt, he looked broad shouldered and muscular as he
loomed over the witch, though she was not a short woman. Percival figured he must
be six-one or six-two. Just her type; Morg liked them tall. He leaned down to
speak to her, his expression, hooded, sensual.
Under the table, Percival’s hands curled into
fists.
Morgana looked up at the man, sweeping an
assessing look from feet to face. She said something and turned away, her body
language dismissive.
The big man froze, going expressionless. Then
he nodded stiffly and walked off.
“Aaaaand another one goes down in a rain of
flaming wreckage.” Cador flashed a cynical grin and lifted his beer in a mock
toast. “Morgana le Fay—body of a Victoria’s Secret model, personality of a
rabid polar bear.”
The witch glanced toward their table, then
quickly away again. Her cheeks darkened.
Percival knew why, too. Normally Morgana
could watch an orgy without turning a hair, but in a place like this, given the
submissive streak he suspected? He’d be willing to bet if he came up behind
her, stroked a hand down the delicate curve of her back, put his lips to her
nape and caressed her with his fangs…she’d cream that pretty thong. Which
explained why her cheeks had been going cherry red all night.
The woman would be the death of him yet.
Cador straightened, eyes narrowing as Morgana
glanced hastily away. “Did she just blush?”
“Appeared that way to me,” Marrok drawled.
Both men turned and looked at Percival, who
glowered back. “What?”
Cador put down his beer bottle with a thump.
“You know what. Percival, you need to do something about this thing you’ve got
going with her.”
“There is no ‘thing.’” Percival gritted his
teeth so hard, they creaked.
“Don’t play stupid,” Cador snapped. “You
can’t pull it off.”
Marrok leaned forward and directed a cool,
level gaze his way. “She wants you, Percival. She’s wanted you almost as long
as you’ve wanted her. And it’s time you quit fucking around and claim her for
the sake of our collective sanity.”
“Morgana doesn’t want me—she wants a bloody
giant lizard.” Percival curled a lip and sipped his drink, only to grimace as
he realized it was nothing but half-melted ice. He gestured their waitress
over, wishing he could order something with a bit more kick; by law, New York
BDSM clubs could only serve soft drinks. “I’m afraid I don’t measure up.”
“Soren’s not her lover.” Cador sprawled back
in the booth, eying him. “Soren’s just her scaly, shape-shifting fuck buddy,
and well you know it.” He was also Dragonkind’s ambassador to Avalon. The pair
had been on-again, off-again lovers for the better part of a decade.
Yet Percival would bet his enchanted sword
she’d never submitted to her dragon lover. Or, for that matter, any of the
others she’d dallied with, even knights like Galahad. Certainly not the way
she’d always seemed to tremble on the edge of yielding to Percival.
One day, he swore, he’d push her right
over—and catch her when she fell.
