An Erotic Excerpt from WICKED GAMES

The following excerpt is intended for readers over 18. If that's not you, please find something more suitable to read so neither of us will get in trouble with your mother. :)

This is a love scene from "The Once and Future Lover," the prequel of the Mageverse series. For those who aren't familiar with this 9-book series, in the Mageverse, the Knights of the Round Table are vampires, and their ladies are witches. This particular scene shows how King Arthur, as a brand-new vampire, woos his beautiful queen, Guinevere.  The problem is that Arthur's mind has been temporarily affected by his transformation, so that all he knows is his own lust for Gwen. 

Please note that there's a strong dominance and submission element to WICKED GAMES and its sequel, LOVE BITES, which features Morgana le Fay and Sir Percival. Both are much more kinky than my other Mageverse books; some of you will find them too erotic for your taste, so be warned.

 WICKED GAMES will be out April 1st, 2014.

Despite the lamp she held, the room was dark as a crypt after the torchlit balustrade. Gwen fumbled to attach the lamp to the chain that hung from the ceiling.

When she turned around, Mordred loomed over her like a wall of muscle. Gwen froze in stark terror, unable to breathe much less scream for help.

Until she realized his eyes were dark, not Mordred’s icy green.

Arthur, she realized, and felt her heart lurch back into rhythm. It’s Arthur! He didn’t look quite as young as his son, though he could easily have been an older brother. “Christ’s wounds, husband, you frightened me witless!”

He stepped against her, forcing her to retreat until her back hit the wall. Leaning down, he sucked in a deep huffing breath, as if scenting her.

“You’re scaring me.” Gwen struggled to regain control of her rising voice. “Give me a little room, please.”

He didn’t react, still breathing deeply bare inches from her throat. She planted both palms against his chest and shoved. “Step back, Arthur!”

He caught her wrists and lifted them over her head. Pinning her hands in one of his against the cool plaster, he leaned against her.

Gwen once had a horse she was grooming pin her by shifting his weight, trapping her between his shoulder and the stable wall. The animal hadn’t applied any real pressure, but she’d found she couldn’t move him no matter how she pushed and struggled. Point made, the gelding finally stepped aside and let her go.

Arthur’s hold felt exactly like that. Not tight enough to hurt, but completely inescapable. He watched her, his expression patient, while she strained against his warm, immoveable strength. “Arthur, dammit, let me . . .”

“My queen?” Lancelot called through the door. “Do you need help?”

Arthur tensed and lifted his head, glaring toward the door. His lips peeled off his teeth.

Two of them were fangs.

“My queen? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Lance! He’s not hurting me, he’s just irritating the hell out of me. It’s not the first time, and I assure you it won’t be the last. Quit listening at the door before you hear something that will embarrass you as much as it does us.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. “Excuse me, my queen. I was but concerned. You sound . . . breathless.”

“Breathless or not, I’m in no danger.” I hope. She had never been so intensely aware of her husband’s size and strength, especially compared to her own far more delicate body. Was he actually bigger than he had been the day before, if not in height, then in sheer muscular breadth?

He looked down at her, his black stare hungry as he bared those fangs again. “Mine.”

Gwen actually felt the word rumble from his chest to hers. “Yes, my king. Yours. Still. Always.”

His snarl became a smile, sensual and hot. Gwen knew that smile. That was Arthur. The tension in her knotted shoulders began to relax.

Arthur lowered his head slowly, still watching her with that lupine intensity. The hand not holding her wrists reached up to cup one breast through her thin linen tunic. Pleasure unspooled along her nerves as she stared up into her husband’s face, at the smile that looked both familiar and alien with the curve of his lips baring those white, white fangs. His cupping fingers curled to milk her nipple with exquisite delicacy, pinching and tugging with steadily increasing force. Delight grew with each stroke, given an extra wicked kick by the undercurrent of danger added by those fangs. She tried to squirm, but he didn’t budge even the fraction he would have before. Instead he smiled, obviously well aware of her tangled emotions.

Then Arthur pounced.

She was in his arms before she even felt him move. He spun and dropped onto the bed, pinning her beneath his hot, hard strength as she yelped in alarm.

“Betterrrr,” he growled, and smiled.

The dark satisfaction in his black eyes made her catch her breath. Her sex tightened in the kind of wet clench that usually followed a whole evening’s worth of skillful, determined foreplay.

Arthur knew it, too. He leaned down and wrapped one big hand in the front of her gown. He did it slowly, giving her plenty of time to realize what he intended—and plenty of time to realize there was nothing she could do to stop him, even if she’d wanted to. Which she definitely did not.

Even so, Gwen gasped when he shredded the gown with one easy tug. The sound of ripping linen sounded incredibly loud— and just as erotic. “That was one of my favorite tunics,” she told him. Which it was, though with such animal want pumping through her veins, she really didn’t care about the tunic.

His lips curled in another fang-revealing smile. “Wet.”

“Hard,” she retorted. The hot length of him pressed against her belly. He was also naked, since they’d put him to bed that way. Normally, that wouldn’t give her pause; Arthur slept nude on all but the coldest nights. Their running joke had always been that he had enough fur to keep him warm—and her too, for that matter. The man radiated heat like a human hearth.

So it had been a very long time since Gwen had felt this kind of aching awareness of her husband’s nudity. Yet now every last inch of him seemed branded on her quivering senses. Gwen found herself staring up at him in the lamp’s flickering golden light, wide-eyed as a virgin.

He stared back, levering off her to look her up and down. Under that wolfish gaze, her nipples drew hard as cheery stones. Lowering his head, he took one rigid peak into his mouth.

And moaned.

The sound was deep, ragged, distilled male eroticism given voice. She found herself echoing him as he swirled his tongue over the peak, back and forth, around and around. Strong fingers found her breast, stroking and squeezing, increasing her arousal until Gwen found herself pressing her thighs together in an attempt to alleviate the ache between them. She groaned, rolling her hips against his thick length as she fisted her hands in the gleaming raw silk of his hair.

Feeling out of control, Gwen shivered, overwhelmed by Arthur’s animal sensuality. So familiar, yet simultaneously so alien.

Suckling hard, he rumbled a rough, wordless sound that might have been warning or need. Or both. She gasped back at him, digging her nails into the thick muscle of his shoulders, feeling just as lost in incoherent hunger as he was.

Arthur transferred his mouth to the other breast, triggering another bright ping of delight. Wanting to give him the same kind of pleasure, Gwen reached between them. His cock felt huge, hot, insanely tempting as she curled shaking fingers around its meaty width. “In me, Arthur,” she whispered. “Now. Please.”

Instead he pulled out of her arms and backed down her body. Settling between her thighs, he nudged them apart as she whimpered in helpless longing.

He bent over her clitoris, his lips sealing the little nubbin inside his mouth’s piercingly sweet hold. His tongue swirled around it, wet and maddening, before he tightened his lips and sucked so hard, she twisted like a woman in agony. Her entire body shuddered, her thigh muscles jerking as her sex pulsed in need.

Ecstasy shot up her sensitized body. “Arthur!” Gwen’s spine arched as her hands flew to fist in his hair.

Staring down at him, she found him watching her face as his tongue swirled and lapped and stabbed between her slick folds. His dark eyes narrowed, and she tensed, knowing that look. Sure enough, a beat later she felt the tips of his fangs against the sensitive inner lips. Not biting. Quite. But the erotic threat of it shot heat and fear and stark arousal through her blood. Jolting like a mare under a knight’s spur, she ground her pussy against his mouth. Wanting. Burning.

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