Wednesday, February 12, 2014

The First Chapter of OATH OF SERVICE

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.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

WIPped Cream-- A taste of "Oath of Service" from LOVE BITES







Here's a sample of my work in progress, OATH OF SERVICE, from Love Bites. Keep in mind that this is a first draft, so it's likely to change. And please, this excerpt is NOT for those under 18, so get thou gone if you are. Otherwise, enjoy!

Here, Morgana le Fey has offered Percival, a vampire and Knight of the Round Table, her Oath of Service, and has donned a collar that blocks her considerable magical powers....






The distilled male menace of Percival’s gaze sent a wave of ice across her skin. “Now, witch, you and I are going to have a word.”

The ice turned to heat when he grabbed the hem of his knit shirt and dragged it off over his head. She sucked in a breath, then hoped he hadn't noticed.

"I get hot when I work." He tossed the shirt across the back of the couch without breaking the intent focus of his gaze. Morgana longed to look away, only to find herself frozen like a rabbit in a combination of fear and erotic anticipation.

He was...incredible. She'd seen Percival without a shirt before, but there was a world of difference between seeing him shirtless during laughing horseplay and...this. Knowing that he owned her now, that she'd taken an oath to obey him, fuck him, however he wanted. So she stared, and listened to her heart's frantic thump.

All that sculpted brawn, the swells and hollows of muscle groups clearly defined, the branching veins snaking down his biceps, his triceps. Body hair formed a silken golden cloud on his chest, narrowing into a fine line down his belly, pointed the way toward the massive bulge behind his fly.

Oh, goddess…

He took a step forward, and she bit back a scream as he swept her off the floor the way an angry man would pick up a bag of frozen peas. Whirling, he took three long paces and banged her back against the nearest wall.

Despite her best efforts to suppress it, a startled yelp escaped Morgana's lips as he pinned her there with the hot, hard weight of his body. "Now," he growled, "you and I are going to have a word, witch."

"You might want to remember I'll get my powers back." She winced the minute the words were out of her mouth. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Percival smiled. Someone who didn't know him well might have thought it a pleasant expression. Morgana, however, recognized the carefully throttled rage in the tight curve of his mouth. "But you don't have those powers now, do you?" He whispered the words in her ear, each syllable a warm puff against her sensitive flesh. "And I have all of mine." He cupped her breast through the thin lace gown she'd stupidly worn to tempt the three knights.

She licked her dry lips. "You won’t hurt me."

“Won’t I?”

“You don’t hurt women, Percival.”

"Lord Percival," he gritted.

"What?" She was too close to real terror to grasp his point.

"You will address me with respect. Lord Percival, Sir Percival, or my lord." He bared his fangs. "Not. Percival."

She swallowed, staring at those lupine teeth inches from her face. "Yes, Lord Percival."

"That's better." A tight smile of satisfaction lit his starkly handsome face. "Both arms over your head, and cross your forearms."

"Why do...?"

His eyes narrowed. She hastily obeyed. "Thank you." He caught her crossed arms in one hand, pinning them against the wall. She knew without trying that she'd be utterly unable to break his implacable grip.

Stepping back, he let her hang by her imprisoned arms as he gave her body the kind of long, insulting up-and-down scan no Magus had ever given her. Then he met her eyes again, silently daring her to protest.

She kept her mouth shut. Nobody had ever said Morgana le Fay was stupid.

That smile flashed again as he wrapped his free hand in her lace robe. Fisted it. And ripped, shredding the peignoir as easily as if he were tearing down a cobweb. She couldn't seem to bite back her gasp. Still holding her gaze, he hooked a finger in her corset and gave it a slow tug. The laces popped like cotton thread, leaving her clad in only a lace garter belt, stockings, and heels.

Again, he subjected her to another sweeping, insulting stare. "Nice. Very nice."

She licked her desperately dry lips. Why in the hell was she getting so wet? Nothing about this should be arousing.

Morgana opened her mouth for some bit of acid sarcasm that would hopefully make him let her go so she wouldn't feel so bloody vulnerable. Perhaps "I'm delighted you approve," or "You always did have a bard's way with a compliment," delivered in a suitably icy tone.

Before she could get either line out of her mouth, his eyes narrowed. She snapped her teeth closed so fast, she almost bit her tongue.

"I've always loved your tits, Morgana." The words may have been flirtatious, but the cold warning in his voice was anything but. "I'm going to like being able to do any damned thing I want to them."

For the sweet sake of the Lady, that was a threat, Morgana told her idiot cunt. It kept growing slicker anyway, responding to...something. His eyes, his dark velvet voice, the white points of the fangs that flashed when he spoke. His sheer, fucking size...Gods, he was dangling her by her arms, yet her feet were still well clear of the floor.

His nostrils flared, and one corner of his lip lifted in a carnal cross between a sneer and a smile. Reaching between her legs, Percival stroked a finger between her labia and deep into her sex. "Ohhh, yesssss. You are creamy, aren't you? And how can anybody who regularly fucks a forty-foot lizard be so bloody tight?"

"Obviously, I shape-shift," she gritted.

"That would help." He added a second finger, pumped deep again, and flicked his thumb over her clit. She jerked at the knife-sharp delight.

Percival grinned. "Liked that, did you? Too bad. I'm afraid you're being punished for today's tactical goat-fuck, so you won't be coming. I will, though. I intend to enjoy you thoroughly."

The fingers withdrew from her traitorous pussy and reached for her right breast. The knight's big, warm hand gave it a squeezing stroke before tugging and twisting its aching nipple. Milking her, he watched her face in erotic calculation.

Morgana dropped her eyes, unable to hold his gaze, not with him beaming raw dominance at her with the intensity of a laser. That proved to be a mistake; when she looked down, her gaze fell on the bulge behind his fly. Horned God, it was huge.

Percival laughed, a dark chuckle, and stepped against her again, pinning her once more. She groaned in relief as his body took the pressure off her pinioned arms.

Pressing his face against her throat, he inhaled as if dragging her scent deep into his lungs. "You smell delicious." His lips moved against her skin with every word, a warm, sensual tease. "My two favorite things: pussy and blood."

"Percival..." When he stiffened, she corrected herself. "My lord Percival..."

"Can you keep your mouth shut, or would you prefer a ball gag?" He scraped the tips of his fangs over her helplessly banging pulse. "I don't care to be interrupted while I'm eating."

Which triggered another humiliating gush of cream into her sex.

With a growl, he sank his fangs deep, the sudden hot sting startling a gasp from her throat. She'd known he was going to bite her, but somehow she hadn't expected it just now. Morgana bucked, jerking against his grip, but he had her pinned too thoroughly. She couldn't move at all.

His hand abandoned her breast to seek out her crotch, his forefinger skating between slick labia to slide into her opening. He made a sound against her throat at what he found there, a triumphant growl that deepened to a rumble as he pumped deep, in and out, keeping the pace slow--goddess, far too slow as he drank in hot swallows.

Letting her head fall back against the wall, she moaned in helpless lust. The moan became a gasp as he added a second finger, thumb strumming her clit like a lute string. His body rolled against hers, branding the feel of hot, hard strength against every inch of her smaller, softer one.

This was why she’d always preferred bottling her blood. Feeding a vampire directly from her throat was too damned seductive, too much an arousing act of submission that revealed her darkest needs.

But Percival didn’t give a damn what she preferred. He just took her, like prey, like a mortal woman he was using, fingering her cunt as he drank, shooting her toward her peak with his erotic brutality until she…

But just as her climax began to pulse, he jerked his hand away. The orgasm drained away, leaving her body aching with vibrating, helpless need. Morgana cried out in frustrated protest.

He chuckled against her throat.

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.



Saturday, August 17, 2013

My screwup

I'm posting this out of sheer mortification.

Yesterday's post about the Romance Novel Convention featured some nifty images I'd bought from the RNC website which were full resolution. Because Blogger includes a setting that says something like full size, medium, etc., I thought the images downsized;many sites  automatically reduce the resolution on high resolution images. (Web images are a standard 72 dpi, but print images are 300. This is a big difference, and the reason that if you try to print web images, they look like crap.)

But the images didn't downsize. Jimmy Thomas pointed out that I'd posted the full-resolution images so anyone could copy them and basically obtain them for free.

Now, this violates the hell out of Jimmy's copyright on the images. I just bought the right to use the images for my swag and covers, so as soon as he brought it to my attention, I took them down and put up low-resolution versions.

Please, please PLEASE, if you copied the high-res versions and plan to use them, go to the RNC website and pop for the one-time $15 per image fee to pay for the rights to use them. That's a heck of a lot cheaper than being sued, which you easily could be if you haven't paid for those rights.

What's more, you could get me sued too, only in my case it would be for being too damned stupid not to realize my mistake in violating the copyright on the images. I wouldn't blame Jimmy a bit if he did sue me; he'd have every right to. (He's a nice guy, but if the post had gone viral or something, I could have cost him a lot of money. Luckily that didn't happen, but still.)

You should also be aware that ANY image, piece of music, ebook, ANYTHING you get on the internet, even if it's a cat video, belongs to the original photographer, musician, writer, etc. If you use it without the creator's permission, he can sue the living hell out of you.

And a lot of companies and creators will not hesitate to do just that.

That means if you, say, decide you're going to do a music video using a Black Eyed Peas song and half-a-dozen Jimmy photographs, you need to obtain permission from the Black Eyed Peas AND Jimmy or the photographer who took those pictures before you can post the video online. Otherwise, you could find yourself in court losing your shirt.

This is not about creators being hardasses. People like Jimmy, the Black Eyed Peas, and me make our respective livings creating things for your entertainment. But just because you've bought a copy of one of my ebooks, say, or "Boom Boom Pow," that doesn't mean you then can give it away to everyone you know.

You may think, "Hey, I bought it! I can do what I want with it!" Well, yes and no.

Let's say you bought a paperback of MASTER OF DARKNESS. After you finished reading it, you took it to a used bookstore and traded it in. You have a perfect right to do that: it's your paperback book. My publisher already got its $6.99 for that copy, and I already got my 6 percent cut of that, so we're square. You can give that copy to the used bookstore or your sister or whoever. I don't care, because I've been paid.

However, you could not take the book apart, take the pages to a printer, and make a thousand copies of my book and sell them for $6.99, because that's stealing. You only paid for ONE copy of my book. Selling 1000 of them violates my copyright, because I don't get paid anything for those 1000 copies.

People think writers and other creators are filthy rich, but in fact, most of us get paid what amounts to minimum wage. It takes MONTHS to write a book, and it's damned hard work. Creators, like everyone else, have a right to be paid for their efforts.

Now, let's say you bought the e-book of MASTER OF DRAGONS, and you put it up on your website and started charging $6.99 for it. Again, you have violated my copyright, but the damage is potentially much greater.

In the first example, you've only taken $6,990.00 from my publisher and me, but in the second example, there is no theoretical limit to what you can cost me, because you can sell that one copy over and over and OVER again, because it will never wear out.

Even if you give the file away for free, you're still costing me a huge amount of money, because every copy you give away is a copy I can't sell.

Jimmy's in the same boat I'm in. By putting the high res pics up on my blog, I could have cost him sales, even if my actual intention was to make more people aware of his website and help him sell more pics. That's why I'm so embarrassed and unhappy about my mistake.


So make sure you pay for the rights to any use you make of a creator's work. Just as you expect to be paid for your work, we should be paid for ours.

Thanks for your understanding!

Angela Knight