Love Bites (6 page)

She found the three men sprawled in the house’s lower level, where a fully stocked bar and an impressive flat-screen shared space with an enormous navy blue sectional. The couch formed a U-shape around a massive oak coffee table with a black marble top.

“Save your breath,” Percival told her, as he emerged from behind the bar carrying a bottle of Jack Daniels and sauntered over to his teammates. All three of them had shed their bloodied, dented armor in favor of jeans, boots, and knit shirts. “We’re not going to ask Arthur to change his mind.”

“I’m not asking you to.” She managed a cool smile despite her clawing nerves. “Arthur has already given me another option.”

Percival hesitated a moment before he sat down and topped off the glass Cador extended to him. “Not interested.”

Morgana ignored his effort to shut her down, instead dropping to her knees. In rolling, formal tones, she said, “Percival, Cador, and Marrok, I wish to offer you my Oath of Service. If you accept my offer, for the next year I vow to serve your desires, whether for sex or blood, in whatever way you choose.” Bowing her head, she waited, watching them through her lowered lashes. Her heart pounded furiously in anxious arousal.

Marrok’s dark brows shot up. Cador straightened; if he’d been in wolf form, his ears would have pricked in interest.

But it was Percival who spoke. “No.”

Morgana stiffened in shock. She’d been utterly sure he’d jump at the chance to make her his Oath Servant. “What do you mean, no?”

He shrugged and dropped onto one side of the couch’s U, swinging his long legs up and crossing his booted ankles. He gave her a cool, emotionless stare. “For one thing, I doubt your sincerity,” he drawled, his gaze sliding over her, as heated as his bare palms. “That’s not how an Oath Servant dresses for her Masters.”

She firmed her lips. It was a challenge, but more than that, that hard look sent a quiver right down between her legs. She had to make this work. She had to. Reaching into the Mageverse, Morgana drew on the simmering reservoir of power there. Ignoring the magic’s seductive offer of omnipotence, she let the magic spill down her body, transforming the elegant red suit she wore into a negligee of thin scarlet lace. “Is this closer to what you had in mind?”

Still kneeling, acutely aware of the nipples so boldly visible through the red lace, she looked at them from beneath her lashes. To her satisfaction, lust flared in the eyes of all three men.

Percival was the first to sit back as his gaze shuttered, that handsome mouth taking a cruel set. “Just shows how desperate you are, Morgana. Answer’s still no. I’ve had it. We’re no longer effective together.”

Marrok nodded, though at least there was longing in his eyes as he contemplated her near-nudity. “We’ve been discussing this for a while now. I’d always argued in your favor, but what happened today has changed my mind. There’s too much emotional shit with you, Morgana. It’s a problem.”

Her temper began to steam, almost drowning out her panic. “There isn’t a witch in Avalon with the power I have, and you know it!”

“That’s not the point, Morgana.” Percival paused to down a slug of his drink. “Raw power doesn’t mean a damn thing if we can’t trust you not to misuse it the way you did tonight. Or have you forgotten those two women almost died?”

“The dragon hurt them before I even arrived, Percival! I cast that locator spell as quickly as I could, but . . .”

“
You left us.
” He looked up at her over his glass, his narrowed gray eyes blazing. “You stranded us in that bloody alley so you could go off and fight that dragon by yourself. We had to call Caroline to find out where you were and transport us there. What if those women had died while we did all that utterly unnecessary fucking around?”

“And what would have happened if I’d wasted precious time calling in reinforcements before we gated? I’ll tell you—he’d have
eaten
those girls, just the way he did the seventeen others who’d come before.”

“Not if we’d gated when you did and held him at bay while you made the call. Instead, you damned near ended up dead with them. It was only the luck of the draw that we got there in time to save your arse. If a less-powerful Maja than Caroline had been on call, or someone who didn’t know how to do that kind of tracking spell, the delay could have been fatal to all three of you.”

“The whole thing was inexcusable, Morgana.” Marrok’s jaw jutted as his thick brows lowered over hot black eyes. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“She was thinking Percival had pissed her off when he called her on her focus issues, and she decided to show us the error of our ways.” Cador gave her that nasty smile that made her want to hit him. “Didn’t work out that way, did it, baby?”

“Cador.” Percival gave him a look. Yeah, he was as pissed as any of them, and he’d intentionally cut her pride with the taunt to make her change clothes, but they all knew more was involved than that. “Morgana, you should have been honest with us about the way Mordred’s birthday would affect you today, and how it would fuck up your thinking process. You owed us that, but you didn’t say a word.”

“Everyone makes mistakes. It’s not like I make a habit out of it.” She stalked behind the bar and grabbed herself a glass, then scanned the liquor until she spotted a bottle of eighteen-year-old Glenlivet. Splashing two fingers into the glass—and ignoring Marrok’s wince at her mistreatment of the expensive liquor—Morgana tossed it back in a single searing swallow. She banged the glass down and glowered at the three knights. “I’ve saved every one of you bastards a dozen times . . .”

Percival picked up the bottle of Jack off the coffee table and poured himself a deliberate refill. “As we’ve saved you.”

“. . . and the whole bloody planet at least twice. You could cut me a damned break. In fifteen hundred years, I’ve never given anyone my Oath . . .”

“Because nobody was dumb enough to take it.”

“Fuck you too, Cador.” Morgana splashed more scotch into her glass. Damned if she was going to do this sober. “It’s not an offer I make casually.”

“And the first time one of us really tried to dom you, you’d burn our balls good with one of those nasty jolts you love dishing out.” Cador curled his lip. “Not my idea of happy fun time.”

She stiffened and glared. “If you accept my Oath, I’ll bloody well keep it.”

“Yeah, right.”

The skepticism on Cador’s face was to be expected. What stung was the way Marrok’s mirrored it. Worst of all was the wintery disbelief in Percival’s gaze.

I’m losing them. I can’t lose them—they’re the only ones who can do what needs doing if my control fails.
“Fine. How about this, then.” Pointing at the coffee table before the knights, Morgana gestured, spilling a stream of sparks from her fingertips as she called the conjuration from her worktable. More sparks spilled as it materialized on the coffee table in front of Percival. “I’ve been working on this for months—it was a bitch to pull off, but I finally completed it a couple of weeks ago. Luckily we haven’t had a need for it yet, but the time will come.”

Percival leaned back, frowning down at the metal circlet with its intricate swirl of magical symbols. “A collar.” He looked up at her with a dismissive flick of his gaze. “Very pretty.”

“It’s far more than pretty, Percival. That collar is designed to block a Maja’s access to her powers.” She tilted her chin, mustered her most challenging smile. “If you accept my Oath and collar me, I’d effectively be powerless unless you chose to deactivate it for missions. I’ll be completely at your mercy.”

*   *   *

P
ercival froze. And swallowed.

Morgana stood before them, her lushly beautiful body barely clad in a red lace corset that clearly displayed her perfect breasts and hard nipples. A catlike smile curved her lips as she tilted her head, sending her waist-length black curls shifting around her creamy shoulders.

He silently cursed the erection swelling behind the fly of his jeans. Leaning forward, Percival braced his elbows on his knees, hoping to keep those sharp green eyes of hers from spotting his cock-stand and going for the kill.

The witch had always known how to make a man sit up and beg. Then she’d curl those long red fingernails around his balls and tie them in a knot.

Marrok frowned and asked the question Percival hadn’t managed to think of, not with all his blood headed to his cock. “Something like that would be a piece of major magic. What the hell would be the point?”

“It’s a way to control new Majae with Mageverse Fever,” Morgana explained, picking up the collar in her long, elegant fingers. She was talking about the ugly tendency of new witches to be driven mad by suddenly gaining the raw power of the Mageverse. “It prevents them from being able to draw on their full magic. A Court Seducer could collar the girl before sleeping with her the third time, so when Merlin’s Gift triggered, she wouldn’t be able to commit mayhem if she went insane. That’s not a minor consideration, given the number of Court Seducers who’ve been slain by insane Majae over the years. Not to mention the girls themselves.” Something grim slid through her green eyes. “I am tired of killing those children for something that isn’t their fault.”

“Doesn’t that only delay the inevitable?” Percival asked. “You can’t cure Mageverse Fever; it’s their own power that drives those women insane. Unless you kept the Maja collared for the rest of her life . . .”

Cador smirked. “Much as that might be interesting . . .”

Percival ignored him. “. . . She’d try to destroy everything around her the moment you took the collar off.”

Morgana leaned forward, her eyes going bright with enthusiasm. “But what if it’s the immediate onslaught of the Mageverse that drives the girls insane? What if the collar could let them have the power a bit at a time, allowing them to learn how to manage it? Perhaps that would keep them from going mad.”

Marrok eyed her, then reached for the bottle of Jack and refilled his glass. “You’re not contemplating some kind of experiment—like giving someone the Gift when you suspect they might go insane?”

Was that a flicker of hurt in those vivid eyes? “Do you seriously think I’d do something like that?”

“Would you?” Cador lifted a cinnamon brow.

“No, damn you.” Morgana turned and began to pace restlessly, gesturing as she spoke. She evidently didn’t notice the way they watched her long legs stride in those sheer red stockings and four-inch crimson fuck-me heels. And God, her arse . . . Percival’s hands itched to grab those pert cheeks and spread them so he could see the plump curves of her labia, the tight pucker of her anus . . .

When she turned, there was a shadow of genuine hurt in her eyes. It distracted him from his lust, made him realize just how rough they were being on her. He was surprised by the stab of guilt he felt.

Maybe he was being a little too hasty in rejecting her Oath. Could this really be the way to finally resolve the sexual issues between them? Not that he’d ever let himself become too vulnerable to Morgana—that would be asking for trouble. His gaze lingered on her practically naked body, and he felt his cock harden even more. A sideways glance confirmed his partners were just as aroused.

Percival frowned. They’d shared women before, of course. Most of the time the team went on missions with one Maja, two at the most. Any time a job went for longer than a few hours, there was usually the opportunity for a little sex, and one thing would lead to another. Knights of the Round Table never had a problem getting laid. Besides, Percival and his team had acquired a certain reputation among the Majae; the women were always eager to experience a night with the three of them.

But sharing Morgana . . . that was something else again. He didn’t like that idea one bit. Unfortunately, having her to himself didn’t seem to be on the table. If he wanted her at all—and God knew he did—then he was going to have to ignore his possessive instincts and share her with Marrok and Cador.

Unaware of his thoughts, Morgana was still explaining the theory behind the collar. “No matter how carefully we screen the candidates or how well-trained our Court Seducers are in accessing them, a percentage of our Latents always go insane.” Pivoting, she paced the other way. “If we collared all of them before that third time, even the stable women wouldn’t suffer the psychic storm of gaining their full power at one time. We could ease them all into becoming Majae, especially the unstable ones. If they didn’t develop full-blown Mageverse Fever, killing them wouldn’t be necessary.”

“God knows that’s a worthy goal.” His thoughts went to Clarice.

Fifteen years ago, Lancelot had been forced to kill Percival’s only daughter to keep her from murdering Morgana’s granddaughter, Grace. Percival hadn’t even known about Clarice’s existence until she’d been identified as a candidate for the Gift. Which, unfortunately, was one of the hazards of siring illegitimate children.

Percival had been impressed with Clarice in the brief time he’d known her; she was an intelligent, idealistic woman who volunteered in her local soup kitchen and was passionately involved in environmental causes.

Then she was dead, all her bright potential lost with her. Though he’d barely known the girl, he’d grieved her passing. Especially since she’d died during an attempt to kill sixteen-year-old Grace Morgan. In her right mind, Clarice would have been horrified at the idea of doing something like that to a child.

Watching Morgana gesture, eyes alight with passion as she talked about the problem of Mageverse Fever, Percival realized she sincerely wanted to find a way to save those girls. He wasn’t surprised: though the Liege of the Majae had a well-deserved reputation for cool ruthlessness, she was also deeply protective when it came to innocents.

“I’ve had to put mad girls down far too many times over my life.” Morgana turned to face them, pain in her green eyes. “If at all possible, I never want to do it again.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Cador said. “But there’s a hell of a long way between creating something to keep women from going insane and wearing that collar yourself. You’re actually willing to let us collar you and strip you of your magic?”