Love Bites (5 page)

“I mean I’ve wanted you since you came to court, but you never even looked at me. Now I’ve
got
you.” His mouth came down on hers in a kiss that demanded her utter surrender. She melted against him with a soft moan. But as he kissed her, drawing her tight, fear rose in the back of her mind, an icy shaft that stabbed through her heat. Yes, he wanted her now, against all logic, all reason. But that need couldn’t be real. What happened when he decided he didn’t want her any longer?

And that day would come. Everyone she’d ever loved had turned on her. Her mother had. Her son had.
What happened when Percival, too, betrayed her? She remembered the fury she’d felt when Mordred threatened her with rape. If she’d had the power then that she did now, what would she have done to her son in the grip of that dark rage?

What would she do to Percival?

In her rising fear of that inevitable rejection, her first instinct was to scream at him, rant until she drove him away. She instantly realized that was exactly the wrong approach to take with a Knight of the Round Table. She had to be cool, rigidly controlled, or he would counter-attack, probe the cause of her panic. She couldn’t bear that. Not now, when she felt so vulnerable to his intoxicating passion.

“No,” Morgana snapped, her voice icy to her own ears. “Get off me, Percival!” A flick of her magic picked the knight up and threw him against the wall of the chamber with stunning force. “I do not want you, sir knight. And you will
not
have me—not now and not ever.”

She heard his shout of rage and pain as he tumbled to the floor, but she was already rolling off the bed and running for the door. Jerking it open, she snapped over her shoulder, “Stay the hell away from me, Lord Percival, or I will not be responsible for what I do!”

I
t hadn’t taken Morgana long to think better of demanding that Percival keep his distance. He and his team were too skilled, as she learned when they were forced to work together despite her initial resistance. Morgana wasn’t stupid enough to deprive herself of such invaluable help. She’d compensated by maintaining a careful emotional distance during their missions, not letting Percival get too close, despite the way his big, sensual body tempted her. Fortunately, he hadn’t pushed the point, though there’d been times his gray gaze had lingered on hers, hooded and hot. As a result of her careful self-control, the missions they’d worked together had always been successful.

At least until today.

The Table Chamber’s massive carved oak door swung silently wide. Percival, Marrok, and Cador stalked out, still in their bloodied armor. None of them said a word as they strode past. Morgana had never been so thoroughly ignored. “Percival!”

He kept walking, refusing to even give her a glance. Only Marrok looked back at her. His expression was so cold, the sick knots in her stomach tightened even more. If even ’Rok was that pissed, she was in serious trouble. Because of his issues with anger management, the knight usually cultivated a deliberately sunny attitude, or at least the pretense of one.

Arthur’s deep voice rumbled from inside the chamber. “Step in, Morgana. And close the door.” Judging by that icy tone, he was in one of his Pendragon rages.

Merlin’s balls, this is going to be nasty.
Swallowing, she obeyed.

Entering the great circular chamber, she found Arthur sitting in his seat at the Round Table, the muscles of his jaw working, his black eyes cold and narrow with rage. She took her usual seat at the massive gleaming circular table with its chairs carved with images of knights and ladies. Straightening her shoulders, she stubbornly refused to cower.

He stared at her through an uncomfortable, weighted silence. Arthur wasn’t a tall man, but he had a thickly muscled build that made him look lethally intimidating. Black hair fell to his shoulders, and a short, dark beard framed his wide mouth. “What the fuck did you think you were doing?”

“I hate to mention this, but we’re equals now, Arthur. As Liege of the Majae, I don’t answer to you.” She was responsible for assigning witches to teams, just as the former king directed which vampires worked with whom on what. Both of them had recently been reelected by their respective constituencies yet again; she’d lost count of the number of times it had been now.

“You answer to me if you almost get three of my men killed,” Arthur growled. “To say nothing of the two girls you almost got eaten.”

She lifted a brow. “You’ve never had a mission go off the rails, Arthur?”

He snorted. “You know better than that.
Everybody’s
had missions go off the rails. Which is why you analyze where you fucked up and determine how to avoid it the next time. In this case, I strongly suspect it has something to do with Percival’s calling you on your sexual arousal in that fucking bar.”

Mortified heat flooded her face. “That had nothing to do with it.”

“Bullshit.” He sat forward in his chair, hunching his massive shoulders. “You got your arse on your shoulders, decided you had a point to prove, and
stranded
your team in that alley. They lost fifteen crucial minutes contacting the next team on call, waiting while Caroline retraced the steps you’d already taken, then gated them all to the scene. It’s pure luck you and those girls weren’t halfway down that dragon’s throat by the time they got there.”

Morgana glared at him, refusing to be cowed . . . or admit he had a point. “If I’d taken the men with me, they might have been the ones on the receiving end of the teeth.”

“That’s their damned job, Morgana! Besides which, I’ll remind you that
they
rescued
you
.”

“After I brought the dragon down! If we’d all gated there first, the killer would have done exactly what he did when I arrived—gone airborne. What the hell was the team going to do with him flying around three hundred feet over their heads? I had to shift and go after him, which is what I knew I was going to have to do to start with! Kel had told me if I could stall the dragon for a half hour, he’d be able to come help me fry the bastard.”

“Yeah, assuming you could survive that long. Given the fucker was twice your size, I seriously doubt you’d have been able to make it a half hour. Face it—you and those girls would have ended up eaten if the team hadn’t arrived when they did.”

“I had it handled, Arthur!”

“Bullshit! You had no business playing Lone Ranger with the scaly bastard.” His face turned grim. “Especially not today. Your judgment has always sucked on February third.” He smiled, but it had the quality of a grimace. “Not that I blame you. Mordred could warp anybody.”

She blew out a breath, staring sightlessly at one of the tapestries that lined the chamber. This one depicted battling knights fighting with sword and spear during the Battle of Camlann, when Arthur had killed Mordred, their murderous son. “Yeah, but I should be over it by now. I thought I was, dammit. I thought I’d banished my ghosts, but I’m still having nightmares.”

“Kiddo, unlike mortals, we never forget a fuckin’ thing. Makes it tough to get objective distance.” He drummed his fingers on Excalibur’s hilt where the big sword hung at his hip. “Which is why these postmortems are so important, even if they do sting like a motherfucker. You should have called in
more
backup, not left the backup you had cooling their heels on Mortal Earth.”

Really, what could she say to that? He was right. “All right, maybe I miscalculated. I’ll remind you, it’s not like I make a habit of it. It won’t happen again.”

Arthur was silent so long, Morgana had to look at him again. She found him studying her with such calculation in his dark eyes, she instantly had to wonder what the hell he was thinking. “Unfortunately,” he said at last, “I don’t think that’s the case.”

“What do you mean by that?” She glared at him.

Being Arthur, he didn’t look away. “I mean it’s going to happen again unless you address the root cause of this mess: the sexual tension between you and your team that’s interfering with your ability to assess situations coolly and unemotionally.”

“My sex life is not your business, Arthur.”

“I will repeat: it is when it interferes with the mission. You’re arrogant, Morgana. You have a deadly habit of underestimating your foes and overestimating yourself.” His ebony eyes narrowed in a calculating expression she didn’t like a bit. “Your team might be just the ones to give you the lesson in humility you so desperately need.”

She gritted her teeth. “All I need from those three is their sword arms.”

“And if you mean to keep them, you’ll offer Percival your Oath of Service.”

Morgana stared at him in horrified shock for a heartbeat before she thought to wipe the reaction from her face. “If you think I’ll willingly become the next thing to Percival’s sex slave for the next year, you’ve taken too many blows to the head.”

Arthur studied her, and she suddenly remembered why he’d been England’s greatest king. He knew how to read people with an accuracy that was terrifying. “You’re afraid you’re going to fall in love with him.”

Her heart seemed to stop beating as the shot sank home with a sniper’s unerring accuracy. She forced a scornful laugh. “That’s absurd.”

His deep voice lowered to a dark male purr. “So you’re telling me you feel nothing at the thought of being bound hand and foot while he rides you like a mare?”

“You’re being crude, Arthur. It doesn’t suit you.” As Morgana’s mouth went dry, she looked away before she remembered herself and jerked her eyes back to his. She couldn’t afford to show him any weakness at all.

“And you didn’t answer the question.” There was an unyielding note in his voice that told her she’d better damned well answer.

Panic stung her.
Oh, God, what was the question?
She mentally rewound the conversation. “No, there’s nothing sexual between Percival and me.”

Arthur lifted a brow as one corner of his mouth quirked. “Vampires have a keen sense of smell.”

Morgana felt herself blush scarlet as she realized what he meant. He’d scented the arousal that had flooded her sex from the moment he’d mentioned giving Percival her Oath. She gritted her teeth. “You can be quite the bastard, Arthur.”

“Yes, and you’d do well to keep that in mind. Because if you refuse to offer Percival your Oath, I’m going to reassign his team. You’ll need to pick which of your witches to assign to them. You’ll be with Lamorak and Baldulf.”

Morgana jolted. “No! They wouldn’t be able to . . .” At the last moment, she managed to bite the sentence off. Arthur didn’t need to know why she needed the team so desperately. If he ever guessed she could become a greater danger than some of the monsters they fought—that she only trusted Percival and his team to control her . . .

He frowned. “Lamorak and Baldulf are Knights of the Round Table, Morgana. They’re hardly second-stringers.”

“That’s not the issue. I’ve spent centuries learning to work with Percival and his team. We’re so good at reading each other’s minds in combat, we’re practically Truebonded. I wouldn’t be as effective with anyone else.”

“Unfortunately, at the moment you’re not effective at all. You and Percival and his boys have too much baggage. It’s getting in the way of doing the job. One way or the other, I’m putting a stop to it before you get somebody killed.”

She stared at him, barely breathing. His black gaze was unwavering, fierce. It was his King Arthur face, the expression that said you’d better damned well do what he wanted, or you’d regret it.

He means it
. Her stomach sank. She was going to lose them if she didn’t do something.

“All right, you high-handed bastard.” Morgana rose to her feet and glared across the Round Table at him. “I’ll offer Percival my damned Oath.”

Maddeningly unruffled, Arthur lounged back in his chair. “He has to accept it, or the deal’s off, and you go to Lamorak and Baldulf.”

“Fine. I’ll convince him.” She spun on her heel and stalked out.

*   *   *

M
organa strode along the cobblestone street, trying to ignore the incendiary combination of sexual heat and anxiety in the pit of her stomach. She’d told Arthur she could convince Percival to accept her Oath.

But now she’d started to imagine what it would actually be like being the knight’s Oath Servant. She wasn’t sure what disturbed her more: her arousal at the idea, or the deeper feelings for the knight she’d felt since the night she’d fed him for the first time.

Either way, she was vulnerable to Percival in ways she couldn’t afford to encourage. Fortunately, she could think of at least one way to make that dangerous vulnerability a little less acute.

It was three
A.M.
or so. The moon rode high in the sky over the magical city of Avalon with its eclectic array of architectural styles—everything from thoroughly modern American townhouses to Scottish castles and Roman villas. No matter what the style, all of them had been erected with magic rather than mortal construction techniques. The Majae—a notoriously competitive lot of witches—vied to see who could produce the most elaborate and elegant homes for themselves. In general, the more powerful you were, the more gorgeous your residence. Which was why the homes of single vampires tended to be more modest than those of their Maja counterparts. Part of that was because the Magi were generally too focused on going on missions to care where they slept between them. But more than that, they had to convince some Maja to build their homes for them.

Morgana’s team lived in a trio of homes on adjoining lots in Avalon’s oldest neighborhood. None of the three houses were anywhere near that old, of course, since she made a point of building them new places to live every century or so, whether they asked for them or not. She usually told the men it was a matter of personal pride on her part, but the truth was, she liked making sure they had somewhere comfortable to live.

Percival’s place was a brooding gray stone pile that bore a strong resemblance to a gothic castle. Its stained glass windows depicted interwoven Celtic knots in vivid colors. The colored glass wasn’t just beautiful; it also protected sleeping vampires from the sunlight that could inflict nasty burns.

Morgana climbed the stone steps, refusing to let herself falter. She might have to do this, but that didn’t mean she had to do it the way Arthur dictated.

Offering her Oath to Percival alone wasn’t an option. That would be too intimate, make her too vulnerable. If she gave him that kind of opening, Merlin alone knew what he’d do with it.

“So you’re telling me you feel nothing at the thought of being bound hand and foot while he rides you like a mare?”

Oh, she felt something, all right. And that was exactly why she wasn’t going to put herself in that position. At least, not the way Arthur intended.

Morgana swept through the front door without knocking; she had the ugly suspicion Percival wouldn’t have let her in if she had.