Wicked Games

by Angela Knight

  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 made no secret of his dislike of Morgana, though he was chivalrous enough to manage cool civility most of the time.

  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 jaguar.

  He had a long, starkly masculine face, with prominent angular cheekbones, a hawkish nose, and a sensualist’s mouth. He wore his thick honey-gold hair just long enough to curl, and his gray eyes were cool and watchful. There was something about him that suggested a kind of erotic cruelty Morgana really shouldn’t have found intriguing.

  Any one of the three men could make any woman stare. All three of them together posed a safety hazard to any female in their collective orbit. Morgana wasn’t surprised when a passing well-endowed redhead walked right into the chair in her path.

  Marrok caught her before she could fall on her face. Lifting her to her feet, the big man leaned down to speak to her, probably asking if she was all right. Then he turned and headed back to the booth, apparently unaware of the longing look the girl shot his mile-wide back.

  Technically speaking, he shouldn’t have rescued her. He’d had to react far faster than humanly possible to catch her before she hit the ground. Morgana also knew he couldn’t help himself; Marrok was one of the Knights of the Round Table. Though come to think of it, Percival hadn’t even budged. Cador had probably considered it, but Marrok had beaten him to it. Besides, Cador would have gotten the girl’s cell number, sexual opportunist that he was.

  “Mmmm.” A woman purred to her companion off to Morgana’s right. “Wouldn’t you love to be the meat in that sandwich?”

  “They’re probably gay.”

  The woman snorted. “Not the way they keep watching that chick in the red corset.”

  Morgana was wearing a red corset.

  “The one in black leather looks like he’d like to take her into one of the scene rooms and chain her to a St. Andrews cross.”

  Percival wore black leather, though she hadn’t noticed him watching her. The idea that he had been sent another wave of heat through Morgana that only intensified at a female scream. The sound was more suggestive of a really good orgasm than pain.

  For a moment, Morgana could almost see it: herself, naked, chained to one of the X-shaped bondage crosses as Percival stalked around her, a leather flogger in his hand . . .

  Don’t be ridiculous. Percival probably would like to flog you, but it would have nothing to do with sex. Like most of the witches and vampires in Avalon, he seemed to consider Morgana a cold-blooded, manipulative bitch.

  And he was right.

  • • •

  A girl strutted past, a pair of clamps swinging from her generous breasts. They looked damned painful, judging by the swollen red condition of the nipples they gripped.

  “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 would be worth it.”

  As the clamped girl jiggled past Morgana, the witch’s eyes slid down to the clamps, then flicked directly to Percival’s face. Her vivid green eyes darkened with lust. His cock hardened in a searing liquid rush.

  In the middle of a fucking mission to keep a werewolf from eating more women. Percival’s temper began to steam. It burned all the hotter because he was as angry at himself as he was at her.

  Passing his thumb over the signet 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 Saint Michael I will bend you over the Round Table and whip the ass off you!”

  “You forget yourself, Lord Percival. I am leading 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!” Marrok growled in the link, “Cador and I didn’t do anything. Why hit us?” Morgana’s spell must’ve caught the pair as it traveled through their spelled rings. Morgana made no reply; she’d evidently closed the mental link.

  “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. She’s too distracted. I’ve never seen her this off her game.”

  He was right. They’d worked with Morgana for centuries now, and Percival knew she normally maintained an icy focus on the mission at hand. That, plus her magical power, intelligence, and ruthless dedication meant they rarely failed to achieve their objective.

  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—and they, in turn, would die for her.

  Which didn’t mean she couldn’t royally piss them all off. Today’s little psychic zap was hardly unusual behavior for her.

  Which was why he’d had more than one fantasy of turning her over his lap for the spanking she’d been asking for.

  Among other things . . .

  Cador returned to his favorite topic. “So when are we going to look for another Maja partner?”

  Marrok glowered at him. “When you can name one with as much raw power as Morgana Le Fay.”

  “Well, it doesn’t have to be just one Maja,” Cador pointed out. “Two or even three . . .”

  “Might be equivalent to Morgana’s power, but not of her experience or talent for magical combat strategy.” Percival rattled the ice in his glass impatiently. “Nobody is as good in a magical duel as Morgana. Except maybe Kel, and he’s a shape-shifting 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.

  Centuries ago, the four of them had been among the first twenty-four people to drink from Merlin’s enchanted Grail. The potion it contained had magically changed them all, transforming the twelve Knights of the Round Table into vampires, or Magi, while twelve women, including Morgana and Queen Guinevere, had become 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. That universe’s version of Earth was also home to everything from fairies to dragons and elemental gods.

  Mortal Earth, meanwhile, remained home to werewolves like the one they were hunting today. He was a 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 eviden
tly eaten them.

  The human authorities had yet to put all the pieces together. Which was fortunate, given the questions that particular realization would raise.

  Because the victims’ bodies had been reduced to skeletal remains so quickly, the mortal authorities assumed they’d been dead much longer than they were. Thus they’d excluded individuals who had been missing less than a month. All of which made identification much harder, since police needed some idea who a victim might be in order to obtain dental records to compare skulls to.

  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 that was a cross between Watson the IBM supercomputer and something out of a Harry Potter movie—had found newspaper articles from around the country detailing skeletal remains believed to be the victims of animal attacks.

  Morgana had told Grim about a flash of an image she’d seen in her vision: a hand holding a whip outlined in red neon. The book had identified it as the logo for a New York club called The Whip Hand.

  Which explains why the most powerful witch on the planet was dressed in red corset, a thong, lacy stockings, and high heels. It was a costume that displayed every gorgeous inch of her elegant body, long, toned legs, and full breasts.

  In other words, she was dressed like a submissive—just the kind of woman the killer liked to hunt. Morgana was playing the bait to the hilt, prancing around on those crimson stilettos, drawing the eyes of every straight man in the place, whether dominant or submissive.

  Percival couldn’t blame them. Morgana was an exquisitely beautiful woman, with that long-boned, elegant face, 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 of which should make her an irresistible target for the killer.

  Which was why the three of them were occupying a table, pretending to be 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. 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, he deserved everything they could dish out.

  Nor could he claim to be a victim of animal instinct. Unlike the movie version, real werewolves were no more driven to murder than real vampires. This fucker was just a furry serial killer who liked to butcher women.

  “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 blue polo shirt, he looked broad-shouldered and muscular as he loomed over Morgana. The bastard had to be six-one, six-two. 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, her glance assessing.. She said something and turned away, her body language dismissive.

  The big man froze, his face going expressionless. Then he nodded stiffly and walked away.

  “Aaaaand he goes down in flames,” Cador said with a cynical grin. “Morgana Le Fay—body of a Victoria’s Secret model, personality of a rabid polar bear.”

  The witch glanced toward their table, then hastily away. Her cheeks colored.

  Cador straightened in astonishment. “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. If we’re not going to get a new partner . . .”

  Marrok snorted. “Fuck that.”

  “. . . You need to address this thing you’ve got going with her.”

  “What 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 for a long time.”

  “She wants a goddamn 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. “I’m afraid I don’t measure up.”

  “Soren’s not her lover.” Cador sprawled back in the booth, eyeing him. “Soren’s just her scaly, shape-shifting fuck buddy, and you well know it.”

  He was also Dragonkind’s ambassador to the vampires and witches of Avalon. The pair had been on-again, off-again lovers for the better part of a decade.

  Yet a decade wasn’t long at all by the standards of the Magekind; Percival, Cador, and Marrok had been Morgana’s partners a hell of a lot longer than that.

  She’d also been cutting Percival off at the knees for most of that time.

  As the waitress refilled Percival’s scotch, his mind flashed back to the earliest of those galling encounters . . .

  • • •

  It had begun when Morgana, Percival, Marrok, Cador, and a young Maja named Sebille had ended up in a fight with thirty-eight Saxon raiders. The Magekind were normally more than a match for human warriors, but those odds were pretty bad however you sliced it. The five had had their hands full, but in the end, they’d managed to drag victory from the bloody fangs of defeat. By the time it was all over, four of the five of them had been in the mood to celebrate their survival, despite the rain pounding on the leather roof of the tent Morgana had conjured.

  Marrok and Cador had wasted no time seducing Sebille out of her clothes. Cador had found an excuse to spill the little redhead across his lap for a brisk spanking while Marrok toyed with her pink nipples, plucking and rolling them into hard peaks. Both men were savagely erect.

  So was Percival, for that matter, but his focus wasn’t on the lush little redhead. The woman he wanted was Morgana Le Fay.

  The dark-haired witch was trying unsuccessfully to ignore the laughing trio and the scent of arousal that filled the tent. She hadn’t been as brittle in those days, or as inclined to give the team those nasty little jolts.

  But Percival had been just as fiercely attracted to her as he was now. There had always been something irresistible about all that beauty, intelligence, and raw magical power.

  He wanted her. What’s more, his acute vampire senses told him she was aroused by what Cador and Marrok were doing to Sebille. Her green eyes kept flickering toward the Maja’s pinkening arse as she giggled and yelped under Cador’s carefully measured spanking.

  Recognizing his cue, Percival rose from his place across the fire from Morgana and moved to sit beside her. The scent of her need teased his nose and made his cock buck behind the laces of his britches.

  “If they’re going to fuck her,” Morgana growled, “why don’t they just do it?”

  “Because spanking her arouses them all. It’s foreplay.” Deliberately, Percival let his voice go low and deep. “Would you like to try it?”

  Her head snapped toward him, and her green eyes widened. She recovered quickly, giving her chin a regal tilt she must have copied from Queen Guinevere. “Absolutely not.”

  “Are you sure?” He gave her a slow smile. “Because I’d be willing to . . . accommodate you. I’d love to see that lovely arse bare across my lap.”

  Her pupils expanded, her lips parted, and she swallowed au
dibly. But a moment later, she stiffened, eyes going hard. “I said no.”

  Percival’s first instinct was to keep pushing, explore the vulnerability he sensed, but he knew the witch well enough to recognize when she’d dug in her heels.

  It was Morgana, surprisingly, who refused to let it go. “Her submission to this . . . to being spanked like a child . . . It’s beneath a Maja.”

  The girl evidently heard, for she shot Morgana a wounded look and went still over Cador’s lap before trying to rear up and regain her feet. The knight flattened a palm on her back, stilling her as he gave Morgana a narrow glare.

  Knowing his friend was a heartbeat from giving Morgana herself a spanking—welcome or not—Percival intervened. “Don’t discount the importance of submission, Morgana. Everyone submits to something, whether it’s men, the law, or the will of God. You submit to the king, do you not?”

  “That’s hardly the same thing,” she scoffed, but her eyes flickered. Something in her expression made him wonder about her one night with Arthur, when, as a nineteen-year-old girl, she’d conceived Mordred, Arthur’s illegitimate son. The seventeen-year-old king hadn’t known Guinevere at the time, and neither of the lovers had been aware they were half siblings. According to Merlin, Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon, had taken Morgana’s mother by force following an attack on her Druid temple.

  Following a hunch, Percival gave Morgana a cool look. He’d been commanding men—and women—for years, and he knew a vulnerable spot when he saw one. “Perhaps before you insult and humiliate a fellow Maja, you should know what you’re talking about.”

  “I don’t think . . .”

  “That much is obvious.” Rising, he crouched behind her, caught her shoulders, and turned her to face the trio. She tried to turn away, but his hands tightened on her upper arms, and she stilled. “Watch.”

  Cador had gone back to spanking the girl, but now both he and Marrok knew they had an audience. There was a reason the two were Percival’s partners. They had a way of sensing his intentions and giving him exactly what he wanted.