Master of Passion
Master of Passion (Merlin’s Legacy 4)
Angela Knight
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2019 Angela Knight
BIN: 009061-02932
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Changeling Press LLC
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www.ChangelingPress.com
Editor: Margaret Riley
Cover Artist: Angela Knight
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Table of Contents
Master of Passion (Merlin’s Legacy 4)
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Acknowledgements
Angela Knight
Master of Passion (Merlin’s Legacy 4)
Angela Knight
After combat news cameraman Adam Parker covers a Times Square attack by blue-skinned aliens that costs hundreds of lives, the invaders try to kidnap him. Fortunately, the attempt is foiled by a sword-swinging Knight of the Round Table and his witch partner. But when the vampire knight removes his helmet, Adam realizes Sir Baldulf is the father who abandoned him and his mother when he was ten.
Ulf swears he and Opal Cassidy are Adam’s only hope of survival. Otherwise the aliens will keep coming after him. Furious, Adam wants nothing to do with either of them -- especially after Opal uses her magic to force him to run from the aliens instead of doing his job.
Opal has been ordered to seduce Adam and transform him into a vampire. Still grieving for a previous partner after more than a decade, the witch wants nothing to do with the handsome, cynical mortal. But orders are orders, so seduction it is.
Despite Adam’s bitterness and her grief, the two discover they have red-hot sexual chemistry. As the stakes climb and passion turns to love, Opal and Adam realize that if they don’t take a chance on each other, humanity will pay the price.
Chapter One
Warm, muscled arms wrapped around her waist, and a big body slid against her from behind, snuggling close. The scent of him made Opal’s heart skip in sheer joy. “Joaquin?” She rolled over to face him, eyes widening. It was him. “Joaquin!”
His wide, white grin flashed in the dim light as he rose to one elbow above her. “Hello, love.”
She caught his handsome face in her hands. Treasuring the warmth of his skin between her palms, she fell into the love shining in the rich, velvet dark of his eyes. With a needy gasp, she pulled him into a ravenous kiss. He felt so solid and strong as she pressed against him, all long, lean muscle. Her world had become as hollow as a drum without him, empty with yearning. “Oh God, I’ve missed you,” she moaned against his mouth. “I’m so sorry I failed…”
“Opal, no one could have done more.” His long fingers stroked her red curls. There was such sadness in his gaze, her chest hurt. “And I know how much you miss me. I’ve missed you, too. But darling, it’s time you let me go.” He lowered his head until his forehead touched hers. “Because, my love, I’m gone.” He began to fade from her arms like mist in the morning sun.
“No!” She screamed, clutching for him, but her hands raked through empty air.
* * *
Opal came awake crying. She sat up and swung her legs out of bed, burying her face in her hands. “I should have Truebonded with you when I had the chance,” she groaned to the man who’d been dead more than a decade.
Her cell phone vibrated on the oak nightstand with Alys Hawkewood’s ringtone. The atonal thumping notes made Opal long for the noxious metallic brrrrriiiing of the twentieth century. She scooped up her phone. “Hello, Alys,” she said, wiping her face with the back of her free hand. “What did you See this time?”
There was a pause. “Are you all right? You sound a little choked.”
“I’m fine.” Briskly, she added, “So what fresh hell is it now?”
Alys snorted. “‘Fresh hell’ is right. You need to meet us at the Great Hall. Arthur and Morgana want to brief you on an assignment I Saw.”
“Oh, that doesn’t sound good.” Not if the job was bad enough to trigger one of her friend’s visions.
“It’s not. And you’re not going to like it.”
Terrific. She forced a light tone. “Is it my turn to get captured by Fomos?” Which was what had happened to Alys the week before. From what she’d said, it had been ugly.
“No, someone else is in the bull’s-eye this time. And I’m afraid you’ll have your hands full keeping this one alive. He’s not going to want to cooperate.”
Merlin’s beard. “I’ll be right over.”
With a sigh, Opal reached for her magic and sent it rolling down her body. When the wave of sparks dispersed, she was dressed in black slacks, boots and an emerald silk blouse. Beat the hell out of whalebone and a bustle.
Boot heels clicking on polished red tile, Opal strode through the hacienda she’d built for Joaquin a hundred years before. She could have gated directly to the great hall, of course, but it was a nice night and she liked to walk whenever she could. Laziness was not a survival characteristic for Magekind agents.
The night was cool and pleasant, a quarter moon floating in the star-flecked Mageverse sky as she headed down the stone walkway to the cobblestone street. Avalon was at its most active at night when the vampires were out. The crowd was thick with agents kicking back between missions. Men and women strolled among fifteen centuries’ worth of architecture -- everything from Roman villas to Frank Lloyd Wright. Stained-glass windows shone with rainbow light, giving Avalon a fairytale quality that prosaic mortal cities lacked.
Looking around at the laughing, chatting couples, Opal remembered the dream, and her heart ached. Eleven years ago she’d walked at Joaquin’s side like that, enjoying private jokes, arguing over mission strategies, anticipating a stolen hour or two in bed.
Now all she had was the job.
Ten minutes later, she reached the Great Hall that served as the Magekind’s headquarters. A massive gothic cathedral of a building, it towered against the night sky, huge stained-glass windows blazing into the night. Arched doors, each fifteen feet in height, swung silently wide at her approach, then closed behind her with a resonant thunk.
Time to find out just how bad this was going to be.
* * *
There was something about being in the presence of five thousand years of accumulated magical firepower that made her brain vibrate in her skull.
Arthur leaned a hip against his half-sister’s imposing desk. A handsome, broad-shouldered man, he had ink-black hair and a neat beard that enhanced the jut of his square, stubborn jaw. Though no longer High King of Britain, Arthur radiated so much power and regal dominance she wanted to drop to one knee anyway -- his jeans and Avengers T-shirt notwithstanding.
Morgana sat behind her desk, green-eyed and feline in a crimson power suit that emphasized her pale beauty. She was said to be the most powerful Maja in Avalon. Given the magic boiling around her, that was easy to believe.
Opal found herself wishing she could push her oxblood leather chair a bit further from the desk.
Almost as much power radiated from the big wingback on her right, where Sir Baldulf sat. Sir Baldulf -- he’d told her to call him Ulf -- was a tall blond with short-cropped hair and the powerful build of someone who swung a broadsword for a living. Like Arthur, he was casually dressed -- in his case, jeans and a turquoise Henley that stretched across his wide chest. A frown creased his deceptively young face as one hand drummed restlessly on the hilt of the sword lying sheathed across his lap. The motion made the signet ring flash on his index finger. “The problem is my son, Adam Parker,” he said. “He’s a combat news cameraman for DCN.”
“Remember the video of Davon Fredericks fighting the dragon last week?” Arthur asked. “You had to have seen it -- it’s been running 24/7 on every news station since. Adam shot that. Almost got his ticket punched in the process. One of the Fomos was about to end him when I ran the blue bastard through. Adam just kept right on shooting. No sense of self-preservation at all.” There was a note of grudging approval in his tone.
Morgana grinned slyly at Ulf. “Wonder where the boy got that particular trait?”
Ulf snorted. “Could just as easily have come from his mother.” Regret darkened his Caribbean blue eyes as he lost the grin. “I fell so damned hard for that woman. Cheryl would have made a hell of an agent if she’d inherited the Gift.”
“I warned you she was getting to you,” Arthur said. “If you’d kept your distance…”
“That was a lot easier said than done.” A hint of resentment tightened Ulf’s mouth.
“Relationships with mortals…”
“By definition end badly,” Morgana finished impatiently. “We know.” She turned her attention back to Opal. “You’re in this because Alys has had a vision about you and Ulf’s son.”
“Unfortunately, the detail of that vision leaves a lot to be desired,” Alys said from the chair on Opal’s left. Tall, elegant, with rich copper skin and a crown of corkscrew curls, she was the Magekind’s most powerful seer. “I spent three hours in a spell circle yesterday, and I still wasn’t able to pull out much about where this is going.”
Opal studied her, brows climbing. “Could the Fomos be blocking you?”
Her friend nibbled her lower lip. “Doesn’t feel like the Fomorians,” she said at last. “But something’s definitely interfering. Only thing I know for sure is how it starts. The bastards will go after Adam hard.”
“For God’s sake, why? If he’s just a mortal…”
“He is,” Alys said. “At the moment. And no, I don’t know why the Fomos want him.” Correctly interpreting Opal’s frown, she shrugged. “I told you the vision’s vague as hell.”
“Which means,” Arthur broke in, “You and Ulf are going to have to protect Adam and any other unfortunate mortals who happen to be in the blast zone.”
Opal frowned as she picked up on what Alys had just said. At the moment Adam was mortal? “Why do I get the feeling this is not just a bodyguard job?”
“Because it’s not.” Morgana fixed her in a cold-eyed green stare that warned her not to question her orders. “We need you to Gift Adam.”
“Wait, what?” She stared at the witch, so startled she said the first thing that popped into her head. “I’m not a court seducer.”
“That isn’t a requirement. All you have to do is sleep with the man until your magic triggers his Gift.”
Warm muscled arms wrapped around her waist, and a big, familiar body slid against her from behind, snuggling close. The scent of him was so familiar, her heart squeezed hard in her chest… “I’m not… particularly comfortable with that.” When Morgana’s eyes narrowed, she added, “I’d be happy to protect Sir Baldulf’s son, but I’ve never given anyone the Gift. Surely one of the court seducers…”
“It can’t be anyone but you,” Alys interrupted. “That’s part of why I spent so much time scanning alternate futures. Every timeline ended in disaster if we sent anyone else to Gift Adam.”
Warm muscled arms wrapped around her waist…
Oh, Joaquin. “The Gift can do ugly things to even the best people. Are we sure he’s going to make it?” What if he goes blood-mad and tries to rip my throat out? I’d have to kill him.
Alys’s curls bounced as she shook her head. “The timelines all agree Adam survives the Gift. And he’s absolutely vital to what comes next.” She frowned. “Whatever the hell that is.”
If Alys had Seen it, it was a certainty. Trouble was, her friend was also fully capable of lying to avert some ugly future. “Yes, but…”
“But nothing,” Arthur said, his black eyes locking on hers like a pair of gun sights. “Alys says we need the kid for the next part of this dance, so I damn well want him.” He grimaced. “After the way she pulled our collective nuts out of the fire last week, I’m not inclined to ignore anything she says.”
Her instinct was to yield before that implacable black gaze, but her rebellious heart didn’t give a damn.
Arthur’s expression softened, and Opal realized her face had shown too much. “Look, I know how you felt about Joaquin. I hate asking you to do this, but we’ve got no choice.”
And I’m an agent of the Magekind. Opal forced a shrug and a smile. “It’s been eleven years. It’s not as if I’ve been celibate. Of course I’ll do my duty.”
Arthur gave her a long, searching look. Nodded.
A big hand covered hers, rough and warm. “I appreciate this,” Ulf said. “If anyone knows how difficult it can be to move on, it’s me.” His mouth took on a grim line. “I certainly haven’t been able to do it.”
* * *
Adam Parker scrolled through the video he’d shot that morning: uniformed pallbearers carrying a flag-draped casket into Saint Patrick’s cathedral. Ranks of police officers in dress uniform stood at attention, white-gloved hands raised to hat brims in salute. The NYPD was a huge department of over thirty thousand officers, far too big for everyone to know each other. You could tell who’d known patrolman Glenn Harris by the sick grief on their faces.
An alien had cut Harris’s head off with a sword. The cop had been just one of the eight hundred and thirty-three people who’d died in Times Square last week, stabbed by swords, impaled on spears, shot by friendly fire or ricochets -- even burned to death by dragon breath.
A dragon, for fuck’s sake. Adam had seen it winging overhead, silhouetted against the night sky as it strafed the fleeing, hysterical crowd with gouts of flame.
For a moment, he could almost hear the screams and the pop pop pop of the cops’ panicked pistol fire. The acrid smell of smoke and burning meat had filled his nose and mouth, coating his tongue with a nauseating patina.
An image flashed through his mind: one of the aliens lunging at him in the frame of his camera’s viewfinder, lips peeled off pointed teeth, eyes red in a cyan blue face, sword gripped in a two-fingered hand. He knew he’d be as dead as Harris if not for the bearded man in golden armor who’d leaped into the alien’s path.
The death toll would have been a lot higher i
f it hadn’t been for the people in that armor. The question was, who were they? Why had they gotten involved? For that matter, what the hell was going on with all the other Game of Thrones shit -- blue guys, dragons, centaurs and trolls. Nobody understood any of it. The whole planet teetered on the edge of panic as people tried to figure out what was going on. It was so bad, Fake News conspiracy theories almost seemed comforting.
Assuming you weren’t one of the people being accused of perpetrating the Fake News.
Now, sitting at one of the long desks in DCN’s open-plan newsroom -- phones ringing, the rumble of voices, one of the night producers telling a joke three seats over -- the memory seemed more like a scene from the last Avengers movie.
“Can you tell me anything about the autopsy results on any of the aliens?” Branwyn Donovan asked from a little further down the long table, long fingers dancing over her laptop keyboard as she listened intently to whomever she was interviewing over the phone. Gleaming black hair curled around her shoulders as her violet eyes narrowed in concentration.
Though Branwyn had a private office, she preferred working in the newsroom with the rank and file. She might be the network’s star talent and the sister of Conal Donovan, CEO of Donovan Cable News, but she was a reporter before anything else.
His gaze lingered on her profile. Damn, he wished they’d been able to make it work.
His cell phone vibrated on the desk at his elbow as Elton John crooned the first stanza of “Tiny Dancer,” his mother’s favorite song. Adam clicked his earpiece. “Hi, Mom.” She always called on her way to her job as an ER nurse in Charlotte, NC.
“They egged my car!” Cheryl Parker snarled. “I had to wash the damn thing to keep the egg from eating the paint job, and now I’m ten minutes late for my shift!”
Adam sat back in his chair, wincing. “Oh, hell. The neighbor’s kids again?”