Bound by Legend: A Bound Novel

by A. D. Trosper

  Jake lifted the cup toward her. “I’m fine. Head’s a little sore. Not sure if that’s from the whiskey or the black out.”

  “Blackout?” Lucian frowned and made as if to put an arm around her waist then stopped.

  Morgan was relieved he hadn’t followed through, she was confused enough without touching him again right now.

  Jake took a sip of coffee and nodded with a slight furrow between his eyes. “Yeah. I saw that asshole shoving her around and was running to help. I don’t know what happened, one second I was almost to the parking lot and the next I was waking up on the ground and the guy was gone. Some strange shit.”

  “If you’re sure you’re okay, I’m going to head…” Morgan glanced at Lucian. “Where?”

  “Back to the house for now. I chose to stay at the house last night. I wasn’t sure if you would return during the night and you didn’t bother to find out which hotel we were supposed to be at.”

  Well, that had been stupid. Good thing Lucian had been thinking, otherwise if she had decided to drive back an empty house would have greeted her. Or maybe one full of hounds. Becoming a hell hound chew toy wasn’t anywhere on her bucket list.

  Lucian stayed close as they walked toward the vehicles, his eyes keeping up a constant search of the area around them.

  “Morgs.” Jake called.

  She turned as he jogged across the space between them. Lucian glanced between them before his gaze settled on her. “I’ll wait in my car then follow you home.”

  Home. The words, “I’m already there,” hovered on the tip of her tongue. Not because this was where she’d spent a lot of her time on the streets, but because Lucian was there. Higher Powers help her, the inside of her head was starting to sound like it was occupied by an idiot.

  Jake waited until Lucian had got into his car and started it before turning his attention fully on her. “Look, I know you think you are better off keeping your distance. I’m telling you right now, you two belong together. I’m serious, Morgs.”

  She would have laughed except for the serious expression on his face. “Why do you say that?”

  “Watching you two together this morning. It’s like watching a couple of strong magnets trying to stay away from each other. Every action you two make, you’re reaching for each other and pushing away at the same time.”

  “I think you must have cracked your head when you fell.” Morgan snorted and looked away, not willing to let him see the reflection of the truth she knew he would see in her eyes.

  Jake walked back to his duffle and picked it up. “Let him in. I promise, if something happens to him, it will be worth the pain.”

  Morgan watched him head across the park toward the overpass. Sighing, she walked to her truck and climbed in the driver’s seat. Lucy whined and shoved her head over the back of the seat, snuffling at Morgan’s hair.

  Morgan reached back and scratched the dog behind the ears. “I’m okay girl, I promise.”

  She started the engine and backed out. Lucian pulled out behind her and followed closely. At first, navigating the heavy Denver traffic kept her full attention, leaving little room to think of anything else. Once she was back most of the way out of Denver, the traffic spread out and her mind wandered.

  Her heart ached for Lucian’s touch, her very soul wanted to reach for him, wanted to stand beside him, to accept his protection and the love that seemed to hover behind his eyes. The feelings of safe and of home rushed through her again and sudden tears stung her eyes. What the hell was wrong with her?

  Reaching forward, she turned on the radio. A soft beat filled the inside of the suburban. She turned onto the road that would wind through the neighborhood to Lucian’s house as the lyrics to Four Walls by the Broods flowed from the speakers. The voice sang out about how in those walls were the only place she could breathe, how it was home.

  The words resonated inside her. Not because the house was home, but because Lucian was her four walls. Torn between what she thought she didn’t want, yet really did, and her fears, the tears came freely. Through blurred vision, Morgan pulled into the driveway. Laying her arms across the steering wheel, she rested her head against them.

  How could she let her walls down? How could he truly accept such a broken creature? Even her parents, if they suddenly appeared, might not accept the damaged person she’d become. No one did. Even Jake didn’t know all of it. If she was going to have anything with Lucian, she would have to show him, let him see the glue that barely held her together. What if, once he realized how screwed up she was, he walked away? Or stayed only because he was assigned to her and had no choice.

  Her heart broke at the thought, bringing with it a physical ache that she hadn’t felt in years. She dropped her arms, wrapping them around her middle as if that could somehow hold her pieces together.

  She didn’t hear the driver’s side door open, but she sensed him standing there even with her eyes pressed closed. The voice on the radio sang about someone being the only thing she needed.

  “Morgan?” Lucian asked gently.

  “I don’t know if I can do this.” She refused to open her eyes. More tears made tracks down her cheeks.

  He reached past her and cut the engine, shutting off the song in the process. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “There’s something between us, Lucian. I can feel it and I know you can, too and I didn’t want it. It’s like everything inside is trying to drag me into it whether it makes sense or not. It’s there in my heart and I’m just not sure I can do this. I don’t know if I know how.” She finally turned her head to look at him. “I don’t want to be away from you and I’m having a hard time accepting that.”

  He studied her for a long moment. “Morgan… I don’t know what to say.”

  Her heart shredded. She’s opened up enough to let him know how she felt in the only way she knew how and he was pushing her away, not reaching out. Her rational part whispered that it had told her so and started trying to put up walls that wouldn’t build.

  Lucian raked a hand through his golden hair and sighed. “I won’t deny that I feel it too and it’s different than anything I’ve experienced in all of my lives. I don’t know how to do this. The kind of relationship trying to develop between us is too distracting. I can’t let that happen again.”

  He couldn’t let that happen again? That meant he’d felt something like this in the past and it still caused him pain. The tightness in her chest eased a little. Lucian was fighting his own walls. It was a battle she could understand completely. Lucian wasn’t rejecting her, wasn’t pushing her away. Just struggling, the same as her.

  More silent tears slipped down her face. No matter what she did, Morgan couldn’t get control of it. Crying like this was so foreign it scared her. Fear, pain, determination, loneliness, those were what she knew. What she’d known for seven long years. Love, so all-consuming it brought her to tears, and relief that it wasn’t being rejected, were beyond her realm of experience.

  Lucian stared at her, completely dumbfounded. In his time with her, Morgan had never acted like this and he was at a loss as to how to handle it. She was tough and occasionally unsure or afraid, but uncontrolled crying? His heart bled at the sight of her tears, at the thought of how vulnerable she had made herself in that moment.

  She had admitted she didn’t know how do this anymore than he did. The Higher Powers couldn’t have brought together two more confused people. Who knows why they did what they did, their reasoning was above even someone like him.

  Without taking his eyes off her face, he opened the back door and let Lucy out then stepped closer to Morgan and hesitated. How could he cave in to what he felt when he knew damn well how it could turn out? Each tear that slid down her face weakened Lucian’s resolve. Did it really matter at this point if he kept denying it? Would pretending there was nothing between them really lessen the distraction?

  Lucian reached across and pushed the button on her seatbelt. As it slid out of the way, he lif
ted her out of the seat. Morgan in his arms felt right, more so than anything else in any of his lives. He gazed at her tear-streaked face and admitted defeat.

  Lucy happily followed them into the house.

  Morgan clung to him as if she would drown if she didn’t while in truth she was drowning in him. Her heart soared at being held in his arms. He set her down just inside the door and Morgan stared into his eyes. They stood that way in the silence as time took on no meaning. Slowly, his face lowered toward hers.

  She was too torn to resist. Somehow, she needed Lucian. Needed him to be more than her dark angel. He was her salvation from herself.

  Their lips touched. Fire raced through her veins, her pulse beat out a rhythm that matched his, and as she opened her mouth to him and the kiss deepened into something uninhibited and unrestrained, her soul bled into his. Lucian’s touch, his taste, the very essence that was him melded to her in a way she couldn’t define and didn’t understand.

  His hands caressed her body, running up her back to press her closer. When they lowered to her backside and lifted her with ease, she wrapped her legs around his hips and buried her hands in the hair at the base of his neck.

  The movement barely registered until she felt the hard length of his body pressing her against the wall. Heat radiated off his skin and burned through her shirt. Lucian broke the kiss long enough to trail his lips down her neck and back up, his warm breath in her ear sending shivers through her body.

  When he came back to her mouth, she accepted it as readily as he seemed to give it. Lucian shifted his weight and she locked her legs around him. So consumed by the scorching heat between them, she barely noticed him climbing the stairs or breaking their kiss long enough to for her shirt to come up over her head. When they reached his room and Lucian set her on her feet, he held their kiss while his hands deftly loosened her jeans.

  And then she lay naked on the silky sheets of the bed with him. The sensation of his bare skin against hers drove her wild. His lips made their way past her collar bone as his body shifted over hers and all thoughts of protecting her heart fled her mind.

  THEY LAY TOGETHER as the afternoon sun filled the room with light, her back pressed against him and his arm around her waist. It seemed impossible that they’d spent most of the day making love and spending long periods just lying in one another’s arms talking about the things in life they loved best, never touching on the darker things. When had she ever felt this comfortable with someone? Morgan couldn’t think of a time.

  Her mind wandered back to what he’d said in the driveway. “What did you mean when you said you couldn’t let it happen again?”

  Lucian’s fingers trailed up her arm and over her shoulder. “In all of my lives, I’ve only felt more than duty once before. It wasn’t as strong as this, not nearly so, still enough that I let my attention become divided. I died in that moment of inattention and because of that, she died as well.”

  “How…” Morgan swallowed, almost afraid to ask. “How did she die?”

  He didn’t answer for so long Morgan started thinking he wouldn’t at all. Then he said quietly, “She was imprisoned and eventually burned at the stake.”

  “Burned at the stake?” She twisted so she could see his face. The pain in his eyes at the memory was undeniable. “How long ago was this?”

  “A few hundred years ago, in a different country,” he said, a somber expression on his face.

  Morgan knew that a man like Lucian would likely have had several partners throughout his many lives and yet, the thought of him sharing his bed with a woman—for whom he’d felt so much that it still hurt to think of her death several hundred years later—caused a small twinge of…what? Jealousy? Surely not. She wasn’t the jealous type. The new, unfamiliar emotion screamed that she was liar.

  “Did she love you the same?” Morgan asked.

  Lucian snorted. “No. Her love lay elsewhere. She was a woman every man loved and no man touched. A hero of her time. I never spoke to her of how I felt. She had her mission in life and I had mine. It didn’t stop me from loving her; it just kept that love in check. If I had felt for her the level of emotion, of connection that I feel for you, I would never have been able to resist at least trying to win her heart for myself. It’s good I didn’t feel this much for her, it would have been highly selfish of me.”

  “So who was this mystery woman? Does she have a name?”

  Lucian stared into her eyes for a long moment as if weighing whether or not to answer her. “She was often called La Pucelle. You would probably know her better as Joan of Arc.”

  “What?” Morgan bolted up. “Joan of Arc was a channel? Wait, you were her dark angel and you loved her?”

  “Morgan, what’s the problem?” He sat up.

  “I have to freaking compete with the memory of Joan of Arc? There’s no way. I couldn’t even begin to compare to her. Very few could.” Morgan flopped back down with a groan, covering her face with her hands. “No wonder you weren’t sure if you wanted this with me.”

  Lucian’s rich laugh filled her ears as he gently pulled her hands away. His smile sent flutters through her stomach as did the desire burning in his eyes.

  “I assure you, you have no one to compete with. Did I love La Pucelle? Yes, and though her death still brings me sadness, I was never meant to be with her.” Lucian leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. “You have no need to compete with anyone.”

  Sure she didn’t. His last love was only a freaking saint.

  “So are you going to tell me what happened at the park while I was gone getting coffee?” Lucian asked as he lay down next to her again.

  An involuntary shiver ran through Morgan. Whatever Jax was, he completely creeped her out. She rolled slightly so she could see his face again as his fingers trailed lightly across the bruises on her throat.

  Morgan considered how to explain. “He was unlike anything I’ve ever encountered. Granted I’m young both in this life and in number of lives so I’m sure there are plenty of things I haven’t encountered...even so…”

  “How was he different?” Lucian’s asked, his voice low and soft.

  “For one, I couldn’t get away from him.” Morgan snorted. “That’s sounds so arrogant and I’m not trying to claim that I’m some kung-fu badass or something, but I’m pretty good at defending myself. I may take some hits, but I can always either fight back and win or find a way out of it and escape.”

  “And you couldn’t with him?” A sudden tension ran through Lucian and though his expression showed none of it, a hard glint of anger shown in his eyes. Again the sense of safe settled over Morgan and she was surprised to feel protected. It was an unfamiliar sensation. She’d learned to depend on herself, even with Arabrim.

  In answer to his question she shook her head and asked, “If you had hold of me and were truly determined that I wouldn’t get away from you, do you think I could wiggle or fight my way free?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  It wasn’t a boast, it was a simple fact and she knew it as much as he did. “He had the same kind of strength. Normal humans can be pretty damn strong, but I know the difference between human strength and supernatural strength. His eyes went from green to red and then it looked like there were flames burning behind his irises.”

  Lucian stiffened. “A hybrid. Tell me exactly what he looked like.”

  “A what?”

  “Tell me.”

  Morgan studied his face. “He was almost as tall as you and Damien, maybe a couple inches shorter, dark hair, green eyes— when they weren’t red and flaming—and he had some sort of intricate, tribal tattoo that ran from his right wrist up his arm over his shoulder.”

  Lucian’s eyes darkened into burnt umber. “Did you see anything worked into the tattoo? It would have been up near the shoulder.”

  She ran through the encounter again trying to remember. “I think there was a snake twisted around a sword.”

  “Jaxelar.” Lucian’s voice
was hard as he spat the name.

  “What did you mean he’s a hybrid? A hybrid what?”

  Lucian rolled to his back with a sigh, his arm pulling her close to his side. “Jaxelar was supposed to be Jaxciel. He was going to be the first new dark angel in nearly four centuries. The Higher Powers could see even then where the world was going. More and more demons meant the need for more dark angels and Jaxciel would be special. Most of us are born to anonymous parents who give us up at birth and we are then adopted by another dark angel and raised until the age of ascension at sixteen.”

  Morgan nodded, a little impatient. She already knew how dark angels came into the world and how they were raised. “So what was so special about this Jax guy?”

  “Is that what he calls himself now?” Lucian shook his head and went on, “He was to be born of a union between a dark angel and his soulmate. Imbued with the powers of a dark angel and given the gift of his channel mother. He would be able to banish more demons than a normal dark angel and he would be able to dreamwalk like his mother.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “Jaxciel should have been born a hundred and fifty years ago. His birth was eagerly awaited by all of us. His mother was in her second life as a channel, his father was young in lives. Jaxciel was a new beginning, a new weapon in our fight against the Underworld.

  “It didn’t happen.” Lucian’s expression turned angry and sorrowful at the same time, as if he wasn’t sure exactly how to feel even after all this time. “Jaxciel’s father was killed a couple of months before he was due to be born. His mother, Mercy, couldn’t handle the loss. She railed against the Higher Powers for letting it happen. She…cursed them. Repeatedly. And when an upper-level demon offered her a way out of her pain, she took it.”

  “What do you mean she took it?” Revulsion and horror seeped through Morgan, bringing an icy chill to her heart.

  “Freewill. It applies to channels as much as any other human. The Higher Powers would never dream of forcing a channel to walk a path she didn’t wish to. When the demon came to Mercy, she followed it into the Underworld. She drank the blood of a demon.” Sadness was now the dominant emotion on Lucian’s face.