by Kim Knox
I spread my fingers through the air and conjured an image of Beranin. Grey clouds parted to reveal the scarred earth, and my heart twisted. But Blake had repaired some of the damage he’d caused through fracturing magic by making magic whole. The people of that null district now had full access to magic.
Already people had learned of their new gift as they lifted rubble, healed the injured and dampened down fires. Tobias flickered into view, his beautiful suit stained with grit, his arms stretched out, his face fierce. He poured streams of magic into strengthening a crumbling tenement. I could see the difference in him, how his being touched by Blake had transformed him from an ordinary user of magic into something…incredible.
“Yes, he is,” Blake murmured. “The need for magic is a strong burn in him.” He stroked a light caress down my bare spine. “Now he’s almost a perfect vessel for it.”
“Any more candidates I should be made aware of?” Sharing the throne with him, sharing his mind, I knew every candidate Blake had tried to turn into the next Dragon Lord. But I didn’t feel a threat from any of them.
He pressed a kiss to my shoulder. “All fall away in comparison to you.”
“I like you.” I grinned. “I may even keep you.”
I faded the image of Beranin and widened my search, spreading out over the river. I snorted as I saw people on the tube staring in disbelief as an old woman conjured a lithe and very naked young man out of thin air.
A flick of my fingers took me to Clair Musgrove’s sleek office high in a spindled tower of the Council chambers. A blaze of white fire churned around her large desk, and through the maelstrom, I saw her, her body stiff in terror, her hands clawed to her chair. Light and fire sparked from her screaming mouth.
Oh, the free magic simply loved her.
And it had spread beyond the river, beyond the North and South Banks, sweeping around the whole world, touching, living in everyone.
Just as it always should have.
I pulled in a breath and cleared the image. “The guild masters will be busy. So much free magic. So many new magicians who need rules to follow.” I gave Blake a wry smile as he took my hand and I squeezed his. “Councillor Musgrove was not enjoying her newfound skill.”
Blake grinned at me. “Not my problem. Not today.”
“And us, Blake? What do we do?”
He brought my hand to his lips. No wraith fired my body. I didn’t need it. Not anymore. I was bound to him body and soul. And he to me.
“So you want me to give you answers?”
I pulled him across the floor to the stone archway, my laughter echoing. “New life, new rules, Blake. I get answers.”
He snorted. “You’re not the Dragon Lord.”
“Not exactly.” Had he forgotten that I shared his soul? That now I was what he was? I waved my hand over my face and called on our power. It surged through my blood, ancient and consuming, dropping the flesh I had worn all of my life.
And I knew what he had seen by his sudden back step.
The beast shape, the dragon with vast wings, a tail at my command, and overly sensitive horns, writhed before him before magic settled it and I wore the shape as my body. “But is this dragon enough for you?”
Blake shook his head and laughed, pulling me into his arms. “Life just got interesting, didn’t it?”
I grinned at him, my tail wrapping around his bare thigh. The blunted end tapped his hip. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
The End
You can find more of Kim Knox’s books here
About the Author
USA Today Bestselling Author, Kim Knox brews sex, magic, darkness and technology in a little corner of North West England.
Find me in these places…
www.kim-knox.co.uk
Also by Kim Knox
Strange Worlds
Hunting Evander
Flesh and Shadows
Chosen One
Warflesh
Perfecting Naia
Painted Promise
Mythoi Series
Emergence
Slaughter Point
Carina Press Books
Agamemnon Frost and the House of Death
Agamemnon Frost and the Hollow Ships
Agamemnon Frost and the Crown of Towers
Bitter Harvest
Dark Dealings
Synthetic Dreams
Gambit
Fantasy and Paranormal Romance
At the Sorcerer’s Command
Her Dark Soul
Lightning in a Bottle
Reiver
Ruthless Beauty
Skin Magic
Under the Lion’s Curse
Weaving Words
Free - Red in Tooth and Claw
Science Fiction Romance
7% and Rising
Breaking Chance
Dark Immortality
Satin Spar
Free - The Zed Word
Planetary Passions
Magnetism
Friction
Current
Fusion
Frequency
Available in print as: Planetary Passions
Ruthless Beauty
Rachel Sutherland loves control—her job, her life and the men who pass fleetingly through. Yet she aches for someone who doesn’t care about who she is, who would take her for his pleasure and hers. Shame that man is only a fantasy.
Jareth is a fae, bound to the mortal realm by a curse, and he needs Rachel. His curse has always meant a woman’s pleasure must come before his own, but to break his curse he must force a woman to submit to his needs. Rachel is that special woman, one found after centuries of searching.
Now Jareth forces her to find pleasure in ways Rachel never thought she could. A pleasure that could prove more dangerous than she ever believed possible.
Reader Advisory: Is deliciously wicked forced seduction your fantasy? Then prepare to sizzle as a sinfully handsome fae works his sensual magic in Ruthless Beauty.
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excerpt
Her eyelids grew heavy again. Sleep, she needed to sleep and the pull of it dragged her down.
“Rachel…”
Warm breath brushed against her breast. She twisted against the mattress, pushing down the weight of the sheets and blankets. Half-lidded and still groggy from sleep, her eyes focused on the hazy gold of the surrounding light and on the naked dark-haired man licking the underside of her breast.
“What the—”
He sucked her nipple into his hot mouth, his teeth grazing the hard nub, and it broke her words. Sensation rioted through her flesh. He looked up and his silver-cast eyes glittered. The hot curl of lust tightened in her belly as he tugged at her nipple with strong, white teeth and she couldn’t help the escaping groan. Her stranger grinned, something wicked, and her heart thudded. He was beautiful, sculpted perfection and she knew him. He was the stranger from her fantasy.
She sucked in a quick breath. A dream, she was in a dream.
“Want me to fuck you, do you, Rachel Sutherland?” His strong hands gripped her hips as he knelt over her, his breath hot over her belly. She ached for him to sink lower, for his mouth, his tongue to find her pussy. “Want me to take you?”
“Yes…” The word escaped on a gasp.
His tongue teased over her mons and he held her down as her hips bucked. “My first taste will be kind.” His breath brushed warmth over her sensitive skin and his silver eyes fixed on her. They glittered and fire rushed through her blood at the sinful promise shining from him. His words teased her. “A single memory to soften what is to come.”
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Weaving Words
Easy part of his day?
Resurrecting the dead.
Hard part?
Keeping them alive.
Kaede is a witch whose family has been bound for over a thousand years. He’s sworn to his lord. A lord who murdered his mother and could kill him with only seven words.
Now
he’s been commanded to use his unique powers to resurrect his lord’s wife from the dead…but he pulls the wrong soul back.
Vara’s day couldn’t get much more bizarre. One moment she’s a captain in the Temple Guard. The next, she finds herself transported into a world of magic and witches—and stuffed into the body of a lord’s wife.
Unwillingly plunged into middle of a deadly power struggle, the only one Vara can turn to is Kaede, the witch responsible for dragging her into this alien world. A witch she finds far too attractive…
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excerpt
The corpse’s heart juddered and then began to pump fresh, slow blood through its decaying veins.
“Not decaying any more,” Kaede murmured.
“What was that, witch?”
Kaede ignored his lord’s question. His eyes stayed with the body on the altar, watching as blood flushed the exposed skin not covered by its simple white funeral shift. “Nothing, lord.” His fingers dipped into a pot of liquid gold, sweeping intricate symbols over her face and neck. The symbols writhed and Kaede snatched his fingers away.
He winced. These were the final rushes of power. She was almost there, almost returned to bright life. Almost.
He risked a look to the arched entrance of the ancient cavern. Light edged over the sky in a soft pale grey. It was only dawn. That knowledge had tiredness eating into his bones.
Had he only been bonded to her for a few hours? It felt like forever.
Since midnight, he’d stood over the Lord Tarou’s dead wife and worked his skill. A skill he shouldn’t have, and certainly not one his lord should know about.
The shadows cast by the twisting patterns covering the woman’s skin danced over the cavern wall. Kaede kept his gaze fixed on his gold-smeared fingers. Tarou knew what he was and that scared Kaede more than bringing a dead woman back to life.
How had his lord known?
Kaede’s jaw tightened. He knew his mother had to have talked in her final hours. Tarou had presided over her interrogation, obviously wrung secrets from her in her final breaths. The old soured anger swelled again, tasting bitter on his tongue, but he cut out those thoughts. They had no place in his head. He had a job to do.
He forced his gaze back to the woman’s face—her features calm and delicate even as she fought her way back to life. He hoped the Lord Tarou knew what he was doing. His wife couldn’t be that vital to him.
The rumours ran that she was only a bartered woman from a wealthy Northern family. She had no connections, no special talents. To risk a resurrection was insane. Kaede said a silent prayer for his own soul.
Her lips parted. Dry. Cracked. With a cry, her spine arched away from the cold slab of the altar, her limbs twisting. Kaede grabbed at her arms, and held her down as her soul clawed its way back into her body. The witch willed all of his strength into keeping her still. Her soul had to settle. That fact the scrolls had stressed, stressed in blood and bone.
“Witch, what is happening?”
Kaede gritted his teeth. “She is almost back with us, lord.”
She shrieked, the cry piercing Kaede’s heart. That hadn’t been in the scrolls. A soul was supposed to crave the touch of its body. But he couldn’t panic. Not now.
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