Bad Boys Southern Style. JoAnn Ross
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from the shadows and fiercely ravished her beneath the midnight sky. Just remembering the way his teeth had tormented her nipples was enough to have heat pooling between her thighs.
“She gives witches a bad name.”
Martha Corey’s grim accusation had Roxi reluctantly dragging her mind from her dream of a wild, midnight sexual tryst back to their conversation.
“I believe witches had a PR problem long before Morganna came on the scene.” The Spanish Inquisition and the Salem hangings were two that came immediately to mind.
The woman abandoned the chalice, moving on to the iron cauldron Roxi had filled with fragrant purple and white lilacs for Beltane. “Did you hear that some Hollywood hotshot director is going to make a movie based on the comic books?”
“Graphic novels,” Roxi repeated. Her frustrated sigh ruffled her dark bangs. “And yes, I believe I heard something about that.”
Not only had she heard, Emma’s husband, Gabriel Broussard—a former hometown bad boy who’d been named Sexiest Man Alive—was going to costar in the movie as Damien, a rival witch who just also happened to be Morganna’s lover.
Actually, the dark and dangerous male witch was the reason she’d begun reading the Morganna stories. He’d certainly fueled fantasies of an entirely different sort. Ones she hadn’t even understood at the time. Now that she thought about it, the man in her dream resembled Damien with his ebony hair and piercing blue eyes.
“I also read in People magazine that it’s going to be filmed right here in Savannah.”
“Imagine that.” Having not seen Emma and Gabriel since their wedding six months earlier, Roxi had been looking forward to them coming to Savannah while Gabe was on location.
“Naturally, the coven is planning demonstrations.”
Oh, hell. This was all she needed. Hex Appeal had only been open a few months. She’d established the original shop in Louisiana, but after Katrina blew the building away, Roxi had decided that as tragic as Katrina turned out to be, in her case the ill wind had offered an opportunity to spread her wings beyond Blue Bayou, the provincial Cajun community in which she’d spent the first twenty-five years of her life. Savannah, with its haunted and magical undercurrents, had seemed the logical choice.
“Well, that should certainly liven things up.”
Practically biting her tongue in half, Roxi took a pink candle she’d made last night down from the shelf, infusing the wax with essential oils of lavender and ginger. Both powerful love forces by themselves, recent studies had shown that the combined scent of lavender and pumpkin pie increased blood flow to the penis by forty percent.
The spell she was packaging for her customer might technically be a love spell, but any woman, witch or not, knew that lust was the fast way to get any male’s attention.
That idea had her unruly mind flashing back to the way her dream lover had feasted on her hot and needy body.
“Of course you’ll be there.”
“Be where?” In her mind his roving mouth had clamped hungrily over her breast and his wicked hand was creating havoc between her legs.
“At the demonstration.”
“The demonstration?” Roxi repeated absently, trying to keep her mind in the here and now while her body, which was on the verge of melting into a hot puddle of need, desperately kept returning to last night.
She placed the small linen bag containing the potpourri into the opening of a conch shell she’d picked up on the beach just last week.
“We’re creating our schedule now.” Martha radiated impatience; a dark, muddied red aura of seething anger surrounded her. “The plan is to disrupt shooting so if those damn movie people insist on making their anti-witch propoganda, they’ll at least have to move to another city.”
“Perhaps Salem.”
“That would be more suitable.”
Given that the irony had flown right over the older woman’s head, Roxi tried again. “Why don’t you just cast some go away spells?”
Although he was now a married man, Roxi suspected that once the local witches got a look at Gabriel Broussard up close and in person, they wouldn’t be in such a hurry to send him away.
“We plan to.” Martha had moved onto a group of unicorns, lifting up a crystal one to check the price sticker underneath. “The demonstrations are merely our backup plan.”
“Don’t you think you’re jumping the gun just a bit?” Once again, Roxi tried to remind herself that patience was a virtue. “Perhaps if you were to read the script—”
A sharp chin shot up. Faded blue eyes turned as stormy as her aura. “I don’t need to read any script to know that we’d hate it. As any true witch would.”
Ah. Here it was. What she’d been waiting for. The challenging of her credentials, which somehow managed to come up in the conversation whenever the old witch visited the shop. Just because Roxi chose to be a solitary witch, rather than join Martha’s illustrious coven, she was considered suspect.
Fortunately, not every Lowcountry witch was as closed minded as their high priestess, or Hex Appeal would have had to close its doors after the first week.
“We’re having a planning meeting tomorrow evening at my home,” the elderly witch said. “I know the others will be pleased to have you join us.”
With that, she left the shop like a schooner at full sail. Without buying anything. She never did. Which was just as well, because she’d undoubtedly declare anything from Hex Appeal faulty since it wasn’t sold by a “real” witch.
Sighing, Roxi rearranged the remaining unicorns to make up for the one that had walked out of the shop in Martha’s oversized straw bag.
The old woman wasn’t really a thief. At least not if her niece, who routinely paid her kleptomaniac aunt’s monthly bills from shopkeepers all over town, could be believed. But she was definitely a trial.
Three
Sloan Hawthorne dreamed of her again. The sultry witch slipped into his sleep, into his mind, like a soft and sultry mist.
They’d been in the forest, where she’d been standing in the sacred circle, waiting for him.
Overhead the midnight sky was a vast sea of black velvet scattered with diamonds. Ice crystals sparkled in the frosty air.
Neither spoke. Words were not necessary when hearts—and souls—were in unison.
Rather than her usual black, she was clad from head to toe in white, the color of the season. But there was nothing wintry about the heat shimmering in her thickly lashed eyes as she looked up at him. Offering everything she was. Everything she would ever be.
With hands that were not as steady as he would have liked, Sloan pushed her white fur hood back. A slight gasp escaped her rosy lips, hovering like a ghost on the chilly air between them as he gathered up a fistful of midnight black hair.
She trembled, but not from the winter’s cold as his free hand unfastened the silver fastener of her cape and pushed it off her shoulders. From anticipation? Or, perhaps, fear?
It’s all right, he soothed as he kissed her temple, her eyes, which drifted closed. You need to trust me. Her cheek. I wouldn’t ever hurt you.
Although he did not say the words out loud, he knew she understood. As his mouth covered hers in a deep, claiming kiss, he felt her body relax in soft, oh so sweet surrender.
She stood before him, gloriously naked, clad only in skin as pale and smooth as freshly churned cream. A silver amulet, carved with mysterious Celtic symbols from another time, nestled between her breasts.
Although he’d lived in sun-drenched southern California