Jaded Temptations
The Sex Hex
A witch’s desperate spell on Halloween night will grant a night of incredible erotic pleasure for the man caught in her web—but might very well kill him in the process.
Copyright © 2011 by J. Rose Allister
First E-book Publication: September 2011
Cover design by J. Rose Allister
All cover art and logo copyright © 2011 by J. Rose Allister
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
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The Sex Hex
by J. Rose Allister
Joslynn closed her eyes as the incessant ringing barraged her ears. Fifty-two times she had answered that doorbell. She knew because she’d counted every single one. Fifty-two opportunities to open her door and find the solution she desperately sought. Instead, she found herself nothing but increasingly empty-handed as an endless conga line of trick-or-treaters cleaned out what she’d thought would be an ample supply of candy. Now, the hour had grown late, and the chorus line had slowed to a rare trickle. Much as she hated the thought, it was time to admit defeat. No savior would tread on her welcome mat tonight, ready and able to unwittingly carry out her plan.
She reached for her candy bowl and nicked the edge with the back of her fingers, chipping the black nail polish she had dutifully applied that morning. With a sigh, she pulled open the door to the expected chorus of “Trick or treat!” that trumpeted from somewhere near her navel. The gleeful expression cut off when the child met Joslynn’s gaze, however. The boy looked to be about five, wearing a satiny devil costume with shoe polish smeared on for a curling mustache and goatee. Joslynn smirked at the inaccuracy. She happened to know for a fact that the inspiration behind that costume did not sport any facial hair.
“Happy Halloween,” she said to him, leaning down with her candy bowl even as the boy shrank back. His eyes were goggled wide and looked similar to the candy eyeballs some grubby-fisted scamps had cleaned her out of a short while ago. Straw-like bits of her reddish hair slipped in front of her shoulders and into the bowl. She brushed it aside, but the boy made no move to take the treats being offered.
“It’s okay, Timmy. It’s just her Halloween costume.” Joslynn’s head jerked up in surprise at the velvety male voice, shocked that she had completely missed the male standing behind the little devil. “You know,” he went on. “It’s only make-believe.”
The voice belonged a man with the most chiseled jaw and greenest eyes she’d ever seen. Those eyes had dipped down to the breasts practically spilling from her gauzy black dress while she bent down to offer treats to “Timmy.” The glance gave the man a sleepy, half-lidded look that made her stomach flutter.
“I know it’s make-believe,” the boy said in a somewhat irritable voice, but he stayed rooted in place.
While the man’s eyes were fastened south of her neck, she slid a quick inventory. Sandy brown hair had been styled with deliberate care to appear mussed. Broad shoulders were well defined despite his bulky plaid jacket. Slim hips were molded by expertly fitted jeans. When he shifted his gaze guiltily away from her exposed cleavage, she offered a smile and the silent quirk of a raised eyebrow. His you-caught-me grin revealed a dimpled right cheek, and Joslynn felt all the moisture in her mouth evaporate.
That dimple sealed his fate. He was perfect.
“Great costume,” he said to her.
She shot a glance down at her outfit and shrugged. “Thanks.”
The assumption was one she’d heard several times that night already, yet an odd stab of disappointment poked her stomach to hear him assume she was dressed for Halloween. No doubt he thought the ugly joke fate had played on her face was part of the costume, too—makeup effects labeled “Box O’ Warts” or “Pockmarked Shnozz” at the local costume shop. She reached a self-conscious hand toward the relief map whose lumpy contours she’d come to know all too well and tried to imagine her face hanging from a rubber mask display. She wished that her terminal ugliness was just a mask she could pull off. Then again, she might be able to do just that if her plan worked. On this Samhain night, there was a glimmer of hope that the nightmare could finally end.
The thought brought her eyes back to the piercing green pair on her doorstep. He was staring at her with a puzzled look, and she pulled her hand away from her face and held the bowl out to him. “It’s okay if your son doesn’t want to come closer,” she said. “I know I’m a rather scary sight.”
Joslynn was fishing for two things, and cursed herself silently while he reached out to ruffle the boy’s hair. She wanted to hear the man disagree with her, tell her she wasn’t scary, but beautiful. She wanted him to see through the living mask she was forced to wear, ridiculous a thought as it was. And she was wanted confirmation about the kid, though it hardly seemed necessary. No doubt the tyke was his. They looked so much alike, right down to the sea green eyes and angled chin. A brief flash of remorse sped her pulse. Maybe hearing him portray himself as a loving family man would return her to sanity before she acted on her plan. A comment about a loving wife at home, handing out hand fresh-baked cookies, might stop her before selfish vanity turned her into a vile home wrecker.
“Oh, he’s not my son,” the man said. “He’s my kid brother.”
Her heart somehow sank and leapt with joy at the same time while he reached over the boy’s head to pluck candy from the bowl. Time to make her move.
With a flush of heat in her chest that accompanied her inner call to the forces of magic, she leaned close and whispered an enchanted command. “Return to me just before midnight. Alone. Tell no one.”
When she pulled back, his eyes appeared unfocused and blank for a moment. Then the libido-stirring smile returned, and with a wink, he snatched a second candy from the bowl. “Hope I’m not being too greedy,” he said. “I didn’t have time for dinner before taking Timmy out.”
Greed? If he thought taking two small candies on Halloween was greedy, he had no idea what was about to hit him. She folded her arms and watched them go, wishing she didn’t like him so much already. It would only make this harder.
***
Joslynn stopped her pacing to smooth the lines of her ragged skirt. The gesture failed to improve the drape of the worn, charcoal-colored cloth—or her rattled nerves, for that matter. She resumed pacing, but after a moment kept going down the narrow, dim hallway and opened the door to the never-used guest room. Inside stood several items she hadn’t seen in almost three years, and after flipping on the dingy overhead light, she strode straight through the musty-smelling room to stand in front of one. After a deep breath, she tried to make herself take a good look.
Her eyes were focused squarely on the black boots peeking out from under the layers of her filmy and faded black skirt. She slowly lifted that gaze to the mirror before her, at the reflection of a slim waist and upward to the plunging neckline of her faded dress. At last she confronted the view she’d managed to avoid by nailing a towel over her bathroom mirror and banishing all other looking glasses to this room.
O
ne blue eye stared back at her from a sagging socket that was lower than the other. Her nose was distended and bulbous, her skin waxy in places and splotched red in others. Unnatural bumps and ridges marred the natural lines where a smooth brow and high cheekbones could be. Bangs covered some of the distorted forehead, but they were so lifeless and straw-like that it hardly improved matters. The overall impression looked like a witch hag who had been burned with hellfire, exactly the effect the real hag who had done this to her had been going for.
She conjured a mental image of a sphere of magical energy radiating in her chest and leaned close enough to the mirror to see her breath fog the glass. When she felt the responding heat, she whispered, “Reveal the truth.”
The image blurred for a moment when she leaned back, and for just a pair of fluttering heartbeats, the monstrous reflection in the mirror dissolved into the woman Joslynn had been. Once upon a time she’d been pretty, with smooth, radiant skin, bright blue eyes, and silken, caramel-colored hair. Attractive enough to inadvertently turn the head of the wrong man, which in turn had brought down the wrath of a jealous witch.
Another ripple in the mirror brought back harsh reality, and with a sigh, she turned away. Tonight she might finally shed the horrifying face she’d been saddled with for three years. In just hours she could break free of the hex cast by another witch—one of the vile and sinister variety. A club Joslynn was ironically about to join.
She tried to banish the thought as she returned to the living room and glanced at the clock. Fifteen minutes until midnight.
“Just stop it,” she said, as though telling the pendulum on the old grandfather clock to stop swinging. Tick, there’s still time to change your mind. Tock, but if you do, you’ll stay this way forever.
She’d already had this talk with herself and decided the ends justified the means. She couldn’t stay cooped up in the old house forever, unable to venture out without horrified stares, cruel snickers, and outright rude comments. She was barely making ends meet on what was left of the family coffers. No one wanted a monster working for them, and there was nothing her magic could do about it. The old crone had been thorough, making sure the curse prohibited Joslynn from hiding her deformity with a glamour or any other spell. It had taken her over a year just to get her Reveal command to work for a couple of split seconds. No one else had managed to see beyond her hideous looks for even that long.
Her eyes slid over to the clock again. He would be here any minute. She didn’t even know the name of the man who would become her unwitting hero. All he had to do was sleep with her. A real fairy tale curse, except the guy didn’t have to love her or promise everlasting devotion. Then again, a simple kiss wouldn’t do the trick. The man had to thrust himself inside her until they came. In effect, his “essence” would set her free.
She let out a snort. Although her body was still lithe and shapely, no guy could look above her neck and think of anything other than derision, disgust, or any manner of other unpleasant d words—none of which led to the e word, erection, required to help her break the witch-bitch’s sex hex once and for all. No man could get it up for her, not even with a sack over her face. She hadn’t even been able to pay for sex when she’d hit bottom last year and took a fistful of her rapidly disintegrating inheritance to a seedy alley. Apparently, no one that desperate existed.
Joslynn curled her lip at the memory. Being laughed out of Hooker’s Alley because four zeroes’ worth of cash couldn’t force so much as a twitch from the cock of a broke male whore had been the mother of all humiliating moments since Fallah’s curse. That a shallow fuck most guys would be happy to oblige could end her suffering made the curse all that much more demeaning—and proved just how certain Fallah was that no man would ever touch Joslynn. Too bad blind men were in apparent short supply in her town. She’d never managed to find one young enough to do the deed.
That’s when Joslynn had hit on an idea, one that could ensure she wouldn’t have to live out her days as a circus freak. By using the power of a Samhain moon, she could enchant a male into sleeping with her. Then, Fallah’s “one way out” would be within reach. Like a succubus, she would siphon the sexual energy from his orgasm to transform her back into the human she’d once been. Fallah had warned that the energy drain might kill the man, but she wasn’t one to be trusted. She might have been trying to discourage Joslynn from trying. Then again, the old witch had enjoyed bludgeoning people with ugly truths.
Either way, there would be a drain of energy. How much damage it would cause was the question, as was how much humanity she was willing to sacrifice for the sake of beauty.
Joslynn swore under her breath just as a knock at the front door jarred her from her thoughts. She went to answer it, running a hand through her wiry hair as though it could possibly help. She licked suddenly chapped lips while she reached for the knob.
“Hi,” he said when she pulled open the door, again flashing a dimple-revealing smile.
Her legs rubberized, and she gripped the edge of the open door for support. “You came.”
He shrugged. “I was curious.”
She frowned a bit. That was an odd answer for a mindless minion who had been suckered by enchanted words. Joslynn stood there, mentally debating whether to press the matter further or leave well enough alone.
“Are you going to invite me in?” he said. “It’s pretty damn cold.” To prove the point, he pursued the luscious bow of his lips and exhaled. A puff of white fog curled in front of his face.
She blinked and stepped back. “Of course. Do come in.”
When he brushed past her, the fabric of his jacket—not the plaid one from earlier, but black nylon—felt chilled. Still, the sensation sent a tingle of warm heat up her arm. He smelled good, too, like lemon musk. Had he just showered and shaved? She fingered her dress—the same battered thing she’d had on during his first appearance at her door. She had showered that morning, and hadn’t thought about changing clothes for this. What was the point, even if he thought it was a ridiculous witch costume? It was witch garb, anyway. Just not the kind she took off and stored for next Halloween. Witchcraft was in her blood. It was who she was. Long, gauzy and tattered seemed to fit her new face, anyway.
She watched his eyes take in the living room and tried to do the same as if she was seeing it for the first time. The house was seventy-five years old and looked every minute of it. The room was a disaster of well-worn and mismatched furnishings in varying patterns, all with muddied earth tones. The wood paneling matched the floors to such a perfect degree that it lent an odd sense of a fun house room, one where she could walk off the floor onto the walls while the room twisted itself around her. The candlelight dancing shadows along the walls only served to enhance the disorienting perspective.
The floor creaked with each step they took to the room’s center, and at one point she caught a small puff of dust that rose from between the floorboards at his feet. Housekeeping duties hadn’t been top priority while in despair over her condition. No, this wasn’t the ultimate setting for seduction. But her spell involved some romantic elements. A vase of red roses sat on the mantle of the fireplace she hadn’t thought to light, and the room glowed with votive candles around the perimeter—thirteen of them, to be precise. Each was bright red, the color of passion, and sat on key points above the invisible pentagram she’d drawn with magic around the entire floor before his arrival. Even now she felt the reassuring pull of that mystical energy, and she smiled to herself. This was going to work. She just needed to relax.
“Please,” she said, gesturing to a floral print settee beside her. “Make yourself comfortable.”
He hesitated, then shrugged off his jacket and complied. Even without the fireplace, the room was quite warm. Two hours of chanting incantations and waving magical implements had raised a large bubble of mystical energy around them, superheating the air with charged particles of excited magic. The answer had come to her when she’d least suspected it, and had been so simple
she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it sooner. But then, even in this house where witchcraft was cast so often that magic lived in the walls, she could not glamour herself to hide her features. However, with the addition of a Samhain night, when the veil between reality and magic was at its thinnest, she might render a man so drunk with her power that he would be convinced he wanted her anyway.
She met his penetrating green eyes as she sat down beside him, folding hands in her lap so they wouldn’t betray her nervous anticipation with their perceptible shake. There would be passion here tonight, even if she had to pull out every magical stop she possessed to bring it to pass.
“So,” she said, hoping for a casual tone, “I didn’t catch your name earlier.”
“William Bayne,” he said. “And I have no idea who are you, either.”
Bayne? She laughed out loud.
“Something funny?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Nothing. I’m Joslynn.”
He extended his hand, and she stared at it for a moment. How long had it been since a man held her hand, even for a brief handshake? She took it and he gave a gentle squeeze. “Nice to meet you.”
His hand felt warm and almost rough. Her hand flooded with a sense of comfort and yet an unsettling chaos.
“Thank you for asking me over,” he went on. “Even if I’m not sure why.”
His hand lingered a short span longer than was necessary. Good.
“I’m glad you came. Most people wouldn’t have.”
“I’m not most people.” He reached toward her, and she reflexively jerked. Chiding herself for being so jumpy, she forced tension from her clenched hands. William picked up the pentacle that hung on a slender silver chain around her neck and studied it. “This isn’t just a costume, is it?”
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