by JoAnn Ross
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 for a dozen years, had worked in the movie industry for eight, Sloan had not known it was possible for any woman to be so beautiful.
He drank in the sight of her, his gaze moving over her face, taking in her eyes with their sexy, feline slant, her nose, which tipped up ever so slightly. Having always found perfection boring, Sloan approved of the faint flaw.
Her slightly parted lips were a soft and dusky pink against her milkmaid’s complexion, reminding him of late summer roses on a field of snow.
She swallowed ever so slightly as he continued his slow, judicious study. When he bent his head and touched his mouth to that soft, fragrant hollow in her throat, he felt her pulse hitch. Imagined he could taste her low, deep hum of pleasure.
Her long hair draped her breasts in a jet black curtain. He smoothed it back over her shoulders. As her nipples tightened beneath his hot and hungry gaze, it took every vestige of self-control Sloan possessed to keep from taking those pert berry tips between his teeth.
He managed, just barely, to keep a tight rein on his rampant need to ravish as his roving eyes moved lower, down her torso, over her taut stomach to the nest of curls between her smooth, firm thighs. Beads of moisture glistened in the silvery moonlight like morning dew.
No longer able to resist touching, he trailed a sensual path through those thistledown silk ringlets with a fingertip and slid a finger into her moist, hidden sheath.
The body clenching around the gently invading touch was hot and tight. And, he thought, with a burst of primal male satisfaction as he flicked a thumb over her clitoris and brought her that first, sharp release, mine.
She was clearly staggered. Her gleaming gold eyes were blurred. Color rode high on her cheekbones and her lush lips trembled on an unsteady breath.
Just as he was worrying that he might have rushed things—rushed her—she smiled.
A slow, sexy, siren’s smile.
And the spell was upon him.
Sloan had planned, while following her to this secret witch’s place, to have her. To ease the woman hunger that had been bedeviling both his mind and body for too long. But, as he’d also always prided himself on being a tender, thorough lover, he’d also intended to take his time.
As lightning-hot need jolted straight to his loins, a ravaging madness flashed through Sloan. Patience broke, intentions scattered. With a violent heat raging in his blood, he muttered a half oath, half prayer, and crushed his mouth to hers.
No less hungry, she kissed him back, her avid mouth moving beneath his, murmuring words in some mysterious, magical language Sloan couldn’t understand.
His clothes disappeared, thrown to the four winds swirling wildly around them. Her nails dug into the bared flesh of his shoulders as she arched her fluid body against him. Her heart was pounding a fast, primitive beat through her blood, against her ribs, so hard he could feel it against his own chest.
Primal need clawed. At her. At him.
As the animal inside Sloan snarled and snapped its steel link chain, he dragged her to the ground, shoved her knees up, and mounted her.
“Mine.” He needed to say the word out loud. Needed to hear her response.
She didn’t hesitate. “Yours,” she agreed on a harsh, ragged breath.
For all time.
He pistoned his hips forward, surging into her, claiming her innocence in one deep thrust.
Her cry, born not of pain, but pleasure, tangled with feminine triumph, echoed over the winter bare treetops.
Clinging to him, her body bowed, her slender hands racing up and down his back while she chanted those musical words from an ancient time, the witch opened completely. Utterly.
It began to snow, soft white flakes drifting down like feathers shaken from some pagan god’s goose-down pillow. Moving together in an age-old rhythm, steeped in the magic of the night and of each other, neither Sloan nor his witch felt the cold as the snow covered them like a pristine white blanket.
“Okay. That’s it.”
Damn. He’d done it again. Fallen asleep at his computer. Sloan lifted his head, relieved he hadn’t drooled and shorted out the keyboard.
His head pounded, his mouth was as dry as when he’d filmed that adventure flick last year in the Sahara, his body ached like the devil, and he didn’t need to look down to know that it was still reacting to his hot and horny dream. He had, after all, been suffering from a damn near perpetual hard-on since he’d begun this frigging Morganna project. He was also getting sick and tired of icy morning showers.
It was time for action.
Time to take charge.
“Time to get laid.”
He reached out and snagged the phone from beneath a pile of comic books. Make that graphic novels, he reminded himself.
Though, personally, having grown up devouring superhero comic books, Sloan couldn’t understand why there’d be a stigma to the term, but after all the years and trouble he’d gone to convincing Morganna’s creator Gavin Thomas to sell him the film rights to the sexy, crime-fighting witch, the last thing he needed to do was accidentally slip up one of these days and insult the writer’s work in public.
Especially given that, having already managed to incite the ultraconservative right with that pirate movie he’d made with Gabriel Broussard, he suspected the zealots would be heating up the tar and dragging out the feathers when Morganna hit the silver screen.
He was idly flipping through the pages while the p
hone rang and he paused on a scene where Brianna, Morganna’s virginal good witch twin—who represented the white magic side of the duo—made love to a mortal male in a sacred circle of stones.
The black and white frame depicting the snow falling on the naked lovers caused the dream to come crashing back in vivid detail, which in turn had the muscles in his belly knotting painfully.
“Hello,” the familiar voice on the other end of the line answered. At least that’s what he thought she’d said. It was difficult to tell with all that hot blood roaring in his ears.
“Hey, Emma, darlin’.” His southern drawl, a legacy from those halcyon days growing up in Savannah, rasped with unsatisfied lust as he struggled to drag his testosterone-crazed mind back to reality. “I’ve got a favor to ask.”
Five minutes later, Sloan was online, booking a flight to Savannah.
Then went into the bathroom for yet another cold shower. One he damn well hoped would be his last.
Four
Seven months after her grand opening, thanks, in part, to Savannah’s tourism trade, business was booming. Enough so that Roxi had even been able to hire a part-time employee, a descendent of a long line of voodoo practitioners who moonlighted as the lead singer in the Papa Legba Voodoo Priestesses.
Named for the most powerful of all the voodoo spirits, who, along with all his other responsibilities was in charge of all things erotic and sexual, the pop group was starting to generate crossover appeal, which Roxi attributed in large part to Jaira Guidnard’s mile-long legs, poreless dark chocolate skin, and a body that caused males from eight to eighty to trip over their tongues.
“Do you believe this?” Jaira asked ten minutes after a busload of Swedish tourists had descended on the shop, located on the city’s colorful Riverwalk. “It’s like a damn Viking invasion.”
“They’re also paying our rent for the next three months,” Roxi said. “Not to mention your salary.”
“Well, there is that,” Jaira agreed. “And some of them are actually kind of cute if you go for the hunky blond Scandinavian type.”
She flashed a blindingly bright smile at one of the Vikings, who immediately walked into a display of pewter wind chimes hanging from the ceiling.
The temperature and humidity outside the shop was approaching the nineties; the constant opening and closing of the door, as customers left with their packages to make room for others to enter, was putting a strain on the hundred-year-old building’s air conditioner, making it nearly as hot inside. Her hot pink Hex Appeal tank top was beginning to stick to Roxi’s body and her hair felt like a thick dark curtain hanging down her back.
While Jaira went over to model jewelry and flirt with a trio of bedazzled males ostensibly shopping for their mothers back home—if, in fact, Swedish mothers actually wore chandelier garnet and seashell earrings—Roxi wrapped up a voodoo doll for a tall, stunningly voluptuous woman her own age who easily could’ve been a member of the Swedish Bikini Team.
Interestingly, none of the Vikings who were swarming around Jaira seemed to be paying any attention to her, which Roxi took as validation that blondes didn’t always have all the fun.
As the blonde left the store with two more members of the team, all sporting fuchsia Hex Appeal baseball caps with its signature witch logo, the phone rang.
“Bonjour, Hex Appeal,” she answered, tossing in a bit of her native Cajun French, which customers seemed to enjoy. “Love spells for the sexy sorceress.”
The laugh on the other end of the phone was rich and familiar. “It’s me,” Emma Broussard said.
“I know. I recognized the number on the caller I.D., but wanted to try out my new branding line. You’re the first person to hear it. So, chère, what do you think?”
“I like it better than the one you’ve been using.”
“I do, too,” Roxi agreed. “I decided this morning that more people would rather be sexy than sassy.”
The revelation had come from last night’s hot, hot dream. The one that had her waking up with her hands between her legs. And still, dammit, unsatisfied.
“How’s the creature from the deep lagoon?”
“Should I be offended that you insist on calling my unborn child a creature?”
“Hey.” Roxi shrugged and grinned. “You should’ve known you were taking a risk when you sent me that sonogram.” Her voice, and her mood, turned suddenly serious. “You and the baby are okay, aren’t you?”
“Of course. I’ve never been better. After I started drinking that ginger peach tea you sent me, my morning sickness disappeared.”
“That’s what it’s supposed to do.” Ha! She might not be a card-carrying member of a coven, but thanks to growing up with a Cajun traiteur for a grandmother, Roxi definitely knew her herbal remedies. “So, what’s up?”
“I have a favor to ask.”
“Anything.”
While they now lived a continent apart, there wasn’t anything Roxi wouldn’t do for her best friend. And she knew the feeling worked both ways. Plus, she figured she owed Emma for having let her choose her own maid of honor dress instead of sticking her in pink taffeta. Or worse yet, the southern belle, Gone with the Wind fantasy that continued to be a popular wedding theme south of the Mason-Dixon line.
“Well, actually, it’s more a favor for Gabriel.”
“Better yet. Tell me you’ve grown tired of the sexiest man alive and want me to take him off your hands.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I believe I’ll keep him a while longer,” Emma said, proving her talent for understatement.
Roxi figured Michelle Kwan would be doing triple toe loops in hell before Emma wanted out of the marriage she’d been dreaming about since seventh grade, when she’d taken to writing Mrs. Gabriel Broussard all over her notebook.
“Funny how you can grow up with someone and not realize what a selfish bitch she is,” Roxi teased. “So if you’re not ready to recycle the drop-dead sexy father of the lagoon creature, what do you need?”
“It’s about the Morganna, Mistress of the Night movie.”
“Coincidentally, I was just talking with a local witch about that yesterday afternoon.”
“Given your tone, can I deduce it wasn’t a very flattering conversation?”
Emma might not be a witch, but her intuition was usually right on the mark. Including when she’d tried to break off her engagement to the dickhead. Unfortunately, her mother had laid the guilt trip of all time on her, so Emma had caved.
Bygones, Roxi reminded herself. Besides, not only had Emma overcome the collapse of a marriage that should have been declared dead at the altar, she’d emerged from the rubble a strong, bold, kick-butt heroine who could hold her own with Xena the Warrior Princess or Lara Croft, or even Morganna, any day. And in doing so, had won herself a sexy, caring man who openly adored her.
“Let’s just say there’s a bit of local concern about Morganna’s Wiccan legitimacy.”
“Would you be surprised to hear that Gabriel agrees with those detractors?”
“Really?” A faint sound, like that made when Clarence, the angel, finally earned his wings in It’s a Wonderful Life, chimed in the back of Roxi’s mind.
“Really. He just finished reading the most recent script and is concerned the movie could come off looking like a comic book.”
“Which isn’t all that surprising, since it is a comic book,” Roxi said, conveniently forgetting her earlier correction when Martha had called it that.
“True. But what a lot of people don’t know is that The Last Pirate began as a superhero comic book type version of Jean Lafitte’s life. It was only when Gabriel insisted that Sloan Hawthorne expand the concept that it became the movie everyone saw.”
Everyone being the definitive word. Earnings for the film depiction of the Louisiana pirate’s life had topped even Depp’s Pirates of the Caribbean.
“Good for Gabe. So, what’s the favor?”
“Gabriel thought it might be a good idea to get a witch’
s input on the script. And you just happen to be the only witch we know. Which is handy, because I remember you enjoying those Morganna comics.”
“Actually, they’re graphic novels, but yeah, I did enjoy them.” And, as Emma well knew, she’d devoured them like chocolate pralines. “So, what do you want me to do? Read the script—”
“Oh, absolutely, we’d appreciate that! But rather than have Gabriel pass your opinions secondhand to Sloan, which can always result in miscommunication problems, we felt perhaps you should meet with him directly.”
That niggling little chime sounded again. Louder, and a bit more insistent this time.
“I’d love to help you out, chère. Right now’s a busy tourist season and I only just hired a part-timer helper, so it may take me a couple days to arrange things, but I’ll check the flights and—”
“Oh, we wouldn’t want you to have to go to all the trouble of coming here,” Emma said quickly. Too quickly. The chime was now an alarm bell. “As it happens, he’s coming to you.”
Make that a damn siren. Like the civil defense one Paul Rigaud kept insisting on testing once a month back home in Blue Bayou.
“You’re kidding. Some wunderkind movie screenwriter is flying all the way to Savannah just to get the opinion of a woman he’s never met?”
“Sloan’s directing the film along with writing the screenplay. He’s also very hands on, which is why he’s insisted scouting out shooting locations himself. He’d originally planned to shoot in New Orleans and out in the bayou, but then he lost a lot of the sites to Katrina.”
“I can identify with that.”
“Having grown up in Savannah, he knows the city well and thought it’d provide a lot of local color.”
“It does have that,” Roxi agreed.
“I can’t wait to visit and see it all for myself. Anyway, given the lucky coincidence that you just happen to be living there, as well, Gabriel and I were hoping you’d be willing to meet with him.”
“You wouldn’t be trying to fix me up with this Hawthorne guy, would you?”
