by JoAnn Ross
She kissed the tip with that same gentle touch she’d first used, making him fear she was going to drag this out. But once again she proved herself to be perfectly in sync with him sexually as she took him in her mouth, swallowing him deep, all the way to the back of her throat.
Her tongue was doing amazing things, stroking up and down and around while her head bobbed, and the slurping as she sucked him was one of the sexiest things he’d ever heard, right up there with the way she’d screamed.
“Oh, yeah. That’s it, baby.” He could feel the pressure building in his balls, at the base of his spine. “But you’d better pull out now because—”
“Mmmph.” Her jaw was stretched wide so she could take him all in, which only allowed that mumbled protest, but she had no trouble making her intentions known.
Stubbornly shaking her head, she dug her fingers into his hips and kept pumping.
His stomach clenched. His thighs were trembling. And then he lost it, pistoning his hips violently as he exploded with a long, shuddering moan.
And still she kept sucking and licking, her lips closed tightly around his throbbing cock until he was semi-flaccid. Then, and only then, did she allow herself to collapse upon his chest.
Sometime during that world-class blow job, the driving rain had lessened to a soft drizzle that should have, in theory, cooled them off. But as the water hit their overheated flesh, Sloan imagined he could hear a sizzle, like water on a hot griddle.
“Thank you,” she breathed, pressing a kiss against his wet skin.
He managed a rough, hoarse laugh. “I think you’ve got that backwards.”
“No.” A lingering bit of lightning illuminated her face as she smiled up at him, and Sloan knew he’d remember the way she looked tonight for the rest of his life. “I love your body, cher. All of it. Especially”—she trailed a finger over the tip and made it jump in response—“this delicious super-sized cock.”
“You realize, if you keep talking to me this way, you’re not going to get any sleep tonight either,” he growled as he felt himself growing hard already.
Her laugh as she kissed him was sexy and wicked and probably would’ve gotten her hung on Gallows Hill if she’d lived in old Judge Hawthorne’s time.
“Promises, promises.”
“I’ve got a proposition for you,” he said, much, much later as they lay in her bed, arms and legs entwined, riding the golden afterglow of a night of passion. A soft predawn light was beginning to slip through the slats of the plantation shutters, casting a lavender glow over the room.
“I don’t think there’s anything we haven’t done,” she said. Her fingers were idly trailing through the arrowing of hair on his chest.
“Oh, I’m sure we can think of a few things.” Sloan ran a lazy finger down her spine.
He glanced around the room, taking in the crystals with their glittering magic from the earth waiting to be released, the candles on every flat surface, the bottles of lotions and potions, and the frilly pillows that had been on top of the bed and were now scattered all over the floor.
The scarred, one-earred cat, who looked as if it had gone ten rounds with a junkyard dog, had huffed off somewhere.
“If we take some more time to put our heads together.”
“How much time?” She leaned up on an elbow and kissed his flat nipple.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe forty, fifty years.”
She stiffened as he untangled himself from her sweet embrace.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Actually, I’ve never been more serious in my life.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a black velvet box. “I’d intended to give you this earlier, but I got a little distracted.”
Sitting upright now, she was looking at the box as if it were a water moccasin about to strike. “What is this?”
“You’ll probably be able to see better if you open it,” he coaxed mildly.
The pendant hung on a platinum chain was a stylized Celtic silver dragon on onyx set with garnets. “It’s yin and yang,” he said into the thundering silence. “Jaira told me it signifies the duality of Morganna, and also of the equal forces of male and female.”
“You spoke with Jaira? About us? When?”
“This afternoon.”
“You weren’t in the shop.”
The mattress echoed his sigh as he sat down on the edge of the bed. “There’s this new invention. You may have heard of it. Called a telephone? We discussed what I wanted and she had it sent to the inn.”
“I remember her wrapping it up,” Roxi said. “But I had no idea . . . if I’d known . . .”
“You would have refused to sell it to me?”
“No. Yes. Dammit, Sloan, I don’t know.” She ran a finger over the dragon’s silver wings. “You’re confusing me again.”
“If you don’t like it—”
“No, I love it. I loved it when I ordered it from that jewelry dealer at a southeast Atlantic craft show. But it was too pricey for me.”
“Fortunately, I’m rich. It seems a little strange buying something for you from your own shop, but Jaira assured me it was perfect.”
“It is.”
She didn’t look pleased by that idea.
“The dragon, of course, is a fire sign for Beltane. I figure I can get you a different one for each Shabbat we celebrate together. It’ll become our tradition.”
He’d never had to beg for a woman before. Sloan feared he might have to for Roxi. Which wasn’t a problem. He’d crawl naked on his knees through broken glass down Bull Street in front of the entire town if that’s what it took to get his sexy witch to agree to spend the rest of her life with him, but he feared she wasn’t going to make it that easy.
“That wasn’t . . . it couldn’t have been a proposal?”
“I believe it was. Though if you have some rule against marriage—”
“Of course I do! Oh, not for other people. Emma and Gabe certainly seemed happy when they left for California—”
“They’re even happier now.”
“I’m glad. Like I said, maybe it’s okay for other people. But it’s not for me.”
“We’re back to that ridiculous three date rule?”
He liked that she tossed up her chin. On some perverse level he even liked that she was making this difficult. He’d always preferred a challenge.
“I’ll have you know that rule’s always worked before.”
“That’s because you hadn’t met me before.” The calm, controlled tone cost him.
“You mean I haven’t met anyone crazy enough to propose after two dates.”
“That’s exactly what I mean. Are you saying you don’t believe in love at first sight?”
“Of course not.”
“You didn’t feel anything last night?”
“Well, sure. Lust.”
“I recognized you. You recognized me.”
“You thought you were looking at Morganna,” she insisted.
“And what did you think?”
“Okay.” She yanked the sheet, which had been down around her hips, up to cover her breasts, and folded her arms. “It may have crossed my mind that you reminded me, just a bit, of Damian. Morganna’s lover.”
Sloan arched a brow at her sudden show of modesty, but decided against getting sidetracked off topic. “And partner in crime-fighting.”
“Sloan. Listen to me. They’re fictional characters!”
“I know that. Just as I know we’ve done this dance before.”
“You don’t believe in magic,” she reminded him.
“I didn’t. But that was before. This is now.” He forced a smile to encourage one in return. It didn’t work.
“It’s only chemistry.”
“Hey, don’t knock chemistry. It’s what makes coal into diamonds and dead dinosaurs into oil.”
“It also doesn’t have anything to do with love.”
“Try telling that to my parents. My father proposed to my mother the d
ay he wandered into her antique shop looking for an anniversary gift for his parents. They’ve been married forty years.”
“That’s lovely. But—”
“And my grandparents, for whom my father bought that tea set from my mama, have been married sixty-five years. They had one of the longer courtships in our family. Gramps proposed to Nana on their second-week anniversary. He was a pilot in World War II. She came to his base in England dancing on a USO tour and broke her ankle when she tripped over his big feet. He likes to say she fell for him on the spot.”
“Clever,” she said dryly.
“He and my grandmother Anna seem to think so, given that they still tell the story every anniversary. They couldn’t get married right away, because of that little complication regarding the German army, but they made up for lost time later. My dad’s one of six kids. And my great-grandparents—”
“That’s my point,” she broke in, holding up a hand like a traffic cop. “Not the part about your great-grandparents, but your grandparents having six kids. I grew up in a family of eight kids. I watched my mother not have a moment’s freedom. Her life totally revolved around us kids. I swore I wasn’t ever going to fall into that trap.”
“Interesting that you’d think of children as a trap, but I don’t recall asking you to procreate.”
“Are you saying you don’t want children?”
“I’m saying I want you. However I can get you.”
“This is crazy.” She jumped out of the cozy bed and began to pace. “Just because the men in your family have this crazy tradition, or habit, or whatever the hell you want to call it, of proposing to a woman as soon as they meet her—”
“Not just any woman. The right woman.” He caught her in midstride, linked their fingers together, lifted them, and brushed his lips over her knuckles. “How about we make this a little easier? We’ll table the M word. And just focus, for now, on living together.
“Now, as long as I show up in California from time to time for meetings, I can work anywhere. You’ve already been displaced once in the past year, and I’ve been getting homesick anyway, so we can buy a house here in Savannah and—”
“I’m not living with you, Sloan.”
“How about going steady?” he asked. His voice was calm; his eyes were not. “Think you’d be up for that? I believe, if I ask my mother, she may still have my old high school class ring in a cigar box somewhere in the house.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“No.” He pulled her closer and pressed his lips against her hair. “I’d never do that. However . . .”
With a deep sigh, he released her and began putting on the clothes they’d thrown onto a wing chair covered with dancing fairies. “If your mind’s made up—”
“Set in stone.”
“Okay.” He pulled on his knit boxer briefs and slacks. “You know where to find me when you change your mind.” Which he had not a single doubt she would.
“What? You’re leaving?” She scooped her hair back with a frustrated hand. “Just like that?”
“Since you insist on counting last night as a date, we only have one more anyway. By your rule of three.”
“So you’re just going to cut your losses.” And not even try to change my mind? She didn’t say the second part of that sentence, but the words were hovering between them just the same.
“No. I’m going to go back and prepare for a preproduction meeting with some studio execs that’s been scheduled for two months. Then I’m going to sit in on some casting auditions. And while I’m doing that, maybe I’ll pay a visit to Venice Beach and get one of those fortune-tellers to weave me that binding spell we were talking about earlier.”
He touched a hand to her cheek. Her lovely, lovely cheek. “I really do love you.” Which was why walking away was the most difficult thing he’d ever done. But he’d already determined that Roxi Dupree was one hard-headed lady. The more he pushed, the more she’d back away.
Better, he’d decided, to let her be the one to make the next move.
“You can’t possibly.”
“Why not? You happen to be a very lovable woman.”
“It’s too soon.”
“There you go. With that counting thing again. So how many dates do we need before it’s real? Four?” He bent his head and touched his lips to hers in a light kiss. “Five?” Another kiss. “A dozen?”
Her lips clung, sorely tempting him to stay. Keeping his eyes on the prize, he forced himself to back away. Now, while he still could. “If it’s not love, I guess the only answer is that you put some kind of love spell on me.”
He touched a fingertip to the lips whose taste he hoped would hold him until she saw the light.
“Thanks for that Beltane party. Who knew paganism rocks? Last night’s going to make a great story—censored, of course, for the PG family audience—to tell on our sixty-fifth anniversary.”
“You’re crazy.” Moisture pooled in her whiskey brown eyes and almost broke his heart.
Hold firm, he told himself one last time. “Crazy about you,” he agreed.
He kissed her again, a hard, possessive kiss that ended too soon for both of them. “Call me when you change your mind.”
He did not look back as he walked out of the room, out of the carriage house. But if he had, he would have seen Roxi—who hadn’t even cried after Katrina had blown away both her home and her business, and had certainly never cried over a man—standing at the window, tears streaming down her too pale face.
Fifteen
Five days later, Sloan was sitting on the deck of Gabe and Emma’s Malibu home, watching the waves roll onto the impossibly golden sand.
“You sure you know what you’re doing?” said the man who had, during the filming of The Last Pirate, become Sloan’s best friend.
“I sure as hell hope so.” He took a long pull on a bottle of pale ale. “Emma seems to think it’s the way to play it, and if I’d stayed in Savannah and let the woman play her three date game, I’d be gone now anyway.”
“What if she decides to stay single in Savannah?”
“She won’t do that.”
“You’re that sure of her?”
“No. I’m that sure of us.” He leaned forward, dangling the green bottle between his thighs with two fingers. “The thing is, she has to want this. I figure if I put on a full court press, I could convince her. But then there’s an outside chance that she’ll always wonder if she’d made the right decision. No.” He shook his head, firmed both his jaw and his resolve. “It’ll be better if she comes here to me. Without any lingering reservations.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“Then I’ll go back to Savannah, and tie her to my bed at Swansea until she changes her mind.”
Gabe lifted his bottle in a toast. “Works for me.”
Sloan’s office bungalow, located at the far reaches of Baron Studios’ sprawling properties, belied his skyrocketing fame and fortune. It was a small, white stucco building designed for efficiency rather than boosting the ego.
As the golf cart carrying Roxi approached, the door opened. She wasn’t surprised to see Sloan. Although Gabe had gotten her a studio pass, the ancient guard had insisted on calling the office so Sloan could utter whatever magical command would open those high, wrought iron studio gates.
“Hello, sugar,” he greeted her in a neutral tone that threatened to destroy the last of her already tattered nerves.
It had been two weeks since she’d last seen him. Two weeks during which she’d tried to convince herself that he was just like any other man. That all they’d shared was some blanket bingo that had, admittedly, been more earth-shattering than most. But sex was just sex.
She’d told herself that over and over again. But after two long and unbearably lonely weeks she’d decided that she’d badly miscalculated and it was time to put her heart before her pride.
The fear of commitment that had been such a deeply imbedded part of her for so long was go
ne. She’d never been forced to examine it until Sloan had dragged it out into the bright light of day, where, she’d discovered, it had as much substance as morning mist beneath a hot Savannah summer sun.
When just the sight of him, standing in the doorway of the building with its red tile roof, caused her previously barricaded heart to turn over, then settle back into place, as if it had finally found a proper home, she knew she’d made the right decision.
One tanned hand was braced against the doorframe, the other was stuck in the pocket of a pair of faded jeans so worn through her mother wouldn’t have even saved them for dusting. The stance drew Roxi’s eyes downward, to where the denim cupped his penis. The memory of him fucking her mouth while the rain poured down from a stormy sky caused heat to curl in her belly.
“Hello, cher.” As she climbed out of the golf cart, her legs felt uncharacteristically wobbly.
He stayed where he was, watching her, his gaze narrowed against the slanting afternoon sun, which kept her from reading his eyes. There was a coiled, dangerous intensity around him that frightened her just a little. And excited her a lot.
“I hope I haven’t interrupted your work?”
“Nothing important.” He moved aside, inviting her in. “And I’ll always have time for you, Roxi.”
She glanced around, getting a vague impression of bold colors and bright movie posters, but her nerves were too knotted for her to concentrate on any one thing but her reason for having come here today.
“I brought your spell. The binding one,” she said when he didn’t immediately respond.
Had he forgotten? Oh God, even worse, had he changed his mind? Wouldn’t that be ironic? If she came crawling to a man only to end up being the one who got dumped?
“Ah. I hadn’t realized Hex Appeal had delivery service.” He sat down in a chair behind a glass-topped desk, braced his elbows on the arm of the chair, and observed her over the top of his tented fingers.
“You had this delivered to the inn,” she reminded him, lifting the dragon pendant from where it had been nestled between her breasts ever since May Day morning.
