Bad Boys Southern Style

Bad Boys

Southern Style

Bad Boys

Southern Style

JOANN ROSS

E.C. SHEEDY

JILL SHALVIS

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

CONTENTS

LOVE POTION #9

by JoAnn Ross

MIDNIGHT PLANE TO GEORGIA

by E.C. Sheedy

FALL FROM GRACE

by Jill Shalvis

LOVE POTION

#9

JoAnn Ross

One

A full moon rode high in the southern sky, casting an unearthly white light over the Lowcountry, illuminating the woman who moved through the marsh with the sleek grace of a swamp panther.

The thick air, pregnant with the disparate scents of salt, decaying Spartina grass, and night-blooming jasmine, dripped with moisture.

Herons glided on wide blue wings while an alligator slid silently across water the color of burgundy wine. Fireflies glowed amidst the branches of old growth cypress, which stood like silent sentinels over the watery world, silvery moss draped over their limbs like feather boas discarded by ghostly belles.

Bullfrogs croaked; cicadas whirred; somewhere in the dark a lonely owl hooted for a mate.

The familiar scents of the southern Georgia marsh reached deep into the woman’s soul; the night music stirred the wildness that dwelt in her heart. It was music from an ancient time, a time when primitive man trembled with fear against the unseen denizens of the dark.

A time when her people ruled with wisdom and power.

A time of magic.

Her hooded black cape blended into the shadows as she made her way through the swirling mists of fog. Upon reaching the sacred grove of live oak she knelt and plunged her hands into the inky water. When she brought them out again, her long, slender fingers glowed with green, phosphorescent ghostfire.

Sparks fell back into the water, like a shower of stars, as she lifted her hands—palms turned upward toward the midnight velvet sky—offering a blessing to her mother, the moon.

Her exquisite face bathed in a shimmering light, the woman began chanting the words taught to her while she was still in her cradle. Words from before time passed down from woman to woman through the generations, words that flowed warmly through her veins, along with the blood that made her who she was.

What she was.

A witch.

After completing her invocation, she untied the hooded cape and let it fall to the ground. A zephyr blowing in from the nearby Atlantic caught her freed hair, whipping it into a wild jet black froth around her face. The black bodysuit she wore beneath the cape fit like a second skin, revealing every lush curve. Black leather boots, polished to a glassy sheen, encased her legs to midthigh, while a metal breastplate shaped her breasts into two glistening cones.

A silver amulet, dating back to medieval times and suspended from a hammered silver chain, nestled between her gloriously voluptuous, magnolia white breasts.

She took a small vial from the amulet. The scented oil—which she’d blended herself on Midsummer Night’s Eve—was a dark and sultry concoction of scarlet rose petals, black dahlia, belladonna, dragon’s blood, and, of course, wolfsbane. Best known for its properties of protection against werewolves, few were aware that Medea had embraced the selfsame deadly plant in her many works of vengeance.

She sprinkled the pungent oil over the rowan branches she’d gathered earlier and stacked in a circle of white angel wing seashells.

With the powers of midnight vibrating through her, the woman known as Morganna held her hands out over the wood, causing it to ignite in a sudden whoosh of wind and flame.

Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the faces of her life-sworn enemies, those who would use the darkness of the night to cloak their wicked ways.

She envisioned them melting like candle wax amidst the dancing flames. Felt the fire crackle in the very marrow of her bones. Heard their agonized, bloodcurdling screams. A lethal heat suffused her, fire flashed along her every nerve; suffering the evildoers’ every torment, the witch swayed.

But she did not flinch. Nor did she cry out.

Any spellmaker who dealt in the dark side did not escape such acts unscathed, but given that her fate was both preordained and inescapable, Morganna bore her pain in silence.

And when it was finally completed, when a cooling, benevolent rain began to fall to drench the scorching flames, she lifted her pale white arms again and offered a prayer of thanksgiving to the goddess moon for having allowed her to survive.

It is done.

Then, drained from the torturous burdens she’d willingly undertaken, Morganna, Mistress of the Night, folded to the damp ground and surrendered to the darkness.

Two

I cannot believe you allow garbage like this comic book in your shop.

Roxi Dupree, owner of Hex Appeal, glanced up from stirring crushed lavender into a love spell potpourri at the book the older woman was holding up between two fingers, as if afraid of contamination.

It’s actually a graphic novel. She sprinkled a handful of scarlet rose petals over the mixture. And I like Morganna.

She works the dark arts.

Roxi shrugged and refrained from pointing out that the Morganna stories were, after all, fiction. Fiction she’d grown up devouring. Stories that had fed a young girl’s imagination.

Another thing she’d only ever shared with one person—her best friend Emma—was that Morganna had been a childhood role model. Oh, Roxi hadn’t grown up to turn cheating boyfriends into toads (though there had been one or two who deserved it), or burn alive wicked people who harmed children, but she had taken Morganna’s independent spirit to heart.

All of us, witch or not, have our dark and light sides. Given that patience was not her strong suit, Roxi had to work at the mild tone. Isn’t all life about striving for balance between the two?

That may be, the older woman reluctantly allowed, even as her narrow face remained as pinched as a prune that had been left to dry too long in the sun. She tossed the book back onto the shelf.

But Morganna, Mistress of the Night, certainly doesn’t spend a great deal of time on the light side, she sniffed. She’s an angry, vengeful creature who embarks on a crusade of blood and brimstone in every book.

Roxi found it interesting that a woman who’d proclaim the popular Morganna stories garbage seemed to be so familiar with the stories.

Not exactly brimstone, she murmured, thinking how that very word played into detractors’ misguided view of pagans as devil worshipers. And that particular crusade, by the way, is against undead spirits of the underworld who have infiltrated the bodies of humans.

Wiry wisps of steel gray hair surrounded the woman’s frowning face. Her thin lips firmed as she skimmed a finger around the rim of a hammered silver chalice. That couldn’t possibly happen.

Closed-minded old biddy. There are those who don’t believe it’s possible to draw down the moon, either.

The mention of the ancient rite brought to mind last night’s x-rated dream where she’d been in the sacred grove drawing down the moon when a stranger, clad all in black, had appeared 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 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 phone 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