LITMIR.BIZ

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wearing suits or black tie, the women, for the most part, dressed much as she was, though she did glimpse some cocktail suits, and quite a few floaty, flowered dresses in the pretty pastels so popular in the South.

      The walls were lined with banquettes covered in a rich burgundy tapestry, and as they walked across the room, she caught sight of several floor-to-ceiling draperies which seemed to close off private alcoves.

      Were these rooms, she wondered, where the assignations took place?

      As they followed the man toward the kitchen, she was thinking that for all the bowing and beaming, the old guy hadn’t given Sloan a very good table, when he opened a door leading to some steep stone stairs.

      “I’d thought we’d have dinner in the wine cellar,” Sloan explained as Roxi looked up at him. “Given that the place tends to be packed on Friday night, I thought it’d give us more privacy.”

      He paused just a beat, long enough to let that idea and all its implications sink in. “But if you’d like to eat in the dining room—”

      “The wine cellar will be fine.” She hoped.

      What did she really know about Sloan Hawthorne, after all? What if he was some sort of crazed sex fiend? What if the cellar was a secret S&M dungeon where members chained women to the wall and whipped them for their own sadistic gratification?

      God. What on earth was the matter with her? Although Savannah, which Margaret Mitchell had referred to as “that gently mannered city by the sea,” was well-known to possess an erotic, sensually adventurous side, it certainly didn’t have S&M dungeons hidden away in five-star restaurants.

      Besides, Emma, despite her uncharacteristic mistake with the dickhead, was a very good judge of character and never would have hooked her up with a sex maniac.

      Although the walls and floor were made of the same stones she’d seen all over the city, stones that had arrived in Savannah as ballast in the holds of ships, there were no chains. No whips that she could see.

      A single table had been draped in a snowy cloth, and set with gleaming crystal, china, and heavy silverware. Wall sconces cast a soft light over the room and a candle in a hurricane glass glowed. The damask napkin the maître d’ had placed in her lap with a flourish had been lightly scented with lavender. Smooth and sultry jazz flowed from hidden speakers.

      Perversely, although she certainly wasn’t into masochism, after their drink orders had been taken—a summer melon martini for her, beer for him—Roxi experienced a twinge of disappointment that he appeared to have been telling the truth about having chosen this room solely because it allowed for more private conversation than the upstairs dining room.

      “Did your ancestor lay these stones, as well?”

      “He did. The cornerstone was set a hundred and sixty years ago and you’ll note the place is still standing. I’m not sure how many modern-day buildings we’ll be able to say that about.”

      “I love old buildings.”

      “Me, too, which is one of the things I miss in California, where it seems all the great old houses are being bulldozed down and replaced by megamansions. When I was a kid I used to have my birthday parties down here and show off to all my pals.”

      “That’s nice.”

      It also took away the idea of the house being used as a sexual pleasure palace. From what she’d read of his family, his parents were respectable Episcopalians who attended Savannah’s first church, which since 1733 had been designated as “Georgia’s Mother Church.” His father was CEO of one of the largest brick suppliers in the South, while his mother owned an antique shop on Bull Street across from the gold-domed City Hall. They did not sound like people who attended orgies. Nor would they, she suspected, appreciate their son dating a witch.

      “My friends always wanted to go to my grandmother’s shop,” she revealed.

      “Was she into magic and spells and such, too?”

      “She was a traiteur—that’s Cajun for a healer. But she also had some Caribbean heritage, so she was active in the voodoo religion, as well.”

      “Religion?”

      “Despite the way it’s often depicted in movies, what with people biting heads off chickens, making blood sacrifices, and dancing naked, voodoo is a very structured religion.”

      “Damn.” One brow lifted. “And here I was, really looking forward to that naked dancing part.”

      Arousal stirred in her belly. And lower. “Oh, I’ve been known to go skyclad. When there’s a full moon.”

      She combed a hand through her hair, a time-proven gesture that lifted her breasts appealingly. Unsurprisingly, his gaze followed.

      Ha! As she’d always told Emma, men were easy.

      Unfortunately, despite having always insisted on maintaining the upper hand, she was proving every bit as easy. She wanted him. Here. Now. In every way there was to want a man.

      “I don’t happen to have a calendar,” he said hoarsely. “Would you happen to know when, exactly, the next full moon will be?”

      Hanging onto her ebbing control with her fingertips, she managed a coy smile as she trailed a languid scarlet nail down her throat. “Not tonight.”

      “Well, damn. There goes that moonlight fantasy, shot to smithereens.”

      He might not believe in magic and spells and things that went bump in the night, but Roxi Dupree definitely had him bewitched and as bothered as hell.

      The thought of those sexy, red-tipped fingers curving around his cock was all it took to give Sloan a massive hard-on.

      He was debating just ditching the Southern manners he’d been taught in the cradle and jumping her luscious, sexy bones, right here and now, when the waiter showed up with their drinks, giving him time to drag his rampant libido back into check.

      Seven

      “So you were sharing a religious experience with your friends by taking them to your grandmother’s shop?”

      “No.” Her laughter was rich and warm and curled around him like satin ribbons. “To be perfectly honest, they just wanted to see all the gator heads and teeth.”

      “I imagine gators beat foundation rocks any old day when you’re a kid.”

      “Perhaps. But wasn’t it in Savannah that that fictional pirate gave Billy Bones the map of Treasure Island?”

      “Yeah. Some of the background for that novel supposedly came from the Pirate’s House restaurant, where pirates supposedly hung out.”

      “Maybe they hung out here, as well,” she mused.

      As she glanced around at the gray stones, he imagined her a captive, chained to the wall, naked. Hot. Wet. Forced to do his every bidding.

      He wondered what she’d do if she knew that the cellar had been originally built to hide smuggled pirate treasure. And stories persisted of Blackbeard having spent several weeks hiding out here with a woman he’d taken prisoner who’d become one of his fourteen wives.

      “So, your family’s from Savannah originally?”

      “No, they landed in New England in 1630.”

      It was proving harder and harder to carry on a civilized, getting-to-know-you conversation when in his mind, she’d climbed onto his lap, her dress up around her waist as she straddled his thighs and gave him the lap dance of his life.

      “About sixty years later, a group who didn’t exactly buy into Puritanism broke off and moved south. And immediately became known as the black sheep branch of the family tree.”

      That was putting it mildly. Though, to his mind, building brothels was a lot more respectable than hanging women falsely accused of witchcraft.

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