L. Banks: My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding

He kissed her again and didn't answer the charge. What could she do but kiss him back? There was no way to explain this nightmare. Determined to get away From all of that Family drama, she'd up and gone to college, hoping that root conjures had distance limits. But her daddy told her he'd redoubled his efforts and gone in with his sisters on that Front—to supposedly protect her virtue. She couldn't chance it, not the way she loved her Jeff.

"We're gonna get wet if we stay out here." Jefferson's voice was a quiet rumble, his gaze penetrating.

"I know," she whispered, already wetter than he could imagine. The slow trail his fingers made along the edge of her tank top was maddening. But she couldn't stop thinking about the few times they'd been alone, had come close, and the mysterious things that would always happen to break the mood and give them pause. A stove popping on—flames on high—a window slamming shut, pic­tures falling off the wall. . . yeah, Jefferson had ultimately come up with plausible explanations to calm her nerves, but to her mind, the virtue spell was in Full effect.

"I love you," she Finally said, and tried to put a bit more distance between their bodies, even while still in his embrace.

For a moment, he didn't answer. The look on his Face was that of a tortured man. She expected the kiss that was coming, but instead he only swept her mouth, bent his neck, and spilled a series of hot, wet kisses along the edge of her tank top until she writhed.

"I love you, too," he said against her breast, and then captured a nipple between his lips and suckled it through her shirt.

He'd never touched her there before, had only held her arms, stroked her back, or caressed her face. No man had ever touched her secret places. The closest they'd gotten to that was hot friction on a sofa, their hands afraid to explore further. The sensation was exqui­site; the gasp that escaped her was immediate. It made her fit herself against the hard length in his jeans and grind against it to staunch the sweet pain, even though her mind screamed for her not to.

But she couldn't pull away as his free hand cupped one tender, swollen lobe and then began to roll the distended tip of it between his fingers while his mouth played havoc with her will, wetting her tank top as it attended the other. Before she knew it, her top had been lifted to expose her bare flesh, and the sensation of his mouth against her skin put tears in her eyes. The word "don't" formed and fled on a whimper as he nuzzled the ache within her to fever pitch. Somehow her hand slipped between them on its own volition, touching a part of him she'd dared not before, and the sound that es­caped him nearly buckled her knees.

Harsh kisses pelted her face as rain began to fall. A spell be damned, she couldn't hold out for a minister or a judge, nor could Jeff. They had all they needed—each other, privacy, a blanket, and a vow to marry. The intent was clear; today would be the day. Storm clouds would be their witness. There was no stopping love. She be­gan unfastening his jeans.

A bright flash of lightning, Followed by an instantaneous loud crack and heavy thunder, made them both stop, look at each other, and then jerk their attention toward the huge pine tree a hundred yards away that had been split clean in two.

"Shit . . . ," Jefferson murmured, and stepped back From her.

Odelia nodded, and Fixed her top. "It's a sign."

He nodded. "Baby, listen . . . there's something I need to talk to you about."

"I know," she said, her gaze flitting between him and the angry sky. It had eerily stopped raining, but the overhead threat was still very real. "I've gotta talk to you, too."

"How about if we talk about it in my hoopty on the way home?" he said, gathering up the blanket as she snatched up the basket of abandoned food.

"Ya think?"

Racing to the car, they both jumped into his rusted-out white '87 Ford Tempo jalopy at the same time. They simultaneously turned to look at each other when Jefferson gunned the motor and another bolt of lightning struck the spot under the tree they'd just fled From.

"My family," they both said in unison.

"You First," he said, peeling down the small gravel and dirt road.

"Uh-uh. Not out here," she said, wiping her Face with both palms.

"Yours, too? That's all you gotta say."

She stared at him as he drove. "Yours?"

"Yeah. Mine."

"They . . ."

"Yeah—they do all of that. Baby, I was hoping that all this stuff they always told us was really just a bunch of superstitious hocus-pocus, but now I don't know. . . ."

Odelia glanced up at the sky again with Jefferson as he stepped on the accelerator. The sun had mysteriously come out. Their words were a quiet, unified confirmation embedded in a terrified whisper.

"Family roots."

To Odelia's mind, there was only one solution: call Nana Robinson. Her mother's mother wasn't a Hatfield and was a powerful woman in her own right. She had never accepted her youngest girl marrying a Hatfield and then dying way too young from a mysterious fever that claimed her the night of a horrible storm. Odelia had only been a crib baby then, but the family oral history on the event was cloaked in whispers and murmurs.

Odelia sat in the car outside her apartment and kept a close watch on Jefferson's expression as she told him about her kin. To her sur­prise, the man only rubbed his palms down his Face and sighed, seeming weary, and then confessed the most outrageous set of cir­cumstances, which eerily paralleled her own.

"So what are we gonna do?" she finally asked, relieved that her fi­ance didn't think she was crazy. She'd been fully prepared to slip the engagement ring off her Finger and return it.

"I need to go on ahead and meet your daddy, and do this the way men gotta do."

Odelia sat back in her seat. "Are you nuts? With your last name,

you wanna go into Hatfield territory to meet my daddy before we get married?" She shook her head no.

"It's the only way. Can't stand another minute not being with you, girl. We gonna have to try to reason with our Folks, and you're eventually gonna have to meet my momma, too. That's all there is to it—she ain't no real McCoy, just upholds the traditions on account of the Fact that I got thirteen uncles that ain't to be trifled with."

Odelia closed her eyes and slumped back in the passenger's seat. "Can you see it now, Jefferson? My thirteen angry Hatfield aunts squaring off with your thirteen uncles, and all our cousins by blood at the same wedding? My daddy just goes along with the git along to keep the peace and to probably stay alive. But my aunt Effie ain't no joke."

"My uncle Rupert is the McCoy ringleader on my side. But we'll have all the Robinsons From your momma's side and all the Jones clan From my momma's side as a buffer. They'll all be there, since both me and you are the first ones graduating beyond high school on all Four sides. So, the way I see it, if I can get my momma's momma, Grandma Jo, to help us out—'cause she ain't no McCoy but ain't no slouch, either—maybe we can get through the ceremony. Who knows? Don't worry. My grandma still ain't square with the way my momma, her daughter, ran off to marry my daddy, a McCoy. We still don't know how or why lightning struck a tree that Fell on his car and killed him when I was two. I'm half scared to speculate, girl. Just trust me when I say, though, Grandma Jo got some juice, too."

This was a shaky plan; Odelia could Feel it in her bones. But there was no denying how badly she wanted to be with this man. Despite the Fear, her body still burned For him. It was all over his Face, too. Passion denied was a powerful lure.

"We do this together," he said, pressing his point when she'd taken too long to respond. "We go up to your apartment, and make the heads-up calls... get a temporary truce in effect, so we can safely drive down home together. All right?"