JoAnn Ross - Untamed

Gavin, who had dozed off in a large wing chair positioned to give him a good view of the front windows, was jolted awake by the crack of thunder and almost simultaneous bolt of lightning. On some subconscious level he’d been aware of a loud thud just after the lightning flash that had obviously struck very close to the house.

“All right!” It was what he’d been waiting for, an opportunity to catch the vandals in the act. He ran into the foyer and yanked open the ornately carved front door.

Instead of the teenage boys he’d thought he would find, Gavin found himself staring down at a seemingly lifeless form lying at his feet. When another flash of lightning—thankfully more distant this time—lit up the sky, he stared in disbelief at a woman who could have stepped right out of that long-ago photograph of Brigid Delaney.

New York Times bestselling author JoAnn Ross has written over seventy novels and has been published in twenty-six countries, including Russia, China, France and Turkey. Two of her titles have been excerpted in Cosmopolitan magazine and her books have also been featured by Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild. She’s received numerous awards, including a Lifetime Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times magazine, and is a popular conference speaker. JoAnn lives with her husband in Tennessee, where she gains inspiration from the view of the misty Smoky Mountains out of her home office windows.

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Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

A full moon rode high in the midnight sky, casting a shimmering silver light over the ancient forest, illuminating the lone woman who moved with the suppleness of a sleek jungle panther amidst the tangled trunks of the leafless oak trees. Her hooded black cape blended into the shadows as she made her way through the swirling mists of fog to the clearing.

The night was silent save for the sad sigh of the north wind in the tops of the towering pine trees, the occasional sweet, lonely cry of an owl, the croaks of frogs in the meadow pond. The familiar night sounds were primal music to the woman’s ears, reaching deep into her soul, stirring the wildness that lurked 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 night. A time when her people ruled with wisdom and power.

A time of magic.

When she reached the clearing, the woman turned her exquisite face skyward and received a warm infusion of energy from her mother, the moon. She lifted her arms, palms turned upward toward the icy stars. Her ripe vermilion lips began chanting words taught to her while still in her cradle. Words passed down from generation to generation, words that flowed warmly through her veins along with the blood that made her who she was.

And what she was.

A witch.

Her greeting completed, she slipped off the hooded cape and let it fall to the ground. The wind caught her freed long hair, whipping it into a wild jet froth about her face. Beneath the hood, she was wearing the clothes she always donned when fighting those who would use the night to cloak their evil ways.

The jet metal breastplate of the sleek black bodysuit shaped her lush breasts into two glistening cones in a way that was designed to send male pulses hammering. Black leather boots encased her long legs to mid-thigh.

Around her neck, she wore a silver chain on which hung a silver amulet that nestled between those glorious, uplifted breasts. The woman opened the amulet and took out a small vial of scented oil, which she sprinkled over the wood she’d already gathered and stacked in the sacred circle of stones.

With the powers of midnight vibrating through her, she held her hands out over the wood, which instantly ignited in a whoosh of wind and flame.

Closing her eyes, feeling the heat of the crackling fire in the marrow of her bones, the woman known as Morganna concentrated on the faces of her enemies. In her mind she saw them melting like candles amidst the dancing, deadly flames. She heard their agonized screams. And suffered their pain. Spellmakers who dealt in the dark side did not escape unscathed.

A lethal heat suffused her, fire flicked at her nerve endings, but Morganna did not flinch. Nor did she cry out. These acts of vengeance were her calling. Since her fate was both preordained and inescapable, she bore her pain in silence.

And when it was completed, when the scorching flames gave way to the cooling, comforting rain, she lifted her arms once again to the midnight sky and offered a prayer of thanksgiving.

“It is done,” she said finally, breathing a deep, satisfied sigh of achievement.

She was physically and psychically drained. Her legs had as much substance as the sea as she slowly folded to the ground. For an unfathomable time her mind was washed clean, healing her of the torturous burdens she’d willingly undertaken.

“IT IS DONE.”

Gavin Thomas nodded with satisfaction as he signed his name to the last frame of this latest adventure of Morganna, Mistress of the Night.

The crime-fighting witch had outdone herself this time. And looked damn good while doing it, he decided, casting a judicial eye over the full-color drawing of the luscious female body glowing orange and silver from the moon and firelight.

Gavin would be the first to admit that his creation probably stirred up the hormonal juices in more than one teenage male. But what was so wrong with that? he’d asked detractors on more than one occasion. Besides, his graphic novels—which those same detractors insisted on calling comic books—were not nearly as sexually explicit as the stuff kids saw every day on those rock and rap videos on MTV.

And Morganna, while admittedly dabbling in black magic, was, after all, a force for good. For truth, justice, Mom, apple pie and the American way.

She was, he’d told late-night TV talk-show host Tom Snyder just last week, this generation’s Superman. But a lot better looking.

He’d even finished up the interview by saying that if he ever met a female who was half the woman the fictitious Morganna was, he’d marry her on the spot.

Tom had laughed—that familiar too-many-cigarettes rasp—as he was supposed to. What the talk-show host had no way of knowing was that Gavin wasn’t joking.

THE LETTER ARRIVED in the morning mail. Tara Delaney did not have to open the cream linen envelope to know what the letter inside would say. The return address—from an Arizona attorney—told her all she needed to know.

Why wouldn’t they leave her alone?

She tossed the letter unopened into the wastebasket beside her desk, went into her bedroom and tried to resume packing for her long overdue vacation. With her usual attention to detail, she’d planned the trip to Kauai months ago. A beachfront condo was booked for the next two weeks, her airline tickets had been purchased weeks ago and she’d even bought two new bikinis and a sheer white cover-up. Tomorrow she’d be lying on the beach, soaking up the tropical sun and beginning to make her way through the stack of novels she was always buying but never had time to read.