Witcha Gonna Do? (Witchington #1)(76)
xoxo,
Avery
Keep reading for an excerpt from Avery Flynn’s next novel . . .
Big Witch Energy
Leona . . .
Erik motherfucking Svensen.
He is the last man I ever want to see again in this lifetime or any others that might happen to follow. The man is a cocky, smooth-talking jerk who is too hot, rich, and smart for his own good.
Even worse, he’s technically my husband.
My secret husband that no one—and I mean no one—knows about. Well, except for him, and I’ve already told him the magical miseries I’ll rain down on his head if he even hints at our matrimonial status. It is enough to drive a good witch to drink, and I am no good witch, at least not when I’m around Erik Svensen. He brings out the bad witch in me.
Don’t judge. We all make mistakes. Mine just happens to be of the six-four, broad-shouldered, eight-pack abs, black-haired and blue-eyed with a mouth that did things that still have me waking up in the middle of the night from a hot dream on the verge of orgasm variety.
I’ve spent the past year outmaneuvering him, working on the down low with attorneys to break the secret handfast marriage we got in Vegas before anyone in my family (especially my mother) finds out—but he won’t sign the papers. You’d think the fact that I had no idea he was a member of my family’s biggest rivals would have been enough to break the handfast. Erik Phillips. Yeah, he was no more some random witch than I am LeLe Collins, which has been my go-to fake bar name since I was in college.
Fine, I was using a false identity when we’d met too. I didn’t say I was all clean and shiny in this. However, if a woman couldn’t go to Vegas and live the life she wants instead of the one she has in reality, she’d lose it—or at least I would. There are all kinds of pressures that come with being the heir apparent to Izzy Sherwood. Most days it’s fine, but there’s always a limit, and I’d reached mine before hopping the jet to Vegas last year to meet up with the mystery guy I’d been talking to online for a year.
And that’s when it happened. There were sparks. It felt like kismet. And I got carried away by the moment—me, the woman who plans her spontaneity and has planners for her planners. They’re color coordinated, and I have a killer sticker collection as well as a whole rolling cart of colored pens. Just because I’m overly organized doesn’t mean I don’t like things to be pretty.
Speaking of pretty, this situation is not, but there’s no way to get out of it without making a fuss in front of my entire family and exposing my one bout of impulsivity.
Keeping my smile in place so no one looking will realize I’m talking to my own personal albatross, I lower my voice so only Erik can hear me. “Well, we might as well get this over with.”
He winks at me. “Whatever you say, LeLe.”
His grin matches mine just for showiness, but there’s more to it, an intensity in his blue eyes that sends a shiver down my spine. Damn it. He shouldn’t be able to still do that to me, not after what he did. He drops his hand the size of a dinner plate to the small of my back, his palm and long fingers spanning the space and setting off a whole swarm of butterflies loose in my belly. The smug look on his handsome face shows that he knows exactly what he’s doing.
It takes everything I have not to let my annoyance show to the rest of my family, who are sneaking looks at us.
Ugh.
He is such a giant pain in my ass, which he is well aware of. I know he goads me on purpose. Most people try to ruffle the iciest of the Sherwoods, as long as you don’t count my mom. Almost no one succeeds. The exception? My sisters (come on, you know your siblings know exactly how to push every button you know about and half a million more you have no clue about) and Erik Svensen.
“You know I hate it when you call me that.” He is the only one who does, because he obviously doesn’t value his kneecaps.
“Fine.” His hand drops a few millimeters, his fingertips almost but not quite brushing my ass. Typical Erik, tiptoeing along that line of acceptable and what will get him kneed in the balls. “I’ll just call you wife instead. Is that better?”
“Not in the least.” I side-eye him and take a small step forward, missing the sizzle from his touch as soon as I break contact.
He grins at me. “But it’s what you are.”
“Only because you won’t sign the divorce papers.” The ones I’ve sent multiple times with little yellow Post-it Notes marking everywhere his signature needs to go.
“I have absolutely no plans to do that,” he says, not even bothering to pretend to be ashamed.
Yeah, no shock there. The first time I sent the paperwork, he opened the package and returned the papers unsigned. The next time, he signed his name as Santa Claus. The third time, the envelope came back unopened and stamped return to sender. The next set I sent via a flying monkey courier. All I’d gotten back were pics of Erik and the monkey living their best life in a beach resort somewhere tropical.
The why of his avoidance is easy. Erik Svensen loves a challenge, and I am a challenge. Not a person. Not a potential life partner. A challenge. An opportunity to show all of Witchingdom that he can do what no one thought possible—bring together the Svensen and Sherwood families.
Knocking my glare up a few notches, I keep my volume low as I tell him, “I’m not a prize to be won.”