Juniper

by Eva Delaney

  Sammy drew his shoulders back. “I be a golden pirate, aye.”

  “Are you aware of what life was like in 1400?”

  “Lots of plague and witches.”

  “Indeed. What was life like in your time?”

  “Less plague and fewer witches.”

  “Exactly! Is it so hard to believe that civilization would advance in the centuries between your time and now?”

  Sammy eyed the ceiling lamp. “So…more witches and—”

  “Even less plague, yes,” Shakes said. “Not only that. Man—”

  I cleared my throat.

  “Humans,” he corrected himself, “have learned feats beyond what you could imagine. Just as a person from 1400 would struggle to imagine a Yorkshire boy sailing the world and plundering the treasures of the Spanish king.”

  Sammy thought for a moment. “Aye…but what in hell’s fiery lake is this place, and how did we get here if it ain’t a cesspit of deviltry and magic?”

  I crossed my arms. “You wanted to bone this cesspit of deviltry and magic ten minutes ago.”

  “Still do! I ain’t an honest man. I be a god-fearin’ one…but not enough to pass over a fine wench.” His gaze trailed over me like fingers, and he bit his lip slowly.

  “Call me wench again. I dare you.”

  His dark eyes locked on mine. “Wench,” he said in a husky whisper.

  In three steps, I crossed the room to stand nose to nose with him. He smelled of saltwater and rum. I grabbed the broom handle and yanked it from his grasp. “I’m going to spank your ass red with this until you learn some respect.”

  “Try it,” he growled. “I’ll have ye over me knee and moaning like a storm wind in the rigging.”

  “Try that and I’ll have you moaning like a ghost with a glass cock in your ass.”

  “Try that and I’ll have ye spread wide and—”

  I kissed him, jamming a hand into his hair. He kissed me back, fiercely. Our mouths and tongues clashed, vying for the upper hand.

  “Um…can we not?” Oscar said. “Not do any of that? Can we instead talk about how we got here and what happens now?”

  Chapter 9

  What happened now was that I would leave before Alyssa, Ram, or someone else showed up to kill me. I broke off the kiss with Sammy.

  He frowned. “Why are ye pulling away? This be the best I’ve smelled in me whole life!”

  I turned to Oscar to tell him I had to leave. The look of wonder in his gaze stopped my tongue and made my knees feel weak.

  “A few minutes ago, I was in the ice cream factory. I couldn’t touch anything, and no one could see me or hear me no matter how much I screamed. And then…I’m here. Alive. With the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  Oscar’s voice, his gaze, the heat of Samuel’s body next to me, and the pirate’s scent—it all made my heart leap between my slit to my throat like large breasts when jumping on a trampoline. Up and down, up and down, and not entirely comfortable but also kind of hot.

  “Whoever loved, that loved not at first sight?” Shakes said. His gaze behind his waves of long hair was tender and hungry. “Indeed, when that sight is one hotsy-totsy tomato.”

  Fuck, being around these naked hotties meant that stupid line pooled wetness between my legs. “You sound like a gangster from the 20s.”

  “That’s your modern slang.”

  “That was a hundred years ago!”

  Shakes shrugged. “One hundred, fifty, twenty, all the same era when you’ve wandered the earth as a cursed soul as long as I have.”

  I wanted to stroke his hair and tell him he wasn’t cursed. He was beautiful and lovely and—god damn this mate spell! I was supposed to be boning or fleeing town.

  Behind me Samuel leaned in close, his breath stirring my hair. “Are ye going to bend your ass over me knee?”

  My slit throbbed at his husky words. Fuck.

  I jerked the broom handle backward and it thumped his head.

  “Ah, fucking saucy lass!”

  “Here’s what happened and why you’re here,” I said to Oscar and Shakes. “I said the ancient Babylonian word for dildo three times into a cracked mirror. It summoned the demons of cocks—you three.”

  Oscar’s eyes widened. Shakes’ brows narrowed.

  “You didn’t know you were dick demons before now?”

  “I knew I be a demon,” Sammy said. “They called me the demon of the seas. Booty demon.”

  I laughed. Oscar ducked his head to hide his chuckle.

  “I can show ye me dick demon skills,” Sammy said, his voice going husky as he sidled up next to me.

  I glared at him over my shoulder, and he winked.

  Fuck, his confusion about everything was forcing me to tell the truth. “I was messing with you. I cast a soulbinding spell. It draws ghosts and binds them to a physical object so they can live again. In this case, the objects were sex toys.”

  “Why?” Shakes said.

  “Because cocks rise in the morning like a ghost rises from the dead to a new day. It’s symbolically powerful for resurrecting ghosts.”

  Shakespeare opened his mouth as though to argue, then snapped it shut and shrugged.

  “We’re alive, a second chance,” Oscar said, grinning ear to ear.

  Urgh, now I had to crush his hopes. “For now, you are. The spell wears off after a day at the most.”

  All three of them fell silent. Oscar’s hands fell to his sides, and his smile plummeted to a frown. “Why can’t it be permanent?”

  There was one way to make it permanent, but Ram held it. I knew because I was the one who had stolen it for him. A Spellbinder.

  The problem with Soulbinders, and most spells, was that they were fleeting. The energy that created them faded like a battery. Entropy and all that. Like any energy, magic liked to stay on the move. It liked to return to chaos. Some spells lasted so long that we mortals didn’t notice them weakening and wearing off. Some could be recharged by a witch.

  A Soulbinder couldn’t.

  But a Spellbinder could prevent magic from fleeing its spell. Like plugging a battery into a charger, it kept the spell running. It was also one of the rarest amulets in the world. Nobody in the modern world knew how to create one.

  Worst, Ram owned the only one left. And he had nearly killed me the last time I crossed him.

  “Because making it permanent will get me killed,” I said honestly.

  “No,” Oscar shrieked.

  “My love…” Shakes said and took a step toward me.

  Sammy scratched his balls as though he didn’t realize he was doing it. “Sounds like a fun adventure before the dyin’ part.”

  I snorted. He sounded like me back when I was a thief.

  “There is an object that can lock the spell,” I explained. “But it’s in the grasp of a madman and his small army of witches and shifters. I barely escaped alive the last time I was there.”

  Alyssa thought I could defeat him, but she hadn’t been there when I fought him. His curses, powered by the relics we’d stolen for him, had crushed my defenses. Then his vampires had almost ripped my throat out.

  So I had feigned surrender—deference was all he’d ever wanted, after all—to save my life. That night, I stole what I could and fled.

  “Ye need bigger cannons to win the fight, then,” Sammy said. “Lucky for ye, I’m here. The biggest cannon of ’em all.”

  “You have no idea what you’re getting into,” I said.

  He frowned. “What the fuck happened in the last three hundred years to make the world so hellish and insane?”

  “It was always like this. You just didn’t notice.”

  Shakespeare wrapped his arm around my shoulder, pulling me against his warm body. His soft, long hair fell over my eyes. His neat beard was rough against my face in a way that made a pleasant tremor go down my spine.

  I kept my arms at my side. “What are you doing? What is this?”

  “It’s a hug, my love. I’m comf
orting you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you don’t have to risk your life for us. I’d never ask you to brave the sleep of death, to shuffle off this mortal coil.”

  Shouldn’t I be comforting them? They’d be the ones who would return to ghosthood. “Is it like sleep, though? You were ghosts.”

  “It’s much like sleep,” Shakes said. “You cannot feel the wind on your skin or taste food or touch a warm person that fills your chest to bursting. It’s like a dream, only worse, because you can act in dreams. As a ghost, you cannot change the world around you even in the small way of moving an object. It’s endless ephemeral, like continuously watching reality TV without snacks.”

  I pressed my palms to his back, feeling his shoulders flex under my hands. “Sounds like hell.”

  “William is right,” Oscar said. “You have a long life ahead of you still. Don’t risk it on us.”

  Dick turds. That was the other spell talking, the one I hadn’t told them about. The mate spell made them ready to give up their second chances at life for me.

  Better not to tell them about the mate spell. It wouldn’t do them any good to think they had found their soulmate right before they died again. Plus, the mate spell might not survive their second deaths.

  “Ye’re all cowards,” Sammy said. “Ye’re facing a fine adventure to save yer lives, and ye decide to turn tail. Though speaking of tails...ye do have a good one.”

  I glanced over my shoulder to see him eyeing my ass.

  I broke off the hug with maybe-Shakespeare and turned sideways. Sammy stared at my tits instead. His cock grew hard, extending its extra clit-vibrating attachments.

  Hmmm…I openly studied that fine cock.

  “We’re deciding not to risk someone else’s life,” Oscar said as though Sammy wasn’t sporting a massive erection for my ass and breasts.

  “We three can go,” Sammy said, shaking his head clear. “After I be spending forty-five minutes with this fine lady.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Forty-five minutes is all you have in you?”

  “Forty-five minutes be all I need to make your ass quiver and pussy clench—three times.”

  It was already throbbing. I bit my lip at him. He bit his back.

  “Don’t…don’t talk to her like that,” Oscar said, his voice starting strong and quickly dropping to a whisper.

  Aww, he was trying to defend my honor. “I swallow men whole if they fail to please me. I can handle him.”

  Oscar snorted gently.

  “Is…is that true?” Sammy said. “I wouldn’t think so before, but this place be full of devil lights and devil boxes—”

  “You should learn to read a book about this,” Shakes said. “I’d suggest an educational video or two, but you might smash the device.”

  “Damn right, I shall!”

  “Damn right, you shan’t,” I said. “This shit’s expensive and you can’t pay it back.”

  “Point me toward a dock and I’ll have a ship and booty in a week.”

  Except he didn’t have a week. I had brought them here for a fucking good time. But now I felt bad that they’d taste life, only to lose it again so soon.

  “You three have a day before the spell wears off and you become ghosts again. So, whatever you want to enjoy from life, now’s the time.”

  They fell silent. Shakespeare’s gaze found my chest and roved down over my body. I glanced at Oscar, who stared at the curve of my neck with a deep hunger. Sammy was already hard, of course, and smirked as though he knew I wanted that dick.

  My skin warmed under their gazes. Wet heat pooled between my legs, and my lips itched for a taste, for a kiss hard enough to bruise. Hell, my folds were already spreading open on their own. “Well, Shakes, Ozzy, let’s do this,” I said.

  “Yarrr,” Sammy said happily.

  “Not you. You probably have every STD from 1736.” He didn’t. He was a resurrected ghost, which meant any and all disease was long gone. I just wanted to mess with him because he kept messing with me.

  “1756 and I ain’t know what an STD is.”

  “Crotch rot.”

  “I never had that. I used condoms.”

  I did a double-take. “They had condoms in the ass-backward 18th century?”

  “Aye! A leather bag for me mast—”

  “Ewwwww uurgghhhh.”

  “What? I rinsed it between uses.”

  “And that’s why not you. That and your wench and spanking talk.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Ye liked it.”

  I liked some of it, but he didn’t need to know that. I turned to Shakespeare and placed a hand on his bare chest, feeling the rise and fall of his breath—among his first in four hundred years.

  Leaning forward, I pressed my lips to his. He smelled like comforting old books and fresh wood. I swiped my tongue along his lip, and he wrenched away as though burned.

  “Not like this.”

  “Do you want to turn around? I can give it to you that way.”

  Before I finished my question, Shakes swept out the front door, wearing nothing but a blanket around his waist.

  Chapter 10

  “Maybe Shakespeare misses fresh night air,” Oscar said, his voice taking on a note of need.

  “Get back here. It’s not safe.” I raced for the door, but Sammy grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

  “Why ain’t it safe?” he said. “Who was at the door earlier?”

  “It’s not safe to walk around naked,” I lied and yanked my arm from his grip.

  “June, my love,” Shakespeare called, his voice muffled.

  The fuck? Was he outside?

  I yanked open the balcony’s sliding door and stepped out. Oscar followed, breathing deep and sighing in pleasure.

  Shakespeare stood on the grass outside of my building with one arm raised toward me. “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juniper is the sun!”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Wooing you,” he said. “We have to do this properly.”

  Fucking dick turds. I eyed the empty street, letting my magic flow into the world to catch any shivers of trouble.

  Alyssa and Azea had been watching me for at least a few days. Her henchmen or Ram’s might have been here for longer, if they were the ones who harassed Violet. If any of them saw a half-naked man confessing love on my lawn, he’d be an easy target for a hostage-taking.

  Fuck, if Alyssa saw this, I’d never hear the end of it. Knowing her, she’d take Shakes as a hostage to force me to do her bidding.

  Of course, it would only work for a day before he turned back to a ghost and a lifeless dildo. But Alyssa, Ram, and anyone else connected to my seedy past could do a lot of harm in a short time.

  “Get back in here, Shakes,” I hissed.

  He dropped to one knee and raised an arm as though he were holding a skull in a TV show by someone who hadn’t read Hamlet.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “This is how you romance a—”

  “Don’t say tomato.”

  “A dame. A Sheba. We didn’t romance ladies like this in my day, but everyone references Romeo and Juliet as romantic. I don’t know why. It was about the follies of horny youth.” He shrugged. “But if this is what you consider romance, then so be it—”

  “Shut it, Shakes, and get back inside.”

  “I lack a boombox for the proper modern romantic gesture, so I’ll have to sing.”

  “Don’t—”

  “I want to stand with you on a mountain,” he sang, not badly, but a bit nasally. “I want to bathe with you in the sea—”

  “You can do this inside.”

  Calluna, my upstairs neighbor, leaned on the balcony railing above me. “What the fuck is that noise? I thought someone was murdering one of my feral cats.”

  Shakes locked eyes with me. His gaze held an odd stricken look as though he truly believed this should have worked. Why would it have? I was ready to bon
e him before he tried this grand gesture.

  Shakes raised his eyebrows and started to sing again with a sad longing on his face. “I want to lie like this forever….”

  I dropped my head onto the railing. Fucking fuck.

  Calluna slow-clapped.

  “Stick your hands in your ass and twirl them around,” I snapped at her.

  “I always did love a good shit show.”

  “Fart until your ass cheeks do the clapping.”

  “I knew a man who could do that,” Sammy said behind me. “Loosey Arse Larry.”

  I was starting to think he was as much of a liar as I was.

  “Juniper,” Shakespeare said with an odd vulnerable note in his voice.

  I sighed. “Come back inside.”

  “First, I shall collect a bouquet of night-blooming flowers for you.”

  Dick turds. I didn’t need to be wooed or romanced. Hell, I was leaving in an hour, and his efforts would only get him kidnapped. “I’m allergic to flowers,” I lied. “Woo me inside the apartment.”

  “Ooohhh,” Calluna said. “Woo her hard and fast.”

  “Go massage a rashy ferret,” I snapped at the pet shop owner. “Shakes, come on.”

  “And shake that ass for her,” Calluna said.

  I was about to tell her to shut it but stopped. Actually, it would be a good thing if he shook that ass.

  “If flowers will not do, I shall find you a bouquet of cookies,” Shakespeare said. “I’ll return with a boombox as well.”

  “Please, just come inside before…” I glanced around the street. It was empty…too empty. “Before it rains.”

  “Singing to you in the rain will be an even grander gesture, my love.” Shakes adjusted the blanket around his waist and jaunted down the street.

  He was going to be attacked—and force me to unleash curses at someone to save him. That usually ended with body parts strewn around a lawn. Except for when I faced Ram or Alyssa, which would end with my body parts strewn around the road.

  Fuck, it would be smarter to leave him. Let him and the other two do whatever they wanted while I skipped town. But they wouldn’t be around for long. With the little time they had, they deserved something good, not kidnapping.