Magic and Mayhem: Witchin' in the Kitchen (Kindle Worlds Novella)
Page 6
“Are you okay?” He placed his huge hand on my shoulder and my body nearly jerked with electricity. The scent of him pushed me over the edge of rational thought.
“I don’t understand. Wait, did you change clothes?”
“Here, take a seat. You look a little poorly.”
“You were just here this morning—in a dark suit. You were here last night…in the apartment. I…” The words tumbled out of my mouth as I searched behind me for a chair.
He looked away for a moment before bringing his gaze back to me. “I think I know what’s going on.”
I stared into his eyes and felt tears well in my own as dark clouds filled the sky outside. I was about to unleash a storm.
“Are you talking about my brother? Chester?”
I blinked hard, and thunder rumbled in the distance. He looked over his shoulder at the darkening skies and back to me. “You need to stay calm, Deliverance.”
“Who are you? Who…who is Chester?”
He looked down as he took both of my hands in his, kneeling at my feet. “I am Wesley. We met yesterday in front of the store after the storm. I believe last night, my brother, Chester paid you a visit—an unwarranted one.”
“And again this morning,” I whispered. “I don’t understand.”
Wes let out a heavy sigh. “There’s not much to understand. I have a twin brother. And sometimes he can be—well let’s just say, mischievous, if you know what I mean.”
“If by that you mean he pretends to be you, then yes, mischievous is an appropriate word.”
“Hey,” he said lifting my downturned chin with his warm fingers. “No big deal. Now you know there’s two of us. Just try to stick with me, he’s the pariah of the family.”
I swallowed hard and thought of the Kissy Cake with Kamasutra love muffin spell and sexual sugar icing. “Holy ratsbane.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said looking back to him, thankful I’d asked the evil twin not to eat the cake until tonight. “It’s nothing.”
“Look, Deliverance. We need to talk.”
I shook my head, doing my best to wrap my brain around all that had transpired in the past twenty-four hours. I’d traveled the world tossed from place to place for over three centuries, and yet the past day and a half held more action that the last fifty years combined.
“Are you listening to me?”
I stared off into the distance. A sinking feeling came over me and for the first time in my long life I thought that perhaps it was about to be the end, my end. Who was I kidding? I’d only come close to true love once in my life and after that I swore off having romantic feelings, trading in it for hot sex. Hale was coming for me tomorrow. There was no way to pull it all together. No way at all.
“Deliverance, I’m speaking to you.”
“What?” I asked, finally breaking free of my churning thoughts to come up for air.
“I need to show you something.”
Standing, I began to pace the bakery and mentally calculated the hours until Hale would be back.
“I’m a little busy right now Mr. Links, perhaps if you came back some other time,” I said thinking in the back of my head that I would most likely be dead the next time he graced the doors of the Beguiling Bakery.
“Don’t turn me away, Deliverance.” Walking to the front of the store, he locked the door and turned the open sign to closed. “Not now.”
“What are you doing?” I asked as he took me by the hand and led me up the stairs to the apartment.
“Just…” he paused. “Give me a second. Okay?”
“A second for what?” I asked, stepping into the room as he locked the door behind him, leaning against it with a sigh.
“Don’t trifle with me.” I warned him, lifting my finger in the air. “I know you’re a Shifter, I can smell it on you—it’s muddled with something else, but it’s there. I will destroy your furry, or scaly, or whatever it is you’re covered in, ass with one twirl of my finger and that’s a promise.”
Thunder rumbled outside, and for a split second I thought if I could just conjure up a storm big enough to blow out of this godforsaken town, I would no longer need to worry about Hale or the Bobbsey Twins.
Turning my back on Wesley, I took a few steps to calm my mind and think of the cleanest way to rid myself of him. I could zap his gonads if he tried something. It would be easy to turn him from a rooster to a hen. I’d done it at least once in my lifetime. Thomas Corbett tried to get too chummy with me one night back in 1855, and when he wouldn’t stop touching me, I took his manhood. Glitter was flying everywhere and by the time I was done with him, all he was left with was a hairy sack of nothing. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have a full life though, after all he had gone on to help kill John Wilkes Booth—one of the worst kind of Vampires ever known to walk the United States. Because of that I felt a little bad, but not really. Corbett was a dick, who in the end I left with a twig—but no berries.
“Settle down, my love. I need to show you something.”
I turned in surprise and watched as he slipped the tan suitcoat from his shoulders without dropping his fixed and steely gray stare. My love? What the hell?
“I’m warning…you.” I stuttered the words and fell silent as he pulled at the bowtie around his neck, releasing it to fall on his chest. Undoing one shirt button at a time, he kicked off his shoes, slowly tugging at his shirttail as it slid from the waist of his pants. I bit my lip and wanted to ask him what he was doing, but his potent pheromones hung heavy in the air like fog on a mountainside and frankly, I didn’t want him to stop.
Unbuckling his belt, he freed the steely contours of his body, dropping his pants to the floor in a heap. The navy boxer briefs that remained on his strong, lean physique gripped not only his muscular thighs, but the bulging magical package between them.
I swallowed hard against my parched throat and tried to speak but nothing came out.
“Deliverance.”
“Yes,” I managed to whisper as I took one step back and closed my eyes.
“Open your eyes. I need you to see me.”
“Oh, I think I’ve seen plenty Mr. Links, or maybe I should call you Mr. Kinks.”
“Deliverance. Just look at me.”
I opened my eyes and standing before me was a naked Wesley in all his glory. The man was an impeccable specimen. Even I couldn’t conjure up something as flawless as he was. And then I saw it. The perfect mark in the shape of a small heart on his left hip right where the V of his man cleavage began its sexy trail to the most beautiful piece of reproductive flesh I’d ever seen. One word escaped my lips. “Barnabas.”
“As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, so deep in love am I,” he said walking toward me.
I froze in utter astonishment. No one could have that mark. No one could know our love poem. No one but my Barnabas. A single tear rolled down my cheek. His soft fingers brushed it away, taking my face in his capable hands.
“And I will love thee still, my dear,” I whispered, staring at him in disbelief.
His lips a whisper from mine, he finished the poem. “Till a’ the seas gang dry.”
Pressing his forehead to mine, he breathed me in and closed his eyes. Stroking his salt and pepper hair, I felt him under my fingertips, making sure he was real. He didn’t look like himself and yet I knew in my heart and soul it was him.
Slowly and deliberately, he brushed his warm mouth across my lips, parting them with his tongue. I met his voracious invitation, my hand trailing down the front of his hard body. Absorbing his very essence into my cells, I savagely kissed him again, unable to quench the thirst of the last two hundred years. “Tell me it’s you. Please say it’s you. But how can it be you?” I asked, gasping between kisses.
“It is I, my love. I assure you. It is I.”
“But how?” I asked, entwining my fingers with his. I stepped back to take him all in. “I don’t understand.”
“Baba Yaga.”
I dropped his hands “What? Wh
at does she have to do with you and me?” I sat on the bed, confused but unable to take my eyes off his swinging manhood. “I mean…”
“When you left in the storm that night—and I know you were mad at me but I promise you, I was never involved with Harriet. She was just a young girl with big ambitions. She asked me for advice and the next thing I know, a cyclone ripped through the town, and you,” he said coming closer. “The love of my existence, the breath to my life and my mate for eternity—you were gone.”
“But you don’t look the same.”
“Baba Yaga.”
“Stop saying her name.”
Barnabas sat on the bed next to me, brushing the hair from my shoulder. He kissed my neck gently and I couldn’t concentrate on anything he was saying with his hard body so close to me. “You left and Reverend Hale rolled into town as soon as the storm was over. He was looking for you, but began following me.” He slipped the cardigan from my shoulders before unzipping the back of my skirt.
“John Hale was following you?” I asked. It was the first thing I’d fully comprehended since he’d dropped his pants.
“He thought he could get to you through me. When we got word he was going to kill Bazel and me both, Baba Yaga put a cloaking spell on us, changing our appearance. She sent us here to West Virginia where we’d be safe. It’s a community of Witches and Shifters, a place where we could find our own happily ever after. I’ve been waiting patiently for you right here—for years.”
I ran my hand across his hard chest and felt my body shudder with supernatural energy. It was a feeling I’d longed for, for far too long.
Barnabas pulled my sweater over my head, exposing the ugly bra I’d chosen for the day. Quickly, I twirled my finger and it was replaced by purple lace.
“My love, there’s no need to do that,” he growled. “It’s all coming off anyway.”
“Wait,” I protested as he laid my body back on the bed and began to shimmy the skirt from my hips. “If you knew it was me yesterday when I blew into town, why didn’t you say something?”
Kissing his way up my body, he tore the purple lace panties from me, leaving my bottom half exposed. “Because, I couldn’t tell you. You had to know it on your own. That was part of the stipulation Baba Yaga gave to us when she granted us shelter from Hale.”
He popped the hook on the back of my bra and palmed my breast, taking it into his mouth with an animal instinct that made my witch bits throb with ecstasy.
“Barnabas,” I moaned. “I can’t think when you do that.”
“Good,” he murmured into my body. “Less thinking about what’s right, more doing what feels right.”
My eyes welled over with tears. “God, I’ve missed you.”
Pressing the hard contours of bone and sinew into my longing flesh, he buried himself deep inside the very heart of me.
I let out a sigh and arched my hips in wild response.
“You are my heart, my soul. You, Deliverance, are my everything.”
SIX
I AWOKE WITH a start, Barnabas sleeping naked by my side. Rolling into the warmth of his skin, I sighed. Could my curse really could be broken? Could this be the end and the beginning of my life?
I looked out the window and knew by where the sun hung in the sky it was around three in the afternoon. We’d made love all day, barely coming up for air. Watching him sleep, I could see physical traces of the man I fell in love with so long ago. Stroking his face, I watched him rouse from his deep slumber.
He opened his eyes and looked around like a new baby discovering the world for the first time.
“Everything all right, my love?”
“Everything is perfect. It’s just,” I began as I ran my fingers through his hair.
“What?”
“I miss the old Barnabas. The face of the man I fell in love with.”
“He’s right here. I promise. Believe me, Bazel had a harder time with the change than I did. But when Baba Yaga explained it was this or Hale stalking and killing us, he agreed.”
“Oh no!” I shouted, jumping from the bed in horror.
“What?” he asked sitting up with a start.
“Bazel.”
“What about him.”
“I…” I stopped myself. How did I tell the man I’d loved most of my life that I’d given his twin brother a cupcake with the Kamasutra love muffin spell, let alone that I had a date with him in less than four hours?
“What is it,” he begged. “Please. I don’t want there to be anything between us. I’ve waited too long for you.”
“It’s Chester—I mean Bazel.” I conjured up yoga pants and a t-shirt to cover my body. It wouldn’t be fair to stand naked in from of him and explain what I needed to. “I…”
“What?”
“I thought he was you. And I needed to find true love… so Felix and I…well…”
“Spit it out, Deliverance.”
“I gave him a love cake to eat—specifically, a Kamasutra love muffin.”
“A what?”
“I said I thought he was you. Didn’t you hear that part? I met you first and then he kept coming here and Felix thought—I mean, I thought that if I could get him, I mean you to fall in love with me, at least part of the spell would be broken. But now…”
“Did he eat the cake?”
I stared into space and thought of the worst case scenario. “No. I told him to wait until tonight.”
“When did my brother ever follow orders or instructions?”
I nervously pulled my hair into a pony tail and began pacing the room. “I don’t know.”
“What happens if he eats the cake?”
I looked to my feet. Surely he knew the answer to that question, he just didn’t want to say it out loud. “Well,” I began with a sigh. “He will fall in love with me.”
“Bazel has never loved anyone but himself. I’ll be surprised if the spell works. Besides, you can’t cast your own spell for true love. Even I know that.”
I shook my head.
“What?” he asked.
“I didn’t cast the spell.”
“Then who did? Because I know Baba Yaga wouldn’t. She’s makes us get out of our own messes.”
“Felix.”
“Who the in the name of hell and all the demons is Felix?”
“I’m Felix, thank you very much.”
“What the?” Barnabas shouted, pulling the sheet up to cover his naked male loins.
With a twirl of my finger, I dressed my love in sweatpants and a tight fitting t-shirt. He climbed out of the bed ready to kill my familiar.
“Watching the two of you was like, whew doggies,” Felix wailed. “I haven’t seen anything that hot since Chicago 1871.”
“Felix!” I shouted. “How dare you?”
“Honestly, I just came up here to tell you we needed to get to work on our plan to kill Hale, but then I realized you were going to bump uglies, or in this case, smash pretties with a hot man only to realize he’s the Shifter brother of the man you have a date with tonight.”
“Thanks for the recap, you little voyeur.” Barnabas ground the words out through his teeth and I could tell by the way his body twitched he was about to shift into the lithe bobcat I knew from the past.
I stepped between the two of them, hoping to diffuse the situation. “Everyone calm down,” Don’t make me whip both of you.”
“Seriously?” Barnabas asked, his dander finally calming.
“Yeah, seriously?” Felix parroted.
“What? You don’t think I could take both of you down?”
“No,” they said in unison.
“Well, at least we agree on something,” Felix sneered.
“Look, Barnabas. Let’s you and I go to Bazel’s or ah, Chester’s right now. We will explain to him—”
“There’s nothing to explain,” Barnabas said, sitting down at the kitchen table. “My brother is fully aware of who you are and why we’re here. Why he would try to seduce you is beyond me.
”
“Okay…” My voice was heavily laced with sarcasm. Between Felix watching me have sex with my soul mate and Bazel possibly already in love with me, I’d reached a breaking point where everyone needed to take a reality pill. “Really? Your brother is the biggest trouble-maker I’ve ever known in my three hundred and forty years of existence.
“You have a point,” Barnabas conceded.
“You don’t think he’s working with Hale do you?” I asked.
“With that one, you never know,” Felix added.
“If you don’t excuse yourself rat, I’ll eat you alive and not think another thing about it.”
“Fine.” Felix scoffed before slipping through a crack in the wall.
Running his hands through his hair, Barnabas looked up at me. I could tell he had a plan. So did I.
I touched him on the face, stroking his jaw. “Say it.”
“This could be bad.”
“I know. But nothing is worse than being apart from you for another two hundred years, so I’m willing to take my chances—whatever they may be.”
He nodded. “Agreed.”
“What are you two waiting for?” Felix shouted from the floorboard.
Barnabas growled and I watched his shoulders hitch in anger. “I swear to Odin, I’m going to eat that little shit before this is over.”
* * *
IN THE KITCHEN, I stared at my mother’s spell book, wondering how to take care of Hale once and for all. I had one hour before Bazel was to pick me up for our date. Barnabas and I decided to meet him together and talk out what was going on. Barnabas was convinced that his brother would be so happy to have his old identity and name back, he would work with us to rid the world of the Right Reverend.
Leafing through the book, I found everything from how to cure athlete’s foot to destroying small villages with a complex plague. What I needed to find was a spell that killed him and somehow rang of poetic justice. What that was, I wasn’t exactly sure yet.
The bell rang at the front door of the bakery and I paused, wondering who’d unlocked the door.
“We’re closed,” I said, walking from the back kitchen into the store.
There stood Bazel. Dressed in a tuxedo and carrying what looked to be three dozen red roses, he smiled from ear to ear. “I couldn’t wait any longer,” he said. “I know I’m not supposed to be here for another hour, but I can’t stop thinking about you. How you look, your beautiful dark hair, and the wild streak I know makes you a red-hot lover in the sack. I bet you could suck the chrome off a tail pipe.”