Juniper

by Eva Delaney

  Cops were always bad for business. “I’ll send something home with Jen for you.”

  “Okay, great,” Magnolia said and fled the store. My cocks sang their farewell song.

  The cop took off his hat and glanced around the store, an eyebrow quirking.

  “Can I help you, Officer? Perhaps a vibrating cock ring for lonely nights?”

  “Officer Bert Stevens with the Silver Springs Police Department. Can I ask you a few questions?”

  “I’m always happy to help an officer,” I lied.

  “We had a report of a witch fight.”

  If I fessed up, I could have Azea arrested and hauled out of my life until I left town. But she’d tell them about my past as an expert thief, or she’d mention the stolen magic items I hoarded, which would be worse. The fewer people who knew about the Scourge Stone, the better.

  “Did you see or hear anything?” Officer Stevens pressed.

  “Yes. A couple of teenagers got in a fight out front. I shouted at them and they took off.”

  He frowned. “Our tipster said it was a big fight—”

  “Kids these days. They’re getting more violent younger.”

  He nodded sagely. “Video games and that new-fangled internet. They learn too much, too young. It leads to trouble.”

  “Exactly. I could hardly believe how vicious these kids were. I’m just glad they took off. They still have some respect for adults, at least.”

  “Well, if they come back, make sure to call us,” he said, handing me his business card.

  “Of course, Officer. Thanks for checking in. Can I help you with anything? A strap-on for your girlfriend or wife?”

  He shifted from one foot to the other. “Maybe another time.”

  The swooping dildos sang as he left. Fuck, another lost sale. Plus a plug in my ass, and Azea, professional murderer, in my back room. Damn Mondays. I might as well floss with hair from a yeti’s asshole.

  I locked the shop’s front door, then returned to the storeroom to deal with Azea. My heart stopped for a long, painful moment of icy coldness. That must be what being a vampire was like.

  The ropes lay limp on the floor, the ball gag nestled among them.

  Azea was gone.

  But none of my carefully crafted security had gone off. I raced to the back door. It was still locked from the inside. I checked under all the tables, in the bathroom, the vents.

  No sign of her, and all my wards and traps remained intact.

  Had the Stone failed and she retained enough magic to sneak out?

  Or had someone helped her? There was only one person who could sneak past my wards…well, two. Alyssa with her natural ability for trickery, and Ram with his store of relics that could cast almost anything.

  So, Azea was free and itching to kill me as sure as my taint itched. And someone much more dangerous was likely helping her.

  Chapter 3

  My shift at the shop felt longer than the yeti dick vibrator in the front window. Every time the door dildos sang, my heart stopped until I saw that the visitor was not one of my old squad. Even then, my heart kept skipping beats because anyone could be working for Ram, Alyssa, or Azea.

  If they were going to attack, I’d rather they do it here at the shop than my apartment. With a single word, I could command ropes to tie people up, cocks to shoot lasers, and fleshlights to suck hands into their vaginal holes.

  Don’t get me started on the gags: ball gags, rope gags, gags shaped like butt plugs. Those were important when witches were likely to show up. We could do a lot with words.

  At least, I told myself I stayed for security reasons. But as my shift drew to a close, I wandered the store, trailing my fingers along every shelf, every toy.

  I was going to miss this place when I fled town.

  If anyone who came in was working with Ram, they hid it well. I closed up shop around six, leaving Jen to package and ship our online orders. “I know we need more self-cleaning vibrators,” I told her. “I’ll craft them at home tonight.” It was a lie.

  I headed out, pausing at the front door to mumble a spell to raise a protective ward. This wasn’t dark magic. This was the usual everyday magic that most witches used.

  So how did Azea find me? I was careful to avoid anything that would tip off Ram’s Night Compass, which only tracked large acts of dark magic. Forbidden magic was my specialty but before today’s fight, I had stuck with small spells that wouldn’t be noticed from afar.

  As I walked home, the stars poked out in between clouds like animal eyes through bushes. My eyes pricked with tears.

  I hadn’t thought that leaving town would make me cry.

  I tapped the key card at my building’s front door and strolled up the stairs to my third-floor apartment. I never took the elevator, even when it worked. Stairs, like the daily walks to my shop across town, were exercise. I had to stay fit enough to handle a sudden attack and to go on the run at any moment.

  Like now. This would be the last time I entered this building. I couldn’t defeat Ram and his entire gang. If they came one at a time or in pairs, I would crush them. I would hate myself for becoming a monster again, but I’d survive and they wouldn’t.

  It wasn’t enough. Dozens of witches and supes worked for Ram, and I couldn’t defeat his entire army. I couldn’t defeat him, either. He had nearly killed me once already.

  The wards around my apartment remained intact, though that didn’t mean much. Someone had already snuck through my wards at The Magical Rooster.

  I cracked the door and peered inside, a curse on the tip of my tongue.

  The apartment looked untouched. On the armchair near the faux fireplace, rope and handcuffs waited. If anyone entered the apartment who wasn’t me, they would come to life and bind the thieves. I checked the entire apartment for intruders—it didn’t take long. The place was small.

  Empty.

  Good. Sighing, I finally slipped my hand down the back of my pants and inside my thong to pull out the butt plug. My ass re-puckered like it was trying to kiss me in thanks.

  The toy was self-cleaning, so I tossed it into a bedside drawer filled with other butt accessories. The green gem in its flared end stared at me like a watching eye. I had the odd feeling that it was sizing me up despite having been in my ass all day.

  What happened to the magic it stole? Could I ever return Azea’s abilities?

  I shuddered. I needed a drink, just one, before packing my bags and disappearing in the night. Again.

  Placing a bottle of rum on the kitchen counter, I unscrewed the top and took a swig. The ridiculous book that Violet gave me sat on the counter. Love Blooms by C.C. Pine. The locals were going nuts over it because it was written by someone from Silver Springs, though no one knew whom.

  The cover’s array of naked men holding flowers over their balls stared up at me. I stared back, thinking I could launch a line of flower-based dildos. People loved the book; they’d buy the flower cocks.

  Alas, that was a dream that would never come true.

  I grabbed the book and the bottle of rum and headed for my bedroom.

  No more singing dildos like strange little birds. No more middle of the night flashes of inspiration for dicks. No more Sapphire calling me at odd hours for odd requests like dancing snow cocks and battle dildos. She was the only other one who knew those could be used as weapons too.

  Turning my back on it and walking away felt like abandoning a puppy shivering in the forest.

  I tossed Love Blooms onto my bed and plopped onto the floor with the bottle of rum in one hand. Maybe I should have a bit of fun before my long lonely journey ahead. I deserved it.

  Opening a different bedside drawer, I pulled out my three fave cocks:

  Dick was my own design. It was wide, bumpy, and vibrated delightfully. Its official name was Doctor Screw. But I called my personal version Dick, short for William.

  The Thomas was what I called my Rabbit. It had an extension that hugged your clit while it vibrated. It
made my slit ache just looking at it.

  The third one was called The Oz because if you used it, you weren’t in Kansas anymore. Part of my collection of custom alien cock dildos, it was curved like a tongue that licked your g-spot.

  I lined them up on the floor in front of me. “Well, boys, you’ve been good friends, great even. And I guess once I go on the run, you’ll be my only friends. We’ll have to leave all your brothers behind.”

  You might think I was drunk to be talking to dildos. But I’d only had one swig of rum. Nah, I talked to my creations all the time. I infused magic into them, so they felt alive to me. Like how writers talked to their creations.

  “Well, boys, we might as well have some fun.” I sipped the rum. I would have liked to chug it, but I needed to keep my wits about me in case of an attack. It burned its way down my throat like too much cum and heated my empty stomach, also like too much cum if that was all you’d eaten in the last day. We’d all been there.

  “One last bit of sexy magic fun, men. Plus, I can use up a few relics before Ram or his hench assholes show up.” I sat up straighter. Why had I never thought of that before? Probably because using any of the artifacts I was hiding from Ram would alert him to my presence. But Azea had found me, Ram would know where I was, and I was leaving anyway. So why bother hiding my magic?

  Might as well keep three artifacts out of his clutches by using their magic for a night of debauchery before I became a nun. Or something even more out of character for Juniper the thief than making pussy pushers and ass stretchers.

  “Let’s do this.”

  I climbed to my feet and strolled around my bed and into the bathroom. The three Soulbinders were where I left them on a shower caddy. I was an expert thief, and the thing about most people is that they hid what was important. If something was in plain sight, it wasn’t precious.

  I scooped up the three stones. They were smooth and warm in my hand. The red gems at their centers pulsed lightly like a heartbeat. Alyssa, the gang, and I had robbed a museum for them. Then I had stolen them and the Scourge Stone from Ram, so that he couldn’t hoard all the power.

  “Hello there, my pretties. Are you ready to bind a cock? I mean…not in the rope around balls type of way. Well, maybe in that way if the men you summon are into it. But mainly, in the get me laid before I have to give up my life way…Wait…Why am I talking to rocks?”

  I returned to the bedroom and plopped down next to the line of dildos. “Let’s do this thing!”

  Pulling open my bottom drawer, I retrieved my magical glitter paste. The paste itself wasn’t magical; it was lube. How you used it created magic…just like cocks, actually.

  I pressed my fingers into the lube and drew a perfect pentagram on my bedroom floor. As I did, my mind slipped into something deeper and clearer, like falling upward through starry skies. At the same time, I felt as though my feet grew roots and plunged through the earth. Earth and sky, rock and air. The keys to all magic.

  This magical flow state had always been easy for me. My hands moved without thought as I placed the dildos and the stones precisely in the pentagram. Words spilled from my mouth like when you swallow water wrong, suffer a fit of coughing and it all dribbles out. This wasn’t my first soulbinding, and I had a knack for anything dark and forbidden. Anything good witches weren’t supposed to do.

  Of course, it was my first soulbinding with dildos.

  Usually, soulbinding was to call up a ghost for a chat. They attached to an object so they could exist in the physical realm. You asked questions, they refused to answer them. Then the magic wore out and away they vanished to wherever death had trapped them.

  I had never tried to infuse a ghost with a sex toy. I didn’t know if it was possible, but if it worked…well, I’d have three hotties here for a few hours. Three hotties who hadn’t been laid since they died.

  “Hehehe, I’m going to get—” I paused to burp. Fucking rum.

  I blinked and refocused on the spell. Moving my hands in a complex pattern, the power flowed through me like a drug in my blood. The pentagram glowed. Black tendrils flowed around and between my fingers. My vision purpled, and the stones flared bright red like a cock with an STD.

  That was a good sign.

  My heart pounded in time with the pulsing stones. The spell spilled faster and louder from me. The black tendrils from my hands and the purple ones from the pentagram swirled together in a complex dance like a snake orgy. My head throbbed with power, my blood hummed like it was trying to escape through my pores.

  All in a flash, the magic barreled through me and out like a dude’s orgasm with a blast of cum. Only my cum was magical power. The tendrils vanished and the Soulbinders turned cold, their red gems a dull dead brown. In the center of the pentagram…

  Three lonely dildos.

  I sighed. Well, it had been a long shot anyway. I didn’t know if this was even possible, and if I couldn’t do it, then it wasn’t.

  “At least Ram won’t get these stones.” They were thoroughly spent. But I was still protecting the much more valuable Scourge Stone. If Ram got his hands on it, he’d wipe out witches and supes by turning us normal until the only magic left in the world was his.

  For everyone’s sake, I had to run.

  But first…

  Standing, I dropped my pants and underwear and grabbed Dick the dildo. His coating felt like real skin, albeit a bit cold. Climbing into bed, something dug into my back. I shifted, reaching underneath me to pull out Love Blooms by C.C. Pine. The woman on the cover literally wore panties made of flowers. Hmmm… Was I missing a market for flower-based panties? Maybe they grow vines that rub you the right way—inside and out.

  Too bad I’d never be able to create those.

  I dropped the dildo on my bed between my legs and flipped through the book until I found a sex scene. The main character, Zirconia, and her men were in a hot spring to soak their sore muscles and relieve some…tension.

  Yeah, this would do. Sex was sex, even if the book was cheesy.

  “Yeah, that’s it. Fuck her good,” I muttered to the book men. “Take her every hole.”

  The wetter this got me, the sooner I could use my dildos. Three orgasms, one after the other from the three toys. By then, it’d be the middle of the night and I could skip town unseen by any locals.

  “What the bloody hell?” a man said.

  I bolted upright.

  A completely naked man knelt between my thighs. His abs and pecs heaved. His cock stood at attention, bumpy and vibrating like the Dick dildo I had planned on using.

  “Aaahhhhh,” I screamed.

  “Aaaahhh,” he screamed back.

  Chapter 4

  The strange naked man took a deep breath, fell silent, then looked down at his vibrating cock.

  “Aaahhhhhh,” he screamed again. His wide brown eyes locked on mine.

  “Aaahhhh,” I screamed. “Who the fuck are you?”

  On the floor next to the bed, a red-headed man sat bolt upright and bolt naked. He looked at me, then looked at the naked man on my bed. His eyes landed on the shaking cock. “Aaahhhh,” he screamed.

  I looked at him and yanked my blanket over my bare lower half. My hand found the book on my bed, and I flung it at the red-haired man. It smacked him in the forehead.

  “Fuck!” he shouted.

  From the floor, a dark-haired man jumped to his feet. “Why are ye screaming?”

  “Where the fuck did you come from?” I said.

  He shrugged his perfect, strong shoulders. “Who knows? A ship? A pub? Prison?” He spoke with a rough English accent. “I don’t remember how I got here, but that always means I had a good time.” He picked up the bottle of rum and took a swig. “Fuck, yeah. I waited three hundred years for this. So, how much do I owe ye three for the night’s pleasures?”

  I blinked at him.

  Red hair blinked at him.

  Cock man blinked at him.

  Then it dawned on me what he meant. He thought I was a se
x worker, and that we had fucked while he was too drunk to remember.

  For a moment, I considered lying and taking all his money. But he was stark naked, so unless he had a roll of quarters up his ass, there was nothing to take. Well, there was something I could take another way…

  Between his legs stood the Thomas dildo at full attention, its clit vibrators arching from the base of his shaft.

  So the soulbinding worked after all. It was just slow.

  My bedroom door slammed open, and the security ropes and cuffs zoomed in.

  Oh right. I forgot about those.

  A pair of metal handcuffs latched onto each of the rum drinker’s wrists. Their other ends flew downward, taking his hands with him. They clasped around his ankles, leaving him bent over with his ass in the air. The bottle of rum hit the floor with a crash.

  A length of rope wrapped around the arms of the man on my bed. He fell backward as the other end flew to the bedpost and tied his arms to it.

  The final rope hit the red-haired man, wrapping around his legs all the way up his thighs. They knotted around his wrists, binding his hands to his hips.

  The security worked well. Yay for my crafting skills.

  The rum drinker with his ass in the air stretched his neck toward the rum pooled on the floor. His tongue flashed out toward it. He groaned. “Come on, come on, get in my mouth, urgh.”

  The naked man tied to my bed tried to sit up but couldn’t because his arms were bound to the post. “I’m ensnared by a bodacious bearcat! A pox on your magic, tomato.”

  Was tomato a compliment or an insult? “A pox on your butthole, eggplant,” I said.

  “Oh no, no, no, no,” the red-haired man cried. Sitting bound on the floor, he rocked back and forth with his pale face turning red as though he was about to have a panic attack.

  “Shit.” I muttered a word and flicked my fingers. The ropes untangled from him and fell limp to the floor.

  He leaned forward with choked sounds escaping his lips. Fuck, he really was having a panic attack.