Jenn Bennett - Bitter Spirits

“Dried centipedes,” Velma said blithely when Aida stared. “My associate claims that Gu poison is venom magic. The sorcerer will put all kinds of creepy-crawlies inside a spelled jar—snakes, scorpions, frogs.” Velma pounded the dried centipedes with alarming gusto; the shells made a horrible crunching noise beneath her pestle. “Then it’s a fight to the death. The venomous insects and reptiles battle it out, eating one another. A spell is cast upon the last one standing. That’s what they use to brew the poison.”

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Velma stopped to retrieve two more jars. From the first, she used tongs to retrieve two frail, perfectly preserved scorpions, their curled tails stretched out and feet shriveled against their abdomens. She dumped them in the mortar with a sprinkling of some dark red powder and began grinding them up with the centipedes.

“The remedy for the hex is to fight like with like—the centipedes and scorpions will eat the Gu inside him. Let’s go ahead and do the unhexing bath. It should help weaken the spell and give the remedy a better chance to take hold. Here, give me your bowl.” Velma bowed her head as if praying and spoke a few mumbled words over the bath mixture. When finished, she let out a deep breath and handed it back to Aida. “Take this to the bathroom. Dump it in the bath water and mix it up.”

“Me?”

“It won’t harm you. I called downstairs and asked someone to bring ice from the bar. We want the water as cold as possible to shake the curse loose. Once you get the powder mixed up in the water, get them to put Winter inside. I’ll be in shortly with the antidote.”

Hugging the bowl against her middle, Aida hurried to the bathroom and nearly stumbled into a girl exiting with two empty ice buckets. Then she nearly stumbled again when she stepped into the bathroom and set her eyes on Winter. He was naked. Very naked.

“I swear to Buddha, Osiris, and your Christian God—”

“Who clearly hates me,” Winter said, interrupting Bo.

Velma’s man held one of Winter’s shoulders, Bo the other, and Aida stood, gawking at the bootlegger’s bare body. He was pale and more finely shaped than she’d imagined when she’d been eyeing him earlier: broad chested, upper arms thick with muscle, his stomach a brick wall. Dark hair peppered the center of his torso, from his breastbone to his solid, blocky legs. But it was the thicket below his rippled stomach that drew her attention. And the substantial length that hung under it.

Dear God.

She wasn’t exactly an expert on men’s naked bodies, but she’d seen a couple, and neither possessed anything between their legs quite like that , and definitely not in a state of rest. She could only guess what it looked like when it woke up.

She forced herself to look elsewhere. Twice.

Her gaze zigzagged everywhere, up and down, back and forth. No, Aida had definitely never seen a body like this, like a statue in a museum—not the athletic, trim David, but a meatier Zeus or Poseidon. As if one extra sandwich a day might take him across the line from stocky to stout. He was big and mighty and intimidating.

A mythological-sized beast.

She couldn’t stop staring. Her face warmed, not with embarrassment over seeing him naked, exactly—well, maybe a little—but mainly because of the raw lust he stirred up.

Oblivious to her entry, Bo flung Winter’s trousers onto the floor with malice and continued ranting. “This is the worst thing you’ve ever asked me to do. And I’m including the spy job in the hull of that steamer with all that rotting fish.”

Winter laughed and nearly toppled over, face-first.

“Whoa, now.” One of Velma’s men pressed a firm hand in the middle of Winter’s chest to hold him up against the tiled wall. He couldn’t stand on his own, but he was conscious.

Mostly.

“It’s not funny,” Bo said. “Did you hear what Velma said? You’re hexed. You’re probably going to die, and I’ll be out of work.”

“Where is she?” Winter complained, almost sounding drunk. The poison appeared to be pushing his mental state into boozy territory.

Aida’s elbow bumped against the doorframe. Everyone looked up. She was sure her face was reddening, and it would be best if she’d just avert her gaze and head to the bathtub. She didn’t understand why her feet weren’t moving—or why she was still gawking. Move, feet, move!

Winter’s mismatched eyes met hers. His lower face melted into a lazy smile—he actually could smile, imagine that—which sent an intense fluttering through her stomach. Good grief. She was acting like a daydreaming schoolgirl.

“Hello, cheetah,” he said to her.

She lifted her chin and tamped down the chaos burning through her mind and body. “Mr. Magnusson—”

“No need for formalities when someone in the room is naked.”

“Mr. Bootlegger, then.”

He chuckled, low and deep. “You can call me Winter.”

“Oh, may I? Now that you’ve nearly crushed me to death and exposed me to sights I don’t care to see.”

“Keep staring like that and I might think you’re lying.”

Aida’s already-warm cheeks combusted with mortification. She quickly shifted her gaze to the bathtub and made her way across the room.

“Where’s Velma?” Bo asked Aida.

“Brewing his remedy.”

“Isn’t the bath the remedy?”

“I think the bath is an insurance policy.” The bathtub was half filled with water; chipped ice floated on the surface. She dumped the contents of the bowl and watched them sink, wishing she’d thought to bring a spoon or a long stick. Then again, Velma said the mixture wouldn’t hurt.

Sighing, she pushed up a sleeve and plunged her arm in the icy mixture. It was shockingly cold. She winced as she used her arm to swirl the frozen water.

Winter’s voice rumbled from across the room. “You bathing with me?”

Now that was a picture. But never in a million years would she give him the satisfaction of knowing his comments about her staring were on the mark. Bootleggers were notorious womanizers, or so the gossip rags would have one believe. A man who looked like that probably bedded every flapper in the city. “I’d rather be horsewhipped.”

Both Bo and Velma’s men laughed.

When the bath turned pink and the herbs and okra seeds floated to the top, she hastily withdrew her arm and shivered, flinging drops of water away. “Okay, get him inside.”

The men grunted in unison as they half dragged, half shoved Winter toward the tub. Aida snatched a towel off an étagère to dry her arm, sneaking a look at Winter’s backside as they passed. A majestic sight. When he tried to take a step on his own, his buttocks rippled with muscle, deepening the clefts on either side and indenting two succulent dimples on his lower back.

He twisted in their grip and caught her staring again. “Go on. Look,” he encouraged with a grin. “I’m not ashamed.”

“Can you not get him in there faster?” she asked the men in exasperation.

They hauled one long leg over the side of the bathtub.

“Cold!” Winter shouted, suddenly energized. He attempted to bolt.

“Oh no you don’t!” Bo said, giving him a shove.

The giant cried out as he crashed in the tub. A tidal wave of pink water surged over the rim. His great body shivered as water and ice clinked against the sides of the tub.

“Don’t drown the man,” Velma said from the doorway. Her dress fluttered around her calves as she strode past Aida with a steaming cup of tea on a saucer. The scent wafting from the liquid was nothing short of repulsive. “You gotta drink this, Winter,” she said, hooking her foot around a three-legged stool to shift it next to the tub. “You gonna go quietly, or am I gonna have to have Manny and Clyde hold you down?”