by Erin R Flynn
I shrugged. “It’s the same for us too. I can’t even fathom the precision Briony has to make the totems or Meave, who specializes in glamours and charms magic. It’s just like anything else, and different fields don’t always carry over.” I glanced at the clock and got to my feet, going for the tiramisu in the fridge. “You want dessert?”
“Please.”
We ate in silence and then I put my dishes in the dishwasher.
“I have to get back to the brew house and change out what’s in the distillers and make some more batches of everything.”
“I think you need sleep more than that.”
I gave him a wry look. “If you want to help so I can sleep sooner, you’re more than welcome to.”
I wasn’t a fan of being lectured by someone who was practically still a kid no matter how stern and serious he was.
“All right,” he accepted. He brought his dishes to the dishwasher while I went and changed. We met up by the front door and after I locked it, we took the ATV to the brew house.
He was a good worker, using all that lean, toned muscle I’d seen to load the eighty-gallon drums that went into the distillers.
I showed him how to use the crane to lift it out and set them off to the side before putting in the new loaded ones.
“You dump those on your own?” he asked, giving me a confused look at how big they were… And how not big I was.
I snorted. “No, I have a deal with a compost farmer who comes several times a week to get all my organic waste. His guys load up the trucks. That’s why I have extra drums. There are several trailers by the greenhouses that the waste dumps into from there and they just switch out open top trailers, but these the drivers have an arm they use for garbage bins like regular garbage trucks. I’m one stop for them.”
“Got it.” He glanced around at what there was to be loaded and frowned. “You’re light.”
“Yeah, I’ve been running the distillers like mad. I’m going to do a quick harvest.”
“Now? At night alone?”
“I do it all the time,” I chuckled as I reset the distiller for the next run. I didn’t wait for him to reply, heading over to the trolley and driving it out the bay door towards the right greenhouse.
I couldn’t hear the sigh I was sure he made over the noise, but his frown spoke volumes.
However, he ended up coming with. And again, he was a hard worker and caught on fast. Not that harvesting mint was hard; you basically cut it down to the base to spur new growth.
But he clearly had never touched it before and was diligent in paying attention. I appreciated diligent.
“So the kid you had doing your site was in way over his head,” he said as we moved from one row to another.
I raised an eyebrow at that. “Kid? You’re calling him a kid?” I didn’t let it go when he just shrugged. “Okay, are you even older than the kid, old fart?”
He cleared his throat. “I am.”
“How much?” I pushed when he didn’t answer. “Come on, how much?”
“Two years,” he muttered.
I laughed. “Oh, so you’re a whole twenty-three. Got it.”
He sighed. “It’s not the age so much but maturity level. There was no way he didn’t know he was in over his head and—”
“He knew. It was me,” I admitted. “He kept telling me that I needed someone with the security knowledge he didn’t have. He’s into game programming or something, something, with the something that made my eyes glaze. I meant to find someone but, well, yeah, things just snowballed after the first time we were hacked about nine months ago and everything since.”
“Why all in the last year?” he asked. “Are you going up against someone big? You mentioned that company Lush, right?”
“Yeah, but they’re not my competition,” I told him as I moved onto another row. “They’ve got the luxury bath products niche that I’m not trying to be. I don’t add glitters or dyes so it’s sparkly and the water colors and everything they do—that admittedly is cool—but extra. I don’t even do bath bombs because the extra steps to press them and ship without breaking is wasted time to me.
“I do bags of the same stuff. There’s no reason people can’t shake out what they want for their size bath instead of unwrapping a bath bomb. I’m a bit of a pure nut like that and I don’t care if the color isn’t pretty. It’s natural and all about nature like magic. But no, I’m not trying for that market. My competition would be more medicinal.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “How so? That sounds like a dangerous line to ride.”
I shrugged. “Dangerous? I don’t know about that, but I’m not curing cancer. My product to help sleep is a potion and spell. They sleep and without any chance of habit forming like synthetic drugs and lab-made pills. My oil for ED is better than those blue pills. Believe me, I had a lot of test subjects.”
I batted my eyelashes when he glanced at me as if to see if I was kidding.
At least his lips twitched. “You could be pissing someone off in big pharm then, because what I found so far was sophisticated, not something from any idiot with a bit of coding experience. Which means they won’t let this go if they see you as a threat or you have something they want.”
“Baby, I have everything a lot of people want,” I teased him, scoring myself another point as I got that tiny twitch.
“I’ll bet,” he said under his breath, probably thinking I couldn’t hear him.
We finished and took it all back to the brew house. He loaded it all while I made several batches of soaps. I was still working on that when he moved over to me.
“What’s all the shredded stuff?”
“Loofah. I put dried, ground loofah in all my soaps as it’s a natural exfoliant. Well, except one for ultra-sensitive skin. All the rest though.”
He made an accepting noise and kept watching. “I should get going. It’s late.”
“Drive safe.”
He sighed, clearly wanting me to call it a night too. I didn’t and he didn’t push, instead asking how high I filled the slab molds. I showed him and he started helping.
“Part of why I do this when no one is around,” I told him as we were walking out, leaving a mess. I muttered under my breath as I touched the seemingly normal picture above the light switch. “It’s a cleaning charm from Meave. I have the power to activate it to clean everything I’ve used like new. She jumps through hoops to hire cleaning people and keep her image.
“I have enough people coming and going where they could never keep it straight. Plus, as much as I dance, I’m not trusting anyone going around my house like that. I have too much hidden and closed off. It’s just so much easier to not play human when I’m working.”
“I understand.”
He stared at me most of the ride back to the house as if he wanted to say or ask something, but he didn’t, closing himself off. He was a bit too easy to poke at as after I plugged in the ATV in the garage, I stood and started undoing my braid so my hair fell all around me.
I felt his eyes on me, knowing he liked it from the bulge in his pants when I turned to him.
Well, and the moaning as I shook out my hair.
“Drive safe.”
“Thanks, I’ll see you in the morning.”
I nodded, biting back a smirk as I started to head for the door. “No one comes around on Mondays so if there’s something sneaky you need to do, I normally do it all then.”
“Understood. Goodnight, Sia.”
“Goodnight, kid,” I threw back, hearing his huff.
Yeah, I could be just as big of a brat. He wanted to pretend I didn’t rock his world? I had no problem pushing every single one of his buttons.
Hell, it amused me enough to almost forget the crap I was dealing with all over the place.
The next day it was the same. He observed how everything went and took notes on his phone, asking questions of the managers, employees, and volunteers. I was about to poke at him when I saw someone flare up purp
le when they walked out of the greenhouse, noting the worker had a bunch of people at the table so she just snuck around.
“Hey, did you check that in?” I asked her, blocking her way. I was annoyed when I saw it was someone who worked for Travis from the shirt she wore, since I’d let him get extra for his catering and now there was a problem.
“Yeah, sure,” she told me.
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” I chuckled darkly.
“You sure you want to do this with all the families around?” she sneered at me. “You really expect me to do extra for you when he already more than pays for you?”
I raised an eyebrow as I noted her aura was full of jealousy. “Honey, he gets the deal of a century from me so don’t spew whatever shit you’ve concocted in your head at me and get off my property.”
I reached for the plastic tote she had, but she stepped back.
“Travis paid for all of this! You can’t just steal from him, bitch,” she shouted loudly, getting the attention she clearly wanted.
“Is there a problem here?” Deon asked as he joined us, sounding a bit more like he was being the boss and not jumping in to help as the muscle or whatever.
“Yes, there is, and the whore manager you have was trying to take what Travis paid for.”
Deon narrowed his eyes at her as he reached for the tote, easily able to snatch it from her.
“Sia is the owner, and if you weren’t being such a lunatic, she would have told you that. Now I believe she said leave her property. I would do it, and before I call the police and report your attempted theft, since if you didn’t check in what you were supposed to, these items weren’t paid for.”
She called me a few more names and stormed off with a screech. Well, that was excessive.
“Thanks.”
He nodded as we watched her speed off. “That happen often?”
“Like that? No. I have no idea what the fuck that was, but I’m about to find out.” I pulled out my phone and went to call Travis, noting we had a crowd. “I’m good, crazy woman left. Let’s get out of the cold.”
People chuckled, moving on as Deon took the tote back inside and I made my call.
“Hey, who did you send today, because that bitch is crazy,” I greeted him.
“Shit, I was strapped for people and my ex-wife’s in town for the holidays and has been coming around,” he admitted, sounding exhausted and ready to blow. “I think she heard I’ve been doing better, but I’ve been so busy and people wanting off, she offered to take some of the catering jobs so I let her. I told her how it worked when she said she’d go get what we needed.”
“Well, according to her you pay a lot for me and she tried to just walk off with whatever she wanted. Maybe don’t send the jealous ex-wife to the farm of the woman you sleep with.”
He was quiet a few moments. “Why would she care? She dumped me. She hasn’t given two shits about me. She doesn’t get alimony from me since she was making more when we divorced. My catering turned into the restaurant.”
“Travis, you cannot use rational thinking on crazy people and that chick was just crazy. Clearly you’re thriving once she’s gone and that wasn’t what she expected when she left you.
“Fuck her. Put her in your rearview mirror. Don’t let her drag you down again or bring this back into your life. You were just talking about dating again next year. Don’t let her darkness ruin that.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” he muttered. “Thanks, doll. I’ll send someone normal. I shouldn’t have let my insanity leak onto you.”
“Fine, apology accepted. I’m just miffed because I was thinking of asking you for an extra day with your friend since I’m free Christmas.” I chuckled when he was quiet. “Do you want me in stockings to share again?”
“Yes, fuck yes,” he groaned. “What time? I have a family party for dinner.”
“Mmm, late night naughty on Christmas. Sounds fun. Come after and stuff me instead of a turkey.”
I mentally pumped my fist when he agreed. I had forgotten the new moon was on Christmas this year and I had told my normal Tuesday and Wednesday guys I wasn’t available this year for Christmas and New Year.
Well, the Tuesday guy was more giving him a time-out. He’d recovered his ego from his divorce but I was starting to wonder if he’d deserved it. He might not have cheated, but after a month of playing with him, I was pretty sure his wife had reasons to leave.
Travis made his apology even better when the guys who came to harvest for him did double what they should have for me. Rock on.
After everyone else was gone and I’d had my scheduled “date” that Deon worked through in my office again, he brought his laptop out to the brew house, now able to work on the website and server from that.
Uh-huh, sure, like he couldn’t have done that from the beginning, and if he could now—why didn’t he just do it from the condo he was staying at?
He had something else going on for the computer in my office with cleaning and tracing. Again, my eyes started to glaze over but he clearly knew what he was doing.
Except with me.
He once again acted like nothing had happened and he wasn’t staring at me too often. It chapped me a bit and when he left I told him just to come through the back gate in the morning as I’d be in the brew house early.
And did I ever have a surprise for him.
Instead of my normal coveralls we all wore when working in the brew house, I had on a black miniskirt that barely covered my ass along with a mint green crop top that matched my eyes. And just to really go for it, I was wearing black fuck me stilettos.
I thought he was going to drop his breakfast he’d brought with. I pretended not to see, smiling at him and then yawning.
“Anything you need from me?” I asked, giving him a challenging look that seemed to fire up his gorgeous steel blue eyes.
“I’m good,” he answered, closing the door behind him. “I’m still researching options and what will fit you better than what you have.”
Oh, game on, kid. “I do like a good fit.”
“I’ll make sure it’s the best fit.”
Uh-huh.
I had to give it to him, because I would have guessed he cracked by lunch. But he kept it together, even when we went back to the house to eat and were right on top of each other. I made sure to brush against him and pull all the dirty tricks I could without being overly obvious.
Tuesday was quiet since most weren’t coming like normal for being closed for the holiday, or they’d gotten what they needed earlier, and I didn’t have a date. But when people came, I pulled on my normal coveralls over the super-short shorts jumper I had on.
Wednesday was the same, but then I had a date with Travis and his friend, dressing up in a naughty Mrs. Claus outfit. I even let Deon see me in it when I told him there was more food in the fridge if he wanted to stay and keep working.
I really thought he would crack after that. The man’s control was crazy and to me, that was dangerous. That was how people snapped and things went wrong.
4
Deon
I was going to snap. I was going to fucking snap completely, she drove me so crazy. I tried, I really tried to put us having sex out of my head, but every time I looked at her, I saw her face full of pleasure again.
She touched me and I imagined what the rest of her felt like besides what I’d experienced.
And those outfits. Fuck, those fucking outfits that made me hard as fuck. Her ass and tits were always hanging out of them and it was driving me crazy.
No, crazy was staying to work while she had her “dates.” I would bet money she was leaving the door to the guest room open so I got to hear it all.
Granted, I could have closed her office door, but I couldn’t miss out on her cries of pleasure and every fucking noise she made when she came.
I did, however, want to punch the guys in the face who got to be in bed with her. The only thing that saved them was they treated her like a queen.
She lavished them with praise and affection while they played, building up their egos higher than they probably deserved, and then they left and I’d get back to work and spend more time with her.
Why the fuck was I torturing myself like that?
What was it about this woman I wasn’t even sure if I liked that drove me so insane and desperate for her?
After seeing that Mrs. Claus outfit I moved by the stairs when she started playing with that Travis guy and his friend and jerked off. I came harder from that than all the other sex I’d had besides her.
I didn’t know what to do, but a week of her and driving me crazy and I lost my ever loving mind.
Friday we were at her house while I worked on her office computer and she was working on some spell idea she’d had. I thought it odd she did it there when she had the brew house. But she said she only did new potions or spells at her house because it was warded big time to be safe, and with so much less foot traffic, she never had to worry.
It made sense, but when I walked into the kitchen for more coffee and she was leaned over measuring something, her pert ass peeking out under another miniskirt, I snapped. I set down the mug and moved over to her, putting my hands on the counter on either side of her as I leaned down and inhaled deeply. Her hair always smelled like the mint her eyes were the color of but with something else.
“If I reach under this skirt you’re teasing me with yet again and find your pussy wet, you’re going to get on your knees and suck me off for all this torture you’ve put me through,” I threatened, moving my hand to her ass.
“Freeze,” she ordered, and I did, shocked at myself for what I said and how I was acting.
But then I realized it wasn’t just me but she’d frozen me with her magic.
I couldn’t move at all.
Oh crap.
“Follow,” she said next as she slid away from me. I didn’t fight the spell, moving easily after her as she led me to the back stairs and up a flight. Then we moved into the guest room. “Undress.”
