by Tate James
Having four hot husbands is great … but the death threats, not so much.
Elements of Mischief
Elements of Mischief © 2017 C.M. Stunich and Katrina Fischer
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For information address Sarian Royal Indie Publishing, 89365 Old Mohawk Rd, Springfield, OR 97478.
Contact the authors at their websites
www.cmstunich.com and www.tatejamesauthor.com
Cover art and design © Amanda Carroll
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, businesses, or locales is coincidental and is not intended by the author.
For Arizona Tape, Lucy Smoke, Britt Rauch, Siobhan Peck, Anita Maxwell, Kate Fischer and Caitlin Morgan.
Don't kill us.
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Authors' Note
Welcome to "Elements of Mischief", the first book in a new reverse harem paranormal romance series called "Hijinks Harem". Before you read, prepare yourself for steamy sex scenes including a tiny bit of male-male and group sex, as well as copious amounts of mischief, mayhem, and plumber puns. This book does't take itself too seriously, but we hope you love it as much as we do.
Writing with love and humor, Tate James and C.M. Stunich
The sound of shattering glass echoed through the huge, empty kitchen as my wine slipped from my fingers and I choked over what I'd just heard. Clutching my phone to my ear, I took a breath before responding.
“It's going to cost me how much?” I needed to clarify because surely I'd just heard him wrong.
“Seventeen thousand, ma'am. And to be honest, that's a stretch. If we ran into any more unexpected problems along the way, that price would go up.” The man on the other end was so matter-of-fact about it. So uncaring that he was delivering such gut-wrenching news to me. “Look, I'm not going to fuck around on this. It's a seriously old house, and no one has touched that plumbing practically since the day it was installed. I just don't think I have the manpower to spare on a job like this right now.”
“But what am I supposed to do?” I hated the fact that my voice had just come out in a whimpering squeak, like a pathetic little girl. I was a tough bitch normally, but not having a toilet in the house was rough. For the last few days, I'd been walking three blocks to an antique store just to pee. “I can't live here without any plumbing, and I already gave up my apartment …”
Of course this guy didn't care about my problems. He didn't care that my grandmother had just died and left me her crumbling Victorian mansion, or that I had just spent nearly every cent to my name on her funeral. Truth was, I would have had to give up my apartment regardless, because I no longer had any way to pay my rent since I was fired from my job at the local coffee shop. They simply hadn't understood why I needed so much time off to care for my grandmother in her final weeks. It was kind of lucky, in that case, that Gram had left me this house or I really would have been out on the street.
“I'd usually tell you to sell it, but no one will buy it without working plumbing so you don't really have a choice here, ma'am.” The man was still speaking, oblivious to my descent into desperation, and I sucked in a shaking breath, swiping the dampness off my cheeks with the back of my hand.
“Can you recommend anyone else?” I asked politely, but my voice shook like a leaf in a blizzard. There wasn't anything quite so stressful as having toilets that didn't flush. “I'm not from around here so I don't know where else to find good plumbers.”
A long sigh came down the phone.
“Yeah, look, I'll put in a good word for you with my son and his friends. They're just starting out with their own business, so they've probably got the time free to take on a job like this. He might cut you a deal or a payment plan or something, but no guarantees. At least you'll know he learned from the best.”
“Oh, god that would be … fucking incredible!” Relief flooded over me. This plumbing needed fixing, but I was flat broke. The next door neighbor's tree roots had messed up all of the plumbing in Gram's mansion, meaning none of the taps, toilets or anything was working. It had been years since Gram had done any maintenance whatsoever, so who knew how bad the damage was?
“Don't thank me yet,” the man grunted, “these boys are known around these parts for having a bit of a wild streak. Personally, I wouldn't hire them—even with my son involved—but you're not exactly in a position to be picky so …”
“Uh, right.” Asshole, no need to rub it in. “So do you have a contact number for them?”
“No need. I'll let them know about the job and they can get in touch with you.” He sounded a bit reluctant, like he was already regretting his suggestion. Hopefully not because of how big this job was? Or maybe he was worried about those famed wild streaks?
But please. Plumbers? How crazy could they be? I imagined them all in their late forties with big bellies and butt cracks covered in wiry hair. No, thank you. How much action could they really be getting?
“Thank you so much, sir. I really appreciate it,” I gushed politely. Never hurt to have manners. More flies with honey and all that … Or wait, flies were actually more attracted to shit, huh? Which is what I was going to be ankle-deep in if I didn't get this plumbing fixed.
“Don't thank me yet,” he muttered, then disconnected our call.
Strange man. Fuck I need more wine.
I eyed the mess of glass and liquid on the tiled floor, then shrugged to myself and grabbed the bottle. No one else was here to judge me. Swigging straight from the bottle, I headed back into the living room to watch Pretty Little Liars, my guilty obsession.
Hey, it was better than the Maury Show, right?
But only by a little.
The obnoxious chiming of my grandmother's doorbell woke me, and I made a mental note to disconnect it. Or at least change the tune. My head was pounding and my eyelids felt like they were lined with sandpaper. Cracking one open, I spotted the empty bottle of wine on the carpet in front of my face; I must have passed out in front of the TV.
Groaning, I hauled myself off the couch when the doorbell played its cheery tune once more.
Who the fuck is at my door?
“Fuck me, I'm coming!” I yelled, not caring who I was snapping at. My hangover didn't discriminate. “What?” I slammed the front door open and was momentarily blinded by bright sunlight streaming in from behind my visitor.
“You must be Arizona,” a husky voice commented, and I blinked to clear the spots from my vision.
“Ari,” I corrected, “who the fuck are you?”
With my eyes adjusting to the light, I inspected my visitor, then blinked a couple more times in case my eyes were playing tricks on me.
The man on my doorstep stood well over six feet, with broad, lumberjack shoulders and rough stubble shading his jaw. His denim blue eyes, framed with lush black lashes, were laughing at me as they dragged a slow path all over my body. My skin seemed to ripple and react with the path of his gaze and I knew my nipples were standing out like headlights through the thin cotton of my tank top.
“Charlie told me you were in need of a plumber. I'm Shane, but everyone just calls me Skeeter …” He held out his hand for me to shake, and threw me a sexy wink.
“A plumber, right,” I said slowly, trying to blink through the haze of my han
gover. Were his eyes really that blue or did I just have too much grape juice running through my veins to see clearly? I bit my lower lip and shifted slightly, wishing I was wearing more than just an oversized tank and boyshorts … or maybe less? I wasn't sure. Too much wine. “Please, come inside.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them.
“I'd love to come inside, thank you, darlin',” he purred, his voice warm and liquid, sliding over my body and making me shiver—but not from the cool, October breeze blowing in from outside. No, this shiver was all heat.
Of course he has a Southern accent, I thought as I stepped aside to let him pass. As if it wasn't bad enough that my entire downstairs bathroom was flooded, now the space between my thighs was, too. Keep it together, Ari, I warned myself as Shane—or Skeeter or whatever tall, dark, and handsome wanted to call himself—set down his toolbox and crossed his arms over his massive chest.
“Something the matter, sugar?” he asked, looking me over like maybe, just maybe, he liked what he saw. “You're sweatin' like a whore in church.”
“A whore in what?” I asked, but maybe I was still nursing a morning after drunk because I didn't push it. “Do you want me to show where the problem areas are?”
Shane's mouth split into a wide grin, this wolfish leer that made me want to pull my shirt down over my panties. Or up. Maybe I wanted to pull it up? Why didn't I put any friggin' pants on before I let this guy in?!
“Is the, uh, rest of your team on the way?” I asked casually, wondering if I should, like, offer him some sweet tea or something. Isn't that what Southern people always drink? I felt like I was being particularly unhospitable. But what the bloody hell did I know? My mum was from Australia, my dad was from the UK, and I was born in … Hoboken. But that was beside the point. I'd just realized I'd let some random dude into my house without first checking his ID, putting pants on, or calling to check any of his references.
I could very well be looking at the next Ted effing Bundy.
Please don't kill me, I thought as I cleared my throat and raised a questioning brow.
“So … Charlie told me that you started this business with some friends?”
“Oh, they're around,” Shane said, running a hand up and down the inked perfection of his bicep. It took more effort than I had in me to look away. “Why don't you show me where I should get started, sugar, and we'll get your pipes all cleaned out.”
I had no idea how to respond to that.
A few hours later, I decided my frigid Northeastern hospitality was a little too cold for comfort and managed to whip up a pitcher of lemonade (while drinking a glass or two or five of Merlot) for Shane. Making my way down the creepy old hallway, I tried to steel myself for yet another quote that I couldn't afford. Sure, Shane was a bit of a weirdo (a hot weirdo), but the truth was, baristas don't exactly make enough to keep savings accounts. I was down a job, had a bank account in the two figure range that needed to last me until I found a new one, and a house with toilets that didn't flush.
What else could go wrong?
I'd just turned the corner toward the downstairs bathroom when I stopped dead in my tracks.
No way.
No fucking way.
The bathroom wall had been opened up by the last plumbing crew I'd had in here to give me a quote, but the pipes were completely dismantled, and coming out of them … was a thing. Yeah, I know, not very descriptive, but whatever it was defied words. I was barista, not a goddamn author.
A trail of water curled out of the pipe, clear and blue and animated, with a head like a dog and horns like a goat. It looked like a fucking dragon. As I stood there gaping, Shane coaxed it even further into the bathroom and stood back with a stupid, cocky male grin on his face.
“What's the damage in there, Reg?” he asked the water-thing as it curled its hooked claws into the wall and hung there like a goddamn lizard.
“I have no clue,” it snapped at him, turning its head almost completely around on its watery neck. “I can't see a damn thing in there with George's fat ass in my way.”
“Hey,” another voice growled back, emanating from the darkness of the pipe, “do you want to do this yourself, Reg? There's a two hundred year old oak making its home in the plumbing of this house; it has just as much right to be here as anyone else.”
“If you weren't such a tree hugger, we'd be done with this job already,” the water-thing said back, its voice rife with sarcasm.
“You want to say that to my face, Reginald Bartholomew Copthorne?” the other voice continued, head sliding from the pipe to glare at the water dragon. This particular thing looked similar to the first, only it was made of bark. Like, tree bark. Like a second dragon coming out of a pipe in my wall.
Apparently, I had an issue with shocking news and breaking glasses because as soon as I saw … well, whatever it was that I was looking at in that bathroom … I dropped both the pitcher of lemonade and the glass full of ice cubes to the floor.
“Holy shit,” I whispered, putting my hands to my lips.
They must've heard the glass break because suddenly all three sets of eyes in that bathroom were looking my way.
“Oh, hell, now look what you've done!” the wooden dragon said, staring at me with its mud colored gaze. It slithered from the pipe next, tail twitching, tiny green shoots unfurling from its skin. “She's seen us already. I told you this job was going to be more complicated than we thought.”
“Hey there, honey doll,” Shane said slowly, coming out of the bathroom with his hands raised in surrender. “It's all gonna be okay …”
I stood there for a moment, my eyes bulging out of my skull and wished with every breath I took that I'd finished off that bottle of wine.
Then my eyes rolled back in my head, and I passed out.
Blinking my eyes slowly, I frowned at the crumbling decorative ceiling of my grandmother's living room. Did I pass out on the couch again?
“Shhhh!” A harsh whisper came from somewhere near my head. “She's waking up!”
With a gasp, I sat up sharply, spinning to face the speaker.
“Who the fuck are you?” I exclaimed, eyeing up the gorgeous man sitting cross-legged in the middle of my coffee table. He wore only a pair of threadbare sweatpants, with no shirt or shoes. His skin seemed to be an almost unnatural shade of bronze and his eyes were a deep, woody brown.
“Is that just your standard greeting, or are we special, darlin'?” Shane, or Skeeter, purred as he stepped into my line of sight, holding out a glass of wine which I accepted somewhat reluctantly—but only because a stranger had given it to me, not because of the wine. I wanted the goddamn wine. “We couldn't find any other drinks in your kitchen, so I hope wine's okay at this time o' day?”
I took a really big gulp before responding.
“Wine's fine. Fucking Christ knows I need it right now.” Arching an eyebrow at both Skeeter and the drool worthy man on my coffee table, I cleared my throat nervously. “Does one of you want to explain what the fuck I just saw in my bathroom?”
“What do you think you saw?” A laughing voice asked from the other end of the couch and I jumped halfway out of my skin with fright. How the hell did I not see the third tattooed hunk sitting right next to me?
“What … how the …” Words seemed to have escaped me so I took another large gulp of my wine. Shit that's good stuff.
“You were saying?” The cocky asshole slid closer to me on the couch, his warm thigh pressing into mine and sending tingling shivers through my body.
“I saw … fucking dragons or some shit, in my bathroom. Who the hell are you two? And what are you doing in my house? Are you serial killers or something? Because I won't make this an easy kill for you.” My voice was shaking (possibly more with lust than fear) and I couldn't take my eyes off this new guy as he slid his warm hand onto my knee. “Oh god, you're rapists aren't you?”
“Sounds like you've been drinking too much wine, beautiful,” the overly friendly man
chuckled, his hand creeping higher up my leg. Dressed as I was in tiny short-shorts, there was a whole lot of exposed leg for him to touch. I slapped at his hand, and he withdrew it with a throaty masculine laugh.
“Back off, Reg,” Shane growled, propping his tattooed hands on his hips. I had mentally decided to stick with Shane, as he was way too damn beautiful to be called Skeeter. “She flat-out saw you two in your elemental forms; don't try and convince her she was imagining things.”
“Told you to lock the door,” the guy on the table muttered, rolling his eyes. “Don't worry, Arizona, we are not rapists.”
“Wait, so I wasn't imagining those … things … in my bathroom? The lizard-y dragon things? They were …” I turned back to the two sexy as fuck men who I hadn't been introduced to yet. Coffee Table Guy had brown eyes, the color of wet earth after a rainstorm, that looked awfully familiar.
“Were what?” Perv Guy prodded, the sound of his voice sparking my memory. “Remarkably similar to me and Earth First! over here?” He jerked his thumb at Coffee Table Guy and then laid his hand oh-so-smoothly on my leg again. “That ain't no coincidence, doll baby—that was us.”
“That was you two?” I managed to choke out, even though—let's be honest—that was kind of a ridiculous conclusion to come to. I blamed it on the wine. It was a lot easier to apologize for being ridiculous when you had wine.
Reg, the handsy one on the couch, threw me a saucy wink and crept his hand a little higher on my thigh. I pried his fingers off—squeezing them hard enough that I hoped one might break—but he didn't seem to mind.
He just smiled at me with lips carved from sex and sin, his blue eyes the color of the lake on a bright summer day. His dark blonde hair was cropped short and his gaze was full of mischievous promises and playful bullshit.
“In the flesh,” he drawled, sweeping an inked finger in the air and drawing a small sigil out of water, like he'd collected molecules from the very air. I guess it made some sort of strange sense if he was the water dragon; it also meant the bronze god on my coffee table was the bark one.
