Wicked Harmony

Chapter 16 | Iri

Chapter 16

Iri

I ’ve just returned from another post-midnight grocery store run when someone steps into the dim kitchen. There’s a muffled bang and subsequent swearing as Sin collides with the kitchen island, telling me she’s at least half asleep.

I spin around and she shrieks like she’s being murdered as she spots me, throwing her hands up in the air. I try to put my own hands up, like she’s the cops, but all that does is cause me to throw a box of cereal clean over my head directly into the cupboard above me. It clatters against the other boxes, knocking them down like skittles, and we both wince at the racket they make.

“Shit. You scared me,” she pants. “Did you just try to throw cereal at my head?”

“No.” My heart’s going a mile a minute and I pause, waiting for the others to come charging to Sin’s rescue.

... nothing.

Wow. She really screamed the house down, but clearly it wasn’t enough to wake anyone.

“If I’d meant to throw it at you, I would have chucked it in front of me, not behind,” I tell her.

Fuck knows why that’s what comes out of my mouth, but it is.

It doesn’t help that she looks rumpled, and she smells like wet puss... No. Oranges. She smells of oranges. Or at least I think she does .

What is happening here? To me? It’s like her unexpected appearance has shocked my brain clean out of my head. Or maybe I left it in the car like a forgotten box of cookies.

“What’s that?” Sin asks, filling a glass of water and drinking deeply before gesturing to the box on the island. The one I’m pretending doesn’t exist.

I try to throw it in the trash without her noticing, but it’s too big and bulky, so I wind up sticking it under the sink with the cleaning stuff. Ignoring her question, I continue to restock the fridge, hoping she doesn’t notice the entire shelf dedicated to her favorite type of juice.

Not that I’ve asked her favorite.

Or... at least I haven’t asked Sin directly. In fact, I don’t think we’ve had a conversation that wasn’t about work in the past week and a half since she joined us.

But I may have asked Sin’s friend Elara about her favorites as soon as we got here. And she was more than happy to give me the full lowdown.

I’m not entirely sure why I felt the need to fill the cupboards with Sin’s favorite things, but she’s been working hard and needs fuel for that.

It’s only now that I'm seeing the packed cupboards with her in the room, I realize that it’s weird for me to know as much as I do about her when we’ve barely had a conversation.

“Fan mail?” she asks, clearly still caught up on the package that definitely isn’t too big to close the cupboard properly.

When I smack my shin on the half open cupboard, I decide pretending it doesn’t exist isn’t working for me. So, I dump it back onto the counter and glare at it instead.

“Package from my mother,” I reply. “Better to pretend it never arrived and burn without opening it. ”

She raises her eyebrows, reaching toward it, and I realize she’s not wearing a bra.

Fuck. Me. My eyes shoot up to the ceiling.

The movement also causes the scent of her to waft in my direction. She definitely smells like wet pussy AND oranges. My dick likes the smell very much and twitches in my pants.

Double fuck. What the hell is going on with me? I’m a professional, dammit. I’ve never gotten horny over an employee before.

Especially not a flighty employee that I’ve had to move into my home for fear she might disappear on me.

Maybe it was a shitty idea to move her in here. Although I can’t say I regret it.

“You’re seriously not going to open a package from your mother?” she asks. “Can I?”

I find myself nodding before I can stop myself and she grins at me before grabbing a knife and slitting the top open. For some reason, that causes my dick to twitch, too.

I’m not sure if it’s the grin or the knife, or the confidence she shows while opening it.

I avert my eyes as she pulls out a bunch of packing peanuts, rooting through them until she plucks out what looks like a miniature grill. Sin opens the lid, snorts, and promptly shuts it again.

“Huh. It’s a grill,” she says. “One that apparently shapes all your food so they look like dicks.”

Of course it fucking is.

“Your mom seems fun,” she says, not even trying to disguise her grin.

“Chaos demon,” I mutter. “Spreads chaos and eats it up with a damn spoon.”

“What sort of demon are you? I’ve never... I don’t think I’ve ever seen you feed.” She opens her mouth and shuts it again. “I’ve just realized that might be a personal question I shouldn’t be asking. ”

“No. No. Ask away, love,” I say, then freeze myself at the slip of my tongue.

I’m definitely losing control here. Of the house. Of my dick. And my sanity.

“I don’t feed on anything in particular,” I tell her. “Strong emotion. Doesn’t matter what kind.”

She eyes the grill again, trying and failing to hide her amusement.

“She showed up the first time we were on tour. Brought an entire flock of fucking geese with her. Have you ever tried to get an entire flock of geese out of a dressing room?”

Sin’s laughing now, her eyes gleaming as she lets out a full cackle.

Yeah, my dick’s no longer half hard.

I hold up my scarred arms. “Half of these are from those fucking geese. And getting goose shit out of the carpet was no joke.”

She stops cackling, just about. “Seriously?”

Well, no.

“I’m lying about the scars,” I tell her.

“Is your mom why you like to organize things so much? Everything in its place?” She eyes the row of cereal boxes behind my head, all perfectly aligned.

I quickly close the cupboard door, hoping she doesn’t notice we have five boxes of her favorites side by side.

“No doubt,” I reply, clearing my throat awkwardly. “When my therapist suggested the same thing, my mother somehow found out and you don’t want to know what she sent him. I was blacklisted after that.”

She snorts and her face breaks into another full grin.

Huh, maybe being blacklisted was worth it.

I need to pull myself together and remember what we’re doing here. She’s here to do a job—to help us put on the best damn tour in living memory, and for my brothers to find their spark again .

“Come by the practice studio tomorrow, around eleven,” I tell her. “I’d like to see what you’ve come up with so far for the tour. Ideas. Designs. Wherever you’re at so far.”

I don’t miss the way she swallows, or the apprehension rolling off her with my words. I put it down to her being nervous to show her work and shrug it off.

“Y-yep, I can do that,” she says, before clearing her throat.

I nod, grabbing my mother’s gift and heading for the garage. “Good. Right. Until tomorrow then.”