Unholy Pleasures (Half-breed Series Book 4) Read online

  I’m not sure who won that round. Bridget pinched Irix’s ass right before a critical shot and he ended up sinking the wrong ball. We were all touching—arms, thighs, a hand tucking someone’s hair back.

  “This is our last round,” Austin announced when the eight ball slid into a corner pocket. He exchanged a quick glance with Bridget who nodded in approval. “Do you both want to come back to our place for drinks? We’re only a few blocks away.”

  We followed them out, Bridget and I leading the way and walking hand-in-hand. She was tipsy, excited, her fingers curling against my palm as she pulled me to her side. We got to their house first and Bridget fumbled with the key, reluctant to let go of my hand.

  “There.” She turned to me, an uncertain smile on her face.

  So I kissed her. My fingers gentle against the edge of her jaw, my lips soft and feather-light against hers. After a brief, teasing touch, I pulled just far enough away that we shared a breath. She leaned toward me, and I took the hint. This time our kiss deepened, tongues touching and exploring. Purses hit the ground and I felt Bridget’s touch against my waist, her other hand at the base of my skull, fingers pushing through my hair as she gripped the back of my head.

  “Now that’s totally hot,” Austin said. From his voice I could tell he and Irix were only a few feet away on the porch.

  Bridget broke our kiss, her hand coming forward to cup my cheek. “Inside?”

  Her voice was husky, her eyes on my mouth. “Yes,” I told her, making sure she knew that I was saying ‘yes’ to everything and anything.

  Her lips curled into a smile and her eyes briefly met mine. “Shall we let them watch, or make them go away?”

  “I want them to watch. And if they’re very good boys, maybe we’ll let them join in.”

  She caught her breath. She wasn’t the only one. I distinctly heard Austin do the same and Irix’s low chuckle. Bridget pushed the door open and pulled me inside, leaving the boys to grab our purses and follow. Five steps in and we were once more in each other’s arms, hands and lips everywhere. Clothing made its way to the floor piece by piece, all while we edged our way to the bedroom.

  Thought blurred into sensation as we collapsed onto the bed, exploring each other. I was barely aware of Austin and Irix joining us, their hands caressing our skin and occasionally brushing against each other. Pheromones filled the air, languorous and rich as dark chocolate. I made sure Bridget came, then Irix did the same before we all joined together, finding a different pleasure in each stroke and touch.

  It was close to dawn by the time Irix and I got dressed to leave, exchanging contact information with Austin and Bridget before heading out of the apartment and to our car in the empty parking lot of the darkened pool hall.

  Irix wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me next to him and placing a quick kiss on the top of my head as he unlocked the car. “Feel better?”

  I was humming with energy. I felt loved, cherished, strong. There was a time when I’d hated my succubus self, and there were still times I lamented that the human world thought me a slut, but tonight wasn’t one of those times. Tonight my succubus self shone, and my elven half was happy to rest in the background. There were still troubles ahead with the elves, the plague demons, and the fate of a vineyard, but for now I was floating in happiness.

  “Much better. Tonight was amazing.”

  Irix swatted my ass lightly as I climbed into the car. His golden eyes adoring as he watched me tuck my dress around my legs. “You were amazing.”

  Chapter 15

  I waited to be last in line to get my assignment the next morning and pulled Jorge aside.

  “You’re up in front of the winery today,” he told me. “There are some big tours coming in this weekend and Richard wants all the annuals replaced with fresh begonias and impatiens. Everything has to be lush and in bloom. Eat lunch inside, then afterward spend the rest of the day with the production group in the winery.”

  It was exactly what I’d wanted, what I’d been silently grousing about not doing. But now that I’d been offered the opportunity to experience the other parts of the vineyard and winery, I found myself reluctant to leave the fields and the plants I’d come to consider mine.

  But this was what my internship was supposed to be about—gaining knowledge and experience in all the facets of large-scale, commercial wine production facilities from vines to bottle to marketing and sales. And this would make it so much easier to follow Irix’s mandate. I wouldn’t be tempted at every turn to heal a sick vine if I didn’t have them right in front of my nose eight hours per day.

  I glanced over at Manny, Rosa, Henry, and Scotty laughing and joking together as they got into the golf carts to make their way to their respective fields for the day. My friends. Hopefully I’d see them again and that I’d like the staff in the winery just as much as I had these guys. Either way, I was going to seriously miss Rosa’s empanadas.

  “Will do.” I reluctantly handed Jorge my clipboard. “I know I wasn’t supposed to be here after my shift, but I need to let you know that I was checking some of the vines the night before last and someone came up and hit me on the back of the head.”

  “What?” Jorge’s eyes widened. “Why didn’t you tell someone? Are you hurt? You’ll need to file a worker’s comp claim.”

  “No, I’m fine. Really. I just wanted to tell you. I saw Hallwyn working late too, and with the vandalism the other night, I’m thinking we need more security cameras.”

  Security cameras that might catch an elf or a plague demon sabotaging the harvest.

  “We will definitely get those up. I’ll let Hallwyn know, too. She didn’t say anything yesterday, so I’m guessing she left before whoever assaulted you got there.”

  Or she was the one who assaulted me, although after our conversation with Txipa yesterday, I believed it was one of the plague demons who had whacked me in the back of the head. Either way, cameras would be a big help. And the next time I stayed late and tried to heal vines, I was going to make sure I stayed aware of my surroundings.

  “I also wanted to ask, is Boone continuing to have the same issues with their vines as we are? I was down there the other day for a tasting and got to wondering, since they’re so close. The manager didn’t seem to think their elf was eradicating the vine diseases as quickly and effectively as they’d expected.”

  Jorge blinked in surprise. “You know, I’ll have to call them and see. I spoke to Sean over there a few months ago and he said they were bringing in an elf to take care of a stubborn downy mildew issue. I’d assumed that was the only problem they were having. And I figured they weren’t having any problems since they hired their elf. Between them, Santor, and Boone Valley, Richard was considering bringing an elf of our own on board. Once we started really having problems in the field, he was convinced, and we had Hallwyn within a few days. Sean seemed pretty happy with theirs, and we’d been having reoccurring cases of black measles, bunch rot, downy mildew, and more.”

  “I wonder how effective their elf is compared to the pesticides and other methods,” I mused. Was the elf at Boone Valley just as much of a fraud as Hallwyn? Sean had hinted that he wasn’t completely convinced the elf was worth the money, but maybe his expectations were too high. Maybe Hallwyn just really sucked.

  But elven incompetence didn’t explain why we were being hit with every single disease and pest known to vintnering at the same time.

  Jorge shrugged. “I’ll ask. I know they’re competition and all that, but I hope they’re not having the black measles and Phomopsis and cutworms and leafrollers like we are. Although we weren’t having those issues either until a month ago.”

  At least the diseases hadn’t coincided with my arrival and I didn’t find myself being blamed for the failed crops. Jorge’s words did give me something to think about, though. Was Boone Valley lucky enough to get an elf that actually knew what the heck she was doing, or maybe they were keeping mum about the significant issues they were continuing to
have with their plants and crops.

  Either way, I’d need to wait to find out. Right now I had begonias and impatiens to plant and winery production staff to talk to. “Thanks, Jorge. See you tomorrow?”

  He shook my hand. “Report to Nancy in the winery tomorrow morning. I think you’ll be there for the next week or so. Although if someone gets sick or we get slammed out here, I may ask for you back. You’re one heck of a botanist, Amber. I don’t know whether you’ll decide to pursue field work or chemistry, or production, but I’m hoping you wind up back in my crew before your internship ends. I’ve never met someone right out of college that has your knowledge of plants, diseases, and pests. You’ve got quite a future ahead of you.”

  “Thank you.” I was glowing at his praise, and smiled the whole way up to the winery. Here I’d been grumbling about being stuck in the field to do manual labor, feeling that no one appreciated my talents or my potential, and all the time Jorge had been noticing. It made me feel good. It made me wonder if I wouldn’t possibly consider a career in the wine industry. Although I was equally excited about working on the wetlands with Jordan. Could I do both?

  Wait. I was a half-elf/half-succubus. I’d live for tens of thousands of years. I most certainly could do both. I could do anything I wanted. And that thought made me smile even more.

  I walked to the winery and came face-to-face with Hallwyn. I nearly collided with her, both of us stopping abruptly and staring while doing that dance to try and get around each other. After a few steps she stopped, blocking my way down the hall.

  “It wasn’t me.”

  I blinked at her, not sure what to make of her words. She wasn’t looking at me as if I were a horrible half-elf monster than she needed to kill, or even as if I were an insolent human who had insulted her. She looked worried, and…concerned.

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “Yeah, you said that. Wasn’t you what?”

  Her shoulders slumped, her face relaxing in relief. “I thought you’d blame me. I was angry, and I know I said that I should kill you for calling me a fraud, but I wouldn’t have done it. And I wouldn’t have snuck back and hit you in the head either. Jorge told me what happened, warned me to be careful if I was working after hours. I ran up here because I figured you had assumed I was the one who had assaulted you.”

  I’d been healing a vine at the time I’d been whacked in the head. If it had been Hallwyn, we’d be having a much different conversation right now. Obviously it wasn’t her or she’d be trying to stab me or fry me with a fireball to erase my distasteful impure genetic existence.

  “I’ll admit I did suspect you. You threatened me. And you clearly don’t like me. Not that you seem to like any of us.”

  “Of course I don’t like any of you. I can hear you making fun of me. I know you hate me. We enslaved you. We’re smarter, more beautiful, more evolved than you are. We elves are in every way your superior. Of course you hate me. I don’t expect any of you to like me, but I won’t stoop to physically assaulting you. Even if the angels hadn’t forbidden us, I wouldn’t harm a human. You’re base creatures who can’t help being two evolutionary steps from primordial ooze.”

  And now I did hate her. “You’re a bitch. None of us like you because you’re a horrible, nasty bitch who thinks she’s better than all of us and that humans have nothing of value to offer you or the world. And guess what? That means you’re going to be really lonely here. This isn’t Hel. You don’t have a pretty forest kingdom to dance and sing in and congratulate yourselves on how wonderful you all are. You’re going to need to drive our metal cars, work for us, eat our food, live next door to us. And if you don’t stop being a stuck-up jerk, you’re going to spend every night of your very long life all alone in a ratty-ass apartment eating Ramen noodles and watching Three’s Company re-runs. You won’t have any friends. No one will care if someone robs you on the street corner, or if you fall down the subway stairs, or get hit by a bus.” I leaned closer. “And no one will care if a demon hits you in the back of the head one night while you’re out in the vineyard. Jorge was concerned when I told him what happened to me. My co-workers would be concerned about me, would be crushed if I’d ended up in the hospital or dead. But you? No one would even go to your funeral. So stick that in your pipe and smoke it.”

  I pushed past her and stomped down the hall, not caring if she attacked me for insulting her. She was a bitch. And I’d had it with her bullshit. Any sympathy she’d gained the other day eating alone in the golf cart was gone. She deserved to lose her job. She deserved to have some plague demon smash her head in. She deserved to get fired for incompetence and sent back to Elf Island where she could rot for the rest of her life.

  But there was one problem with my anger-fueled internal tirade. DiMarche didn’t deserve to fall apart. And those vines in the field didn’t deserve to die.

  As horrible as Hallwyn was, as much as I wanted to wash my hands of the whole thing and let that stupid elf crash and burn, I couldn’t. Because I couldn’t let this company or those innocent plants suffer.

  Which meant if I wanted to help this vineyard, I was going to have to go head-to-head against a pair of pissed-off plague demons.

  Chapter 16

  The begonias and impatiens were easy work. The sun was shining. My hands were dark with the rich, loamy soil. The smell of flowers in bloom mixed with the fresh scent of dirt and the tang of mulch filled my nose. When the last plant was set, I went in to wash my hands and join the rest of the production and tasting-room staff for lunch.

  There was a bus load of tourists arriving for a tasting at one, so the retail staff were rushing to finish and be back by then. The production folks were a bit more leisurely about their lunch time, discussing various sports teams as well as some reality show that was rumored to be setting up the next town over. I saw someone sit down next to me and turned, not surprised to see Matthieu.

  He gave me a dazzling smile. “You’re the intern. I saw you a few weeks back, but then you vanished. They must have stuck you in the fields.”

  Obviously I hadn’t been in the winery long enough for my turn on the rotation or I would have already received the “tour”. “Yes, I’m Amber Lowry, the summer intern. Jorge has had me trimming and tying in the field for the last two weeks, but I’ll be here for at least the next week or so learning the production and retail end.”

  “Do you have a passion for wine, Amber?”

  I’d never seen such a practiced come-hither look before. It was difficult to keep from laughing. If I’d been a normal twenty-two-year-old intern, I might have swooned at his sexy good looks and attention, but I was a half-succubus who made this guy look like an amateur. I’d probably screwed more humans in the last week than he had in the last two months. At least. And besides, as sexy as he might be, Matthieu had nothing on Irix. But then again, it was hardly fair to compare a human player to a sex demon.

  Still, Matthieu was amazingly good-looking with warm, golden brown hair that hung around his head in thick waves, dark brown sultry eyes, high cheekbones and a sculpted jaw with full, slightly pouty lips. He was broad shouldered, slim but obviously very fit with long-fingered hands and muscled arms. I wondered how much of his value at DiMarche was in his ability to taste and judge the quality of wine and how much was due to his striking good looks.

  Didn’t matter. I was totally going to fuck this guy. And unlike the rest of the girls he’d given his “tour” to, I’d be one he’d never forget. Ever. For the rest of his life.

  “I have a passion for many things,” I told him with a knowing smile. “I like to think of myself as a hedonist. Music. Art. Wine. Food.” I hesitated a split second. “Love.”

  His pupils dilated, his breath catching. This was so easy. I didn’t even have to use pheromones. Gotta love a player.

  “Meet me here when you’re off work and I’ll give you the tour,” Matthieu said, getting up from the lunch table, and giving me a knowing smile before heading back to the tasting room. />
  Damn straight he was going to give me a tour, and he was going to love every minute of it.

  I temporarily forgot about Matthieu as I worked in the production area staring into huge vats of smashed up grapes while I learned about yeasts and residual sugars and the different fermentation techniques. I’ll admit the huge machines that were for de-stemming the grapes, crushing them, fermenting, straining, aging, and bottling were impressive. It was a far cry from the little plastic barrels my friends had used to make their kitchen-sink Merlot. As fascinating as it all was, by the time my shift had ended, I knew I could never make a career at this end of the business. I needed to be in the fields with the plants. Hopefully after a week or so here I could convince Jorge to take me back in the field where I could do what I did best…. Well, what I did but no one realized.

  After work I went back to the tasting room and met Matthieu. He smiled at me and wiggled his eyebrows. “Ready for the tour?”

  I let myself admire him once more, from his sculptured good-looks, to the way his slim, toned body filled out the dark gray silk pants and soft white shirt. He’d unbuttoned the collar of his shirt and I eyed the smooth tan column of skin.

  “Ready,” I replied. Boy was I ever ready. Grab a hit of energy from this guy, then, against all better judgement, go out into the fields and see if I could heal a row or two before heading back to the trailer. I was willing to bet Matthieu had the sort of sex drive that would not only give me a rush today, but would continue to supply me for decades. He probably had sex five or six times a week if not more. This was exactly the kind of guy I liked to feast on, the kind that I didn’t mind siphoning energy from and firmly tying to me. I wouldn’t turn the guy into a babbling fool, but I’d make sure he never forgot me, and that he sent a gift of energy my way each time he got lucky.