Dangerous Heat: Frayed Book 2, page 1
DANGEROUS HEAT
Frayed
Book 2
OLIVIA LEWIN
Reber Media Company
Copyright © 2022 by Olivia Lewin
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction intended for adults aged 18+. Names, characters, places, and incidents described within are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons is entirely coincidental.
Published by Reber Media Company
Cover design by Moonpress | www.moonpress.co
Created with Vellum
Contents
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Freya
Chapter 2
Emmett
Chapter 3
Freya
Chapter 4
Caspian
Chapter 5
Shan
Chapter 6
Freya
Chapter 7
Oswald
Chapter 8
Emmett
Chapter 9
Freya
Chapter 10
Caspian
Chapter 11
Freya
Chapter 12
Nolan
Chapter 13
Shan
Chapter 14
Freya
Chapter 15
Freya
Chapter 16
Freya
Chapter 17
Nolan
Chapter 18
Nolan
Chapter 19
Oswald
Chapter 20
Freya
Chapter 21
Caspian
Chapter 22
Freya
Chapter 23
Freya
Chapter 24
Emmett
Chapter 25
Nolan
Chapter 26
Freya
Thanks from the author!
Also by Olivia Lewin
About the Author
Author’s Note
Please note Dangerous Heat contains topics that may be triggering or sensitive for some readers. While the content is similar in intensity to Frayed Trust, if you’d like an in-depth content list you can find one at:
lewinauthor.com/contentwarnings
I’ll also note I write in Canadian English, which has slightly different spellings than American English for certain words.
Chapter One
FREYA
When I slipped from the employee lounge, I entered chaos. Crowds of people were hurrying in a crushing wave toward the front and side doors, and I got swept up in it. At first, I couldn’t figure out what had everyone all worked up. Then the crowd thinned around me, everyone else in far more of a hurry to leave, and I spotted the source of the panic.
Holy fucking shit.
There was a hellhound crouched and snarling in the middle of the dance floor, a couple of fae women cowering before it. It was taller than me, each paw the size of my head with talons sharp enough to flay me with ease. Silky black fur made the creature look surprisingly pettable, until I noticed the fire. Flames licked up its back and down its tail, scorching the floor around where it stood.
My understanding was the creatures never left Zemterra because the flames they produced were too hot for Earth. Not to mention how dangerous it would be to let a pack of giant wild flame dogs run around.
“Freya, get the fuck outside,” Mattie’s voice shouted over the chaos and I caught sight of him approaching the beast.
Of course he was going to play the hero. Shan and Caspian had better make sure he wasn’t injured. He may be a vampire, but my boss was a lover more than a fighter. I nodded at him and he turned his attention to the hound. Following the last trickle of patrons to the front door, I stepped off to the side and hid in the coat check alcove, no one paying me any mind.
When all the screams had vacated the building, only the sounds of a fight in the main room remaining, I tentatively stepped out the front double doors and into the night.
Off to my left, crawling on the ground with a series of grunts and groans, was a man I never thought I’d see again. Our gazes locked and his eyes widened to match mine. Why… “Freya—”
He started to speak, but I was quick to shut him up, my wand flicking through the air. Whatever he planned to say, Kylan’s goons didn’t need to hear it. I sensed a presence behind me, even with me reeling as pieces fit together in my mind.
The man whose memories I’d wiped months ago was here, crawling toward the club like he was on a mission. His determination reminded me of someone. Two someones, actually. The one’s I’d just slipped out from underneath.
Plus, he’d known my name, cementing an idea I’d never thought to consider before now. He had to be Em, the third team member who had been out of the field during their mission so far. He’d been out of the field because of me. The Next Life Company would be too cautious to let him loose in the city after coming in contact with a magic-user who’d spelled him. They had witches and fae of their own who could assess for underlying magic, the type that would kill him if he revisited the site of his lost memories.
I’d been on the radar of their employer for far longer than I’d thought.
Internally, I cursed. If Shan had taken the stick out of his ass and told me what was going on, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Any of it. He’d learn the information he’d been lusting after once I was gone, at least. Emmett’s memories were back, and he’d learned what I was months ago. A murderer, and honestly pretty proud of it.
A hand grabbed my arm and I stiffened, turning away from where Emmett was struggling to move. “He gonna be a problem?” the man asked, gesturing with his chin at Em.
“I took care of it,” I said.
Emmett was trying to get to me, his body fighting the magic. I’d taken him by surprise for a second time, though, and he wouldn’t be able to shake off the spell until it faded in a few minutes.
The man’s grip tightened on my arm and I fought the urge to shake him off and growl. I let him lead me away, doing my best not to look back. I lost against the urge and glanced over my shoulder right as we were about to turn the corner into an alleyway. Em’s eyebrows were drawn together and he looked gutted by my leaving, which gave me some insight on how Caspian would feel when he found out what I’d done.
My heart clenched and I spun to look forward again, but not before mouthing the words ‘I’m sorry’. Maybe he would tell Cas I’d apologized. Maybe it would make this less crushing for my incubus.
The man unceremoniously dragging me away was a shifter, heavily tattooed from his face down his neck and expanding along the length of each arm. He was clothed in jeans and a t-shirt, so I couldn’t see the rest of him, but I had to assume he would be covered in ink. His face was handsome in a way that didn’t appeal to me in the slightest, with a scruffy beard and long hair, and when I inhaled a deep breath of his scent, it surprised me.
An Alpha, and he smelled of apples. Crisp and fresh and with a hint of lemon, which I hated but wasn’t disgusted by. There were no gross hints of manure or rot in his scent. None of the warning signs I would usually get from a man who planned to hurt me. My biology didn’t want him, but it wasn’t warning me away either.
We strode through the alley and across a street before darting into another sheltered passageway. I was about to suggest I portal us somewhere to avoid Emmett catching up when a figure stepped out from the darkness. She had long hair going down to her hips in a brilliant shade of orange, and another huff of breath confirmed my body’s confusion wasn’t just with the shifter man. She didn’t trigger a scent response in me either. This woman smelled of oranges and roses, strong because of her Alpha designation. I’d never met a female Alpha before — they weren’t common.
They didn’t speak to me, the man holding my arm to ensure I didn’t run away. Like I would, when they had my cousin in their grasp. The woman pulled a spell book from her pocket and recited the words, her fingers tracing the letters as she spoke them. When she was done she drew a circle in the air, creating a portal that glowed orange.
I’d never seen anyone else’s method of portal creation before. My family never needed to portal anywhere, so I’d learned the skill on my own when I’d moved to the city. The woman was a witch as well, so it wasn’t too different from how I conducted the magic, but her flourishes weren’t the same, and she didn’t use runes.
“Go on,” she said, gesturing.
Her voice was high-pitched and feminine, not revealing anything about how dangerous she must be. If I spoke to her on the phone, I would have assumed she was a child.
The shifter man pushed me in first when I didn’t move, keeping his grip on me through the portal. My head spun faintly, as usual, but righted itself to take in the surroundings. This certainly wasn’t our final destination, seeing as it was another alley smelling of old food and piss. When the woman came through behind us and closed the portal, we hurried through the streets of an unfamiliar part of town until we stopped in another alley and the woman created another portal.
We did the same routine three more times until the woman was sweating buckets and I was tired simply looking at her. I knew why they were doing this — they didn’t want to make it easy to follow us to our destination — but I was confused about why they hadn’t brought a more robust team. I’d never sensed anyone else around. What if I had been disagreeable? What if Shan and Caspian hadn’t been sufficiently distracted? One shifter and a witch wouldn’t have been enough to fight them off.
Everything about the situation was slightly off.
Hurrying me away from the last portal, the man shoved me into the backseat of a nondescript black sedan while the woman got in the driver’s seat. We took off, not going over the speed limit or driving erratically. I still didn’t recognize where we were, which meant we were in a suburb of some kind. The buildings didn’t rise as high into the sky as they did in the downtown core where I spent most of my time. Soon we were in a residential area, pulling into the underground parking of an apartment building six stories tall.
A group of people waited for us in the parkade.
Finally, they were treating me like I was a precious asset. When we parked, a couple rushed to the woman in the front seat, helping her out. The rest of our new entourage surrounded me and the shifter man and marched us toward an elevator. “This is the greeting I was expecting originally,” I commented.
One of the men in front glanced back at me with a cocked eyebrow, before his neighbour elbowed him in the ribs. Everyone else ignored me resolutely. In the elevator we only went up to the second floor, and I discovered it was still a construction zone. The outside of the building had looked complete, but in here the walls didn’t have drywall or insulation, exposed wires trailing along the wooden slats.
I was paraded down a long hallway, flanked on both sides by incomplete walls, until we reached a small finished corner area. Steel bars inscribed with runes cordoned off a small three metre by three metre area, just big enough for a bed, a bit of floor, and a corner with a half wall that I assumed blocked the view of a toilet.
“These are some quality guest accommodations,” I said dryly, letting them shove me through the steel door and lock it behind me.
My body immediately felt the effect of the magic-blocking runes sapping my energy. As long as I didn’t do any magic within the confines of them, they wouldn’t do any harm to me. However, the second I did magic, I’d be drained to near empty and knocked out. I’d used runes like this before on the Alphas I’d tortured and killed.
With me locked away, everyone relaxed. The tattooed shifter man turned to me. “He’ll be with you shortly.”
“Tell him to bring my cousin with him. I won’t be cooperative until I see her.”
He didn’t acknowledge me, turning on his heel and leaving. Two of the men stayed behind, hands clasped in front of them and backs facing me. From this vantage point I couldn’t see anything outside my finished room, and I found myself longing for the slat walls on the rest of the floor. My cage was the only thing in here other than an antique rocking chair in the corner, which was an odd choice. Did Kylan spend his time rocking babies to sleep while he interrogated people?
A few cameras were honed in on me, one inside the cell with more outside looking in. All in all, the cell wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The floor was clean, if a little messy with construction dust. In the corner, the bed smelled of only one person, instead of the many people I’d assumed had occupied this cell in the past. The woman who’d created the portals had made up my bed, too, her scent lingering on the fabric. Even the toilet was clean and new with a little sink on the half wall beside it, the cramped style you saw in airplanes.
I sat down on the bed and turned my head up to the ceiling while I waited, trying to plot my way out of here. There was no way to get out until they’d opened the cage, so I’d have to wait until then. When Kylan came for me, he’d likely have enough guards to make killing him impossible, but would he keep those guards with him while he fucked me? Not for long, I assumed. Or not many guards. I’d have to wait a while until he trusted me not to attack or run, but he would grow complacent.
The dark that had been covering the room slowly decreased until the orange light of sunrise shone on my captors. I’d been here for hours, only moving to use the toilet and lay back down.
“Tell Kylan to stop keeping me in suspense,” I said to my guards.
Neither answered.
My irritation grew as the light did. He was a vampire. They were night creatures, although they didn’t burst into flames in sunlight like some Null lore claimed. Was he planning on leaving me in suspense all day? I was trying to be a good little captive, for Mabel’s sake, but it wasn’t in my nature to play nice for very long.
It must have been another hour before I spoke again. “That asshole is fucking playing with me,” I said. “And I know the tactic. Tell him it won’t work and bring him in here.”
I’d used the tactic myself to make my captives antsy, when I had the time. As much as I said it wasn’t going to work, it absolutely was and my words were proof of it. Once again, my guards didn’t move a muscle away from my cage.
Giving up on looking put together, I paced. There wasn’t much ground to cover, only a few steps across before I was turning back around. It didn’t take long for me to get dizzy from the constant turning, but I kept pacing. Soon, I was mumbling under my breath, irritation morphing into anger.
My plan to be a good captive was already going downhill. Maybe if I had an impassive mask like Shan, I’d be able to fake it better.
All I wanted was for Kylan to get it over with. He would fuck me and knot me and I’d demand he set my cousin free and maybe he’d even do it, or maybe I was naïve to assume so. In any case, I would be here and I would be bruised by the end of the visit whenever he deigned to grace me with his presence. Waiting for my inevitable abuse infuriated me.
Part of me was tempted to do magic so the runes would drain me and I’d end up passed out, because sleep wouldn’t come while I was this wound up.
“You’re a curiosity to watch.”
I jumped and spun to face the outside of my cage, but no one new was present. Both guards were still facing away from me, completely disinterested. My gaze caught on the cameras pointed at me, and I glared.
The masculine voice laughed. “Are you eager to meet me?” he asked, his voice coming from all sides of me, which I hadn’t noticed at first.
His security system emitted sound so he could speak to me while not in my presence. I grit my teeth, trying to be discreet about it. How was I supposed to kill him when he wasn’t in front of me? If I played nice, he might have someone fetch me for his pleasure, so I’d have to try.
“More eager than I’ve ever been in my life.”
Fuck, my tone definitely made it sound like a threat.
He only laughed again. “Since you’re clearly not going to rest like I’d hoped you would, I suppose I can come and introduce myself.”
“I know who you are.”
“Oh, do you?” he asked, sounding like he was privy to an inside joke I’d never heard before. “We’ll see.”
There was an audible click and no more words came through the speakers. I sat down on the bed, trying to stop my anxious movement before Kylan made himself known. Then again, he’d apparently been watching me the whole time, so he knew how I’d been channeling my anger.
Ten minutes passed and my knees were bobbing up and down from the effort of not moving. I reminded myself this was a six story building. Moving around it took time, and he hadn’t been on this floor. He’d be here.
At the opposite end of the floor, out of view but audible due to the lack of most walls, the elevator dinged. My back went straight and my fidgeting stopped. Every one of my senses was on high alert while I tried to look less prepared than I was. I didn’t want to be seen as a threat.
