Bargained By Fae (Hunted by Fae #3)

Chapter 1

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‘Any chance you can stay at one of your guys’ places? I have company.’

I was already in the building when I read the text with the winking emoji planted at the end of it.

Surrounded by the cold echo of the concrete stairwell, stairs went up on my right to the flats, and stairs went down on my left to the overgrown communal garden.

I slumped against the sticky entrance door and just stared at the phone screen.

The last message I wanted to light up my phone screen.

I’d just come from a delivery run.

My pockets were a few ounces lighter. My purse, a bit heavier. I’d unloaded a few bags of coke, weed, speed, and molly.

Just two deliveries. One regular, and the other was a stag night. Those bachelor parties—even on Tuesday nights—could get way out of hand.

That was good for me.

But I stopped off on the way home to pick up some takeaway—and I had my mind set on a bath, some music playing, maybe a joint, some satay noodles, and a vegan caramel mousse that I was dreaming about all damn day.

I went so far out of my way for the mousse that it added another twenty minutes to my trip home—and for what?

For this? To be stuck in the hall of the flats, leaning against the door with a lot of suspicious stains, two plastic bags pulling down on my fingers, a backpack slung over my shoulder, and a disappointing text glaring up at me?

It was too fucking late for that nonsense.

The time above the text had my face souring. It was almost three in the fucking morning.

And Bee sent it eighteen minutes ago.

So I was supposed to turn around, call through my roster of guys, let my noodles get cold, and spend the night somewhere else.

That was so fucking annoying.

But I knew the deal.

It was now Bee’s flat to use for the night.

Sort of an arrangement of ours.

Sometimes, she would bring some sucker back, drug them, steal what she could from them, then kick them out before the sun rose.

But I usually had some notice.

I hadn’t known that tonight, when I left to do my deliveries and she left to go see an old friend, that she would be bringing anyone back to the flat.

Guess she found a sucker too good to pass up.

Still, an annoyed huff echoed through the stairwell before I pushed from the door.

Instead of going up the steps, I took the staircase on the left—the cold, concrete steps that led down past the bin room, the lift to the underground storage cages, and out into the garden.

‘Garden’ was a bit of a stretch.

There was a patch of grass for the dogs in the building to make their mess, a lot of weeds as tall as my hips, and a concrete slab with two benches on it.

The ashtray was toppled over, cigarette butts everywhere.

I stepped over the mess to the wrought iron bench with the least amount of rust, and dropped onto it with a grunt.

And the moment I did, a dash of black came skittering out from under the neighbouring hedge.

A cat.

Something warmed in me at the sight of it—and a small meow slipped out of me.

The cat responded with a meow of its own and pranced right for me.

I set out my takeaway containers on the bench, then plucked a strip of satay noodle from the box. I tossed it onto the concrete.

The cat paused at the noodle, gave it a quick sniff before snubbing it.

But the cat didn’t leave me. It threaded between my legs, around and around.

Not the first time we’d met.

He belonged to the old guy on the ground floor, and he let it roam every single night.

I hated that.

Too much rat poison around, too many sickos, too many untrained dogs, not to mention the cars speeding up and down the road.

But tonight, the cat and me stuck together.

He joined me on the bench, nibbling at the tofu in the box, and it brought a smile to my lips.

“So that’s your name, then,” I decided. “Tofu.”

The only answer he gave was a purr. Constant, soothing.

The old guy downstairs didn’t like me much. Not since I told him to stop letting his cat out at night, and listed off every reason why he shouldn’t do that. So when, in passing, I asked his cat’s name—he told me to mind my business.

I’d been trying to name the cat since.

Tofu suited him.

I was pleased with that.

And once we’d both polished off our dinner, I rummaged through my bag for a joint I might have left in there, or a spare ounce of weed in a hidden pocket.

I found cigarettes.

That was good enough.

Tofu and I made a night of it.

I smoked, lounged on the hard metal bench as comfortably as I could with a cat curled up on my lap, and I listened to Wish You Were Here on a loop.

I shut my eyes on a gradual dawn.

And when I opened them again, it was to a purpling sky, a sleeping cat on my lap, and the buzz of my phone interrupting a song that broke my fucking heart every time I submerged myself into it.

I angled my neck in a crooked way just to look down at the text on the screen.

‘He’s gone.’

The smiley face at the end of the text did nothing to warm me. Hours I’d been out in the cold, and my limbs were stiff from it.

I was slow to gather my things and scoop Tofu into my arm, and even slower to hike the staircases.

It might have been summer, but the cold of the outside at night had eaten through me to the bone.

I had one thought in my head—a bath.

And coffee.

Ok, two thoughts.

Relief hit me as I pushed open the front door. The heating was on, flooding the flat, and a vinyl was turning on the record player.

Billy Joel’s Vienna.

I let the song roll over me as I kicked the door shut.

Bee’s face was startled—and aimed at me from the kitchen.

Caught her in the middle of wiping down a mess on the counters. A white powder was spilled over the benchtop from a little velvet pouch.

“Coffee?” she asked, her voice a little pitched, and she took my silence as a yes, apparently, because she grabbed the kettle and filled it up.

As she set it down and flicked the switch on, her gaze flickered back to me, to the cat I held to my middle.

She blinked.

Smudges of last night’s mascara sprinkled off her lashes. “What is that?”

The face I made at her was unkind. I put him down on the scratched armchair. “A cat—and his name is Tofu.”

Bee swept the white powder into the pouch. Too thick and clumpy to be coke. Looked more like icing powder. “You’re back soon. Did you sleep on the stairs?”

She meant it as a joke, but she wasn’t far off. “I was already here when I got your text. I just hung out in the garden.”

“Why didn’t you go to Paul’s?” Her mouth flattened into a grim line at the mention of his name—even though she was the one to bring him up. “He’s just a couple of streets away.”

I sighed so hard my cheeks puffed out.

I let my bags drop to the coffee table before sprawling out on the couch.

Tofu jumped back up onto my lap and started to knead.

“We can’t keep that.” Bee’s annoying words reached me over the whistling of the kettle. “I’ll be the one looking after it, feeding it, changing its litter—"

I cut her off before she could irritate me any more, “It’s the old guy’s cat.”

“The grumpy one?”

I hummed my answer and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the clatter of mugs coming from the kitchen.

“So,” Bee said, “Why didn’t you stay at Paul’s?”

“He’s…” I sighed, my mood soured now. “He’s getting on my nerves. You know he wants to come on our holiday?”

“To Canada?” Her voice hiked up an octave. “On the girls’ trip?”

I choked on a disbelieving laugh. “Yeah, he’s going full stalker on me. Wants me to meet his mum. Like, to go up north and actually stay with his family for a whole weekend.”

The pour of water came from the kitchen, then the clang of a teaspoon in a mug.

Bee carried two cups of hopefully very fucking strong coffee to the living room. She set them down on the table before slipping onto the armchair—and slumping, exhausted.

One glance at her, and I knew she didn’t get more than a wink of sleep all night.

Planting her elbow on the arm of the chair, she rested her temple on her fist and looked at me. “Time for him to go, then. Although he should have been gone months ago.”

I studied the dark circles around her eyes. “Easy for you to say—you never like my boyfriends.”

Her scoff jerked her shoulders. “Neither do you.”

“You don’t date.”

Her smile was tired. “I meant you don’t like your own boyfriends.”

That silenced me.

Because it was true.

They always, always got on my nerves too much, too soon. And that was if they were lucky enough that I even considered them vaguely interesting or valuable.

I’d be around them—and my mind would be somewhere else.

I lived in distraction around guys.

Fuck, a guy could be going down on me, and I would end up eyeing my vinyls in the corner, working out a new way to organise them.

A guy could get down on his knees to profess his love, and I’d find myself wondering if I had the time to pin a butterfly and add it to my collection before the week was out.

There was always something that was just so fucking boring about them. Most people, but especially guys. Like they were all just a copy and paste of each other.

None held my interest—and honestly, the only reason I even held theirs was because I wasn’t available, not emotionally, and men didn’t like that.

Men want to conquer. Not love.

Besides, I had everything I needed here in this flat.

I wasn’t a stupid person. I knew that I shouldn’t hope for more, because more has never existed.