Page 1 of Cheap Heat

Chapter One

Rafe’s First Day at Goliaths

Rafe

My neighbour was a total asshole.

His backyard was a mess, always overgrown and littered with trash from the stupid fucking parties he threw too often. He kept odd hours, and he made zero effort to be quiet when he came home at two or three in the morning some nights. Slamming his car door. Whistling as he sauntered up his driveway. Blasting godawful country music the moment he got inside.

When he’d first moved in next door a few years ago, I’d attempted to reason with him. I’d gone over there to politely ask him if he could keep it down. He’d always just smirked at me and said “Sure thing, neighbour” then promptly ignored the request.

So then I’d started going over there and hammering on his door at two in the morning, snarling at him to shut the fuck up. That’d only made him worse.

Now, I just tried to ignore him. I blasted white noise at night to block out the sounds. I avoided looking out my upstairs back windows, because the sight of his yard filled me with unreasonable rage. I pretended he didn’t exist if we happened to be getting in or out of our cars at the same time.

Unfortunately, Dan Ewen was a hard person to ignore.

“Howdy, neighbour,” he’d drawl if he spotted me, seemingly unbothered by my clenched jaw and seething glares in his general direction. In fact, I was pretty sure they only made him worse.

“Actually goin’ out tonight?” he’d ask with exaggerated surprise every time he saw me leaving the house for my weekly game night with my buddies. “Don’t go too wild. Don’t want you gettin’ home after eleven, do we?”

I refused to rise to it. I’d been called a nerd by asshole jocks like him all through high school, and I wasn’t going to let my overgrown fratbro neighbour get to me the same way now that I was twenty-fucking-seven years old.

And then there was the constant parade of people leaving his house in the mornings, usually just as I was locking my front door to head to work, while he was seeing them off from his porch in his tiny, ridiculous robe or a pair of low-slung sweats, or sometimes just his minuscule boxer briefs. Totally unbothered that all the neighbours could see him.

Some weeks, it felt like I saw a different person coming out of Ewen’s house, in last night’s clothes and with fuck knots or a self-satisfied expression, every single morning. A big werewolf in a backwards cap, who Ewen tugged into a firm kiss before they high-fived in goodbye. A huge orc in leather pants who grabbed Ewen’s ass in both meaty hands and yanked their crotches together as he devoured his mouth before leaving.

There’d also been the punk banshee with a mullet who’d fisted his hair tight and yanked his head back as she whispered something in his ear—something that had made a filthy grin spread over his stupid face. And the slender fae with long, pale blue hair in booty shorts and a crop top, whose ass Ewen spanked as the guy stepped outside and shot him a teasing grin.

I knew Ewen was a non-human, but I didn’t know what he actually was. We ghouls were kind of insular and didn’t mingle with different species as much as others did, so I had a harder time recognising those that could fly so well under the radar. Ewen just looked like a jacked-up gym-bro country boy without any of the discernible markings that some species still had in their human forms—like the fae’s colourful hair, or werewolves’ lupine eyes, or vampires’ predatory gaits—and because we didn’t exactly get along, I’d never had a chance to ask him.

And I didn’t care. Whatsoever. So he wasn’t human, big fucking whoop. Neither was I. Neither were the countless people he brought home to fuck.

I was pretty sure there wasn’t a non-human in this whole city—besides me, obviously—who he hadn’t fucked in the few short years he’d been living next door.

Not that I gave a shit who he fucked, but I wasn’t particularly enthused about having to listen to it. Ewen kept his bedroom window open pretty much year-round, regardless of the weather. I’d heard things that would no doubt scar me for life.

So many things.

So many scars on my psyche.

Fucking Dan Ewen. He was such a dick.

I did my best to completely ignore him when I left my house on the first day of my new job. It was hard, because he was standing on his front porch in nothing but his boxers, with his tongue down the throat of a ridiculously hot fae woman in a slinky dress.

I ground my teeth as I locked my front door, trying not to glance over. His hands were roaming over her generous ass and thick waist, and I found myself imagining that they were my hands. I hadn’t gotten laid in a while. I’d split up with my last girlfriend, Hannah, another ghoul like me, about eight months ago.

I’d never dated a fae, and the one making out with my dumbass neighbour on his porch was ludicrously attractive. I clenched my teeth together harder as I turned and stomped down the steps.

I was jealous. Of Dan fucking Ewen. And I despised it.

“Howdy, neighbour.”

My shoulders hunched up at the sound of his smug voice. I kept striding toward my car, not even grunting to acknowledge him.

“Do you not get along with him?” I heard the fae woman ask in a hushed voice.

Ewen chuckled. “Nah, we get along just fine. He just has a stick up his ass.”