Swelter: Hailey Holloway, #5

By K.C. Stewart

Charley had escaped Silas's sad excuse for a prison cell with no more than a broken nail. She knows that she is in some deep shit with her employer for not only disappearing for a few days but also for not killing Silas as promised. There was something infuriating and sexy about the man that made it hard for her not to go rubbing her sass in his face. With his sardonic smile and chiseled cheekbones, Silas was quickly becoming her hardest job yet.

Silas found the little red head's antics cute. Someone wants him dead, but that's nothing new. He is one of the most hated of his kind. He can't help it everyone else is too scared to take what they really want, no matter the consequences. So they hired the half-breed to send him to an early grave, but something is getting in the way of her pulling the trigger. Silas knows he pisses her off just as much as he heats her up. Next time he gets her alone, he plans to investigate both.

Charley wants this job to be over. The target is a smug, arrogant dragon with a great butt. Silas has leverage over the red-headed halfling who is trying to kill him. He'll give her what she wants but only after he has her for a night, or three.

• Language: English
• Publisher: K.C. Stewart
• Release date: Feb 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386087519

K.C. Stewart

K.C. Stewart is the USA Today Bestselling author of the Hailey Holloway series and most recently, the Adirondack Pack series. All her life she had fantasized and day-dreamed on a regular basis but it wasn’t until she began writing short stories that she made those fantasies a reality. She has graduated to novels but still dabbles in the occasional flash fiction and short story. Because of her love for reading and the written word, K.C. is currently working towards her Masters in Library Science. When she isn’t taking photographs, studying or writing, she is supporting a very real gummy bear habit. Currently, she lives with her husband and pack of german sheperds.

Book preview

Chapter One

Where have you been? the man barked at her. Is it done?

She had two answers for him. Fuck no and none of your business.

I’m paying you for a job, when you disappear after part of it was to be completed, it becomes my business. I thought I hired the best?

After she failed to kill the sister of her target, because the target found her beforehand and then proceeded to take her captive for the night, Charley didn’t feel that her embarrassment was any of his business. Although, she made up for it in the end with her disappearing act. She hoped Silas like the note she left him.

See ya ‘round lover.

Charley smirked as she thought about it. His face would be priceless. Would he be able t hold in his shock or would it slip past that carefully placed mask of his?

With her bag packed, Charley zipped it closed and moved to the next. The fact that Silas knew where she lived and how to get into her apartment wasn’t an issue before but she pissed him off and proved him wrong. The man would be sending out his guys to bring her back. Luckily, she had a few holes in the city and was packing up the essentials to move.

Calm your face, it will be done. Her employer this time around was a whiny hardass. He checked in a few times a day and nagged her relentlessly. She typically didn’t get involved with the whys of the situation just the who’s and how’s. As in, who did they want dead and how did they want it done. But sometimes, and right now was a perfect example, she really wished she could kill the people who hired her instead of the targets, the world would have one less asshole. But then she wouldn’t get paid and Charley really liked to get paid. Although in this case, the money was not nearly as tempting as putting a hole in Mr. Bergman’s chest.

Get it done within the week and I’ll double what I’m paying you.

Well now…

You’d pay me four million dollars to kill the leader of the Green sept of dragons?

Only if you do it by Saturday night.

Oh man, this was what she lived for.

Charley was born half angel, half bastard. She had no idea what her other half was since her bitch of a mother left her when she was five. Foster homes made up the next thirteen years of her life until she was eighteen and could walk away from the life her mother had condemned her to. Hunting and killing things had started off as self-preservation in a hard world full of creatures that hated her because she wasn’t one of their perfect races. Being a Halfling made her a target, being a good shot got the bull's-eye off her back and onto the head of someone else. Turned out that just because people hate you for what you had no choice in, didn’t mean they wouldn’t pay you to kill someone they hated more. She had a pretty good life for herself. Then that fucking green dragon had to come knocking.

Charley had been thrilled to find that someone hated that cock sucker as much as she did. The man broke into her home after having virtually nothing on her. She knew, she kept track of those things. He just broke in to see who she was. This led her to believe he was either stupid and stumbled into the wrong apartment--which considering he was known as one of the most ruthless men in his species, she didn’t think stupid was a very good description--or he must have known her from somewhere else. Charley doubted he was trying to hire her. He had his own men for that shit. That meant he had to know her sperm donor.

She had made assumptions about her father throughout the years. Who he was. What he was. She never got a definite answer. Silas’s presence in her apartment pushed her towards the idea that her father was a dragon.

Her assumptions were confirmed just last night. Silas knew her father. He flashed her his hand and it was tempting, so damn tempting.

But then again, so was money.

Deal. He’ll be dead by Saturday.

You’ve been distracted all night, his sister whispered to him. He blinked away the glaze in his eyes and focused back on Hailey. They were the only ones dancing under the millions of tiny twinkling lights of the small dance floor. Then again considering she was one of three women here, his dancing partner options were limited. His sister made a beautiful bride, even more so when she smiled like she was. Her surprise mating to Dacea had gone as planned and Silas had to admit, he was happy for it. He had grown tired