Page 12 of Frayed Trust

Omega side preening from the praise, I glared. All he did was grin. “Another gin and tonic to drink tonight?”

Cursing myself as soon as the words left my mouth, I avoided eye contact. Of course I remembered his drink. Our interaction had been running through my head on a loop since it happened. But he didn’t need to fucking know. “I’m flattered you remembered my drink order,” he said, his voice a low purr. I felt the weight of his presence as he leaned across the bar, his scent heavier in its sensual notes. “But I’m supposed to ask you for information.”

“You asked for that last time. I still don’t have a minute.”

“You remember every second of our conversation?” He was still teasing, but I glanced up to find his cheeks flushed and a hint of vulnerability in his expression. I wasn’t fluffing up his ego. The man was truly surprised he’d been interesting enough to remember.

“Gin and tonic or nothing.”

His lips turned down into a pout. “I’ll take it.”

I poured the drink and waited for him to go away, but he sat down on one of the stools and watched me, sipping on the straw. There wasn’t much to distract me from his presence, his scent, or the way he hardly blinked. We were still in the bar stage of the night and the waitresses made most of their own drinks while I cut lemons and limes and stocked the bar for the club rush. My cutting station was, inconveniently, directly in front of where he’d decided to sit.

Hormones raging, I tried to keep my hands steady with the knife. He was too close to me. Too close to the start of my heat. One wrong move, one single brush of his fingers and I could be sprinting for the back door if I got into my head and let myself fantasize about what he would feel like.

“These men have some questions when you have a minute.”

At the sound of Mattie’s voice behind me, I nearly groaned. “I don’t have a minute.”

“That’s what she said to me, too. I think she just doesn’t like me.”

My incubus chimed in from his seat at the bar, and the tempting scent of the angel from the other night swished through the air around me. I didn’t want to look up, busying myself with the fruit, but Mattie’s hand grabbed my elbow. His touch didn’t hit me as hard as other Alphas, since he had a mate, but I still felt a slight jolt. With my glare burning through him, he dropped me right away and grimaced. He knew I didn’t like to be touched. Why the hell did I need to talk to these men so badly?

“I’ll need you to talk to them, Freya. It’s about the murders.”

I fought the way my back wanted to tense. “Are they with the Angelic Enforcement Agency?”

“We’re with an outside interest,” the angel said, and I resigned myself to turning around. “I have, of course, proven to Mr. Harlie that we are legitimate and have the authority to question you on this matter.”

Bracing myself for the surge of slick that I knew would coat my thighs, I drew my gaze up. He was dressed as fashionably as the last time, tight t-shirt with rolled sleeves covered by a brown faux leather vest. The outfit showed off his arms, every inch covered in tattoos. “Well, if you’ve proven it to Mr. Harlie,” I drolled.

“Freya, is it?” I didn’t nod, but Mattie must have. He was clearly planning on supervising this interaction, which was probably for the best. “I’m Shan, and this is my associate Caspian.”

“A genuine pleasure to meet the both of you.”

My sarcasm flew right over him without eliciting a reaction, but Caspian smirked.

“Our apologies for taking you away from your job when you’re so busy.”

Maybe Shan had a sense of humour after all, because I wasn’t busy. It was a Tuesday evening and we didn’t have an event going, but I did a damn good job of pretending I was busy in order to avoid men.

“Can we get this the fuck over with?” I asked. “I’m not one of your fucking angel superiors, you don’t need to kiss my ass. If you’d stated your true intentions three nights ago, this would have been done already.”

“I would love to kiss your ass, sweetness, so let me know if your offer is ever truly on the table.” Caspian mimed blowing me a kiss.

I gave him the finger in return. That got a slight reaction out of Shan, his eyebrows drawing together before he flattened out his expression again. “We just need to know if you’ve ever seen any of these men before. Some have their last sightings at this very club, and plenty more were patrons days before they went missing.”

He flipped open a binder that he pulled out of nowhere, letting me flip through image after image. A vast majority of the images were mug shots. A comfort, considering I’d killed them. Not that I felt guilty. In this world with my status, it was kill or be killed. Well, not killed right away. With my magical Omega pussy they would rape me first, mark me without my permission, and keep me as a breeding whore until I died from the mistreatment.

“I’ve seen all of them except for these two.” I waved my hand over a set of men in the middle of the binder that I most certainly did not murder. In fact, they looked like pretty stand up fellows. A shame I was being blamed for their demise.

Shan’s eyebrow raised in surprise, circling the one grouping and spinning the binder around to make notes. “Can I ask how you saw all of them?”

“They all came in here.”

“There’s seventeen men in this binder and you recognize fifteen of them?”

I’d never kept complete track of how many men I’d killed, but it had to have been over fifteen. A part of me was oddly disappointed that they hadn’t connected all the dots. Only some. “Is that strange?” I asked, rolling my eyes. “I work ten-hour shifts at this club every night except Wednesdays. If someone comes in here, I see them.”

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