Bitter Heat Read online

  BITTER HEAT

  (Heat of Love, Book 3)

  Leta Blake

  An Original Publication from Leta Blake Books

  Bitter Heat (Heat of Love #3)

  Written and published by Leta Blake

  Cover by Dar Albert

  Formatted by BB eBooks

  Copyright © 2019 by Leta Blake Books

  All rights reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and locations are either a product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious setting. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or people, living or dead, is strictly coincidental or inspirational. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written consent from the author. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  First Digital Edition, 2019

  Kindle Edition

  ISBN: 9781626227828

  Other Books by Leta Blake

  Any Given Lifetime

  Mr. Frosty Pants

  The River Leith

  Smoky Mountain Dreams

  Angel Undone

  The Training Season Series

  Training Season

  Training Complex

  Heat of Love Series

  Slow Heat

  Slow Birth

  Alpha Heat

  Bitter Heat

  ’90s Coming of Age Series

  Pictures of You

  You Are Not Me

  Co-Authored with Indra Vaughn

  Vespertine

  Cowboy Seeks Husband

  Co-Authored with Alice Griffiths

  The Wake Up Married serial

  Will & Patrick’s Endless Honeymoon

  Gay Fairy Tales

  Co-Authored with Keira Andrews

  Flight

  Levity

  Rise

  Leta Blake writing as Blake Moreno

  The Difference Between

  Heat for Sale

  Leta Blake writing as Halsey Harlow

  Stay Lucky

  Stay Sexy

  Omega Mine: Search for a Soulmate

  Bring on Forever

  Audiobooks

  Leta Blake at Audible

  Free Read

  Stalking Dreams

  Discover more about the author online:

  Leta Blake

  Gay Romance Newsletter

  Leta’s newsletter will keep you up to date on her latest releases and news from the world of M/M romance. Join the mailing list today. Click here to sign up!

  Leta Blake on Patreon

  Become part of Leta Blake’s Patreon community in order to access exclusive content, deleted scenes, extras, bonus stories, rewards, prizes, interviews, and more. Click to find out more!

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to the following:

  West Virginia

  Mom & Dad

  Brian & Cecily

  Kim V for her friendship and understanding.

  All the wonderful members of my Patreon who inspire, support, and advise me.

  Keira Andrews and Elizah Davis for their generous friendship and handholding on the regular.

  Thank you to Devon Vesper for the thorough edits and passionate cheerleading.

  Catherine Marshall and her book Christy, which inspired me in one way as a child and now in a different way as an adult. Amanda Palmer and her song “Voicemail for Jill,” which helped inform how I handled aspects of this story.

  A.M. Arthur for loving the Heat of Love universe so much that she made up her own Omegaverse books. Look for Breaking Free!

  And thank you to my readers who make all the blood, sweat, and tears of writing worthwhile.

  You all have my heart!

  A pregnant omega trapped in a desperate situation. An unattached alpha with a lot to prove. And an unexpected fall into love that could save them both.

  Kerry Monkburn is contracted to a violent alpha in prison for brutal crimes. Now pregnant with the alpha’s child, he lives high in the mountains, far above the city that once lured him in with promises of a better life. Enduring bitterness and fear, Kerry flirts with putting an end to his life of darkness, but fate intervenes.

  Janus Heelies has made mistakes in the past. In an effort to redeem himself, integrity has become the watchword for his future. Training as a nurse under the only doctor willing to take him on, Janus is resolute in his intentions: he will live cleanly in the mountains and avoid all inappropriate affairs. But he doesn’t anticipate the pull that Kerry exercises on his heart and mind.

  As the question of Kerry’s future health and safety comes to an explosive head, only the intervention of fate will see these desperate men through to a happy ending.

  This gay romance novel by Leta Blake is the third in the Heat of Love universe, which began with Slow Heat. It’s 111,000 words, with a strong happy ending and a well-crafted, non-shifter Omegaverse. It features alphas, betas, omegas, male pregnancy, heat, and knotting. Content warning for a violent and oppressive society regarding reproductive rights.

  For Marsha,

  I love and miss you. Wish you were here to read this one.

  CONTENT WARNING: This novel deals with sexual and reproductive issues in an oppressive society with the resulting issues of violation and unwanted pregnancy. There may be content within that could stir feelings related to sexual violation, pregnancy loss, or abortion. Proceed with care.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Other Books by Leta Blake

  Gay Romance Newsletter

  Leta Blake on Patreon

  Acknowledgements

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Content Warning

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Part Two

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Part Three

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  Letter from Leta

  About Slow Heat

  About Alpha Heat

  About Slow Birth

  About Heat for Sale

  Gay Romance Newsletter

  Leta Blake on Patreon

  Other Books by Leta Blake

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  The prison smelled like piss and fear.

  The scent had soaked into Kerry’s clothes and hair during the days he’d spent locked inside. It choked him even as guards led him away from the prison’s black iron gates and barbed-wire-covered walls. The bruises all over his body from his alpha’s rough treatment made the guards’ manhandling difficult to bear, but he didn’t have the energy to protest or the strength to cry out.

  The guard on his right, the one who spoke with a deep, sub-Calitan accent, placed a hand on top of his head to prevent hitting it against the roof of the waiting, chauffeured car as the guard on his left maneuvered him inside. As if that small gesture was going to cushion him from injury—too little, too late.

  “He’s clear,” the guard said, his accent thick, before ducki
ng down to regard Kerry with carefully tempered sympathy in his eyes. Kerry thought he might be the same guard who’d cared for him after the heat had ended last time, too. “Have a safe trip home, all right?”

  Kerry didn’t acknowledge him. He was too dazed to speak after his long ordeal. Aching all over from head to hole and down to his toes and back again, he wanted to cry, but tears didn’t come. His legs quaked, too exhausted from days of enforced heat spent with his imprisoned, contracted alpha, only sustained throughout by disgusting prison food and the primal urges he wished he could snuff out.

  Almost as much as he wished he could be snuffed out.

  Safe in the backseat of a plush, Monhundy-owned car, driven by a man hired by his wealthy in-laws and entrusted with Kerry’s well-being, he smoothed his now-wrinkled silk shirt with shaking hands. He didn’t understand why his in-laws always insisted he dress nicely when he came for these visits. No one saw him in his clothes but guards and prison officials. He was naked by the time they led him to Wilbet. But the Monhundys would never approve of Kerry appearing in “public” looking anything but well-heeled.

  Outside, the sun poured down—the heat of summer already in full blaze in the arid county around the prison. The air fairly shimmered with heat, and he longed for the cool shadows of his beloved mountains, the wetness of the lake, and his pater’s comforting embrace.

  Kerry pressed the tips of his fingers to his eyelids, blocking out the light, as gorge rose in his throat. This was the third heat his in-laws forced him to endure since Wilbet went to prison for the rape of Calitan district prostitutes, and each was more humiliating and violent than the last. There had been times leading up to this heat when he’d considered taking matters into his own hands. A knife, a gun, a rope—it didn’t matter what he used. All that mattered was stopping the trauma before it started again.

  But he couldn’t do that to his pater. The Monhundys and their heartless desire for an heir of their son’s flesh and blood could be wolf-goddamned as far as Kerry was concerned. But his pater needed him. It’d tear a hole in his heart too large to ever heal if Kerry acted on his urges to end things.

  After Kerry had settled in the backseat, the driver pulled the car away from the prison, jostling over the potholes lining the road in front of it. Pain shot through Kerry’s core, and he caught a whiff of Wilbet’s semen still lodged inside, left over from the last knot they’d shared. It now slipped free. Just like the first two heats after Wilbet’s conviction, the prison guards, armed with guns to keep Wilbet’s violent impulses in check, had ignored any non-lethal abuse Wilbet wanted to pile on. They’d only pulled Kerry away from his alpha and out of the heat room when the last wave had finally, completely passed. Like always, they’d had a doctor examine him for any serious injury, watched him dress with shaking limbs, and finally sent him away without a shower or a bath.

  Like always.

  The prison scent lingered, yes, but as far as Kerry was concerned, Wilbet’s scent was far worse. His contracted mate was anathema to him now, and yet Kerry was still legally bound to him so long as the Monhundy family refused to dissolve their side of the agreement. In fact, his in-laws now legally held the reins on Kerry’s life choices, finances, and heats since Wilbet’s incarceration. It was a side notation in the contract that Kerry had never thought to question, never imagining it would come to fruition. He’d been more concerned about the dissolution of the contract in the event of Wilbet’s untimely death—and that had been negotiated in his favor. He’d failed to take into account other contingency clauses.

  Another slip of semen led his stomach to rebel hard. Kerry managed to alert the driver to his predicament, and the car pulled over to the side of the road with a quick jerk. Kerry shoved the heavy door open, leaned out, and vomited onto the road. The rancid foulness heaved up from deep inside like poison from his soul.

  “Reckon it took, then?” the driver said when Kerry wiped his mouth with a crumpled handkerchief and sat back in his seat. Kerry pulled the car door closed again with a weak slam. “Going to be a pater, you think?”

  Kerry swallowed back another heave and said nothing, staring out the window. Tears welled in his eyes as they drove away from the behemoth of a prison. It stood—a solid, dark brick building full of shiver-inducing cruelty—backlit by a white sun and a hot, blank sky. As blank as Kerry’s future, and just as empty.

  Smoothing a hand over his shirt again, and wishing he had a jacket to stop his chills, Kerry closed his eyes to pray to wolf-god that there would be no child. He prayed for a solution. A way out of his wretched life. Most of all, he prayed for freedom.

  Because he’d never dare pray for love again.

  PART ONE

  Late Spring

  CHAPTER ONE

  The two-story, white boarding house was tucked into the mountains five hours southeast of the city and an hour and a half from the nearest supply town. The ride up from the train station in the rickety wagon had left Janus tired and aching all over. After paying the waggoneer—a beta with a grizzled, brown beard and a lot of missing teeth—Janus sent him away, choosing to handle his two medium-sized suitcases himself. Behind him, the afternoon sun set in a ridge of the mountains, lighting a fire in the windows of the house and reflecting the orange radiance of the sky.

  He gazed up at the place he’d chosen to be his home for the next year. The steep, angled roofline high above the second story and sparkling clean windows beneath the eaves indicated a well-tended attic space. The stone path going to the porch and around the side of the house was meticulously cared for and weeded. The house had been newly painted sometime in the last few years. There were several storage buildings at the edge of the lawn cleared away from the encroaching mountainside, and they stood in good order, as well. All this was clear evidence of the boarding house being owned by a proud and decent man.

  It was also evidence that this new home would share none of the opulence of any of the numerous Heelies-funded apartments and mansions Janus had lived in throughout his life. He had no doubt that with time, these new circumstances would put his resolve to be independent to the test for sure. Yet, there was nothing he could find from a thorough study of the boarding house’s exterior to note as a real complaint. It was the kind of place many less entitled men would find quite nice, if not grand. Only the very spoiled, like himself, would ever turn up their noses at the earnest modesty of it all.

  Janus hefted his luggage, making his way from the driveway to the bottom of the steps leading up to a wide, wraparound porch. There he paused, taking it all in again, searching for doubts inside, half-expecting to find them easily. And yet, he uncovered nothing of the kind.

  After spending too much of his life at the tit of his uncle Doxan Heelies’ fortune, Janus had determined to make his own way for better or worse. Even in the face of a clapboard house with little more than running water and apparent cleanliness to recommend it, he remained determined. It was both a matter of pride and part of his likely fruitless attempt to improve himself as a person.

  Be careful, he warned himself sternly as he gazed up at the blue shutters and the sturdy roofline. He shouldn’t write the experiment off as a failure before he truly began. No matter how doomed his cousin Xan seemed to think his personal reform might be, he had Caleb’s encouraging words to cling to even if he had lost the beautiful omega himself. Janus sighed as a familiar sadness washed over his heart.

  Now there was the regret he’d been looking for. He’d committed far too many mistakes in his past—errors of vanity, egoism, and hubris—but hurting Caleb was the worst of them. He’d let the brilliant, handsome man down, and all because of his ego and his selfish focus on prurient needs.

  Janus shook those thoughts away. Caleb was happy now. He’d embraced the most unlikely of lives and found joy in it. For his part, Janus had accepted that he’d lost any chance with Caleb years ago, and he hoped he’d find a way to embrace life and joy, as well. With any luck, this new path would help him. Wolf-god knew hi
s old ways of coping hadn’t brought those virtues to him.

  Mounting the four stairs up to the wooden porch, he dropped one of his bags long enough to press the ringer beside the blue front door. A trill came from deep in the house, like a fast-repeating hammer on a brass bell. While he waited, he sat the other bag down to brush his hands over his wavy, stylishly overlong, brown hair. It wasn’t quite chin-length, but it was far from the tightly shorn buzz he’d worn during the worst of the illnesses he’d endured the last several winters.

  Then he double-checked his clothing. His tailored, brown traveling suit was a bit dusty and wrinkled from the road and didn’t quite fit him as well as it had before his last bout of pneumonia. He slapped at the dirt near the bottom of his trousers and jerked at the hem of his suit coat, trying to get it to lay a bit nicer.

  He supposed the owner of the boarding house would accept him whether he looked a mess or not, especially since he was likely paying enough to keep the place in coal and electricity through the winter on his rent alone. Still, it didn’t hurt to show some respect. He’d come to that understanding a bit late in life, but he’d learned it well.

  He wondered what was keeping the innkeeper from answering. The beta who owned the place had been eager enough in their correspondence. So, surely, Janus was expected.

  A rustle came from around the corner of the house along with a deep creak of the porch floorboards. And then another.

  Janus stepped away from the front door, plastering a friendly smile on his face. “Hello?” he called toward the obscuring corner. “Anyone home?”

  The rustle came again, along with a screech—the sound of wood rubbing on wood as though someone dragged a chair from one location to another. Janus wiped his still-sweaty hands on his pantlegs. He frowned and squinted back toward the driveway, long empty since the waggoneer had driven away. He searched the grounds for signs of the owner with the falling sun blinding his eyes. He turned to the door again, standing on tiptoe to try to get a look through the glass panes at the top. The shadowed hallway showed no one coming to greet him.