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“Well, I’m stuffed,” Charles said with an exaggerated yawn. I went to help him collect up the plates, but he waved me off, scraping and stacking them with practised ease. “I’ll bring you some dessert and head off to bed. You can just leave the dishes in the sink, yeah?”

“You are?” I asked him through clenched teeth. He was fooling absolutely no one with his act. Shaun sat back in his chair with the dazed expression of someone well fed, well watered and about to be well?—

“I got the breakfast shift tomorrow, chick. I don’t get to lie in bed all day.”

“Got the day off?” Shaun asked me. Of course he asked. His eyes had been on me throughout the meal and afterwards, pausing every couple of mouthfuls, watching me eat my food like it was the footy grand final or something.

“Um…yeah. Not much to do out here but paint my nails,” I said, tapping them on the tabletop. He glanced down, spending way too long looking at the candy apple polish that had started to chip.

“Plenty of time to sleep off a sugar coma then,” Charles said, disappearing into the kitchen, reappearing later with a tall slice of pancreatic self-harm—his triple chocolate fudge cake with ganache and whipped cream.

“Oh my god, you bastard!” I shouted, perhaps a little too boisterously. The rum was singing all sorts of sweet songs in my head. “You said there was none left.”

“There is none, except this slice. I’m way too stuffed after eating all that food, so I figure I’d leave it with you two. You’ll have to share though.”

Damn you, you great big prick , I said via our Vulcan mind-meld, my thoughts scorching from my brain to his. Stop forcing shit, or the next time some cute unwashed backpacker with double Ds comes in, I’m gonna play a game of ‘Haaave you met Charles?’

You’re on , he replied, or his eyes did. You want the D and are too busy pussyfooting around rather than getting him on his knees and pussy ? —

I blanked the rest out. Charles and I had a sibling-like relationship, so I liked to imagine him smooth and plasticky under his clothes, like a Ken doll. The guy I sat around talking about my worst sexscapades with could not have a peen.

So he just held the dessert forks out with a shit-eating grin, but even he was surprised when Shaun took both of them.

The stranger dragged the cake over to him, almost dragging a growl from me.

He might be fucking hot, but was he triple chocolate fudge cake with ganache hot?

Apparently, he was. He sliced off a large chunk for the end, made sure it was well doused in whipped cream, then held it out to me with a challenge in his eyes.

Charles just snorted, well pleased that his plan had come together.

“I’ll lock up and turn off the pumps,” he said with a grin, then, as he flicked off the lights, the big room become suddenly insanely intimate, just a single spotlight on us.

“So, cake?” Shaun asked in a low rumble.

Fuck, that was hot. I’d read romance novel heroes growling and rumbling before, with no idea how that sounded, but damn…

Maybe that was why I darted forward, leaning over the table, to take a bite, his eyes slipping to where the collar of my polo gaped.

His smile faltered, as my lips closed around the sinfully sweet cake, as I let out a low moan, as I chewed then flopped back in my chair, feeling some honest-to-goodness afterglow.

It took me a ridiculous amount of time to come to again, but fuck, if Blondey McFuckmyface was half as good at doing the no pants dance as this cake, I was in for multiple fricking orgasms tonight.

Merry fucking Christmas to me.

He passed me the other fork over and leant forward, showcasing those very, very nice forearms as they rested on the table, then looked at me expectantly. My brain briefly derailed on what he could possibly be after, my mouth watering, for his taste or the cake’s, I couldn’t decide.

Cake, right. He wanted me to feed him cake.

I sliced off a decent chunk. Little pussy bites of a piece of culinary genius like this was just sacrilege.

I was tempted to try the ‘here comes the airplane’ trick for laughs, but before the night ended, I wanted to be calling him Daddy as he pulled my hair, not him calling me Mummy.

His hand snapped up, wrapping around my wrist and holding it still as those fucking lips parted and he took the cake.

“Night!” Charles’ voice made me jump, coming from the other end of the roadhouse, before we heard the door slam.

Charles had left the building, leaving the two of us conspicuously alone.

I felt a wave of heat, and not just a sexual one.

It was always hot at Christmas Down Under, but I’d say one thing for this place—the aircon was crisp and cold, so why did my skin feel like it was sizzling, sweat rolling down my forehead?

But Shaun didn’t notice me wiping my brow with a serviette, his focus entirely on my mouth, looking at it in the way I usually did Charles’ chocolate cake.

“What are we doing here?” I asked, finally unable to take all this tension. I needed to know if I was getting out Mr Hitachi and all of his oddly shaped buddies to rub out one extremely frustrated orgasm after another until I face-planted on the bed in a sleep induced shame spiral. Or…?

“What are we doing?” Shaun blinked, as if seeing me for the first time, but weirdly, he didn’t look unhappy with what was before him.

He looked…relieved? No, that wasn’t quite it.

Grateful with a splash of surprise and not a little bit of joy to wash it all down.

But why? There’d be women everywhere lining up to lick cake off anything he wanted, that I knew.

“Where I’m from, it’s a thing to provide women we’re attracted to with food.

” He cut off another morsel of cake and held it out.

“I guess it’s kinda He-Man.” He thumped his chest with his spare fist. “Makes us feel like we’d be good mates or something. ”

“Attracted?” I said, unable to move past that part of the sentence, the rest all blah blah blah di blah.

His smile, when it came, was initially tentative, but it was a grower then a shower as his face split into something bright and brilliant.

“Attracted,” he confirmed, his voice a low purr. “I’ve been fucking rigid since the moment I walked in here. As soon as I saw those damn shorts, I knew I wanted in them, and that hasn’t happened in a bloody long time.”

I should’ve stopped and listened. There was pain in his voice, I’d heard it plainly, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from leaning over, snagging the cake from his fork, then pressing my mouth to his.

“Fuck, yes…” he hissed, pulling back and licking the cake from my lips, hauling me up onto the table like I was the dessert. And maybe I was.

“You sure about this?” he asked, going still, so very still.

Like what, he was expecting me to reject him?

I stroked a hand down those sharp cheekbones with a smile, the feel of that dramatic bone structure even better than anticipated.

I wouldn’t get a second chance at this, at touching something this pretty, so I was just hoping the performance was as good as the packaging. “I need you to be really, really sure.”

“Why? You got some kind of crazy kink you want to explore or something?” I asked light-heartedly, while secretly wishing fervently if there were, it was a good one.

“No, I just want you, for as long as I can have you,” he replied. “I want you to want that too.”

“Damn straight.” I fished out my keys from my shirt pocket and shook them in the air. “Now take me to bed or lose me forever.”

And goddammit if he didn’t get to his feet and sweep me into his arms, carrying me across to the door Charles had exited from.

All of a sudden, I felt small and dainty.

And horny—really fucking horny. I gave him directions to my room, and he let me down when I had to open the door, feeling his breath on my neck, then small nipping kisses.

For a moment, I pushed my butt back into him, his hands snapping down to hold me there, feeling his rigid length.

“Naughty girl…” he purred into my ear. “I look forward to finding out just how naughty, very, very much.”

Well, with that, I pushed my door open.