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Is there anything worse than that awkwardness that comes after hot monkey sex?

You’ve just connected on a shockingly intimate level with an almost complete stranger, and when you pull away, your heart rate settling, you’re right back to being strangers again.

So having Shaun grab me a towel, doing exactly as the woman, Ophelia, suggested, drying me off, his eyes trained on the floor the whole time, I was in familiar territory.

I took pity on the guy, taking the towel from his hands and finishing the job off in a series of brisk motions.

When I hung it up, he led me out of the room, into an adjoining bedroom, sorting through drawers, looking for clothes. He tossed a T-shirt and a pair of shorts on the bed, and I pulled them on, rolling them up at the waistband so they’d fit.

“Through here,” he said, a picture of polite concern, before opening a door and leading me out into the living room of a small cabin. It seemed nice, white walls, high ceilings, polished wooden floorboards, and at a small dining table, Ophelia sat, regal as a queen.

“So you are Bec,” she said as I approached, getting to her feet and taking my hands. “Bec…?”

It took me a few seconds to realise she wanted my last name. “Rebecca Carpenter,” I replied finally.

“Carpenter…” She seemed to consider my family name, but I couldn’t work out why. “From Melville?”

“Um…yeah. Why, do you know my nan or something?”

I said that with a ghost of my usual smile, not really feeling it right now. I was trying to resituate the mask I usually put on over, well…everything. Cheeky Bec, flirty Bec, mouthy Bec, they all deserted me under the woman’s cool grey gaze.

“I may,” she replied, her eyes warming, “but what’s more important is I know you, or at least what you’re going through. Shaun has brought you to my town, Sanctuary. As the name suggests, it is a safe place for those that need it.”

Her eyes were soft when they looked at me, and yet they seemed to see every damn thing. The time I passed out in my own vomit on Valentine’s Day, when I cheated on my year ten maths test, when I slept with that guy with the ring of pale skin around his finger, his hands otherwise heavily tanned.

“Do you need it?”

Her question hung in the air between us, long after she’d said it.

She sat back in her chair, waiting me out, and I could feel Shaun’s eyes on me too.

Maybe that was why I started to squirm, sweat breaking out across my skin, the heat flaring hotter again.

My cunt was awash, slick, ready, so fucking ready, my eyes meeting Shaun’s, seeing something bright green burn there as he took a long, shuddering breath in.

“I need…”

I tried to answer her, reply to a politely phrased question, but the words just died in my throat as the heat roared, twice as hot, twice as hard.

“I need…”

Shaun was up and out of the chair, stalking closer, a delicious blend of desire and darkness in his gaze.

He had to be affected by my heat, something that happened with the wrong partners.

Being near me could be like being drip fed Viagra, keeping them hard and coming back for more, sometimes well after they were wanted.

Ophelia saw my tiny flinch and held up her hand, not even looking at Shaun, but he instantly stilled.

“Be clear about what you need. Articulate it, Bec. Desire, consent, they are very important in Sanctuary. Your body is clamouring for specific things. Be clear about what you want and don’t want, and I will make sure you get them.”

I snorted at that, but when she continued to look deadly serious, I finally fell silent.

“So, what, you’re gonna supply me with dick, lots of dick? Curved like bananas or straight as a die. Ooh, or maybe hooked at the end a little so it drags right against?—”

“Is that what you want?” she asked.

“I…” Mum’s prohibition rode me really hard now. Don’t show, don’t tell. Keep it all locked down tight. This, this was the only thing that shut my mouth. I wouldn’t, couldn’t articulate that.

This is home. This is a safe place , my Tirian said. Tell the alpha what you want. She will give you plentiful mates. We will have strong, healthy pups.

I can’t.

Even inside my head, the words came out in a painful growl. I just stared at the two of them until Ophelia nodded.

“I don’t like to do this, but I think I must.” For a minute I saw Mrs Reece, my year twelve coordinator sitting there, looking at me with a mixture of concern and frustration.

“You are experiencing a heat—a period of greater sexual sensitivity and desire. Your body will be running at a higher temperature, you’ll experience greater vaginal congestion and lubrication, and without constant sexual stimulation, you’ll experience considerable discomfort. ”

“What the fuck?” I hissed, an instinctive fear turning my limbs to iron, ready to run the fuck out of here.

Ophelia leaned forward, seeming to sense I needed more, so she gave it to me.

Those eyes stared into mine, captured completely by her gaze, so I caught every moment of her shift.

Grey irises brightened and sharpened, shifting into an all too familiar glowing green.

My eyes, my Tirian’s eyes, they did that when we shifted it.

We’d seen them reflected in still pools of water before we took a drink, in the glass of darkened shop windows in the dead of night, when we dared pace the streets.

I pulled away as I saw hers come through, my back now hard against the chair.

“We are Tirian,” she said, her voice sounding weird and echoey.

“You are Tirian.” When she nodded at Shaun and when my eyes flicked to him, I saw his shone just as bright.

Like mine did. I felt my beast stir within me, rising, rising, ready to face these strangers down.

Ophelia’s hands were clasped neatly in her lap, like a nun waiting to hear my confession.

“I want for you what I want for all the women in my town—for you to be safe, secure, and to have what you need through this experience. Only you know what that is.”

That was all very noble, but it didn’t reassure me at all.

I was up and out of my seat in one second, running towards the door in the other, the sounds of their chairs being pushed back just making my feet move faster.

My hands trembled as I unlocked the sliding door, then I escaped out into the grey of dawn, eyes darting.

“Bec!” someone called, but I shook off the command there, spying a long road that led down the hill and taking off for it.

We are safe. This is home , my Tirian insisted, but it was her strength that powered my limbs, had me running down the road, the asphalt stinging my soles. I heard them calling, but my stride only lengthened at that.

“Who’s this?” a group of guys asked as they came closer, obviously walking down to work, if the high vis gear was anything to go by, but I didn’t get a chance to answer. I ran and ran, my mind, my body in riot, instincts my nan and mum had worked so hard to instil coming to the fore.

I ran up to a large warehouse type building, where yet more men clustered around the entrance, but one whiff of me, and their attention instantly zeroed in.

This, being the focus of twenty, thirty men, all entirely devoted to me, I’d had fantasies about it, wild, overheated dreams, but the reality was somehow scarier.

Green eyes glowed like fireflies in each of the men’s faces, throwing yet more evidence in my face.

But I wasn’t here for that. I didn’t want or need to be convinced that there were others of my kind here, despite my beast’s remonstrations in my head.

My eyes whipped around, scanning what appeared to be a complex of buildings, then finding one that would give me just what I needed.

It looked like a mechanic’s workshop, cars parked in and around it.

I took off at a run, hearing people shout things as I did so, but I paid them no mind.

I sprinted over to the nearest car, my hands slapping down on the cool metal when I got there, then moving to try the door.

It was locked, and so was the next one, prompting me to move into the workshop itself, particularly when there were cars there with windows down, bonnets popped.

It was because I was so focussed on that, on finding a car unlocked but functional, that I completely missed him, not sensing or feeling him until I spun on my heel, ready to lunge for a car that looked perfect and even had the keys in the ignition.

When I did so, moving before I could think or see, I didn’t get to the car, open the door, and fire up the engine, I got him.

My eyes jerked up the minute my hands smacked down onto a warm, muscular, bare chest. His hands covered mine, his thumbs stroking down the sides of my wrists as a slow smile spread across his face, looking like all his Christmases had come at once.

And maybe they had, for both of us. He was a big guy, but he had that kind of lean, well muscled look of Brad Pitt circa Fight Club , and my fingers itched to trace every damn one of them.

“Hello, love,” he said, slowly smiling, but that faltered when he took a deep breath in. Gentle humour was washed away in favour of something much hotter, darker. He shepherded me back until my body was pressed against the side of a car. “I’m Ethan, and you are?”

“Fucked…” was all I could force out.