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The quiet when we got back to Shaun’s place was deafening.

The creak of the door, the sigh he let out when we walked in, the clatter of keys on the kitchen bench, none of them loud enough to drown out the rapid beat of my heart.

He went to the fridge, pulled out two bottles of water, and cracked one, handing it to me.

“I’m not thirsty,” I said.

Yeah right, I was thirsty as hell. I just didn’t want to drink water. He caught my slow perusal of his body, his eyes just as hot, but he pushed the bottle towards me with a definite shove.

“You need to stay hydrated for what’s coming.” He inspected me just as thoroughly. “You. You’ve never been through a heat before…”

Well, that was a lie, wasn’t it, but I kept my mouth shut.

“…our bodies run hotter, our needs…”

He sauntered towards me with that slow, hot guy swagger TikTok models seem to be born with.

But he wasn’t there, tiny, a recording on a screen.

He was here, now. My hands went up as he walked right into my personal bubble, not so much to stop him as to get my hands on that muscular body.

The cotton of his shirt was smooth and worn soft by many washes, and his scent?

I found myself leaning in, taking a long inhale of that musky, woody smell, something he observed with a slow smile.

“I can help you through this, keep you satisfied, do whatever the fuck you want until your heat breaks?—”

Jesus fucking Christ, I’d spent my life wanting to hear exactly those words. Some had tried to deliver on them and failed miserably, turning on me when they were found wanting, but Shaun? I’d never seen anyone look more convinced of his ability to rise to the occasion.

“That’s what this place is, a sanctuary for women like you who turn…”

Tirian, that was what he stopped himself from saying.

“Girls who come here, they say it’s disorientating, that their body feels like it’s not their own but…”

He moved in close, turning me around to face the glass sliding door, to look beyond it to the grass, where some of the men who’d amassed outside the workshop now stood.

His lips went to my neck, his hand to my stomach, pushing the borrowed T-shirt up, like he needed to get at my skin, like he needed to display it to the men beyond the door.

I watched them watch me, their glowing green eyes shining in the morning light.

“I reckon you gotta think about it like this—what have you always wanted but been too scared to ask for? What have you always wanted to try?” Teeth grazed my skin, making me shiver, my heat roaring back again now I wasn’t being bombarded by strangers and their agendas.

“If you could have anything, anyone in the world, what would you want?”

I shifted against him, my hips instinctively tipping back, and he ground his hard length into my arse in response. His fingers began to roam, tracing the line of my collarbone, the slope of my shoulders, his breath rasping in my ear.

“Any one of those blokes out there would step over their own grandmother to get to you, and you get to control who and how many come in.”

How many? I stiffened at that, even though those words were delivered with the same low purr. No change in tone or inflection, like the idea of opening the door and ushering some of them in to quench my ‘thirst’ was perfectly natural.

“What do you mean how many?”

I had to ask the question, something cold and hard shouldering desire to one side for a second.

“You like that idea, greedy girl?” He rocked his hips back and forth, drawing my attention to how hard he was. Still was, even after suggesting this.

“Like it?”

I couldn’t answer, could I? It was only something that had plagued my dreams and fantasies for so fucking long. Even as a little girl, I’d assumed the norm was to have multiple boyfriends, right up until I had that corrected.

“Slut!” That same feminine look of disgust on a rapid succession of faces—from other little girls, to older girls, and even people’s mothers. Those curled lips and narrowed eyes told me exactly what they thought of that idea.

Shaun might be on board right now because his cock was hard, probably had some sort of cum dump kink he wanted to explore, but then as soon as we did?

No more Mr Nice Guy, and I needed allies in this place.

Once my heat was done, I’d have to hightail it back to the roadhouse and hope I didn’t lose my job, and I was pretty sure I couldn’t just walk back there.

So I turned around, ignoring the sight of all those other men, and just focussed on him.

My arms went around his neck, my lips reaching up, ready to meet his, but he stopped me with a firm grip.

“You can have whatever you want, Bec,” he insisted, “but you need to be clear about what you want and don’t want. That’s how this place works. Give it to me, your fantasies, your needs, and I’ll look after you, make sure you get every single thing you want.”

He brushed a hand across my cheek, and dammit if my eyes didn’t close to savour that feeling, because I wanted everything he offered.

I’d been out on my own for so damn long.

Nan died when I was still a kid, Mum dying when I was finishing high school.

“We burn bright, burn hot, and then we’re gone again,” she’d said by way of commiseration on her deathbed in that bloody hospital.

I’d been responsible for everything—keeping a low profile, trying to balance the needs of my beast with my own for survival, weathering heats, feeling the pull of instincts no one else I knew felt.

My breath came in and out in long shudders, making his arms tighten around me, but my eyes snapped up, meeting his head-on.

“You want to take care of me. You want to control this…heat.”

He balked at the last word, looking stung for a second, before my eyes fell closed.

That made sense, I guessed. On paper, it was an accusation, but my voice, it betrayed me, colouring the words with something else altogether—a plea.

The opportunity to just surrender seemed incredibly appealing right now, more than him or any of the other guys waiting around.

I just wanted someone else to make the decisions and know I was safe.

“That’s what you want?”

My eyes flicked open, the lids feeling impossibly heavy. He studied my face with a terrible ferocity, turning him from a good-looking dude to some kind of savage idol. I squirmed in his grip, thinking I’d somehow fucked up again.

But that wasn’t it.

“You want me to take you through your heat, direct what you do and who with? Take…control?”

“Well, someone needs to,” I said with a sigh, closing my eyes again. This time, I was cradled against that hard chest, held close as I listened to his heart beat. I jumped when his hand went to my hair, Shaun making a soothing noise as he stroked me, waiting for me to relax.

“I’d be honoured,” he said finally, so much time having passed, it took me a while to work out why.

“I’ll need you to communicate. I can’t do this if I don’t know what you like and dislike, but yeah, I can help with this.

” He let me go, picking me up and placing me on a stool before stepping between my splayed thighs, holding the damn water out to me.

“And you’ll need to look after yourself.

” His eyes were entirely focussed on my lips as he tipped the bottle up against them.

“Drink your water like a good little girl.”

OK, we were back to sexy as fuck. Good to know. My hand wrapped around the bottle, yanking it from his grip.

“Nobody has ever accused me of being a good girl,” I snapped back, belatedly wondering how that would go down.

I needn’t have. A slow smile spread across his face, one filled with hot, hot lascivious intent.

“Well, that just makes things all the better, doesn’t it?

Drink your water and then get in the bedroom.

The scent of you is enough to drive a man to distraction, but melding with my clothes…

” That mouth dropped down to my ear again, the words vibrating all the way through me. “It makes you smell like you’re mine.”