In Heat (Sanctuary) Read Free

the past year and within a few months become one of the city’s biggest hotspots, particularly among the were population.  It stood as a windowless brick building, a former warehouse turned chic by the silver-blue sign blazing above the door and a reputation for exclusivity.  Full-blood humans flocked to were hangouts with all the enthusiasm of tourists in strange lands, making it the perfect place for Cassie dance off her excess energy while the heat ran its course: her pheromones would be diluted throughout the crowd.   Cassie and Aisha paid their cover and slipped inside, where a throbbing techno beat immediately assaulted Aisha’s ears and the heat of a hundred bodies writhing against each other blanketed her from all sides.  She lifted her hair from the back of her neck, caught Cassie’s eye, and gestured towards the bar with her eyebrows lifted, the music being way too loud to allow for any conversation outside of shouting.  Cassie nodded enthusiastically.
    The space in front of the bar was crowded, but still marginally quieter than it had been standing directly beside the dance floor.  Cassie and Aisha only had to wait a moment or two before two stools became available.  Cassie waved the bartender over for a martini and, upon receiving it, gulped half of it down at a go.
    “Whoa,” Aisha said, laughing a little.  She took a sip of her own drink and let out an appreciative whistle at its strength.  “Easy, cowgirl.  I’m not big enough to carry you out of here.”
    “Oh, my God, Aisha, you have no idea how much I’ve needed that.”  Cassie took another sip and closed her eyes, tilting her head back to show the line of her throat and making her flaxen hair catch silver in the club’s low light.  “You are so lucky you don’t go into heat.  I would take the worst cramps in the world over this.”
    “Says someone who has never gotten a cramp,” Aisha commented drily.  She took another sip of her drink and noticed a man watching the pair of them from the end of the bar.  He was cute enough, with artfully messy dark hair and a slight cleft in his chin.  Aisha lifted her glass to him.  He lifted his own back and then tilted the rim towards Cassie slightly with a question in his eyes.  Aisha barely resisted the urge to roll her own.  Golden eyes were almost exclusively features of were blood, and were women had a reputation for being wild things between the bed sheets even when they weren’t in the middle of a heat, eager to heed every suggestion and whim.  Completely untrue, as Aisha herself could attest—unless pureblooded humans lived some of the most boring sex lives imaginable—but it didn’t stop Cassie from rarely having to buy her own drinks every time the two of them went out.
    “Says someone who has never gone into heat,” Cassie shot back.  She finished off her martini and smiled both at the bartender and the man at the end of the bar when another appeared at her elbow.  This one, at least, she seemed content to sip at.  “I’m telling you, Aisha, it is the worst , even with suppressants.  Sometimes I think especially with suppressants.  I’m looking at all of these fine pieces of candy out here—“  Cassie gestured towards the dancing crowd with her drink and spared a special wink for her new friend.  “And all I want is a nibble when there’s something inside telling me I should be feasting.  If I ever meet someone I like enough to lock in my bedroom for three days at a stretch, I swear—“
    “Oh, my God!”  Aisha put her hands over her ears, laughing.  “Stop it, please!”
    “Prude.”  Cassie regained her grin for only a moment before it faltered.  “Besides, even with the suppressants, I never know whether a guy is into me for me, for my pheromones, or for—“  She gestured up to her eyes.  “A notch on his bedpost.  I’ll take a couple of Midol and a heating pad any day of the week.”
    Their fun night out had taken a turn into the