by Nalini Singh
The rest of her grandparents’ visit passed by in a happy snapshot of talk and laughter, and yes, more than one teary moment. Returning to Bastien’s aerie the afternoon the two left for Calgary, she decided to make dinner while waiting for him to get back from the city. Her skin was tight with anticipation, woman and lynx both in possessive agreement.
It was about damn time Bastien Michael Smith understood that his mate was no longer vulnerable or shocked or in any way unsteady. She’d made her decision and it was a decision that would never, ever change. He was hers and she was keeping him.
So engrossed was she in her plans that she almost missed the sound of feet hitting the balcony, as if someone had climbed overlimb from another tree. A second later, a stunning woman wearing jeans and a simple white T-shirt stood in the open doorway, her red hair pulled back into a high ponytail and her legs long.
Even if Kirby hadn’t seen the photos scattered around the apartment and aerie, she’d have guessed the familial connection in a heartbeat. It wasn’t just the hair, she thought, but something about the shape of their eyes, a way they had of holding themselves. “You must be Mercy.” Hands a little clammy, she nonetheless smiled, recalling Bastien’s words: Show no fear. “I’m Kirby. Come in.”
“Thanks.” Sauntering inside, her walk lazily feline, Mercy took in the meal in progress on the kitchen counter, her body so lithely muscled that her pregnancy—her multiple pregnancy, according to Bastien—wasn’t obvious at first glance. “What’s for dinner?”
Kirby bit the inside of her cheek and decided what the hell. “Fresh kitten cutlets. Want one?”
A hitch in Mercy’s step, before she turned and saluted Kirby with two fingers, no hint of a smile on her face. “Touché.”
Conscious she wasn’t out of the woods, Kirby walked around to finish prepping the cutlets—a prosaic chicken—before washing her hands and putting on a pot of coffee. Mercy said nothing throughout, simply leaned up against a nearby wall, arms folded and eyes watchful. Her dominance was potent, the other woman a senior member of DarkRiver.
“So,” Kirby said, unwilling to be intimidated, “pistols at dawn?”
Mercy’s eyes gleamed. “Bastien tells me you’re a kindergarten teacher.”
“Yes.” To her joy, she had a job to return to next week, the board having been sympathetic to her unique circumstances. “Maybe I’ll teach your pupcubs one day.” Bastien had laughingly explained that since no one knew if Mercy’s babies would shift into wolf pups or leopard cubs, everyone had taken to calling them pupcubs.
“Maybe.”
Yes, Mercy was a tough nut to crack, but Kirby wasn’t about to give up, her lynx digging in its claws. “Cream? Sugar?”
“Both. Two sugars.” A pause. “The pupcubs like sugar.”
Kirby considered whether that tiny tidbit indicated a thaw in Mercy’s mood, decided not to be too optimistic. “Here you go. Bastien’s blend—much nicer than the instant stuff I used to drink until he spoiled me.”
“Bastien does have good taste.” Mercy unfolded her arms to accept the cup. “You like his city apartment?”
“Sure, it’s stunning, but I love this aerie more.” The sound of the tree leaves whispering in the wind, the wild lynx who often dropped by, the scents in the air, and most of all, Bastien’s happiness here, it all mingled into a song of homecoming. “I do still have to use the rope ladder to get down,” she admitted. “I don’t quite trust myself to jump even in cat form.”
“You’ll get better.” Mercy took a sip of the coffee. “Dorian said he spoke to you.”
“Yes, he’s been incredibly helpful. So has everyone else I’ve met from the pack.”
“We’re not always this welcoming with strangers—it’s a good thing you knew Bastien beforehand.”
Kirby decided to stop fencing. This was too important. “I adore him, Mercy,” she said, holding the other woman’s gaze even though her lynx knew she risked angering a far more dangerous predator. “I’d adore him if he didn’t have a penny to his name or a pack to call his own, or if he lived in a tent.” Her chest ached with the fury of her emotions, her breath catching. “He’s smart and gorgeous and wonderful and overprotective and stubborn enough to drive me mad and I can’t live without him!”
“If you think Bas is stubborn,” Mercy drawled, “you haven’t seen Grey in action.” A slow smile so reminiscent of Bastien’s that Kirby missed him unbearably. “You had me at the kitten cutlets.”
Bursting out laughing, Kirby set aside her own coffee before she spilled it. “God, your stone face is legendary.”
Mercy patted her cheek, her leopard’s laughter in her eyes. “Welcome to the family, little sister.”
BASTIEN didn’t begrudge Kirby the time she was spending with her grandparents, but it had been fucking hard to not have her close. He hadn’t even bothered to attempt to deny himself the pleasure of watching over her from a distance the two nights she stayed at the guest aerie.
Yeah, he knew rationally that her grandparents weren’t going to hurt her, but caught in the coils of the mating urge, he wasn’t exactly thinking with clean logic. If Kirby decided to head to Canada to meet more of her father’s pack, he’d damn well be going along. Forget about being civilized and understanding—he needed to be with his mate.
It had seemed like the right choice not to push her into intimacy at the start, but now he wished he’d used the passionate heat between them to tie Kirby to him on the physical level at least. What if she began to pull back now that she’d seen all the choices open to her? What if she decided she might prefer to explore her sensuality with a fellow lynx?
The agonizing jealousy inspired by the thought of anyone else touching Kirby, and fed by his raw need to claim her, tore through him as he arrived at the aerie—to find her waiting in lynx form, ready for a run.
Barely controlling his desire to lunge at her, he stripped and shifted. Kirby rubbed up against him, her fur thick and soft, the way she pretended to bite him affectionate. As if she could feel his feral tension, wanted to soothe him . . . as a mate might do. His leopard settling at the petting, though he remained on a brutal edge, he took her on a run to the lower Sierra.
There was no snow yet, but there would be soon enough. Built for that environment, her paws natural snowshoes, his lynx might just outpace him on it. He looked forward to the challenge, to playing with Kirby on her natural turf. Now, however, he was content simply to be with her under the starlit night, the moon a silver spotlight that caressed her fur like a lover.
Arriving home at the midnight hour, the world hushed around them, Bastien shifted back into his human form, while Kirby stayed lynx. She was having trouble getting used to the nudity most changelings grew up accepting as natural. “I could jump up to the aerie, throw down some clothes.”
She nodded, tufted ears bobbing.
“Or,” he drawled, his gut tight with a need only Kirby could fulfill, “I could stand right here and watch a pretty, sexy woman come out of the shift, then run my hands all over her bitable body.”
He expected a yowl of defiance, but the world fractured into light and then a lusciously sensual woman—his mate—was rising from a crouch, honey-colored hair tumbling over her back as she smiled and crooked a finger . . . and the mating bond smashed into him, the connection vibrant and primal and tasting of Kirby.
Stunned, they stared at one another.
Bastien pounced the next instant, his hands on her hips, his lips on hers. Wrapping her arms around him, she opened her mouth and he took full advantage, giving his hands free rein to explore her curves. “You are mine,” he growled into her mouth. “Always mine. I love you until I can’t breathe.” The mating bond might’ve drawn them together, but it was now entangled with heartbonds as strong.
“You’re mine, too.” Hand fisting in his hair on that ferocious claim, she moaned and held on tight, her body straining as she rose on tiptoe. When she made a frustrated sound, he hitched her onto his hips and turned to th
e tree trunk, then paused.
“Bastien?” Kisses along his jaw, her skin silky soft against his.
“Bark will hurt your back,” he muttered, nibbling on the tip of her ear because he knew it drove her nuts.
Shivering, she purred, sought his lips for a kiss. He opened his mouth on her own, licked and tasted, but it wasn’t enough. He wanted her body under his, wanted to be inside her, her pleasure feeding his. “Up,” he said, his breath jagged. “Climb.”
She tightened her thighs around him. “No.” Nipples rubbing over the hard wall of his chest, she kissed him again, licking just the way he liked. “Here.”
He almost gave in, pounded her on the forest floor, was stopped only by the sneaking suspicion that had taken root when he’d realized how touch starved she’d been. “Have you done this before?” he asked, too aroused to be anything but blunt.
“No.” She didn’t stop tormenting him, her slickness erotic temptation against his abdomen. “I am so ready, Bastien.” Her body moving sinuously against his own. “I want to be with you. Only you.” Kiss after kiss. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
God, she made him her slave.
Determined to give her a good memory despite his ragged control, he walked to the rope ladder and started hauling them up. She held on but did nothing else to help him, nibbling and kissing at his jaw until he thought he’d go mad. “Behave,” he snarled, nipping at her ear but careful not to hurt.
Another shiver, a wicked smile. “No.” Another kiss, this one on the mouth.
Swinging up onto the balcony, he somehow found the door, stumbled inside and to the bed. Where he finally, finally, had her curves under the rigid planes of his own body. Pinning her hands above her head with one hand around her wrists, he settled his lower body snug against her damp heat.
It made him groan.
Kirby arched up, sliding her folds over his erect cock.
“Bad lynx.” Chest heaving, he snapped his teeth at her.
She snapped back, then arched her neck in invitation. Leaning down, he suckled at the flutter of her pulse. Laving his tongue over the red mark with unhidden possessiveness, he closed one hand over her breast, teased her nipple. “You are so pretty everywhere.”
A shy-sweet smile, sparkling pleasure-hazed eyes, her tongue flirting with his until he gripped her jaw to hold her in place for an open-mouthed kiss, wet and hot and a prelude to sex. Legs still locked around him, she opened for him, demanded more, the damp musk of her so intoxicating his claws sliced out to tear the sheets.
“Shit.” Retracting them, he pressed his forehead to hers. “Sorry, baby. I’m having trouble holding it togeth—”
Pelvis arching against him, she sucked at his throat as he’d done at hers—possessive and determined—and that was it. All he wanted, needed, was Kirby. She was liquid heat and hot honey on his fingers when he touched her between her thighs.
“Bastien!”
If he’d had any hope of taking this slow, he lost it on the ripples of her pleasure. Pushing one sweetly curved thigh wider, he waited only until her body had stopped clenching in orgasm before beginning to slide in. She moaned, her claws digging just enough into his shoulders that it felt amazing.
“Tell me if it hurts,” he grit out, because not for anything would he hurt his Kirby.
Kisses on his throat, a purr in the back of hers. “It feels sooooo good.”
Shuddering, he withdrew after that first shallow penetration and slid back in, reining in his instinct to thrust; she was so tautly stretched around him, so small. But she was also lusciously aroused, her unhidden desire threatening to erase the last, faint glimmers of his control.
It was excruciating.
It was beautiful.
Then at last, he was buried to the hilt and they were kissing.
Hand tightening on her thigh, the taste of her in his every sense, he withdrew, pushed back in slowly.
Once. Twice. “Fuck!”
Spine locking, he came in a violent rush, his face buried in the curve of his mate’s neck. His utter lack of control would’ve been embarrassing . . . except that he felt her gasp as she came again, her body clamping down possessively on his cock.
Male pride restored, Bastien collapsed on her. Her fingers petted his hair, her arms and legs imprisoned his very happy body, her words a husky whisper. “Can we do that again? I really, really, really liked it.”
Bastien grinned. “Hell, yeah.”
EPILOGUE
Kirby glared at Bastien as he led her out in front of a lovely home set deep in the forest the next day. “Is this your parents’ house?”
“Yep.”
She dug her heels in. “I’m about to meet your mom and dad and you couldn’t have warned me?” Her old jeans and faded T-shirt would hardly make the best first impression, not to mention the leaves she no doubt had in her hair from playfully wrestling with her mate not long ago. “We’re leaving right now so I can change.”
Bastien tugged her forward instead, insouciant. “Don’t worry, little cat. They’re going to see what I see.”
Kirby wasn’t so certain, but the door was already opening to reveal a small woman with hair of rich dark gold. “Bastien? Why are you lurking out—” A dazzling smile broke out on her face. “Well,” she said, walking over to take Kirby into her arms, “there you are.”
The maternal warmth of the touch, the words, erased any nerves Kirby might have had. And when Lia Smith said, “I’m so happy to welcome another daughter to this family,” she knew she was going to adore Bastien’s mother just as much as she loved Lia’s son.
“Hey, Frenchie!” Sage poked his head out the door, the sun hitting the brown of his hair to reveal hidden strands of red. “Did you bring any baguettes?”
“Why don’t you go season something, Herb?”
Kirby’s shoulders shook as Lia Smith glared at each man in turn. “I gave you both beautiful names. Use them.”
“Yes, Mom.”
Kirby didn’t stop smiling the entire time she was in the Smith house, was the same when she spoke to her grandparents on the comm later that night. “Our future babies are going to be utterly spoiled,” she said to her mate afterward, delighted at the idea.
“In case you missed it,” Bastien muttered, “they’re also going to be demons.”
Kirby laughed, pleased with the idea of her own little red-headed demons. “If Mercy and Riley are having pupcubs,” she mused, “what will we have?”
“Lynxpards?”
“Doesn’t have the same ring to it.”
“Hmm.” A long pause before Bastien began to laugh so hard he almost fell off the bed. “We’ll have little birbys, that’s what we’ll have.”
She slapped his chest. “Don’t you dare say that in front of your brothers or we’ll never hear the end of it.”
Of course he let it slip and of course the future birbys became part of the family lexicon. Sitting around the table being teased about it for the umpteenth time two months later, her visiting grandparents laughing as hard as the Smiths, Kirby knew she’d want it no other way. “I think we should visit Vera tomorrow and take her a great big cake.”
Bastien smiled. “Yeah. I think we should. She gave us the best gift, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
MAGIC STEALS
ILONA ANDREWS
I looked at myself in the mirror. I wore tiny black panties and a tomato red satin garter belt with black lace-up inserts. The price sticker had described the color as scarlet, but really it was tomato red. The garter belt held up black fishnet stockings. A matching bra did its best to push up my small boobs. It didn’t have much to work with. I wasn’t just skinny. When my body was made, someone had read the instructions wrong. I had tiny boobs, narrow hips, and thin chopstick legs with knobby knees.
I looked ridiculous.
The description of the bra had promised “enticing curves” and encouraged me to “flirt with your most stunning cleavage.” I leaned on the bathr
oom vanity and blew the air out. This sucked so much.
I stared at my reflection in the mirror. “You’re a weretiger. Confident. Aggressive. Roar.”
Still ridiculous.
It could be worse, I told myself. I could’ve gone for the chain mail bikini. The lingerie shop had one of those, too.
The sales clerk had recommended a floaty pink see-through thing with bows. Buying that was out of the question. I was already short and skinny. The see-through thing would swallow me. Besides, that outfit was a baby-doll outfit. Looking cute and sweet was the last thing I wanted to do, because tonight Jim Shrapshire and I had a date.
Jim Shrapshire ran Clan Cat, one of the seven clans in Atlanta’s Shapeshifter Pack. A werejaguar, he normally served as the Pack’s Chief of Security. Jim wasn’t just a badass. He was a badass who wrote a book for badasses on how to be a badder badass. Which is why, when Curran, the Beastlord and the ruler of the Pack, had to go on an expedition to the Mediterranean, he left Jim in charge of fifteen hundred shapeshifters. Curran had been gone for about a month and Jim was keeping the Pack together with iron claws. He was the smartest man I ever met. He was scary, funny, had muscles in places I had no idea muscles existed, and for some weird reason he liked me.
At least I thought he liked me. Things were complicated. As the alpha of Clan Cat, he was in charge of me and he’d been really careful not to take advantage of it. We’d been trying to date, except that Jim was busy and I was busy, too, so we barely managed a date every two to three weeks. When we did connect, we talked about everything under the sun and we made out. He let me set the pace. I decided how far we went and the first few times we got together, we didn’t go very far.
Kissing Jim was my definition of nirvana, but some small part of me never believed he was really there for me. Jim needed his equal: a powerful, aggressive, and sexy woman. He got me, Dali, a skinny vegetarian girl who had to wear glasses with lenses as thick as Coke bottle bottoms, threw up when she smelled blood, and was about as useful in a fight as a fifth leg on a donkey. To top it all off, my own mother, who loved me more than the whole world, wouldn’t describe me as pretty. She told people that I was smart, brave, and educated. Unfortunately none of it helped me right now, because tonight I wanted to be sexy. I wanted to seduce Jim.