by Nalini Singh
Used to taking care of herself, she said, "You don't have to." The comment went directly against the huge part of her that wanted to crawl into his lap and ask him not to leave, her skin aching for his.
"Kirby, I'm a dominant predatory changeling male," he said, as if that explained everything, his tone suddenly unbending. "I also have a mother who'd box my ears if I left you alone in this situation, not to mention what Vera would do to me." A deep smile that creased his cheeks. "Have pity."
Kirby didn't have to argue with herself to answer. No, the battle was to maintain some kind of control over a body and a mind that were rocketing out of her control. "All right," she said, stomach fluttering in a way that had nothing to do with pain. "Do you work from the DarkRiver building?"
Stepping out, he opened the passenger door for her and waited until she was on her feet before leaning back against the car to say, "No. My team and I have a dedicated space in the Financial District."
Only a few minutes away, the madness in her whispered.
"I'll be there till about seven." Rising to his full height, Bastien curved his hand around the side of her neck for a moment. "I'll come by right after." He brushed his thumb over her pulse. "Yes?"
Throat dry, she nodded. "Yes."
His gaze dropped to her lips and for a second she thought he'd kiss her, but then he drew back his hand, the green of his eyes leopard-wild. "Rest." A rough command. "I'll see you in a few hours."
Heart a staccato drumbeat against her ribs, she watched him prowl around to get into the driver's seat. Cat, definitely a cat.
CHAPTER 3
Bastien loved numbers, loved the high-stakes energy of the financial world--but thanks to his family and his pack, he also had a solid, stable head on his shoulders. It was what made him so good at what he did.
Most of DarkRiver's investments were medium to high yield, low-risk, which meant that if carefully managed, as Bastien managed them, the pack was immune to market fluctuations. However, and with his alpha's knowledge and authorization, he also had a small percentage in extremely high-yield, extremely high-risk investments that kept their portfolio from stagnating.
Over the years since he'd taken charge of that portfolio, he'd increased DarkRiver's financial assets exponentially, and he had no intention of stopping that trajectory. So yeah, he liked his job, liked that what he did helped maintain and support his pack, but today, the hours couldn't pass fast enough. His leopard snarled inside his mind, wanting to go to Kirby, and it took all of his human willpower not to give in, not to find her, bite down on her neck, mark her.
Shoving a hand through his hair, he grabbed a bottle of cold water in a futile attempt to cool things down. He could be as possessive as any predatory changeling, but he'd never felt such a feral need to brand a woman. Not that his response to her was exactly a surprise.
Kirby, after all, was his mate.
It didn't always happen this hard, this fast. Mercy and her mate, Riley, had known one another for years before the mating dance slapped them both sideways. But for some, it happened in that first, stunning instant of contact.
The knowing was visceral, as if he'd sensed the other half of himself, her presence intoxicating to his senses.
The soft and the wild, the two scents that were both hers.
He frowned. The feline whisper to Kirby's scent hadn't made another appearance the entire time he'd spent with her and that was impossible for a changeling, so she was definitely human. His human. Leopard and man, both parts of him smiled, figuring he'd have plenty of time to work out the complex mystery of her scent.
Had she been changeling, he'd have--No, he'd have done exactly the same things he planned to do to win his sexy little human mate. He'd court her, seduce her, pleasure her . . . and by the time she realized what was happening, she'd already be his. The last thing he could afford to do was come on so strong that he scared her.
With that thought in mind, he rolled up his sleeves and focused on figures that today seemed as dry and as boring as dust, in spite of the financial turmoil caused by the recent political shift among the Psy. That's what a lot of people didn't understand--the psychic race might've been standoffish to a large degree until recently, but all three races--human, changeling and Psy--were connected on a global level; civil war in one sphere affected them all.
Sometimes, it was subtle, as with the market fluctuations, other times overt.
Bastien's mouth set in a grim line as he considered the toxic bomb discovered ten days prior in the city's central skytrain station.
"But that," he muttered, "isn't what you need to be thinking about right now. Get to work so you can spend as much time as possible with Kirby in the coming week."
He did exactly that, was ready for a break when his phone rang a couple of hours later, Grey's number on the display. "What do you want, shrimp?"
"Do you want to come over tonight?" his younger brother asked. "Sage and I are getting pizza and watching the basketball game."
"Thanks, but not tonight."
"Better offer?"
"Way better." His entire body grew taut at the thought of Kirby; if she no longer felt ill, he had every intention of talking his way into staying. God, he wanted to pet her, hold her, nuzzle his face into the curve of her neck and draw in that intriguing scent that made no sense.
If, however, she was still sick, he'd coax her into going to a clinic. And if Kirby proved stubborn about it, he'd pick her up and take her. She could be mad at him later--after the doctors checked her out. Bastien did not mess around when it came to looking after the people who mattered to him.
"Not one of the women from the luncheon?" Grey's voice broke into his thoughts, his brother's surprise open. "I thought Sage said you snuck out early--he's cranky about that, by the way."
"She's no one you two know." He wasn't ready to share Kirby with his family or his pack yet. Not only did he want her all to himself until he was drunk on her, he didn't want to risk her being overwhelmed by the Smith clan or his affectionately nosy packmates. "I'll see you later this week. And tell Sage he can be cranky when he's been ambushed by a setup as many times as I have."
"When should I start worrying?"
"Not for a few years yet." Hanging up after a bit more back and forth with his brother, he knuckled down to work again.
There were three more calls, two from packmates who needed advice about personal financial matters, the third from his father. Michael Smith had obviously been talking to his mate, and was checking up on his son. Happy to answer his father honestly, Bastien told him he was fine. Hell, he was ecstatic.
That visceral excitement had intensified to fever pitch by the time he left the office.
Kirby sounded sweetly delighted when she answered the intercom and cleared him into her building, her accent redolent of mint juleps and magnolia trees. Deciding he was going to kiss her on that lush mouth of hers as soon as possible, licking and tasting and indulging, he took the steps to her apartment three at a time, making it there just as she opened the door.
A slight gasp, followed by a shy smile that made him want to bite, her pretty honey-colored hair in a ponytail that bared the delicate skin of her nape. "That was fast."
Leopard stretching under his skin at her proximity, he allowed himself to tug on a curling tendril of hair that had come loose from the tie. "I bring gifts to bribe my way inside." He held up the bag from a family-run restaurant one block over. "Chicken noodle soup. Good for whatever ails you. And if you're feeling better . . ." He showed her the frozen yogurt he had fantasies of feeding her spoonful by spoonful, and yeah, maybe he wanted to lick it from her skin for his own dessert, but he was a cat. Kirby couldn't be too surprised if he gave in to temptation.
"So?" he teased gently when she didn't step back, her caressing gaze on his shoulders, his chest. It was all he could do not to cup her jaw, claim a hot, deep kiss, tell her she could touch him anytime she wanted.
Cheeks coloring, she invited him into the tin
y space that would've normally made his leopard stir-crazy. "I feel fine," she said. "I had a couple of twinges right after you left, but then nothing."
From the scent and look of her, her skin glowing, she didn't appear ill. Yet once again, he caught a hint of that other scent, wild and inexplicable, that confused his leopard. "Have you been spending a lot of time around another cat lately?" he asked, though the scent was too integrated into her body to be anything other than her own.
Yet the way she moved, everything else about her, was human.
Kirby tilted her head to the side, lines forming between the rich, unusual hazel of her eyes, flecks of green intermingled with near yellow. "No, why?"
"I thought I caught a scent." Except there was nothing in the air now except Kirby's warm softness overlaid by a peach accent that probably came from her body lotion.
Of course, thinking about Kirby rubbing lotion over her naked flesh probably wasn't the best of ideas right now. "Might be one of your neighbors," he said to put her at ease, while his mind worried over the puzzle of it.
"Maybe." She bit down on her lower lip, and he wanted to growl that that was his job.
Yeah, he was having trouble controlling both the animal and the man.
"I haven't met all my neighbors yet." Smile holding a quiet shyness again, she smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle on the front of her fitted sea green T-shirt. "I'm not very brave with strangers." A soft confession.
Bastien's need for her segued into a violent tenderness, and right then, all he wanted to do was hold her. Just hold her. "I think you're braver than you know," he murmured, folding his arms to leash the instinct. "It's not every woman who packs up and moves across the country on her own." She'd come to him, whether she knew it or not, and it wasn't a gift he'd ever forget. "I'm damn glad you did, little cat."
Skin flushing a delicate pink, she turned to put the dessert in the freezer, the black fabric of her yoga pants stretching across her curves. "We should eat before the soup gets cold."
*
BASTIEN took the seat right next to Kirby when it was time to eat, his arm along the back of her chair and his eyes on her profile. Flustered, she said, "You're staring." Like he wanted to take a big greedy bite out of her, his eyes an impossibly vivid and primal green shade that told her it wasn't only the human part of him that watched her.
"Hmm." A rumbling sound that made her want to press her hand to his chest, feel the vibration of it. "Eat." He picked up her spoon, dipped it into the soup, brought it to her lips. "I want you healthy for all the debauched things I plan to talk you into later tonight."
The rough warmth of his other hand curving around her nape stole the words on her tongue. All her life, she'd ached for contact with another living being, hungered to touch and be touched. The lack of tactile contact in her life hurt. As a child in the foster care system, she'd had few choices; it should've been different for the adult she'd become, but despite her need, Kirby couldn't imagine being with someone without bonds of affection, of care. However, building those bonds was incredibly difficult for her after a lifetime of not belonging to anyone.
Then had come Bastien.
"Hey." The spoon clinking back into the bowl, knuckles running over her cheek. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."
That voice, a low, deep purr that stroked over her skin. "You didn't," she answered, her own voice husky. "I'm just not used to . . ." Being so wanted. No one in her life had ever pursued her as Bastien was doing, ever cared enough to get her soup when she was sick, much less touch her with any kind of tenderness.
"To a bad-mannered cat?" he said, the thumb of the hand he had around her nape stroking over her pulse point. "I bring you soup then don't let you eat it." The heat of him a dark kiss, he picked up the spoon again. "Let me make up for it."
Stomach fluttering at the coaxing words, she parted her lips to say what, she didn't know, and he slipped the spoon inside. And somehow--Kirby wasn't sure quite how--she ended up in his lap, one of his hands splayed on her lower back, his shoulders heavy with muscle under her arm and his thighs rock hard below her.
When she belatedly realized where she was and made to get off, he playfully threatened to sulk . . . then fed her more soup. All the while verbally petting her with affectionate, sexy words that made her feel intoxicatingly sensual, a beautiful woman.
"You haven't eaten," she said afterward, warm and full and aroused on the innermost level.
He nipped at her lower lip in a startling contact that nonetheless wasn't unwelcome, his thighs shifting under her body as one of his hands squeezed the curve of her hip. "I plan to nibble on you."
Her skin prickling with that strange, near-painful awareness, and her heart a throbbing drum, Kirby brushed her fingers over his jaw. She knew then that she was about to invite this gorgeous, charming leopard into her bed after a single day's acquaintance. Her need for him was deeper than simple sexual desire, however. Some long-dormant part of her, anguished and in pain, whispered that Bastien alone could assuage the terrible emptiness inside her.
It felt as if she'd been waiting for him her entire life.
Such a dangerous thought. And still, she wasn't going to step back, wasn't going to be rational about this. "Will--" Agony tearing through her abdomen, she doubled over with a shocked cry, her vision blurring.
"Right." Face grim, Bastien rose with her in his arms and headed for the door. "You're going to see a doctor, no damn argument."
In too much pain to respond, her insides shredded open by clawing blades that cut and tore, she curled into the protective strength of his body. It was a quick ride to the nearest twenty-four-hour clinic, but the pain faded rapidly in those fleeting minutes, to the point that though she felt bruised from the inside out by the time they arrived, she was otherwise fine.
Mystified, the Medical Psy on duty did a number of scans using his ability to see through the skin; he even requested a second opinion from a human colleague. Neither had any answers. "Do you want to remain overnight?" the M-Psy asked. "In case the pain reoccurs."
Kirby was shaking her head before the medic finished speaking.
"I hate hospitals," she said to Bastien when he frowned. "I'll feel better at home." Regardless of the fact she'd never needed intrusive medical attention of the kind that could explain her dislike, it was a gut-wrenching one, close to a phobia if she was honest. The smell of a certain disinfectant seemingly used in all medical facilities made her want to retch. Even now, her bruised muscles cramped, stomach twisting. "I won't be able to rest here."
Bastien squeezed her hand and only then did she realize she had a death grip on him. "All right." He didn't speak again until the doctor had prescribed some painkillers and they were in the car on their way back to her apartment.
"You call me if it happens again." An order.
Shifting in the passenger seat to face him, she curled her tingling fingertips into her palms. "You're being pushy and bossy."
"I get that way when I'm worried about someone I care for." It was near to a growl, his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. "You will tell me?"
Shaken by the blunt statement of care, she said, "Yes," her irritability spiraling without warning into a joy so piercing that it terrified. God, she was falling too hard, too fast, her emotional equilibrium nonexistent around the changeling in the driver's seat.
A serrated pain in her chest, three knives drawn through the inside of her skin.
CHAPTER 4
Bastien glanced at her at once, though she hadn't made a sound. "You're hurting." His fingers brushed over her cheek before he turned his attention back to the road, his tension apparent in the roughness of his voice. "We'll be home soon."
Kirby's throat thickened. He was so wonderful. How was she supposed to protect her already battered heart? "I don't know what's wrong with me," she said, scared in a way that sent her pulse stammering.
This time when Bastien reached out, it was to gently squeeze her nape. "We'll figure it out
."
He kept the warm strength of his hand on the sensitive, vulnerable skin until he had to remove it to maneuver the car into a parking spot half a block down from her apartment building. "Wait there."
Scowling--just because she understood his protectiveness, even adored it, didn't mean she was about to allow him to boss her around--she pushed the passenger-side door open right as he reached her. She looked up . . . to find herself the focus of leopard-green eyes that glowed in the darkness. "I can walk," she said, even as her breath caught at the sheer, wild beauty of him.
He refused to budge from in front of her. "You're barefoot."
"Bastien"--she wished she could growl, too--"you are not carrying me again." She was an independent adult female and it was critical Bastien see her that way, not as a weakling he had to cosset. "Move," she said, and when he simply folded his arms, she gave in to the strange, overwhelming urge to bare her teeth at him, the sound that emerged from her throat perilously close to a snarl.
"Now you're trying to get me into bed." His grin transformed her near-feral annoyance into a sense of happiness so strong it didn't seem possible it could exist . . . happiness because he was hers.
Eyes still night-glow, Bastien unfolded his arms. "I'll give you a piggyback ride. Come on." Turning to get into position, he shot her an "I dare you" look over his shoulder that made her want to nip at his mouth, draw in the scent at the crook of his neck.
He was playing with her, she thought all at once, delighted.
Unable to resist, she stood on the edge of the car door frame and wrapped her arms around his neck. He hoisted her up with effortless ease, muscled arms locked under her butt. Burying her nose surreptitiously in his neck, she cooperated when he turned and asked her to push the door shut with her foot, the car locking automatically.
Then he strode down the street while she grew drunk on the exhilarating soap and skin and maleness of his scent, and battled the urge to use her teeth, to bite down hard. So he'd be marked. So everyone would know he was hers. Then she'd tear off his clothing with her bare hands, kiss and touch and lick, embedding her scent into his skin, ensuring that even after one mark faded, the other would remain.