“I’m quaking in my boots.” With that sassy comment, and though a blush shaded her cheeks, she slid one small hand over his erection.
Bastien lost it.
Her breasts were crushed against his chest the next instant, as he took her mouth in a kiss so sexual it burned, her nipples hard points he wanted to touch, to taste. Raising one hand, he went to close it over a plump mound when his leopard raked its claws through his gut in a harsh reminder of what was at stake.
Breaking the kiss so suddenly it left them both off balance, he cupped her face, spoke before she could. “I don’t ever want you to regret being with me,” he said, hiding nothing of what he felt for her. “I never want you to question the first night we spend together, wonder if your choice was driven by shock or fear.” Agony seared him at the mere thought of it. “That would fucking break my heart, Kirby.”
Kirby had been falling for Bastien since the second they met, but at that instant she tumbled head over heels. He was hers and he was wonderful. Retracting the claws that had sliced out when he so abruptly broke contact, she petted his chest. “I would never regret being with you.”
Only Bastien would do for her, no one else. She didn’t need experience to know that what they had was special, a gift. “But”—she pressed two fingers over his lips when he parted them as if to speak, fierce emotion threatening to choke her—“I can see how a protective, stubborn leopard might think tonight might not be the best time to get naked and have a really, really good time.”
He growled deep in his chest.
Scrunching up her nose at him, she said, “I promise to protect your virtue.” That was when she realized he’d given her the sexual reins, this strong, dominant male, who, instinct told her, liked to take the lead. How could she do anything but adore him? “I’ll settle for first base.”
Green eyes gone night-glow met her own. “I’m constantly being suckered by the women in my life,” he muttered, and when she raised her eyebrows, added, “To think I took you for shy.”
Grinning, she nuzzled a kiss to his throat. “Instead of a movie, maybe we could talk about your family?” she suggested, still diffident about asking for emotional intimacy.
It took him less than fifteen minutes to have her in hysterics with tales of his “feral” childhood. When he started in on Mercy’s inspired ideas to run off women she didn’t think were good enough for her brothers—including the “infamous” kitten defurring incident—Kirby gulped. “I guess I better prepare myself.”
Bastien scowled where he lay on a large floor cushion, muscular arms crossed behind his head. “I was planning to tell her soon, but—”
“Don’t worry about leaving me alone for a few hours,” she interrupted before she could stop herself, shifting to her knees on her own cushion. Bastien’s family was a core part of his life and she needed to know they’d accept her. If they didn’t . . . “I—I want you to tell her.”
Scowl even heavier at her blurted-out statement, Bastien hauled her down to sprawl on his chest. “I was going to say Sage is going to blab anyway, so it can wait.”
Kirby nodded but clearly didn’t do a good job of hiding her nerves because, eyes narrowed, he continued to speak. “If I had my way, I’d have introduced you to the whole damn lot of them the instant after we met.” The unadulterated pride in his tone made her eyes burn. “I just didn’t want to scare you with the lunatic asylum straightaway.”
Kirby’s laugh was shaky, a little wet. “Really?”
Bastien stroked her hair off her face. “Really.” Damn the people who’d taught his mate she wasn’t good enough, the scars so deep even her lynx’s knowledge of their bond couldn’t keep them from breaking open. Only constant love and affection would achieve that goal. Bastien had every intention of showering Kirby in both. It would be his pleasure and his privilege.
“The second my mother knows about you,” he warned, “she’s going to start knitting booties for her grandchildren—and she’ll call you up, ask which patterns you prefer. Mercy’s barely three months along and she’s already in possession of enough booties for a football team. One with teeny tiny players.”
Kirby’s shoulders trembled as she struggled to keep a straight face. “No?”
“Oh, yes. Be afraid, be very afraid.”
A firm shake of her head. “I already like your family.”
“They’ll love you—after they make you run the gauntlet. Because you know, you could be a devious wench out to break my heart.” He thought about Mercy, decided another warning was in order. “My sister is really overprotective. Show no fear.”
Kirby bared her teeth. “Bring on the kitten defurring tools.”
“That’s my lynx.”
CHAPTER 10
After a night of exquisite torture holding Kirby’s warm, curvy body against his own without it going any further, Bastien spent the day coaching her on how to shift at will, as well as how to handle senses that had become far more acute now that her lynx was out of hibernation.
With the mating bond not yet set in stone, he was brutally possessive of her, but suggested they call in Dorian for a couple of hours. “Dorian learned to move in cat form as an adult,” he told Kirby, “so he’ll be able to explain things better.” The other male was also already mated, thus less apt to set off Bastien’s aggressive instincts, instincts he couldn’t fully control this far into the mating dance.
Kirby agreed to the instruction, but she was wary with Dorian.
However, and in spite of his violent dominance, the white-blond sentinel proved a patient teacher who had Kirby smiling at him by the time the session ended. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m so glad Bastien asked you to come over.”
Dorian didn’t respond to the heartfelt words with an affectionate touch, as Bastien knew he normally would have; the sentinel had no doubt picked up on Bastien’s precarious equilibrium. “You’re doing me a favor,” the other male said instead. “Finally I get to teach someone.”
He thrust a hand through his hair. “You have no idea the razzing I took from the others when I fell on my ass my first few hunts.” A scowl directed at Bastien. “Bas here sent me a nice sensitive card with a leopard in diapers on the front.”
Kirby’s mouth dropped open. “Bastien, you didn’t.”
Cuddling her close, he rubbed his jaw along her temple. “Sheesh, Kirby, it’s not like I could hug him and say motivational bullshit.”
Dorian’s snarl was belied by the amusement in his vivid blue eyes. They both knew the razzing had been affectionate, the entire pack overjoyed at his ability to shift.
“I’ll see you both later,” the sentinel said now. “I promised my mate and son an after-school drive to get ice cream.”
It wasn’t long after Dorian’s departure that Kirby’s phone rang, the records request she’d filed answered not by social services, but by a detective who’d been on the job at the time of the fire. “I never forgot you,” Detective Shona Bay said, the intensity of her dark gaze apparent even through the small screen. “You were so tiny, so shocked. I carried you to the hospital myself, your poor little feet were in such bad shape.”
Then, as Bastien held Kirby, the detective told her why the victims had never been identified. “Your family was just passing through. Came in on the train, rented the vacation house with cash for a week. No paper trail outside the home, and everything in it went up in smoke when an electrical fault caused a fatal overload early that morning.”
“The owner?” Bastien couldn’t believe he—or she—hadn’t remembered the names of the people to whom they’d rented a home.
The detective rubbed her hands over her face. “I went looking the first day, had a bad feeling it may have been a cash rental, given his habit of them.” Lips twisting, she said, “Turned out he’d had a fall while doing maintenance on another one of his properties two days earlier, took a serious bump to the head. Ended up recovering totally, except for some short-term memory loss.”