“All work and no play.” Vera shook her head as Kirby stared deliberately into her half-empty coffee cup in an effort to hide her disturbing reaction, her skin flushing alternately hot then cold. “Be careful you don’t become a dull boy.”
“I thought I was making women naked on a regular basis?” Rising with that quip, Bastien went around to kiss Vera on the cheek. “Can I give you a ride somewhere, Kirby?” he asked, his hand on the back of her chair.
Scared by how much she wanted to lean back, rub her cheek against his arm, tug him down to her mouth, she shook her head.
“Don’t be silly,” Vera said. “You haven’t got a car.”
Her fingers flexed, the tingling in her fingertips increasing in strength. “It’s no trouble to catch the—”
Bastien’s breath whispered hot and silken over her ear, his face a caress away from her own. “I promise I don’t bite.” It was a dare.
Kirby had stopped accepting stupid dares as a teenager, but a primal defiance rose up inside her at his words. It swamped the near-panic that had gripped her at the realization that he was about to leave, totally overwhelmed the sense of self-preservation that said she needed to put some distance between them so she could think.
“I deal with five-year-olds every day,” she said, his jaw brushing across her temple when she turned her head slightly. The contact made her want to shudder, ask for more. Swallowing down the wrenching need that was too powerful to make any kind of rational sense, she somehow managed to keep her tone even as she added, “You’re a pussycat by comparison.”
“Careful, Bastien.” Vera’s smile was wide. “Kirby’s got a brain.”
Pulling back Kirby’s chair so she could get up, though he remained close enough to touch, Bastien said, “I like women with brains.”
A snort. “Oh? I thought certain other attributes had priority.”
“’Bye, Vera.” Bastien began to walk backward out of the kitchen, waggling his fingers at the older woman—who, from her smile, was clearly charmed by the packmate she’d been teasing.
When Kirby picked up her purse and joined him, he turned to face the correct way, then placed his hand on her lower back again. The contact renewed the odd sensation of fur rubbing against the inside of her skin, made her toes curl even as her breasts ached.
Kirby knew she should pull away—and not only because of her increasingly out-of-control response to him. Thanks to a changeling friend in junior high, she understood the concept of skin privileges: the right to touch, in and out of the pack, different layers of contact acceptable for different situations. A male’s hand on a female’s lower back was an intimate act in human society, even more so in the changeling world.
If she did nothing about Bastien claiming the right, he’d take it as silent acquiescence to his pursuit. If she said no, he’d back off immediately, DarkRiver a pack that adhered to strict and disciplined codes of behavior. Kirby knew that because Vera had told her after pointing out that Kirby was a young, single woman living in changeling-heavy territory and thus had a good chance of coming into contact with interested males.
“If it’s a predator, leopard or wolf, be blunt,” the older woman had said. “Subtle doesn’t work when they get set on a woman. But no male in either DarkRiver or SnowDancer will go where he’s been specifically uninvited.”
So Kirby didn’t have the excuse of ignorance. But she didn’t pull away, didn’t tell Bastien to stop touching her. Because regardless of her worry at the ungovernable nature of her reactions, his big body beside her, the pressure of his hand, it felt good . . . better than anything had felt in a long, long time.
The sensation of warm rightness was potent enough to cut through the cold knot that had been part of her for as long as she could remember, a heavy lump centered in her chest that hurt deep in the night and made her cry inexplicable tears. These days, she cried in silence, woke to find her face wet. As a child, she’d screamed awake, her throat raw and terror in her blood.
“Hey.” Bastien’s hand circling gently on her back. “Everything okay?”
Nodding, she slid into the expensive black car that told her whatever Bastien did, he was very successful at it, and watched him walk around to get into the driver’s seat. Bracing his arm along the back of her seat, he waited until she met his gaze.
“If you don’t want to be here,” he said quietly, “or if you feel uncomfortable with me, tell me.” The leopard looked at her out of his eyes. “Do you want to leave?”
“No.” Her answer was driven by instinct, the moment pregnant with a meaning she couldn’t consciously grasp. “Memories,” she found herself saying to the beautiful male who’d been a stranger an hour ago. “I remembered something that made me sad.”
Bastien reached out to tuck her hair behind her ear, his fingertips brushing the curve of it to shimmer sensation through every inch of her. “Do you often remember?”
She shook her head as the prickling in her skin eased—to be replaced by a greedy desire for more. “No.” The dream-crying had faded to nonexistence in the later part of her childhood, only to return with a vengeance when she relocated to San Francisco. “I think it must be from the stress of moving to a new place.”
Bastien went as if to play with another strand of her hair, then glanced at Vera’s cottage. “She’ll accuse us of necking in her drive if we don’t get going.”
The dry words made her laugh, the sadness fading, and she knew he’d done it on purpose, this leopard she didn’t know . . . and yet did in her very bones.
Starting up the car, his grin devastating, he said, “Which way?”
Kirby gave him her address, then realized she’d never asked his original destination. “Will it be out of your way?” She should’ve offered to get out at the transit stop, but she couldn’t make herself say it.
One hand confident on the wheel as they pulled out, Bastien reached across to run the knuckles of his free hand over her cheek. “You could never be out of my way, Kirby.”
Every inch of her melted at that rough caress of sound. “Vera is right. You’re dangerous.”
“Who, me? I just deal with stocks and bonds all day.”
Fascinated by him, compelled to know everything, she angled herself in the seat so she could look at his profile, the hard line of his jaw cleanly shaven. “Really?” she asked.
He nodded. “I’m in charge of DarkRiver’s financial assets.”
Kirby thought of what she’d read in the papers about the pack and how it was effectively one of the biggest corporations in the city, a corporation in robust financial health, and knew she’d been right. Bastien was very good at his job. “Do you have other clients as well?”
“A few small ones. Why, do you want to invest?” A raised eyebrow. “We could definitely come to an agreement about my fees,” he added with a smile that invited her to play.
Kirby wanted to trace that smile, kiss it into her own mouth. “Kindergarten teachers don’t make enough to invest.”
An interested look before he returned his attention to the road. “Which kindergarten?”
“The one near DarkRiver’s city headquarters in Chinatown.” As a result, she had as many changeling students as human, and had spent the past month learning how to handle children who didn’t yet have full control over their shifting.
“The other day,” she told him, the memory a delight, “I couldn’t find a student until my assistant teacher pointed out that he was in cub form on a tree branch above the swing.” Kirby had eventually coaxed the boy, who’d apparently had a fight with a friend, to jump into her arms. “They didn’t cover that in my training.”
Bastien turned onto the main road back to San Francisco. “You should talk to Annie,” he said. “She teaches seven-year-olds I think, including a lot of changeling kids, could probably give you some pointers.”