“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 tiny 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.”