Nalini Singh - Night Shift

“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 the 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.