Secrets at Midnight(18)

Kirby held her tongue until they were back in the car, her cheeks burning with an emotion that had her gritting her teeth. “If you knew something, why didn’t you say so?” The words came out curt, her anger at him for lying to her—even by omission—smashing up against bewildered hurt.

Hands clenching on the steering wheel, Bastien began to drive. “Because whatever this is,” he said, his voice gravel, “it’s nothing simple.”

Kirby wanted to snarl at him for that nonanswer.





CHAPTER 6





We’ll be at the apartment in minutes,” Bastien said into the tense silence.

Not in the mood to make conversation, Kirby nonetheless found herself captive to her endless curiosity about Bastien. “I didn’t think a leopard changeling would like an apartment.” He’d done his best to hide it, but he’d been edgy in hers.

“I don’t. That’s why I bought such a ridiculously expensive place.”

Kirby understood why the apartment had been so expensive the instant she stepped into it. Aside from a small private enclosure at the back, there were no internal walls in the space that had to cover half a floor. The entire front wall was crystal clear reinforced glass, the floors a gleaming honey-colored wood.

Above, and to her right was a loft-style space that had to house a bed, while the left part of the central area held an arrangement of sofas and large floor cushions that looked decadently comfortable, an open kitchen on the other side.

The entire place was drenched in light.

“Beautiful,” she whispered.

The lines of stress easing from his expression—and why did that make her heart ache, make her want to kiss him, even as she continued to fight the more primitive urge to bite him—he clasped her hand. Sighing silently at the contact that felt deeply right, she allowed him to tug her toward the wall of glass, and to the door cleverly concealed within it.

There was a generous balcony beyond, with a view of the Bay, the water sparkling like shattered sapphires under the sunshine. Gripping the railing, the metal digging into her palms, she stared at him. “You’re rich. Really, really rich.”

Leaning back against the railing, arms propped on either side, he shrugged. “I’m good at making money, been investing my own income since I was a juvenile. Does it make a difference to you?” Green eyes glinting at her from beneath half-lowered lashes.

Kirby fought the urge to bare her teeth at him. What was wrong with her lately? The thought had barely formed when she moved faster than she’d believed she could. Tugging down his head with a hand fisted in his hair, she nipped sharply at his jaw. “Don’t make me even more mad than I am already.”

His grin creased his cheeks, his arms locking around her waist. “Bite me again.” At her narrow-eyed look, he nuzzled the side of her face before saying, “Truth is, I’d rather be at my aerie.” The leopard paced behind his eyes, its presence so strong that Kirby could almost see it.

Almost touch the gold and black of its fur.

“The days I can work from there,” Bastien continued, “I let my brothers, other packmates who want a night in the city, use this place, so we get our worth out of it.”

It betrayed so much of how he saw the world that he so naturally said “our” for a place that, to many other men, would’ve been a status symbol. For Bastien, she realized, it was his pack, his family, who were important, who mattered. She hurt with wanting the same—never had she fit in, always the constant outsider. And now . . .

“Please tell me what you know,” she said quietly, fear a metallic taste in the back of her mouth, a shivering rasp over her skin.

His expression stripped of any hint of humor, Bastien picked up one of her hands, a hand Kirby hadn’t realized she’d clenched by her side. “Open for me, little cat.”

As the blood rushed back into the strained-white flesh, he ran a single finger across the tips. “Do your fingertips ever tingle?”

Heart slamming hard against her ribs and mouth dry, she nodded. “Just recently.” She stared at her own fingers. “It’s not painful, but it prickles.”

Bastien continued to hold her hand, stroking his thumb absently over her skin. “In the weekend, the pain you felt”—wild green eyes capturing her own—“if I said it felt like something was trying to claw its way out, would I be right?”

Unable to accept what he was asking her to believe, she shook her head, broke the searing intimacy of the eye contact. “It can’t be. I’m human.”

Bastien cupped her jaw, turned her face back to him, the brush of his skin over her own almost succeeding in calming the skittering panic within. “Tell me about your parents.”