In Heat (In Heat Shapeshifter Romance Series #1) (20 page)

“Go to your room and lie down. I'll find Mr. Blackwell. He'll be straight up to see you.” The woman ushered her towards the stairs.

Kim did as she'd asked. A lie down sounded good right now. The woman would probably be able to find Erik quicker than she could. She stopped on the bottom step and looked back at her.

“Don't forget the panther,” she said, her voice showing her worry. There had been so much blood.

The woman smiled.

Kim looked at her hand as she walked up the stairs, getting the horrible feeling that something was wrong, that Erik was hurt.

Reaching her room, she sat down on the bed and then lay back. Her eyes unfocused as she tried to recall what had happened. Everything was still a mess in her head. She could only remember Erik telling her to run and then she was unconscious. Someone had pushed her. It must have been Alistair.

She couldn't forget the look in Erik's eyes. He'd been petrified. Had he been scared that Alistair was going to hurt her like he'd hurt all those other girls?

Maybe she was lucky to just come away with a nasty knock to the head and nothing more.

She sat up, unable to keep still for long as her thoughts returned to Erik and his whereabouts. She was worried. Her stomach was turning over and over again, her heart trembling at the thought that something terrible might have happened to him.

Getting up, she walked around the room and eventually found herself by the windows. She looked out on the grounds, searching them for a sign of him. It was getting dark now. She hoped that the housekeeper would be able to find him. She couldn't hope that he wasn't hurt. She already knew that he was.

This time she didn't question how she knew. Erik was right when he'd told her not to question it. Sometimes it was best just to accept things.

Before she could think twice about what she was doing, she was walking back to the door of her room. There was no way she was going to sit around here while Erik was missing.

Heading down the corridor, her heart jumped into her throat when she heard voices and recognised Erik's. She ran to the top of the stairs and had made it down the first few before she stopped dead.

He was hurt.

His white shirt was stained with blood.

She ran down the remaining stairs and the look in his eyes when he saw her spoke volumes. He had been hoping she wouldn't see. Rushing over to him, she got a good look at the cuts on his chest before he pulled the shirt closed around him. The long scratches reminded her of the wounds on the panther.

“What happened?” she said, a little out of breath as she struggled with her emotions and tried to stop herself from shaking. There was so much blood on his shirt. She wished he was wearing black now. The dark red on white was too much to bear. It made her stomach turn and her panic worsen. “Was it the panther?”

He shook his head, the look of worry not leaving his eyes. What was he worried about?

“It was my brother. He's gone now.” He let go of his shirt and it fell open again.

Her gaze dropped to his chest and her eyes widened as she remembered what had happened. She swallowed, trying to take in the conclusion her mind was racing to make. The scratches were the same as the panther's. Before Erik had made her run, she'd seen the fur on his hands and felt the claws. She wasn't imagining it. She wasn't. This wasn't her fantasies.

She remembered everything.

It was real.

Her chest tightened and her throat constricted with it, making it hard to breathe as the world came crashing in around her. She felt as though it was going to swallow her whole and she wished it would because she couldn't make sense of this at all.

“What are you?” she whispered, still staring at his chest.

She couldn't believe it until he said it, until he offered some proof and told her she wasn't going insane.

He looked at her, admission in his expression and no trace of denial of the accusation that she was throwing at his feet.

She'd seen him change, just like she had in her dreams.

No, they were their dreams. They were their dreams, and she'd seen through his eyes, and she'd felt him when they'd been outside.

And she'd seen him changing into something.

Into the panther that had been licking her when she'd come around.

Erik had been there; he'd just been the panther and not the man before her now.

Shaking her head and not wanting to believe what she knew was true, she turned and ran up the stairs without so much as a glance at him.

It couldn't be real.

He couldn't be the panther.

K
im had made it halfway along the hall before she felt him grab her arm. His grip was tight and unrelenting as she struggled to get free. Her gaze met his as she turned. There was so much pain and fear in his honey eyes, so much that it cut her to the core and she stilled.

She didn't stop him when he led her back down the hall and then into one of the rooms. It was a bedroom.

He let go of her hand and she walked to the other side of the room, and then to the bed. She held onto one of the posts to steady herself, and waited in silence for him to speak and make everything all right again.

He closed the door and sighed. She could sense the uncertainty in him, and wished that she had the courage to say what she knew he wanted to hear. He wanted to hear that whatever had been happening between them over the past few days wasn't over.

She wanted to hear it too.

But how was she supposed to deal with something like this?

Things like this didn't happen in real life. This was make-believe. This was a fantasy. Men didn't turn into panthers. It wasn't physically possible. Surely?

“I wanted to tell you...I tried,” he whispered quietly, but she heard him, and she heard all the muddled feelings behind those words. When she'd met him, he'd been so strong. Now, he looked weak and scared.

She'd made him scared. She'd taken his strength from him and had peeled back the layers to reveal the man beneath. He didn't want to lose her. That's what he'd said to his brother.

She didn't want to lose him either.

She looked at him, at the boyish look on his face and the blood on his chest. He was still bleeding, and her head was still killing her. This was all so screwed up. All she wanted to do was forget what she'd seen and pretend that he was just a normal man, but she got the impression that it wasn't an option.

He had tried to tell her.

She realised that this was what he'd wanted to say to her before they'd made love the first time. He'd tried to tell her and she'd stopped him. She didn't know how she would have reacted if he'd revealed it to her that night. She knew him so much better now, felt so connected to him, that it seemed impossible to turn her back on him.

She sat down on the end of the bed and stared at the floor.

He'd said that he'd answer any questions she had, that he'd tell her everything about him, if she'd come with him to this place. She had. Now she had so many questions that she didn't know where to begin.

“I wanted to tell you,” he said, coming across the room to her.

“How about you tell me I'm crazy...that this can't be real. It's just a dream.” She looked up at him.

He gave her a look that said it wasn't possible. “I can't lie to you.”

“Why me?” she whispered to her knees, not wanting to look at Erik and see the blood on his shirt. He needed to tend to the wounds. She'd do it if he let her, but she could feel that he needed to get things out in the open before he took care of himself. It touched her heart. It was probably hurting him to stand there with those scratches across his chest. How had he got them? Was Alistair like him?

Erik sighed heavily and she half expected him to tell her it was complicated.

She remembered him shouting at his brother. She remembered him saying that he wouldn't lose her now that he'd found her.

He'd said she was his mate.

Her mind reeled at that thought.

She stared at a spot on the carpet, letting it all slowly sink in, and letting emptiness fill her.

“I knew somehow,” she said and Erik moved again, stepping closer to her. Her gaze shifted to his feet. They were bare, dirty. “What you were...that all of this would happen. Why me? What's a mate?”

She looked at him now, right into his eyes, trying to see the explanation there so she didn't have to wait to hear it.

He knelt in front of her, between her knees, and looked up into her eyes. There was such a look of hope in his. He was probably taking how calm she was a good sign. In a way, she supposed it was. Either that or she was sinking slowly into dementia and that's why this all made sense on some level and didn't freak her out as much as she felt it should have.

“Because we belong together, Kim.” His voice was soft, soothing. It drew the smallest of smiles out of her. He looked so noble kneeling before her and it made her feel as though he was holding his heart out to her, asking her to love him for what he was and understand as best she could, begging her not to leave him. “We're meant to be. It's destiny. When I said that I've been waiting my whole life for you, I was telling you the truth. A mate comes around once in a lifetime. We were chosen for each other. Think of it as a soul mate.”

“A soul mate.” She frowned as she tried to take it in. “And the dreams? You said we shared those.”

“We do now. I've had them for twenty-seven years,” he said it as though it was perfectly normal.

Her frown intensified as she calculated it in her head. “Since you were seven?”

“No,” he said with a smile. “We age differently to others, slower. Now that I've matured, I won't age any more. Thirty four years has been more like fifty.”

“Oh,” she said, still trying to take it all in and finding it increasingly difficult. She looked into his eyes, at his open expression. He was trying to be honest with her and she silently thanked him for that. She preferred that he was honest, even if it meant she thought she was going insane. “I haven't had the dreams all my life. Is that normal?”

He hesitated. Clearly there was something else she didn't know.

“You're in heat.”

He'd said it so fast that it had been nothing but a blur, one word. Her brows rose and she pursed her lips. Okay. She was in heat. God knows what that meant.

“It just means you're receptive to your mate. It's a mating call. You wouldn't notice because you're human, but others like me do. I do.” He was still talking fast and the look of panic was back in his eyes.

“How?” she said.

He cringed. “I can smell it, sense it.”

“Okay.” She nodded again, not quite sure what to make of the fact that there were apparently other panther people in the world and they could all smell that she wanted a man. Great. She frowned. No wonder Alistair had been coming on to her.

Her head ached.

“I think I'm still unconscious.”

He smiled up into her eyes, his look softening again, and reached up to touch her cheek but stopped himself. She wished he'd touch her. She needed to feel that all this was real.

“This isn't a dream. You felt the connection...you're my mate.”

She furrowed her brows, confused but desperate to understand. She always felt the connection between them and had always known it was more than just a physical attraction. It ran deep, right down to her soul and into the very depths of her heart.

“What does that mean? I'm not like you,” she said.

“You can be.”

“No, I can't. I don't know what you are...I don't understand this. I've been seeing things and now I know what I saw was through your eyes.” She looked away from him, at the far wall, and kept her gaze fixed there. “All these feelings...is this me, are they real, or is this all just because of this mating stuff? Do you really feel the way you do, do you see me as you would if it wasn't for all of this?”

He caught hold of her cheek and brought her eyes back to his. “Kim, listen to me.”

She nodded, blinking back tears as she struggled to calm herself again.

“You're beautiful. The way I feel about you has nothing to do with the mating because it hasn't even begun properly yet. We're all born to love one person. You and I are just lucky to have that one person revealed to us.”

She swallowed hard but her throat remained dry. Was he saying that he loved her? Did she love him? Could she love him?

She looked at his hands. So many times she'd seen them change in her dreams and she'd never been frightened. Now she was so scared, but she didn't fear what he was. She was scared of her feelings.

“I'd never hurt you,” he whispered. “Not even when I'm changed.”

Her gaze met his and she tried to let him see that she believed him, even if she couldn't find her voice to say it. He'd protected her from Alistair. He'd done nothing but take care of her since he met her. She knew in her heart that he'd never let anyone hurt her, especially himself.

“Show me,” she said quietly, not quite sure whether she really wanted to see it or not. She felt terrible inside when he gave her a look of confused hurt and she realised that commanding him to change made him feel like a freak. “Please? I just want to understand, to believe this is real.”

He nodded and stood.

Her heart was pounding against her chest as he stepped away from her. Its rhythm was erratic, her breathing coming in short gasps as the tension in the room elevated. She didn't know what to expect and her mind raced through all the scenarios it could imagine.

Her attention was immediately with him when he removed his shirt and then pulled the strings on his linen trousers. She watched them drop around his ankles and he stepped out of them. She supposed it did make sense to be naked before changing. It wasn't like panthers wore clothes.

He gave her a little smile before divesting himself of his underwear. Her eyes lingered there and it was hard to remind herself just why he was standing nude before her.

He took a deep breath and held it.

Was he nervous? She was. Her whole body was trembling, her hands shaking where they gripped the edge of the bed.