Secrets at Midnight (6 page)

Rubbing her hands over her face, she tucked back the strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail. “I dismissed it as a weird acoustic effect when it faded after a few seconds,” she said, her heart beginning to race again as it had then. “Then I walked out with the water . . . and into an avalanche of scent. I couldn't breathe, felt as if I'd suffocate under the weight of it.”

Eyes intent, Bastien ran his free hand up and down her arm, his other one still strong and warm around her shoulders, but didn't interrupt.

“I dropped the water”—thank God it had been a plas cup meant for little hands—“and it went all over the carpet. The scents disappeared almost at the same time, but I knew I couldn't stay, risk the children when I couldn't predict what might happen next.”

Hugging her arms around herself, she asked the question that had been tormenting her since. “Is it all in my head?” She couldn't forget the fact the doctors at the clinic had found absolutely nothing wrong with her. “I could be having some type of a psychotic breakdown.”

Bastien gripped her chin. “You are not going crazy.”

Kirby stilled, caught by the unadulterated certainty of his tone, as if he knew something she didn't. “Bastien?”

“Not here.” He scanned the park, and she knew he'd noted the three elderly people who'd arrived in the past few minutes. “We'll go to my apartment. It's not the best place for this discussion, but our forested territory isn't close enough.”

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.

W
e'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.”

“I—” Her blood went cold. “My parents died when I was a toddler,” she whispered, the brutality of her history something she preferred to forget . . . a history that led to one inescapable conclusion, but for the impossibility of it. “The care services would hardly mistake a changeling child for human.”

“Not necessarily. Changelings don't shift till around one year of age.”

“That's how old I was when it happened.” She forced herself to recall the small number of facts that had seeped into her memory over the years, in spite of her refusal to access her own records. “My birth date is unknown but, according to one of my social workers, I was examined by a pediatrician and judged to be approximately twelve months old. If I hadn't yet shifted, I should've soon after I was found.”

“Yes.” Bastien frowned. “How did you lose your parents?”

“In a fire.” She didn't know much more than the basic details of that fire, her anger at her unknown parents for abandoning her a raw wound that had never healed. “I was found on the street dressed in one-piece pajamas covered in soot, the bottoms of my feet burned and bloody.

“It was clear I'd come from a nearby house that had gone up in flames, but while the police did discover the remains of an adult male and female who must've been my parents”—she swallowed—“for some reason, those remains were never identified.”

“Ah, hell.” Bastien's exclamation was rough. “You experienced a severely traumatic event around the same time that you were meant to complete your first shift,” he said, tucking her close. “It must've fundamentally altered your development.”

It sounded right . . . yet wrong. “No,” she whispered, a cold chill in her blood. “What if I
did
shift for the first time that day? So happy, so excited. Then . . . then a bad thing happened.”

Bastien stepped back, took her face in his hands again. “Do you remember?”

“No.” All she had were lingering echoes of emotion. “But I know that's what happened.” Could almost see it. “Wouldn't a baby think the two events were connected—the shift and the fire?” Pain twisted her heart. “The human half blamed the animal, and the animal blamed itself.”

“And,” Bastien said harshly, “you had no one who understood what was going on inside you. No packmate to comfort you, reassure you it wasn't your fault.” He kissed her cheeks, her jaw, her lips.

Finding strength in the affection, she told him the rest. “The only reason anyone knew my first name was that it was stitched into my pajamas.” Her last name, Rosario, had apparently been the name of the street where she'd been found. “That's the only other piece of information I have.”

“Your adoptive parents might—”

“I was raised in care.” Kirby didn't like to think of the seventeen long, agonizingly lonely years she'd spent in the system, but if the truth to her present lay in her past, then she had to find the will. “I had terrible, screaming nightmares as a child.” A sympathetic social worker had given her that information after she grew old enough to wonder why she didn't have a family when other infants and toddlers were quickly adopted.

“I kept being chosen for adoption, then returned.” Like a broken machine being sent back to the warehouse for a refund. “They finally stopped trying to place me when I was six and I spent three years in state institutions for troubled children before the nightmares faded”—as far as the world was concerned at least—“and I was cleared for the foster care system.”

Bastien's claws threatened to release. He wanted to break something, shred those who had wounded his mate when she'd been a small, vulnerable cub unable to fight for herself.

“I remember, you know,” she said quietly, her eyes on the
ground. “Being taken by people who said they wanted me, feeling happy and hopeful, and then being brought back because I wasn't good enough.”

“Bastards.” So angry he was trembling, he closed his hand around the side of her neck and pressed his lips to her temple.

Kirby lifted her hand to his hair, petting him in gentle strokes. “It wasn't so bad, being in care. I wasn't abused or anything.”

Bastien's leopard growled within at that unwitting indictment on her childhood. “You're fucking amazing, you know that?” He pressed his forehead to hers, his rage cut with violent pride.

“No, I'm a coward.” Breaking away in a jerking movement, she paced to the end of the balcony and back. “I tell myself I'm still angry at my parents for leaving me, that that's why I've never requested my records. The truth is, I'm afraid.”

Her eyes shone wet, her shoulders knotted. “Because if I read those records, then I can't avoid the truth any longer, can't pretend that maybe I'm not alone, that one day someone will come for me.” She dashed away her tears. “I'm twenty-four years old and I'm still hoping. How stupid is that?”

“You don't get to do that.” Bastien pulled her stiff body into his arms, his fury at what had been done to her a vicious storm within. “You don't get to hurt yourself, and you never ever get to call yourself stupid.”

She thumped fisted hands against his side. “Why? Who're you to give me that order?”

Bastien didn't even think about it—his mate was hurting and needed reassurance. “I'm yours,” he said bluntly, wrapping his hand around her ponytail and tugging back her head so he could look into those beautiful, pain-filled hazel eyes. “You are
not
alone. Do you understand?” There was nothing in his life more certain than what he felt for her, and it was no longer simply about the primal pull of the mating bond. It was about Kirby. Sweet, strong, sometimes snarly Kirby. “I will always be here for you.”

Her breathing erratic, Kirby didn't respond to his declaration. Instead, she tugged her hair free and said, “I'll e-mail the records request today.” She refused to meet his gaze, her
own obstinately on the glittering water in the distance. “It'll probably take a few days for the files to come in.”

Bastien gritted his teeth to hold back the leopard's anger as she surreptitiously wiped away the tracks her tears had left on her face. It wasn't Kirby's fault she didn't believe him—no doubt all those prospective adoptive parents had promised her forever, too. But he wasn't his mother's most stubborn boy for nothing.

Kirby would soon discover that when Bastien Michael Smith made a promise, he kept it.

•   •   •

FEELING
bruised on the inside, Kirby didn't argue against Bastien's nudge back into the warmth of the apartment, but when he made her a cup of sweet tea and ordered she drink it, she put her hands on her hips. “Stop growling at me!” She might be shaky, horribly tempted to believe in his every promise, but she was not and never would be, a pushover.

“I am not growling at you,” he growled, thumping down the mug of tea on the counter.

Of course the hot liquid splashed all over his hand. Grabbing his wrist when he hissed and pulled back, she stuck it under the cold water tap. “Don't move,” she snapped when he went to pull it away, shooting him a glare as he growled again, the sound vibrating against her skin. “You're worse than my students.”

No warning, no nothing, he just leaned down and nipped the tip of her ear sharply with his teeth. “Bastien!” Jumping, she let go of his wrist long enough for him to wrap his arm around her, trapping her between his weight and the sink.

Her entire body sang at the proximity of his, hard and hot and deliciously overwhelming against her back, but her worry about him kept her focused. Taking his wrist again, she put it under the tap. “It's a bit red.”

He nuzzled at her, licked out at her skin.

Kirby couldn't control her shiver. “Cat.”

A smile against her skin. “I like the taste of you.” Another lick, his free hand braced against the sink to block any escape.

Kirby didn't want to escape this muscled masculine trap. “So,” she said, trying to keep her brain in gear, “I have some changeling blood—”

“No, it's more than that.” He kissed her nape, making her toes curl, and she thought that, perhaps, this gorgeous man was attempting to distract her from the pain of the childhood loss that had so badly scarred her.

Eyes burning, she turned and pressed her lips to his jaw.

Rubbing his cheek against hers, he continued to speak. “Changeling genes are dominant, at least when it comes to shifting. A full or half-changeling child always shifts—and your scent tells me you fall into that category. Even if you're latent, you should know what you are.”

“So I'm some kind of freak,” Kirby muttered. “Great.”

Bastien's snarl raised every hair on her body. “What did I tell you about hurting yourself?” With that furious comment in a voice that barely sounded human, he broke her hold, turned off the tap, and spun her to face him.