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.
It made him groan.
Kirby arched up, sliding her folds over his erect cock.
"Bad lynx." Chest heaving, he snapped his teeth at her.
She snapped back, then arched her neck in invitation. Leaning down, he suckled at the flutter of her pulse. Laving his tongue over the red mark with unhidden possessiveness, he closed one hand over her breast, teased her nipple. "You are so pretty everywhere."
A shy-sweet smile, sparkling pleasure-hazed eyes, her tongue flirting with his until he gripped her jaw to hold her in place for an open-mouthed kiss, wet and hot and a prelude to sex. Legs still locked around him, she opened for him, demanded more, the damp musk of her so intoxicating his claws sliced out to tear the sheets.
"Shit." Retracting them, he pressed his forehead to hers. "Sorry, baby. I'm having trouble holding it togeth--"
Pelvis arching against him, she sucked at his throat as he'd done at hers--possessive and determined--and that was it. All he wanted, needed, was Kirby. She was liquid heat and hot honey on his fingers when he touched her between her thighs.
"Bastien!"
If he'd had any hope of taking this slow, he lost it on the ripples of her pleasure. Pushing one sweetly curved thigh wider, he waited only until her body had stopped clenching in orgasm before beginning to slide in. She moaned, her claws digging just enough into his shoulders that it felt amazing.
"Tell me if it hurts," he grit out, because not for anything would he hurt his Kirby.
Kisses on his throat, a purr in the back of hers. "It feels sooooo good."
Shuddering, he withdrew after that first shallow penetration and slid back in, reining in his instinct to thrust; she was so tautly stretched around him, so small. But she was also lusciously aroused, her unhidden desire threatening to erase the last, faint glimmers of his control.
It was excruciating.
It was beautiful.
Then at last, he was buried to the hilt and they were kissing.
Hand tightening on her thigh, the taste of her in his every sense, he withdrew, pushed back in slowly.
Once. Twice. "Fuck!"
Spine locking, he came in a violent rush, his face buried in the curve of his mate's neck. His utter lack of control would've been embarrassing . . . except that he felt her gasp as she came again, her body clamping down possessively on his cock.
Male pride restored, Bastien collapsed on her. Her fingers petted his hair, her arms and legs imprisoned his very happy body, her words a husky whisper. "Can we do that again? I really, really, really liked it."
Bastien grinned. "Hell, yeah."
EPILOGUE
Kirby glared at Bastien as he led her out in front of a lovely home set deep in the forest the next day. "Is this your parents' house?"
"Yep."
She dug her heels in. "I'm about to meet your mom and dad and you couldn't have warned me?" Her old jeans and faded T-shirt would hardly make the best first impression, not to mention the leaves she no doubt had in her hair from playfully wrestling with her mate not long ago. "We're leaving right now so I can change."
Bastien tugged her forward instead, insouciant. "Don't worry, little cat. They're going to see what I see."
Kirby wasn't so certain, but the door was already opening to reveal a small woman with hair of rich dark gold. "Bastien? Why are you lurking out--" A dazzling smile broke out on her face. "Well," she said, walking over to take Kirby into her arms, "there you are."
The maternal warmth of the touch, the words, erased any nerves Kirby might have had. And when Lia Smith said, "I'm so happy to welcome another daughter to this family," she knew she was going to adore Bastien's mother just as much as she loved Lia's son.
"Hey, Frenchie!" Sage poked his head out the door, the sun hitting the brown of his hair to reveal hidden strands of red. "Did you bring any baguettes?"
"Why don't you go season something, Herb?"
Kirby's shoulders shook as Lia Smith glared at each man in turn. "I gave you both beautiful names. Use them."
"Yes, Mom."
Kirby didn't stop smiling the entire time she was in the Smith house, was the same when she spoke to her grandparents on the comm later that night. "Our future babies are going to be utterly spoiled," she said to her mate afterward, delighted at the idea.
"In case you missed it," Bastien muttered, "they're also going to be demons."
Kirby laughed, pleased with the idea of her own little red-headed demons. "If Mercy and Riley are having pupcubs," she mused, "what will we have?"
"Lynxpards?"
"Doesn't have the same ring to it."
"Hmm." A long pause before Bastien began to laugh so hard he almost fell off the bed. "We'll have little birbys, that's what we'll have."
She slapped his chest. "Don't you dare say that in front of your brothers or we'll never hear the end of it."
Of course he let it slip and of course the future birbys became part of the family lexicon. Sitting around the table being teased about it for the umpteenth time two months later, her visiting grandparents laughing as hard as the Smiths, Kirby knew she'd want it no other way. "I think we should visit Vera tomorrow and take her a great big cake."
Bastien smiled. "Yeah. I think we should. She gave us the best gift, didn't she?"
"Yes."
Keep
reading for an excerpt from ALLEGIANCE OF HONOR, the "unparalleled romantic adventure"* of Nalini Singh's New York Times bestselling series continues as a new dawn begins for the Psy-Changeling world . . .
*Publishers Weekly on SHARDS OF HOPE
Lucas Hunter, alpha of the DarkRiver leopards, ended the comm call with a touch of his index finger against the screen. The outwardly calm action belied his current state of mind: his jaw was a grim line, his claws shoving at the insides of his skin as the black panther within snarled.
He was still battling the urge to release that snarl when one of his sentinels stuck his head into the room. That room was Lucas's private office at the pack's Chinatown HQ, from where they ran their myriad business enterprises. Pitch-black hair and dark green eyes vivid against the deep brown of his skin, his shoulders solid, Clay was officially the Chief Construction Supervisor at DarkRiver Construction, but before that, he was one of the most trusted members of the pack, a man Lucas knew would always have his back.
Today, the sentinel was dressed as if he planned to go to a site, his pants of a tough black material appropriate for the outdoor environment and his T-shirt wild green with DarkRiver Construction in white on the back. But when he spoke, he said, "Jon and his friends found something down by the piers."
Lucas scowled, not in the mood for juvenile high jinks today. "Why aren't they in school?"
"Half day off. Some big citywide teachers meeting." Clay's right T-shirt sleeve lifted as he braced his hand against the doorjamb, revealing the slashing lines of the tattoo that echoed the hunter marks on the right side of Lucas's face. Lucas had been born with those jagged, primal marks that identified him as a changeling hunter, born with the ability to track down and execute changelings who'd gone rogue, submerging totally into the animal side of their nature.
Unlike wild animals, however, rogue changelings couldn't be left to roam, because despite their animal skin, they weren't animals. Rogues always came after the people they had loved when whole, as if part of them remembered who they'd once been and envied their packmates and lovers for still living that life. Lucas hadn't had to execute a rogue for over seven years, and he hoped that record held for another seven and another and another.
No alpha wanted to kill his people.
Clay's tattoo denoted something far different; like the rest of DarkRiver's sentinels, he'd had the mark inked as a silent symbol of his loyalty to Lucas. That loyalty was a truth Lucas never took for granted. An alpha who didn't value the respect of such strong men and women shouldn't be alpha.
"Anyway, I'm heading over to see what's up," Clay said now. "Kid sounds worried."
"I'll come with you." Lucas walked around his desk, shrugging his shoulders back to loosen muscles that had bunched up at the start of the comm call and stayed that way. "Could do with the fresh air. You want to walk?" It wasn't far to the waterfront.
Clay glanced at the heavy black watch strapped to his left wrist. "Better drive. I have to be at a work site within the hour."
"I'll walk back so you can head to the site straight after we speak to the boys." Sliding out his phone, Lucas sent a message as they walked out of the building and hopped in a pack vehicle.
The reply that made his phone buzz thirty seconds later helped with his feral tension. As did the emotions that kissed him through his mating bond with Sascha. Nothing calmed his panther as quickly as her touch. And though she was a woman who could heal emotional wounds, her empathic gift a treasured one, he knew she wasn't trying to manipulate or influence him. It was Sascha's love itself that settled him, along with the knowledge that she and their child were safe and sound.
Beside him, Clay stayed silent until after they'd pulled away from the HQ. That silence held no dark emotional undertones as it once had--the big, heavily muscled sentinel was simply quiet.
"A pool of silence," Lucas's mate had said not long ago, the white stars on black of her cardinal gaze lit with the sparks of color that appeared only in the eyes of empaths. "But it's not emptiness. Clay's just so calm, so centered, and so very, very content that I feel an untainted peace when I'm near him."
Clay hadn't always been that way. He'd come into DarkRiver as a strong but undisciplined eighteen-year-old who'd never before been part of a pack, who'd never even known another changeling leopard his entire existence. More than that, he'd spent years in juvenile detention. It had left him angry and lost and aggressive, a big, dangerous cat who'd had no idea how to handle either his strength or the fury riding him.
It was Nathan, DarkRiver's most senior sentinel, who'd found that lost boy and hauled him into DarkRiver. But it was Clay who'd done the hard work to become a sentinel himself, earning his place at Lucas's side. Emotionally, he'd still been broken for a long time, his duties to DarkRiver and his loyalty to Lucas and the other sentinels the only things that kept him from surrendering to his demons.
Then had come Talin.
In mating with her, then adopting Jon and Noor, Clay had truly left behind the loneliness and pain of his past.
"Trinity Accord?" The sentinel glanced at Lucas before returning his attention to the road.
Putting down the passenger side window, Lucas tapped his fingers on the edge of the door. "Yes and no."
The world-spanning and groundbreaking cooperation agreement had gone from idea to fruition in an impossibly short period of time, thanks to the existence of the Consortium. The shadowy group's aim of destabilizing the world in order to take advantage of the ensuing chaos had ended up having the opposite effect when the various disparate parties began to talk and realized they had a common enemy. Unfortunately, while Trinity was a critical asset in the fight for a stable world, the speed with which it had been cobbled together had resulted in more than one critical hole.
The fact that the rush had been unavoidable didn't mean the resulting issues weren't still a pain in the ass. Especially since, with the ink barely dry on the names of the first signatories, Trinity had no administrative structure, which meant everything was being handled on an ad hoc basis.
But that wasn't what had a growl building in the back of Lucas's throat, his panther bristling with aggressive protectiveness once again as the comm call came to the forefront of his mind. "Aden called to pass on some intel," he said, referring to the leader of the Arrow squad. Assassins and black ops soldiers without compare, the deadly bogeymen of the Psy race had of late become quiet heroes.
It was Aden who'd set Trinity in motion.
Clay shot him another quick look. "Your claws are out."
"Fuck." Lucas retracted them with conscious effort of will, then shoved his hair out of his eyes; the black strands reached his nape at the moment. He'd have had it cut shorter except that Sascha loved running her fingers through it. He might wear a human skin at times, but he was also very much a cat--he wasn't about to do anything to lower his chances of being petted.
Unfortunately, it wasn't such pleasurable thoughts on his mind right then.
"Aden's people picked up chatter about Naya in the back channels of the PsyNet." Sascha had explained the psychic network that connected all Psy on the planet except for the renegades, as a giant repository of knowledge. It was fluid and so big that no one could ever know every part of it.
The Arrows, however, walked its darkest alleys. Heroes or not, someone still had to hunt the monsters that prowled the PsyNet, the twisted minds that wanted only to murder and to hurt. Because despite over a century of cold emotionlessness that had been meant to erase mental instability and turn them into a race without flaws, the Psy still had an abnormally high number of serial killers. The Arrows alone had the strength and the skill to take down those vicious monsters.
"Why are strangers talking about your cub?" Clay's question was a growl. "Naya is none of their fucking business."
"Exactly." Lucas's protective urges had never been anything but violent. Part of it was simply who he was--he'd been born with the potential to be alpha and that included a powerful protective driv
e.
In his case, that drive had been honed to a razor's edge by the horror of the childhood attack that had left his mother dead and his father critically injured, Lucas a prisoner of an enemy pack. Young and weak and heartbroken from watching his mother die in front of him, he'd fought desperately to escape his bonds, save his father. He'd failed.
That boy, however, hadn't existed for a long time. Lucas was a man now. An alpha christened in blood. Anyone touched a hair on the head of any of the people under his protection, and he'd rip their arms off. That was just for starters. "Aden didn't have too many details," he told Clay, "says the speakers didn't specifically reference Naya by name, but their mention of a Psy-Changeling child with a leopard father makes that a moot point."
At this instant in time, there was only one child in the world who had a Psy parent and a changeling parent: Nadiya Shayla Hunter. Naya. Lucas and Sascha's fierce, intelligent, mischievous daughter who was a couple of weeks away from turning one.
Less than a year of life and she'd already changed Lucas on a fundamental level.
He understood now why his father had passed in peace. Carlo Hunter had fought alongside his beloved mate, Shayla, to protect their son, then fought the agonizing pain of losing her and the effects of brutal torture long enough for pack to come. But despite his massive injuries, he'd left this world in peace. Death meant nothing when his child was safe.
"You think it might just be curiosity?" Clay asked. The sentinel was clearly fighting to keep his breathing even, his hands flexing and unflexing on the steering wheel. "Now that Silence has fallen and the Psy are free to feel emotions, have relationships, they have to be wondering about the future. Naya's a living, breathing symbol of that future."
"No." Even had it been curiosity, Lucas still wouldn't have liked that his daughter was being talked about by strangers, a dangerous percentage of whom were virulently against the fall of Silence and the "dilution" of Psy "perfection," but this was far worse. "Aden said his people heard mentions of 'purity' in the chatter." Not everyone liked change, especially when that change challenged their worldview of their own race as superior.
"Fuck." Clay's voice was harsh. "I thought Pure Psy was dead?"