Bengal's Heart

◆ CHAPTER 12 ◆

He couldn’t touch her skin-to-skin, but now that he had, he didn’t want to stop. He couldn’t kiss her lips-to-lips, but once that line had been crossed, he hungered for her kiss. He’d told himself for so long that he couldn’t have her. It was his place to protect her, his place to hold back the mating heat and ensure her safety, her security.

The past years had been hell, forcing himself to stand back, to stay away. Refusing himself the slightest touch of her soft flesh.

“You could try telling me what the hell is going on.”

Cabal wanted to howl in fury as she pulled back, crossed her arms over her breasts and glared back at him. She was good at that. The woman could glare with those stormy gray eyes like no man’s business.

“I could try.” He eased back, his gaze going over the parking lot as he tried to sort out the emotions that assailed him each time he was near her.

“But you won’t?” Her gaze narrowed on him and he wanted to smile. Damn her, she made him forget all the reasons why he shouldn’t have allowed the mating heat to begin here.

“I didn’t say that.” He gripped her arm again, pulled her back from the SUV and opened the door.

“Manhandling me only pisses me off.” She managed to jerk her arm out of his grip as he stared back at her in surprise.

“Manhandling you?” he questioned her abruptly. Was that why she fought his hold each time he tried to keep her in place? She thought he was manhandling her? “Cassa, you’re like a damned windup toy. You never stand still for too long. How the hell am I supposed to keep you covered if I can’t keep you within a safe area?”

She knew the Breeds were still targets, and their women even more so. He could feel the gun sights on him, even now. He was always watched, always threatened—and yet she seemed oblivious to it.

“I don’t need you to keep me safe,” she snapped back. “I’m not the one that’s a target, Cabal. Worry about your own safety and I’ll worry about mine.”

His teeth clenched almost violently as a wave of lust shot through his senses. Damned independent woman. It was like dealing with a Breed. He wondered if she had any concept of how well she resembled one. It was obvious she had been around the alpha mates too long; their independent, argumentative ways were rubbing off on her.

“How about I do what I do best, and watch both our backs?” he growled as he waved her into the passenger seat. “Now, would you like to talk, or do you want to stand here arguing for the rest of the day?”

He saw the brief battle in her eyes and swore she was debating whether or not to stand there arguing with him.

“Talk?” she finally asked.

“What the hell do you want me to do, promise I’m not going to touch you? We’re in the middle of mating heat. I want to fuck you so bad that my dick’s throbbing like an open wound.” He could feel every muscle in his body tightening in protest. “Get in the vehicle, Cassa, before I go about my own business and leave you standing here.”

In the cold and the wind? That wasn’t likely; his protective instincts toward her were becoming much too honed, too sharp to ever allow him to do that. She was aroused, nearly to the point that she was in pain herself. He wouldn’t allow that to last much longer.

“A promise would have been nice,” she muttered, but she moved past him, ignored his outstretched hand and hopped into the seat.

Cabal closed the door before allowing a rumble of displeasure to vibrate in his throat. He would have a mate with a mouth that would sear a man’s flesh at fifty paces.

His brother sometimes said that at least he was never bored since mating his wife, Scheme. Tanner often remarked that life was interesting now. Cabal definitely wasn’t bored with Cassa, could never imagine himself being bored, but damn if he wasn’t ready to pull his own hair out.

Jumping into the driver’s seat, he slammed his door, started the ignition, then backed out of his parking slot. Remaining quiet, he turned onto Main Street before heading out of town to the small cabin he’d rented in the state park.

Cassa remained silent as well, which only had the tension tightening through his body. He could smell her emotions, her arousal and the hint of fear she always carried whenever he was around.

It tore at something inside him to know that she feared him, even a little bit. And it was fear of him. He knew the scent of it, he smelled it often enough from others. Where it rarely bothered him at any other time, it bothered him now. To know that something so elemental as her trust in him was denied him sent a shard of disappointment raging through him.

Maneuvering the SUV along the mountainous roads, he glanced over at her from time to time, taking in her calm profile. The thick waves of her dark blond hair flowed around her face and shoulders, fell over her breasts and down her back.

His fingers itched to bury themselves in that silken mass, and he found that denying himself was only making the hunger grow. He felt lost in the need rising inside him. That need was threatening his control and the assignment he was on. She threatened the assignment he was on.

By the time he pulled the vehicle into the small driveway of the cabin he’d rented, Cabal felt as though his control had been stretched to its limits. It was the scent of her. Subtly sweet, heated with a hint of wild desire.

That was what tempted him past bearing, he decided, as he stopped the vehicle in front of the wide front porch and turned off the ignition. That hint of wild spice in her arousal.

“Here we are,” he announced as he turned to her.

“Convenient.” Her smile was tight as she turned to him before opening her door. “What are we, a few miles from that little valley I was looking for?”

Two maybe. He was surprised that she realized that.

“You have a damned good sense of direction,” he said, com plimenting her as he opened the door and stepped out of the vehicle, before loping to her side to help her out. Not that she needed any help. She was jumping out of the SUV as he moved to open the door. He should have known she would be too damned independent to wait for a man to do anything for her.

“My sense of direction has always been excellent,” she informed him as he placed his hand at the small of her back and led her to the front door.

The cabin was large and roomy. The lower floor, with its wide living room, spacious kitchen and spare bedroom, was neat and open. Upstairs, the master bedroom overlooked the door, and held a large master bath.

The rental cabin was built for year-round stay, and afforded plenty of room for the additional Breeds working the assignment with Cabal, when they were needed.

“Nice place,” she said as he closed the door behind them, then silently locked it.

“It works.” He shrugged, moving ahead of her. “Coffee?”

The last thing either of them needed was coffee. The caffeine played hell with mating heat and they both knew it.

“Sure.” Her smile was knowing, mocking, as she followed him into the open kitchen. She knew what caffeine did to the system, and she was daring him just as fiercely as he was daring her now. “Then we can talk.”

Talk wasn’t exactly what he had on his mind. Laying her down and licking her from head to toe—now that idea held some merit. He was curious though. How much longer would the mating hormone treatment she was taking allow her to hold out? She was doing damned good. A hell of a lot better than he was actually.

“Sure, we’ll talk.” He wasn’t promising what they would talk about though.

Awareness of her tingled over his flesh like an invisible caress and sent a shard of aching loneliness tearing through him. He knew what he was missing by holding back; he knew the completion he could find by claiming his mate.

But he also knew what he was risking if he allowed his emotions to become involved any more than they already were. He was risking his very soul, as well as hers. Unlike other Breed enforcers Cabal was a covert enforcer. He was unregistered and known for his complete lack of regulation. He was a suicide operative. He took the jobs the other enforcers couldn’t because of Breed Law or protocol. He took the jobs with a fatality rate much higher than most.

He was a mate now though. If anything happened to him, then the hell Cassa would live through was something he didn’t want to contemplate.

Once this mission was over, his enforcer status would have to be reconsidered. There were plenty of other Breeds who could take his place, and honestly, he thought he might be more than happy to step aside for them.

“What do you intend to talk about then? The fact that you don’t want me for a mate, or the one where it’s already too damned late to do anything about it?” There was a snap to her tone that had him turning and staring back at her silently.

Hell, he wouldn’t have imagined that mating could have started with something so simple as his blood against her tongue. She couldn’t have done more than taken a drop of his blood, but somehow, it had been enough.

Bullshit. He’d become more enraged than ever when he’d seen Cassa and her husband in the control room of the facility he thought he would die within. He’d watched her fight to release him, watched Douglas’s glee at the blood and death.

He’d claimed her then, he thought. Before he’d ever escaped that pit, he’d known he would claim her.

He could smell the scent of her desire now, almost taste it on the air around them. The night of his rescue he had smelled her fear, her anger. He’d smelled her rage and her pain. And when she had touched her finger to his face, then brought that finger to her lips, he had sworn he had tasted her tears and her regret in the air around them.

“Or we could talk about H. R. Alonzo’s dead body and the reason why the Breeds are protecting a killer.”

He could tell by the sound of her voice exactly which subject she was forging the most interest in. Her body was heating by the moment, but that sharp little mind of hers wanted answers first.

“The Breeds are not protecting a killer,” he informed her as he finished preparing the coffee and turned back to her. “We’re investigating David Banks’s disappearance, Cassa.”

She gave a delicate, ladylike snort. “Bull. You know the information I was sent, Cabal, don’t try to lie to me. I know you’ve managed to access my files as well as the emails from my server. You have my laptop tapped. I’m not stupid. You know exactly what I have, just as I know what you’re covering up.”

She was enough to make a hardened, coldhearted Breed want to laugh, or to at least smile.

She was right. He knew the information she had. He was doing nothing more than delaying the inevitable by pretending that he didn’t.

The soft metallic ring of the coffeepot completing its cycle sounded behind him. Grabbing two cups from the hooks beneath the counter, he poured the aromatic, decaffeinated brew into them and carried the cups to the long counter that separated the kitchen from the dining area.

He might want to silently dare her where the mating heat was concerned, but he wasn’t going to deliberately see her in more discomfort than need be. The caffeine in coffee aggravated the systems of mating heat, not the coffee itself.

“Lying to you isn’t something I had in mind,” he told her as she slid onto one of the bar stools across the counter from him. “I am investigating Banks’s disappearance.”

“As well as Alonzo’s death,” she pointed out knowingly.

“As well as several deaths.” He wasn’t going to admit to Alonzo. Admitting to anything where this woman was concerned was the same as giving her express permission for an interrogation. She should have been a prosecutor rather than a TV reporter.

“And you think I don’t know exactly how many deaths there are? The killer contacted me, Cabal. You know that. You’re more than aware of it, and you think you can continue to play this damned game with me?” Her voice rose as amazed anger began to fill her, to scent the air around her.

She was coming to the end of her patience. Cabal knew it, recognized it. Just as he knew that he was going to have to make a choice soon. Make her hate him forever by pulling them both out of the game, or allowing her in. Neither choice was one he wanted to face.

For a second, the barest second, his self-control slipped. Anger surged through him at the thought that she honestly believed she could so carelessly endanger her life and he would do nothing to protect her.

“I have the right to protect my mate.” He pushed his face close to hers, felt her surprise, saw it in her rounded eyes and the flush that suddenly mounted her skin as his voice rumbled dangerously. “However need be, Cassa, I claim that right. You’re in danger here. The very fact that that bastard contacted you tells me that he’s already targeted you. You know that as well as I do.”

“Well, you can unclaim that right.” Suddenly, she was nose to nose with him, her stormy eyes darkening further as they narrowed back at him angrily, daring him, challenging him. Hell, he was going to come in his jeans now. “Don’t think I’ll tolerate force, Cabal. Not from you or any other man. Never again. And don’t for one minute think that you can force me out of this. Mating heat be damned, I won’t allow it.”

Cassa could feel the anger she had been trying to stem over the past days rising inside her now, trying to break free of the careful self-control she used to maintain it. She’d focused on the story she’d come here to uncover; she’d even allowed herself to focus on her own guilt rather than his actions. That tunnel vision was beginning to expand though and her ability to continue to ignore his actions was eroding.

He had dared to manhandle her, to all but lie to her. He had frightened her, deliberately in the forest her first night here, and in the back of her mind she admitted to herself that she had always believed that no matter the circumstance, her Bengal would never treat her in such a way. He would never allow another Breed to chase her, nor would he try to push her out of something that was so important to her.

“Never again?” The golden glitter of the amber flecks in his dark green eyes intensified. “I know I’ve never forced anything from you, Cassa, so who the hell are you talking about?”

His voice lowered. There was a throb of latent violence in it now that sent a chill up her spine and made her wonder if the man she had been married to wasn’t lucky to be dead. He’d died easy. The look on Cabal’s face made her suspect he could make a man die hard.

“You deliberately allowed me to be chased through that forest,” she accused him furiously. “You let Dog terrify me. You let him run me from that valley so you wouldn’t have to deal with it. What you did was terrifying and painful and something I would have sworn you could never do to a woman, let alone your mate.”

She watched his jaw clench, the muscle ticking furiously beneath the flesh as he glared back at her. Let him glare. She felt like raging—hell, she felt like hitting.

“How dare you!” she yelled as she moved from the stool and slapped her hands furiously on the top of the counter. “How dare you do that to me.”

“How dare you risk your life in such a manner!” he yelled back at her. “How dare you to think I’d allow any Breed, no matter the reason, a chance to so much as breathe your air. Damn you to hell, Cassa. I nearly broke my own fucking neck getting to you that night.”

“Then you should have done more than attempt to run me off later!” she yelled. “You have zero respect for me, Cabal. And even less understanding of who I am, or you wouldn’t think you can lie and connive to get me off this story.”

“What the hell did you expect?” he growled out. “You’re like a fucking bulldog with a bone. I doubt death would stop you.”

She rolled her eyes at his male outrage. “Oh, forgive me for doing my job,” she bit out sarcastically. “Excuse me for giving a damn if the Breeds are framed or in danger of losing all this great public sentiment they’ve acquired over the years.”

“Public sentiment my ass,” he growled, and she couldn’t blame him. The majority of goodwill and expressive sympathy toward the Breeds was no more than an attempt at political correctness for many of the high-profile individuals that spouted it.

“I’ve worked hard, Cabal, as have other journalists that I work with, to make certain the Breeds are portrayed in the best possible light, while still staying within the bounds of truth. You aren’t helping me at all here.”

“Truth?” He came around the counter, his body tense, wired for action as his expression tightened in outrage. “What truth, Cassa? If you found a Breed bending over a bloody body, what would you do then?”

“The same thing I’m doing now!” she yelled, her hands going to her hips as she faced him defiantly and loved every second of it. “Investigating, Cabal. I have the pictures of an obvious Breed attack and death. Do you see any damned thing in print, or do you see me trying to figure out who the hell is trying to frame the Breeds and why?”

“I see you trying to get your ass killed. That’s what I see.”

She almost laughed at his expression. It was completely male, infuriated and filled with frustration. And she wasn’t frightened. She was facing him defiantly without fear.

He wouldn’t hurt her. He hadn’t allowed her to be hurt that night in the forest, and he wouldn’t do it now. He had frightened her, brought back memories of a past she wanted to forget and pissed her the hell off, but he hadn’t hurt her.

“Well, I guess you’ll just have to let me continue on my merry little way and hope I get lucky,” she snapped. “Because there’s not a chance in hell, Cabal, that you’re going to stop me.”

Cabal could feel the heat and hunger rising to a boiling point inside his mind. She knew better than this. He knew she knew better than this. She had been around Breeds long enough, especially mated couples, to know what such vocal and physical defiance did to a mate.

“We are not normal combatants, Cassa,” he warned her, his voice dropping as the growl in his throat echoed inside it. “You know what you’re doing.”

Her brow arched mockingly. “Do I really?” She turned away from him and paced a few feet before turning back. “What am I doing, Cabal? Refusing to give you your way? Poor little Bengal Breed. He’s been so spoiled by his little toys that he thinks all women are going to kneel down and worship those pretty little stripes he has on his ass. Sorry, babe, not me. Your arrogance is pandered to enough the way it is.”

The thought of those women, a damned parade of them who had visited his and his brother’s bed, was enough to set her teeth on edge. There were times she was certain that pissed her off more than the way he’d manhandled her and fought to keep her from getting to the truth in Glen Ferris. If there was a Breed groupie he and Tanner had missed over the years, then it wasn’t because he hadn’t tried to screw them all.

“Leave the stripes out of this.” He paced closer, his growl warning.

She should have known better than to mention the stripes; Cabal was also rumored to dare his lovers to mention them. It was said he hated the Bengal stripes, the oddly colored fine hairs that ran from a point along each buttock around his leg to end in a point on the inside of each thigh.

The unusual markings were highly erotic. She wanted to kiss every damned one of those hairs but hadn’t yet found the courage to try.

She widened her eyes in false innocence. “You mean all those snickering little debutantes you’ve fucked over the years didn’t dare mention them to you all? Why, Cabal, they were quite remiss. They’re sexy. They make me wet.” She was nose to nose with him. “They make me just want to pet you all over.”

His eyes narrowed on her. “You’re daring me,” he stated, his voice so dark and warning that it sent chills racing down her spine. “Why, Cassa? Why push me like this when you know where it will lead? Do you think I want to take you without thought? Without consideration? Why push me like this?”

If the glitter in his eyes was anything to go by, then he was more than ready to find out if he could make time.

“I never was one to enjoy playing second best.” She crossed her arms over her swollen, sensitive breasts and tightened her jaw as anger surged through her. “How many women have you had since you first suspected I was your mate, Cabal? One dozen? Two?”

“At least make the number believable,” he snarled back at her.

Cassa’s lips tightened in anger. She had watched him fuck his way through countless women over the years. He and his brother had once shared those women, had played sex games that would make most grown men blush.

“The number is very believable to me,” she stated coolly. “Really, Cabal, your lack of fidelity amazes me. I thought Breed males were supposed to be faithful from the moment they first realize who their mates are. What? Are you an exception to the rule? Need a harem rather than a mate, do you?”

She needed her head examined. She was pushing him, daring him to take her, and she knew it. Somewhere between last night and this morning she had misplaced her sanity.

“And here I thought you were here for a story.” The rumble of his voice made her clit throb. “I didn’t know you had come to claim your mate, Cassa. You should have said something beforehand. I would have made certain to take time to accommodate you.”

Angry heat flooded her face at his tone.

“You insulting bastard,” she snapped. “Go to hell. And while you’re at it, tell Jonas Wyatt to kiss my ass. I’ll just report on what I have so far. I bet it gets me a Pulitzer for revealing the real face of the Breeds.”

Not that she would ever do it. She couldn’t do that to the people she knew as friends, even for a story. But damn him, he deserved to sweat over it, and so did Jonas.

She turned to stomp out of the kitchen, to get as far away from him as fast as she could. She’d walk that lonely mountain road in the dead of night to get away from him. Snarky, snarling prick. She needed to be tied to a Breed like she needed a hole in her head. Especially this Breed.

She’d had no idea how much it had infuriated her that he had been denying the natural impulse to take her, to claim her. She knew she had denied it. She knew why she denied it. He didn’t have an excuse, nor did he have a reason for it that he could justify to her.

He was a tomcat. Plain and simple. He wasn’t taking her because he didn’t want to be tied down. He couldn’t play all his cutesy little sex games with her or make nice with every woman willing to lift her skirt for him.

“Like hell you’re leaving.”

His voice was animalistic; it throbbed with lust and with demand as she felt his fingers curl around her arm, drawing her to a halt as he pulled her around to face him once more.

Bracing her hands against his wide chest, Cassa stared back at him, refusing to be intimidated by the sudden hunger reflected in his eyes.

“Like hell. You better believe I’m leaving. I’ll be damned if I need anything from you, Cabal. Need or want. I’ll just tromp my merry ass back to Sanctuary, have Ely increase the hormonal treatments, and you can go to hell.” She pushed against his chest, even as she knew he wasn’t about to let her go.

She could feel the power of the intent in his gaze now, the hunger and the lust that suddenly churned the air around them.

“You believe I didn’t claim you because of something so trifling as a desire for other women?” His fingers flexed on her arms. Not painfully, but as though his need to touch her, to caress her, was overriding whatever demands he was making on himself otherwise.

“I really don’t care why you didn’t claim me, as you put it,” she sneered back in his face. “I will never be claimed by you, Cabal. Not in this lifetime or any other. I was willing to work with you, to be a partner—there’s a difference.”

Work with him, and maybe learn what this hunger for him was all about, how the mating heat could give her something she had never had. Something of her own. A man to love her, a man to care for her. She hadn’t wanted him in her bed because he was forced there by the mating heat. She’d wanted him to want her. And she’d been too damned naive to realize it couldn’t work that way for her.

She’d been warned that mating heat was something that couldn’t be denied, even in its mildest form. She hadn’t believed it until the day she met Cabal St. Laurents face-to-face. Until she saw the torment that lined his face, saw the loneliness in his eyes and ached for everything he had lost in his life. Even more, she had ached for her part in what he had lost.

The need to go to him after his rescue all those years ago had nearly overwhelmed her common sense. She’d wanted to touch him, to ease him. She’d ached to do something, anything, to ease the pain she knew he had to feel at the loss of the pride he’d loved so dearly. She’d wanted to make up for what Douglas had done. She’d wanted to make certain he was safe. She’d just wanted to be a small part of his life. Something more than a bad memory.

“You’re a torment.” He pulled her closer, her breasts against his chest, his heavy thigh pressing against her legs as he pushed her back to the wall. “You torment my thoughts. You torture my body with need. Why the hell you’d walk into this mating as blithely as you have confuses the hell out of me, Cassa. You knew what you were facing by pushing me here. Admit it. You’ve always known.”

Yeah, no one had ever nominated her for the common sense prize, and they sure as hell weren’t going to do it now. It had been evident with her deceased husband that she had lousy taste in men, and Cabal was only proving that theory. Problem with this one was, it wasn’t just her fault. For some reason nature had decided to get in on the fun and help her screw her life up even more.

“Please be so kind as to excuse me for pushing you in any direction,” she ground out between clenched teeth. “Honestly, Cabal, all I want from you is the damned story. That’s it. Tell me what I need to know and I’ll just go on my merry little way and let you continue to screw yourself through the rest of the female population. Isn’t that what you want?” Was it even possible? She knew female mates couldn’t bear another’s touch, but could males?

She tried to push away from him again. She tried to ignore the feel of his erection pressing into her stomach, hard and insistent between the layers of their clothes. And she tried to ignore the need beginning to whip through her, the sudden desire for the taste of his kiss, the feel of his hands stroking over her flesh.

She wanted to deny it all.

“Damn you,” he growled. “I knew you would do this to me.”

“What? Refuse to let you think you’re lord of all you survey?” she bit out furiously.

One hand moved from her arm, cupped her cheek and held her head firmly in place as his head lowered.

“I knew you’d shred my fucking control,” he whispered, his voice tormented now, deep and dark and echoing with the same needs she couldn’t control any longer. “Damn you, Cassa. I knew you’d end up destroying me.”

Her lips parted to argue that statement. She even had an excellent comeback poised to shatter his ego. Before she could speak, before she could flay him for making such a ridiculous statement, his lips covered hers. His tongue pushed into her mouth. The taste of cinnamon and spice filled her senses as heat exploded through the rest of her body.

Cabal’s taste. She loved the taste of him. His kiss. She ached for the feel of it again. Her fingers clenched on his forearms and she lifted to him. Her tongue touched his, tasted the spicy heat of the mating hormone, and she knew she was lost. Or was she found?