Bengal's Heart

◆ CHAPTER 16 ◆

There was nothing as confusing as a damned Breed, especially Cabal. He’d gone from refusing to hold her at all to refusing to release her.

He held her hand out of the sheriff’s home. When they were back in the Raider, his large hand cupped her knee as he drove. He acted as though he couldn’t stand to take his hands off her.

Was he trying to distract her? Throw her off balance? What the hell was up with him?

She gave him another suspicious look as they drove through town. The Raider itself drew an incredible amount of attention as it eased through the light traffic of Glen Ferris. Not that the town was large enough to actually slip through without being noticed. The Breed insignia on the door of the vehicle didn’t help matters much.

Breeds drew attention wherever they went though. The world still wasn’t used to, or certain of, this strange new species that man had created.

“The Breed Freedom Society that hid the Breeds in the area. Do you know the identities of all its members?” she asked as she tried to think past the feel of his fingertips rubbing against the inside of her knee.

“No one knows the identities of the Freedom Society,” he answered her, and he didn’t seem concerned by it.

She stared back at him in disbelief. “Right,” she answered mockingly. “No one knows their identities. You haven’t checked into it. And I’ll just bet Jonas doesn’t have a clue either.”

His lips quirked at her snappy words. “What Jonas knows pretty much stays with Jonas,” he stated. “Who knows what he knows?”

She almost snorted at that, but found herself staring at him in disbelief instead. He was joking with her? The stoic, sober, dangerous Cabal was cracking jokes? Since when?

“You’re making fun of me,” she accused him suspiciously.

The look he turned on her was one of confusion. “Making fun of you? Why would I do that?”

“Because you can,” she sighed, attempting to move her leg from his touch and failing. Not for the first time.

“I’ve never attempted to identify all the members of the Freedom Society for a reason,” he explained. “They’ve struggled to remain anonymous, even to the Bureau. I’ve tried to respect that.”

“And if they’re hiding a killer now?” She turned to him as she asked the question. “What if they’re aware of the rogue, aware of the murders?”

He stared through the windshield as she watched him with a hint of anger.

“Danna is a member of the Freedom Society, we know that.” She held up a single finger. “Walt. I’d bet he was part of it, and high ranking at that.”

“Why Walt?” His hand slipped higher on her leg, his fingers rubbing, caressing, interfering with her thought process.

She could barely manage to control her breathing. If his fingers went much higher, she was going to lose her breath entirely.

“Why Walt?” She looked down at his hand, watching as his darkly tanned fingers continued to smooth, to rub over the denim that covered her legs.

There were chills chasing up her legs, frissons of sensation beginning to sing through her nerve endings, to strike higher, to wrap around the sensitive bud of her clit.

She was growing wetter, more sensitive. She could feel the tender flesh of her pussy heating, preparing for him.

All she wanted to do was to slide across the console, straddle his lap . . .

And what the hell was stopping her? This was her mate, right? He was her man. He could touch. He could kiss. He could do whatever the hell he wanted to do.

Her jaw tightened at the thought. Well, maybe she should try doing what she wanted to do for a change. They were close enough to the hotel. Hell, for that matter there were any number of places that he could pull off the road, darken the windows and just have his way with her. If he were of a mind to do that.

She wondered if she could put him in the mind to do it.

“What the hell are you up to?” She slid around in her seat, watching him closely now, wondering if she had the courage, if she dared to be so bold.

“Me?” He stared back at her in surprise. “What do you think I’m up to?”

His fingers were moving higher, only inches from the wet, desperate flesh that vibrated with need for him.

“You’re trying to distract me.” She could be naughty. She could be bad. She would be, because she was sick and damned tired of this particular Breed thinking he could, and that he would, control her.

She let her fingers touch the back of his hand, the pads barely caressing his flesh as he paused on her thigh.

“You think you can control me, don’t you, Cabal?” she asked him softly, the accusation weighing heavily between them. “You don’t want me asking questions. You don’t want me investigating this story. So what are you doing?”

He glanced over at her in disbelief. “What am I doing?”

“You’re using the mating heat and the sex to distract me,” she answered him. She should have been furious. She assured herself that she would be later. For now, she was going to be what she wanted to be. For once, she was going to do what she wanted to do. For once, she was going to distract rather than be distracted.

She decided that was a mate’s job. At least when a woman had a mate such as Cabal.

“I wouldn’t do that.” He cleared his throat as she moved her hand from his and laid it on his thigh. Her fingertips danced over the denim that covered the hard muscle there, moving close, then drawing away from the bulge of his hardened cock.

She watched as he took a deep breath, his chest expanding as she released her seat belt and moved in her seat.

“Hell,” he breathed out roughly as she slid one leg over his thighs and moved until she was straddling him, her body braced between him and the steering wheel.

“I’m sure this is illegal.” His voice was suddenly guttural, harsh.

“Have you ever cared about the legalities of what you do?” she asked, her head lowering to his shoulder, her lips touching his neck.

“Only if I could get caught.” His hand gripped her hip, his body tightening as she raked her teeth along his neck. “We could get caught.”

“What are we doing?”

“Driving and riding in an illegal manner?” he questioned her. “I’m sure there’s a law somewhere.”

“I’m sure,” she murmured, suddenly distracted by the taste of his flesh as her lips caressed his neck, her tongue stroking over it.

She felt a surge of power racing through her as Cabal’s hips lifted, shifted, his cock pressing into the vee of her thighs as she moved over him. He wasn’t pushing her from him. He wasn’t denying her or ridiculing her.

“Damn, Cassa.” He was groaning instead, as she pulled his shirt from his jeans, her hand smoothing over his hard abdomen, feeling the muscles flex beneath her palm.

He was warm. So warm and hard. He made her feel soft, female, in ways she had never realized before.

“If I wreck, we’re going to be in trouble,” he warned her, but he wasn’t ordering her away. He wasn’t calling her names; he wasn’t cursing her for her temerity.

He was aroused. And he was holding her to him.

How many times had she fantasized about this? About being brave and bold with him. She had dreamed about being the woman she had never been able to be before. The woman she hadn’t known how to be.

“Don’t wreck, Cabal,” she whispered as she nipped at the hard flesh of his neck.

“Easy for you to say,” he groaned, his hand moving against her hip, shifting her against him as he rocked in the cradle of her thighs.

“Very easy for me to say.” She sighed in bliss at the feel of the hard ridge of his cock stroking against her sensitive folds.

“What the hell has come over you?” His moan was a strangled breath of lust as his head turned, his lips stealing a quick kiss before he turned his gaze back to the road. “I thought you were going to fight this with every breath.”

“You were the one fighting.”

She leaned into the curve as he took the turn that led back to the cabin he had rented. Her knees tightened on his thighs, her hand stroked his chest.

“Cassa, baby, you’re destroying my control.”

And what had happened to her control? Where had her common sense gone or her sense of self-preservation?

It had disintegrated in his hold. It had disappeared with his first kiss.

“I own you.” She sat up on his lap as the Raider gained speed up the steep incline to the cabin.

She watched the amber in his eyes flare, watched the flush that stained his cheekbones and the lust that flared in his expression.

Her hands moved between their bodies, her fingers tearing at the closure of his jeans. She needed him. Ached for him.

“Damn you,” he growled. “What you do to me should be illegal.”

“Take it up with the ruling cabinet,” she gasped, speaking of the group that oversaw the Breed community and its laws.

“I’ll take it up with you, mate.”

His breathing was as harsh, as heavy, as hers when the Raider slammed to a stop outside the cabin. Before she could draw more than one harsh breath, his lips were on hers, his tongue swirling over hers, spreading the spicy taste of the mating hormone and setting fire to an arousal already growing quickly out of control.

She tightened her arms around him; her knees gripped his hips and she held on to his shoulders and his kiss as he stepped from the vehicle.

She wanted to laugh in sheer pleasure as she felt his hands grip her rear, holding her to him. But she was consumed by his kiss instead. She moaned into the kiss, her hands tearing at his shirt, pulling at it, desperate to feel his bare flesh as she felt the door at her back, felt Cabal struggling to release the security lock.

“You’ve pushed too far, mate.” He was growling with lust now, his voice thick, deep, as the door pushed open.

Cassa took her own kiss this time. Melding her lips over his, she dug her fingers into the long strands of his hair, holding him to her as she teased, stroked, as she loved.

Here, within the lust that consumed them both, she could hide the love that welled so deep inside her and spilled over into each touch she gave him.

Here she could hide each emotion, disguise it in her own lust and hold on as tightly as she needed to hold.

“You make me mad to touch you. To taste you.”

She had no idea how they made it from the door to the living room. She only knew that as he lowered her to the couch, her shirt was being jerked from her, tossed aside. The lacy bra was shredded and his lips were covering a torturously hard nipple.

His hands were tearing at her clothes, dragging his jeans and boots from his body, even as he lashed at the nipple with his rough tongue, sucked it into his mouth and had her crying out in blistering need.

It was exquisite. She could well find herself living for this, aching for this even when the mating heat wasn’t torturing her body.

She dug her fingers into his hair, twining the thick, heavy strands around her fingers as her back arched and she fought to get closer to the wicked, knowing tongue that licked and stroked at first one nipple, then the other.

Cassa could feel the vortex of sensation, of pleasure, as it began to swirl, to twist inside her. She was naked before him, arching into his embrace and needing so much more than his teasing strokes were allowing her.

“Cabal, please,” she whispered the plea with a soft sob as his hand smoothed down her stomach.

“I’m going to please you,” he rasped. “I’m going to please both of us, baby.”

His fingers slid into the thick, slick moisture between her thighs as he began to kiss and nip his way down her stomach.

A startled cry tore from her lips as he suddenly lifted, reclining her back on the couch and spreading her thighs before him as he sat on his knees before her.

She had no time to grasp the significance of the move before his head lowered and his tongue was burrowing into the clenching, desperate grip of her pussy. Licking, thrusting. He ate her with wicked decadence as he lifted her legs, propped her feet on the cushions and opened her farther to his touch.

Cassa tried to fight back the scream of pleasure as his tongue licked through the narrow slit, then sucked her clit into his mouth, but there was no holding it back. She was flying through a turbulent wash of sensation so violent it shuddered through her, causing her to writhe on the cushions in suspended ecstasy.

It was too much. She was dying. Right there in the living room with the sun pouring through the large tinted windows, she was dying. Burning alive in his arms and rushing headlong into the flames.

The orgasm that rushed through her left her crying out his name as he pushed from between her thighs.

Cassa opened her eyes as he untangled her fingers from his hair and placed them on his shoulders. They both watched as he gripped his cock with one hand and tucked the wide, flushed head against the wet entrance of her sex.

“Damn, baby, that’s sexy.” His rumbled voice sent shivers of pleasure racing through her.

Cassa watched, eyes wide, as he pressed forward, eased back, pressed in again. The head of his erection entered her slowly, stretching her flesh as a low, moaning cry fell from her lips. Her lashes drifted closed as she arched into the penetration, relishing the slow, exquisite burn of entrance, the stroke of his cock through tender tissue.

Her head rolled against the cushions, her nails tightened into the skin of his shoulders as her legs wrapped around his hips to draw him closer.

Each slow thrust, each powerfully controlled stroke of his flesh inside hers sent her senses spinning. Electric impulses of pleasure pulsated through her pussy, causing her to tighten around the shuttling flesh, to fight to hold him inside her as he continued to thrust slow and easy.

“So sweet,” he rumbled, his voice rough. “Damn, Cassa, so fucking good.”

Too good. She was reaching, her muscles gripping him, her nails digging into his flesh as he leaned into her, thrust deep and hard. His hands gripped her hips, his lips went to her shoulder and she knew what was coming. She could feel her climax building, tightening in her womb.

It was a conflagration. Heat and flames swirled around her, through her, until they exploded into a mass of such exquisite sensation that nothing else mattered.

When she thought she could bear no more, it got better. The feline barb became erect, locked inside her and spilled Cabal’s release in spurt after spurt of liquid heat.

She was locked in a world of sensation, of pleasure. Her legs gripped his hips, her neck arched, and when the bite came, she exploded in a series of orgasms that stole her breath and shook her mind.

She was left holding on to him with a desperation she had never known in her life. Holding on to him to retain some semblance of order, some measure of security.

His arms around her, his flesh locked to hers, his body sheltering hers—he was her security. Her port in a storm that threatened to destroy her with the violence of the pleasure. She had sworn she would never depend on anyone, that no man would be the center of her universe, her port or her security.

Even Douglas hadn’t meant that much to her. He had never been imperative to her life, or to her pleasure. In this moment, awash with ecstasy, Cassa admitted, to herself at least, that Cabal was exactly that. Even without the mating heat, this man was imperative to her heart.

“Easy.” She heard his voice whispering at her ear, and only in that second did Cassa realize that she was crying.

Her head was buried against his shoulder, her arms locked around him, and she was losing her mind, because she was insane enough to let him realize what he meant to her.

He was a Breed. He wasn’t a normal male. He could sense, scent emotions. He would know what she refused to say. He could smell what she refused to feel. And right now, she was feeling plenty that she shouldn’t, that she had sworn she wouldn’t.

“I have you.” His lips pressed against her neck, his hands slid up her back, the calloused palms stroking over her flesh, soothing the tremors racing through her.

She didn’t want the comfort. She didn’t want to depend on this, didn’t want to look forward to it only to have it taken away from her later. Because it always went away. It never lasted for long.

She fought to steady her breathing as he slowly withdrew from her before lifting her in his arms and rising to his feet. Legs around his hips, her arms holding tight, Cassa rested her head on his shoulder as he carried her up the stairs to the huge bedroom above and the bed that still held their scent.

“You make me lazy,” he said softly as he laid her in the bed, then followed quickly, pulling the sheet and comforter over them as he drew her back into his arms.

“Yeah. Lazy.” The mockery in her voice fell far short of what it should have been. She hadn’t met a Breed yet that was anywhere close to lazy.

“You make me want to stay right here, Cassa, for as long as I can stay.”

His head settled into the pillow beside her as she turned to stare into the somber gaze directed at her.

“Why couldn’t you?” she asked. “Unless you have something to do that you don’t want me to be a part of.”

He continued to stare back at her silently, the gold flecks in his gaze brightening knowingly as he watched her.

“We’re mates,” she pointed out. “There should be nothing you do that I can’t be a part of.”

She had been saving that trump, hoping to use it at a time when it would actually work. She didn’t know all the specifics of Breed Law, but one thing she was damned sure of: If she didn’t want him endangering his life, then he was required to cease and desist at once, for a period of one year.

She would hate to pull that one on him; truth be told, she probably couldn’t bring herself to do it, unless he made the mistake of trying to take her out of her job.

“You know, I’ve always been aware of the fact that you knew how to play dirty,” he stated musingly, without anger.

He was actually pretty calm, surprisingly. Terrifyingly so perhaps.

Cassa arched a brow. “Play dirty? I merely stated that I should be a part of whatever you’re doing, however you’re doing it. How is that playing dirty?”

He snorted at the comment as he shifted to his side and propped himself up on an elbow. “We both know Breed Law.”

Her eyes widened. “Do you think I’m threatening you, Cabal?” She blinked for added effect. “I wouldn’t ever.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t,” he drawled. “You seem like a very intelligent woman, Cassa. That’s why you’re going to stay out of this now that we’ve mated. I won’t risk you.”

She laughed. Right there in his face, amusement welled inside her until it erupted past her lips and left her shaking her head at his arrogance.

“Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” she promised with all the sarcasm she could muster as she rose from the bed and jerked the wrinkled sheet from the bed to wrap around her naked body.

She didn’t care much for the frank male appreciation in his gaze at that moment. Nor did she care for the mockery that lingered in his expression.

“Cassa.” He didn’t bother to cover his nakedness, or his arousal, as he crawled over the bed. “This isn’t a joking matter. Whatever the hell is going on here is about to get fucking dangerous.”

“You cover my back and I’ll cover yours.” She glared back at him fiercely. “But I won’t be leaving, and I won’t drop what I’m doing here.”

“Just what the fuck are you doing here?” His voice rose, not a lot, but a lot for Cabal, who normally kept his tone calm, even. “Besides endangering your own life.”

“Getting the story,” she informed him coldly.

“Why?”

“What do you mean ‘why’?” she exclaimed. “The killer sent me information, Cabal. Should I just ignore it?”

“What are you going to do with the information or the answers once you get them?” he asked her, his expression fierce. “You know we’re going to cover this up, bury it as deep as possible. Why write a story that will never see print, Cassa? Why do that to yourself?”

Why? She stared back at him in confusion. She knew the answer, but it wasn’t one she could give him.

“What if you’re wrong about covering it?” she whispered.

“What if someone else finds out? Or the killer sends the proof to another reporter? You’ll need the answers. You’ll need someone to write a story that will show your side of it, and cast a better light on the Breeds.”

“That can be accomplished without putting you in danger,” he stated. “Why are you here?”

“I want the answers,” she bit out angrily. “I need to know why.”

He shook his head. “You need to absolve yourself. That’s the reason you’ve done this all these years. It’s the reason why you’ve always fought to see the Breeds as heroes and victims rather than the killers we were created to be. It’s why you put yourself in danger time and again for the Breeds. You can’t make up for what Watts did.”

Cassa flinched. The pain of his statement traveled through her until she was amazed that she was standing on her feet. It was like a punch of agony centered in her soul that spread out through her entire being.

She couldn’t make up for what she had allowed Douglas to do. For what she hadn’t realized he was doing. She’d known that all along. Known that there was no absolution, no forgiveness for the crimes he had committed. The crimes she had unknowingly committed in trusting the man she had been married to.

There was no way anyone else could forgive her either. There had been two dozen Bengal Breeds. To her knowledge they had all died but one. Cabal. The most fierce, the most dangerous of them all.

“That has nothing to do with this,” she argued, aware that her voice as well as her argument was weak.

It was no more than she had thought herself. She fought to make the world see what she saw once she had gotten to know the Breeds. Men and women fighting for survival. It didn’t matter what they had been created to be. What mattered was what they were, honorable, strong.

“It has everything to do with this, Cassa,” he growled as he jerked a pair of jeans from a dresser and pulled them on. “You think putting yourself in the line of fire will make anyone see you differently?”

Cassa whirled around so he wouldn’t see the pain in her face. It was exactly what she had hoped. That the Breeds, should they ever learn the extent of what Douglas had done, would believe that she hadn’t been a part of it. She had hoped that it would ease the hatred she feared Cabal felt for her.

“Whether they see me differently or not doesn’t matter,” she said quietly as she turned back to him and fought to bury the pain deep enough that even his Breed senses wouldn’t detect it. “What matters is how I see myself. And I wouldn’t like what I saw in the mirror every morning if I just walked away from this.”

She walked away from him instead. She didn’t bother to stalk out of the room; she didn’t think she had the energy for that. She just walked away, returned to the living room and the clothes scattered across the floor.

Her clothes as well as his.

Shaking her head at her own feeling of failure, she hurriedly dressed before picking up the pack she carried as a purse and leaving the cabin.

The walk was going to suck, but it wouldn’t suck near as bad as staying here and staring into his eyes, knowing that nothing she did, no matter how much she loved him, would ever make up for what her ex-husband had done. Or for how much he blamed her for the chance that Douglas had had to deceive the Breeds.

The air was chilled, the late winter weather moving in hard on the mountains as the temperature began to drop. It would be a long, cold walk back to town. But it couldn’t be any longer, or any colder, than the past that stretched out behind her.