Bengal's Heart

by Lora Leigh

  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 love
rs 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?

  ◆ CHAPTER 13 ◆

  Lips, teeth, tongues. The taste of lust, of need and heat, seared Cassa’s senses as Cabal jerked her to his chest and took the hungry caress with a force that fired her desires.

  It was better than the last time. It was hotter. It was brighter. Sweet God have mercy on her, it was like being thrown into a vortex so blistering, so bright, that nothing mattered but the sensations ravaging her now.

  Arrogance was so much a part of him. It echoed in his hungry growl as she tried to jerk back from him, and it added dominance to the hold he had on the back of her head to keep her in place for his kiss.

  Cassa moaned as his tongue swiped over hers and spilled more of the spicy taste she was rapidly becoming addicted to.

  She had definitely lost her sanity, because she had known what she was facing in accepting this, in daring him to take her as she had. She had known there could be no easy ending to it, but the need, oh God, the need was tearing her apart, driving inside her like steel stakes burning with hunger.

  “Damn you.” The light nip at her lips had her lifting to her toes, desperate for more now. His kiss, even without that damned hormone speeding through her system, was still more than any other kiss she had ever known.

  Hungrier, greedier, filled with more desire, with more lust than anything she had ever known.

  Tugging at his shirt, she fought to touch skin, to stroke his body as his lips came over hers again, his hard body pressing her closer to the wall at her back.

  Her breath hitched as his hands clenched on her ass, lifted her and jerked her closer. Her thighs parted over his. His cock, covered by a layer of denim, was still hard and hungry as it pressed into the cradle of her thighs and stroked over her clit.

  Cassa wrapped her arms around his neck and held on for dear life as her hips moved of their own accord against him. Thrusting, stroking against the rigid mound pressing against her, she drove herself mad with the arousal burning through her now.

  Her fingers threaded through the silken strands of his hair, the caress of it against her fingertips, erotic, sensual. Everything about Cabal was too erotic, too sensual. She had been losing this battle for months, and she had known it.

  “No. Please.” She gasped out the plea as he jerked her head back, one hand gripping her hair to hold her in place as he glared down at her.

  “You know what you’re doing,” he stated, his voice like a caress of a hot summer night. “Tell me, Cassa. You know what you’re doing.”

  “I know what I’m doing.” Her fingers clenched in his hair to drag his head back. “You’re damned right I know what I’m doing.”

  He was hers. A part of her refused to accept anything less than the fact that he did belong to her. She would pay for it later. She might well die for it later. But for now, he would belong to her. Hers to hold. She had never had anyone, or anything, belong solely to her, until Cabal. And she had never belonged, not really, not where it mattered.

  “It doesn’t change anything.” He lifted her closer against his body and began to move through the cabin to the stairs that led to the loft bedroom. “Nothing, Cassa. This story is still off limits to you.”

  That was what he thought. Let him think it. Let him believe whatever he had to believe for now; she’d show him different later. She wouldn’t be dictated to in this mating any more than she had been dictated to before it.

  Her lips parted, and she allowed her teeth to nip at the line of his lower lip as he moved slowly up the stairs. Her tongue licked over the little wound and she wished she knew how to purr, because she would have purred with the pleasure coursing through her now.

  “Stop ordering me around,” she panted as his hands clenched on her ass. “Kiss me again, Cabal. Just kiss me.”

  His lips covered hers again as a soundless cry vibrated in her throat. It was a kiss made of gossamer desire and fiery need. It stroked over her senses as his tongue stroked over her lips, then her own tongue. The spill of the hormone spread through her, slowly at first, heating nerve endings, throwing her body into chaos as she felt herself being lowered to a bed.

  Cabal’s bed.

  Her arms lifted as he caught the hem of her T-shirt and pulled it slowly from her body.

  The chill of the room washed over her lace-covered breasts for only a second. Only as long as it took for him to toss the shirt away, and for his palms to cover the heavy, swollen mounds.

  “So pretty,” he sighed, his voice thick and husky. “I dreamed of caressing your breasts, Cassa. Of holding them in my hands and seeing that pretty flush on them.”

  She looked down. Sure enough, her breasts were as flushed as the rest of her body felt. Her nipples pressed hard and de mandingly into his palms, and she knew they’d look ripe, cherry red with the need for his touch, his kiss.

  She was almost panting as his hands moved, his fingers flipped over the closure of her bra and peeled the fabric away while she fought to hold back a cry of complete surrender.

  It was a cry that fell from her lips anyway, as his head bent and one of the hard, tight peaks disappeared into the heated depths of his mouth. His lips closed over her, his cheeks drew on the sensitive point and sent shards of pleasure racing to the throbbing knot of nerves in her clit.

  The feel of her juices flowing between her thighs had her hips flexing, arching against him. She wanted him naked, she wanted to be naked with him. She wanted to feel every inch of him caressing her, touching her.

  When his head drew back, his lips releasing her damp nipple, she nearly orgasmed from the sight of it. The look of building lust on his face, the hunger that suffused it.

  Reaching down, he gripped the hem of his T-shirt and jerked it off, displaying the impressive muscles of his chest and abs. The tattoo of a blood-dipped fang lay against his shoulder. The opposite bicep held what was becoming known as a Breed tribal tattoo: barbwire, canines and daggers in a circle around his muscle. It was impressive, sexy as hell, and looked as dangerous as she knew the Breeds could be. Funny that until now, she hadn’t paid as much attention to the tattoo. She’d seen it, known it for what it was, but it had been on the periphery of her attention before.

  Her hands moved, her fingers gripping the hem of his jeans as she pulled and popped the first metal button free. The head of his cock peaked above the opening now. Wide, flushed, throbbing for attention.

  “Not yet.” He pushed her hands back to the bed. “Later.”

  “Like hell later.” She panted, fighting to get her fingers back in place to touch him. “I didn’t say you get to make the rules here, Cabal.”

  He chose that moment to release her jeans and jerk the tab of the zipper down. The low-rise jeans parted, revealing the flesh of her lower abdomen as she froze beneath the hunger in his look.

  She couldn’t move beneath his gaze. His expression was absorbed as he moved lower, pulled her boots and socks from her feet, then gripped the bottom of her jeans and shifted them down along her legs.

  Cassa was mesmerized by his eyes, by his expression. The glitter of gold in a field of vibrant dark green as he revealed her.

  Silken panties came down with the jeans, removed with a long, slow caress of his calloused hands and dropped to the side of the bed along with the denim.

  She was naked beneath him now. Chill bumps of sensation raced over her flesh as his palm pressed against her belly, stroked over it until his fingers encountered the soft curls between her thighs.

  “The mating hormone treatment,” he growled. “I can smell it on you. It’s what’s allowed you
to stay away from me.”

  “It’s allowed me to survive,” she informed him tartly. “I’m not a mating puppet, Cabal. I refuse to be one.”

  She watched as his eyes narrowed on her, his lips curling in amusement as his fingertips moved slowly through the saturated center of her body.

  Cassa gasped and arched against the caress. She swore she could feel flares of explosive heat in each pore that his fingers touched.

  “Trust you to keep trying to stay a step ahead of me,” he murmured before moving back, his fingers going to the metal buttons of his jeans as he toed his boots from his feet.

  “Who’s trying?” She could barely breathe, let alone talk. “I succeeded.”