Bengal's Heart

by Lora Leigh

  He grunted at that, but arguing wasn’t her first impulse as the impressive length of his cock was revealed, along with the subtle Bengal stripes on his thighs.

  Cassa shivered at the proof of the animal inside him and how close to the skin it truly was. The orange stripes, three in all to each side, curled around the teak flesh from the outside of his thigh to the inner flesh.

  The stripes flexed over the muscle as Cassa’s fingers curled with the need to touch them, to run her nails along them.

  “I love these stripes.” A wave of sensuality raced through her belly as he placed his knee on the bed and moved closer to her.

  “The stripes aren’t up for discussion,” he warned her, his look completely carnal.

  “Yet,” she agreed, entranced by the gold glitter of need in his gaze as he came over her.

  “Never.”

  His lips cut off any protest she may have had in mind to make. They covered hers as she felt his hard, naked body come over her. Heavily muscled thighs parted her slimmer ones, and the tip of his cock kissed the heated wetness of her inner lips.

  Cassa reached into the kiss with a desperation she had never known for another’s touch. Her arms curled around his neck, her fingers dug into his hair. She could feel her thighs clenching on his as her hips arched in a wild attempt to force the hardened flesh of his erection deeper into the embrace of the wet folds between her thighs.

  “Not yet.” He pulled back, his lips moving down her neck, sending hot pulses of pleasure racing along the nerve endings there. “Not yet, baby. I get to taste first. You’ve tempted me with the scent of your arousal; now you’ll give me a taste.”

  She shuddered at the dominance in his tone, at the need.

  Cassa lifted her head to watch as his tongue licked over her nipple, then he began moving down her body. A kiss here, a nip there. His tongue played over her flesh and left her shaking for more as he moved down her abdomen to the blazing heat of her sex.

  “So sweet,” he whispered, his voice rough. “You smell as sweet as sunshine.”

  His tongue swiped through the narrow slit as something part growl, part purr left his throat and sent a punch of lust flexing through her womb. Her hips arched closer, her hands dug into his hair and wicked flares of sensual heat began to ignite through her senses.

  Her head tipped back as the pleasure wracked her. Cabal’s tongue was wicked. It stole her senses as it caressed around the sensitive bud of her clit, then swiped over it before his mouth drew it in.

  “Cabal.” Her cry was a thick wail of hunger as pulsing shards of need echoed through her flesh.

  Arousal was a never-ending hunger. It throbbed and ached from her clit to her nipples and beyond. Each inch of flesh was sensitized, each portion of her mind consumed by it.

  She could feel the drugging response of the hormone whipping through her bloodstream, burning through her veins. She couldn’t get enough. She needed his touch, needed all of it.

  “Oh God!” She nearly screamed the prayer as she felt his fingers burrow into the clenching depths of her vagina. They stretched her, burned her, thrust inside her until she was certain she couldn’t hold on to the last shreds of her sanity.

  Cassa couldn’t stop her hips from moving, from driving onto his fingers. She felt as though she were being torn apart by the need now, the desire to be filled, to be taken. She was lost in the pleasure burning through her, and she had no desire to be rescued from it.

  Cabal’s tongue raced over and around her clit. He suckled at it delicately, then firmly. All the while his fingers fucked her slow and easy, pushing her past the point that she could keep so much as a measure of control.

  A control she didn’t want in his arms.

  “More,” she panted out breathlessly, her fingers digging into his shoulders as she arched closer.

  Her legs opened wider, desperate for more kisses, more touch, more of anything he wanted to give her, because she had no idea what the hell she needed other than to be possessed by him.

  She had sworn she would never allow a man to possess her. She had made that promise to herself when she realized her husband was more monster than lover. Now, eleven years later, she wasn’t lying to herself. Her lover was more animal than man, and she promised herself that this time she would handle her emotions, she would handle what she didn’t have, for this. For what she could have.

  She could immerse herself in this. Here and now. She twisted beneath him, pressed her hips higher, drove her clit deeper into his mouth as she felt the winding pleasure tighten through her warningly.

  “Cabal.” She cried out his name when she fought and couldn’t hold back the sensations.

  His answer was a low growl, a flick of his tongue over her clit and a sudden, powerful thrust of his fingers inside the core of her.

  Pleasure exploded through her, shocking her with the strength of it, the force of it. Her body tightened with the suddenly harrowing pulse of release and the fire streaking through each cell of her body.

  She could have sworn she heard herself scream his name. She was certain she had, despite her attempts not to. Her fingers were locked in his hair, holding his lips between her thighs as she jerked and shuddered beneath him.

  Perspiration soaked her body even as sexual need climbed through her again. Writhing beneath his caresses, Cassa fought to find the relief she needed from the heat flooding her senses.

  “Hell yeah, baby.” The animalistic growl echoed around her as Cabal suddenly came to his knees between her thighs. “Come for me again.”

  She stared down her body, watched his fingers curl around the heavy length of his erection as he bent to her. She watched, entranced as the broad head parted the swollen lips of her sex, her juices glistening as he parted her farther.

  “You’re mine, Cassa,” he stated, his voice uneven, rough, as he began to press inside her.

  She wanted to laugh at the claim but couldn’t find the breath. Instead, she stared back at him fiercely.

  “Other way around,” she gasped. “Mine.”

  She wouldn’t let him possess her. She would possess him. She wanted to wrap him so deep inside her soul that when the truth came out, he could never walk away from her. So deep that he would try to see, try to understand what she knew could never be understood.

  A hard, heated chuckle met her statement before her eyes widened and jerked back down the line of her body. He was entering her, pushing inside her. She watched, sobs of need leaving her throat as her flesh parted for him, burned around him.

  He filled her. Inch by inch as she felt another contraction of release tear through her. She hadn’t thought it was possible to orgasm with no more than the act of penetration. Just the feel of him pushing inside her, the heavy length of his cock caressing her sensitive inner muscles. She threw her head back as pleasure suffused her in a violent cascade of light and color. It whipped through her senses, tore through them and left her shaking as Cabal began to thrust inside her with deep, measured strokes.

  His body covered hers; his hands held her hips to him as his lips moved to her neck, her shoulder. She could feel each harsh growl that rumbled in his chest, as it echoed through her chest. She felt each pulse of blood that throbbed in his cock as it shuttled inside the tender tissue of her sex.

  Her moans echoed around her; his harsh, rasping breaths filled her senses. Wrapping her legs around his hips, Cassa fought to hold on to something, anything, that would anchor her to earth as the spiraling ecstasy began to tighten inside her.

  She couldn’t bear it. She could feel it burning, racing, creating a whirlwind inside her that she didn’t have a hope of resisting.

  Pleasure had never been like this. Lust had never been like this. She had never known anything as deep, as filled with pure ecstatic sensation as the feel of Cabal taking her.

  It shouldn’t be like this, she thought distantly. Just lust wasn’t this consuming, this dangerous. She could feel things she didn’t want to feel, a connection, a bond th
rough the pleasure that terrified her.

  It was just a chemical reaction, she warned herself. That was all. She had to make herself remember that. She couldn’t let love interfere. Cabal didn’t love her. He wasn’t going to love her. She couldn’t allow her own love for him to get in the way of this.

  His hand smoothed along her hip as he held his weight on one elbow. It caressed up her side, cupped her breast. His fingers flicked over her tight nipple as his tongue laved at her shoulder and his hips moved faster. Harder.

  His cock thrust inside her with powerful, even strokes. Sensitive nerve endings fired further to life. Cassa felt her flesh becoming swollen, felt her womb tightening, her clit throbbing.

  So close. She could feel her orgasm moving through her, feel it building, edging closer. It was tightening, drawing her body closer to him, making her arch and writhe against him as the wildness of it began to burn through her.

  Her legs tightened around him, her nails dug into his back. She could feel it, it was there, so close, so filled with sensation that when it poured over her, she swore she was dying.

  Cassa heard herself scream his name as his canines sank into her shoulder. Then she felt her breath lodge in her throat, her body contract, her sex swelling with rapture, as the barb, the small, thumb-sized erection, swelled from the flared head of his cock, locking him inside her and spilling its hot hormonal essence into her, binding her further to him. There were no words for the ecstasy shooting through her now. There was no way to explain or to describe the strength, the depth of her release.

  She felt as though she melded into him, became a part of him. She felt her body taking him, accepting him, and knew that in her lifetime she would never know this pleasure with another man. She had never imagined such pleasure could exist.

  The feel of the barb locked inside her was animalistic, ecstatic. It was hers. This happened with only one woman, she knew. That additional erection happened only with a mate, no other. She was the only woman Cabal would ever know this with. And she was the one that had betrayed him.

  She buried her face against his chest as he shuddered above her, his own release jerking through his body as Cassa fought back the tears that would have dampened her eyes.

  For now, she held him. He would belong to her as much as she would belong to him. He couldn’t deny her now. He couldn’t make her leave; he couldn’t turn her away. The mating heat would ensure that. For now, he would have to share himself with her, and not just physically.

  She felt his bite at her shoulder like a brand into her flesh, marking her forever. The little wound would never fully heal. It was a physical mark that would never go away entirely, just as she knew that her own bite on his palm still hadn’t fully healed.

  The Breed’s and the mate’s bodies changed during mating. They shadowed each other, the essence of each blending. Cassa knew that, just as she knew that there hadn’t been a mating that hadn’t ended up in love. In a devotion between the two mates that had always made Cassa envious.

  There was no longer a need for envy.

  “My mate,” he growled at her shoulder.

  Cassa held on to him tighter. She was his mate, for now. She would revel in him while she had him. She would pit her will against his, enjoy the hell out of the time they’d have together, but she promised herself she wouldn’t let herself depend on it. She would never fully become her Bengal’s heart, because she’d betrayed him. She would lose him. She was resigning herself to it. But she had never expected the pain that was coming from it. It had done her no good to steel her heart against this man, because she had a feeling it was going to be ripped from her chest anyway.

  Losing him might well kill her.

  Cabal held on to Cassa, his arms wrapped tight around her as he slowly loosened the bite against her shoulder. He could taste the primal mating hormone in his mouth as he licked against the wound, spreading it over the tiny bite marks he had left in her flesh once again.

  Mating wasn’t easy, it wasn’t gentle. He was still shuddering at the force of the pleasure that had torn through him. The violence of his release left him shaking and suddenly much too aware of what would happen to him if he ever lost this woman.

  Brushing her hair back from her perspiration-damp face, he let his fingers caress her cheekbone, her jaw, as he stared into her dove-soft gray eyes.

  His woman.

  He fought to hold back the possessiveness rising inside him, the feeling of something belonging to him. Just to him. He knew fate, and she laughed at him for sport. She snatched happiness from his fingertips with a sneer and a laugh.

  He stared into Cassa’s eyes, and once again saw a flash of that ever hated fear in her eyes. Even now, seconds after the most incredible pleasure he had ever known, he still sensed her fear of him.

  Perhaps it was something time would take care of for him, if he had time with her, he told himself. She would learn she had nothing to fear.

  He would give his life for hers without thought. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that living without her now wasn’t something he could face doing. This hunger, this need, this total fulfillment of sexual pleasure was unlike anything he had ever known in his life.

  And her touch. Her touch was a stroke of pleasure and of comfort. Living without that comfort wasn’t something he wanted to ever risk.

  She was the other half of him, the one thing he had longed for ever since he had learned of the mating phenomenon. She was the part of his soul that had been missing and was now complete.

  “I don’t like seeing that fear in your eyes,” he told her softly as the barb slowly receded and her inner flesh released its grip on it.

  Her eyes flickered and he saw the lie coming. Placing his fingers over her lips, he held back the words.

  “No lies, Cassa,” he told her softly. “If you can’t tell me why, then don’t bother to tell me I’m not seeing what I know I see.”

  Her lips were pressed tightly together as a frown worried at her brow.

  “When you’re ready to discuss it, then I’ll be here,” he told her rather than demanding the answers.

  A man didn’t get far when demanding anything from Cassa. She was as willful as a woman could get, and twice as independent.

  “Will you?” she finally asked, her lips whispering over his fingertips. “Will you, Cabal? Or will you walk away like you always do?”

  His lips quirked mockingly at the thought of walking away now.

  “I think we’re both very well aware of the fact that there’s no walking away now. Even if it was something either of us wanted to do.”

  He moved against her, his hardening erection filling her flesh as her breath caught.

  “See, Cassa? There’s no walking away, honey. We’re bound. Just as you knew we would be.”

  He could see it in her eyes, in her expression. The knowledge, and the fear.

  ◆ CHAPTER 14 ◆

  Death smiled at the sight of the lights flipping off in the cabin. Death would have laughed, but something deep inside a frozen heart refused to allow the amusement to go quite that far.

  It was a mating. There was no doubt of that. Cabal St. Laurents and Cassa Hawkins were mates. It was one more sin to add to Death’s conscience.

  Death touched the shoulder that was still sensitive, even after twenty years, and still bore the bite of a mate. A mate long dead.

  Snow drifted in the air; the cold formed like freezing vapor and eased along the forest floor. The mist from the gorge not far away sent frozen fog to cover the land, even now, so close to spring. So close to the anniversary of Death.

  There was a job to be done, and it didn’t matter the regret now, or the fact that a mate would soon be lost once again. The past refused to die; Death had to help it along. That meant they all had to die. Everyone who had been a part of that massacre so long ago had to be taken from this world.

  It didn’t matter that Cassa Hawkins hadn’t been a part of that massacre at the time. Truth was, she had been a par
t of her husband’s life later, and her husband had been part of that massacre. The husband would come now. He would find a way, he’d slip from his hole and come here once he learned his precious wife had mated a Breed.

  Douglas Watts had been so young the night Death had been created, barely eighteen and following in his father’s evil footsteps. But still, it was an evil that refused to die. And Cassa, his precious wife, had helped him later to betray the Breeds—that put the mark of evil on her soul as well.

  As far as Death was concerned, Cassa was as much a part of the Deadly Dozen as her husband had been, and she would have to die.

  Luring her here had been easy. The pictures, the emails, the threat of framing the Breeds. The world would one day know that Breeds were no more than humans and humans were no more than Breeds. They all had the ability to kill, and they could all die. Proof of that had already begun.

  Death hadn’t expected the mating though. That thought flitted through a mind that was torn with the decisions made that now must be followed through. Losing a mate was a horror no creature should have to endure. It was a pain unlike any other. Each breath taken without that mate was a nightmare that never eased.

  Death slid slowly back from the cabin, easing along the path that the snow hadn’t yet covered but would soon. It wouldn’t do to leave proof that eyes watched and an enemy waited. The Breeds that chased Death through the silence of the night could never understand the mission that lay ahead. They couldn’t understand why their lives didn’t matter any more than those of the humans.

  Cassa’s day would come. It was right around the corner, her blood marked to be spilled if her husband didn’t arrive. But first, another’s blood would soak the valley of Death. Another’s blood would still the demons rising inside Death, tearing at the mind, searing the soul.

  The seventh of the Deadly Dozen. It was time for him to die.

  Cabal curled around Cassa like a living blanket, keeping her close to his chest, holding her warmth inside each pore that he could press against her.

  He was a man that had never relished sleeping with others. He had bedded enough women over the years, but as his brother could attest, the intimacy of sharing a bed with them was something Cabal hadn’t found much pleasure in.

  Until Cassa. He had fought it at first. He’d tried not to need it, to need her. Now he would have dared Cassa to find another place to sleep, at any time, after tonight. She would spend her nights here in his arms, no matter what he had to do to achieve it.

  He brushed back the long, tangled strands of her hair to stare at her sleeping profile. She slept deep, hard, her slight breathing brushing against his arm where she lay. She had slept the night away with the same deep intensity. But he couldn’t say her sleep had been dreamless. She had shifted about throughout the night, muttering to herself a time or two, a frown working between her brows.

  Did she relive the horrors she had seen during her years as an investigative reporter? he wondered. She had been there the night his lab was attacked, and during his rescue. She had seen the slaughter that had taken place in the pit of death; she had seen his wounds and his rage during his rescue.

  He stared across the room, fighting those memories himself now. That was a place within his soul that he tried not to revisit too often. Too many of his family had died in that pit. A dozen men and women who had given their lives to ensure that he lived, despite his protests. They had thrown themselves in front of him, blocked him, kept the blades that sliced through the metal walls from impaling him.

  So much blood had filled that pit before he had managed to escape. So many lives had been lost. Because a betrayer had been harbored in the midst of the rescuers. Because Cassa’s false husband had betrayed them all.

  Damn, Douglas Watts had sowed a hell of a mess. He was still living, albeit a bit miserably, but those whose lives he had touched carried the bitter wounds of his actions.

  What would she do if she learned the bastard lived?

  He stared down at her, questioning within himself the decision he had made so long ago to allow Watts to continue living.

  It had been that cruel streak he harbored within him. To kill Watts would have been too easy. Too merciful. He’d wanted the man to suffer and to suffer hard.

  Had Cabal instigated the demise of his own future with that decision though? Would he be the first Breed to lose a mate to a former lover, to a man who had lied even to the point that the judge who had wed them had been false?

  Once this assignment was completed and the identity of the Breed killing humans was revealed, then, Cabal promised himself, he would take the time to learn more about his new mate. More than just her stubbornness and her loyalty. He would learn what made her laugh, what made her find joy. He had a feeling that Cassa hadn’t known great joy in her life.

  And then perhaps he would know if he had her loyalty over that which she had once given the man she believed was her husband.

  Glancing toward the window, he drew in the scent of the snow outside. The late winter air gave the forest a fresh, clean scent as well as a blanket of white to wrap the world outside within.

  The fire he had laid just after Cassa went to sleep was still burning, the glowing embers and low flames lighting the bedroom through the open ceiling of the living room.

  Moving from the bed, he tucked the blankets carefully around his sleeping mate before pulling on his jeans and easing from the bedroom. He could hear the Breed Raiders easing up the road to the cabin. Jonas would be in one of the vehicles, he knew. The director rarely left anything to chance, especially in a mission as delicate as this one.

  A rogue Breed killing humans wasn’t something to ignore. As Cassa had stated the night before, it could show the world the true face of the Breeds, and that was something they weren’t quite ready for.

  Moving to the front door, he watched as the two Raiders, the powerful ATVs the Breeds used in mountainous and desert settings, pulled into the drive.

  Leaning against the door frame, he watched as Jonas moved from the first vehicle, followed by his bodyguard and driver, a human simply called Jackal. The second vehicle held the two enforcers, Lawe Justice and Rule Breaker. The names rarely failed to cause Cabal’s lips to twitch in amusement.

  It wouldn’t do to let either Breed see that amusement though. They were rather proud of the names they had chosen for themselves.

  As Jonas neared the house, he paused, his eyes narrowing on Cabal as his nostrils flared. Cabal knew the director was taking in the scent of the mating, as well as Cassa’s scent as it surrounded Cabal’s body. Now there would be no doubt in Jonas’s mind that the mating was completed.

  “Hell, I thought you’d at least wait until this assignment was over,” Jonas growled.

  Cabal narrowed his gaze back at him. “I’d waited long enough.”

  And that was the damned truth. He’d held back because he’d sensed Cassa’s need to do so. That need was no longer there, for either of them. He should have held back for the sake of the mission, but the animal inside him didn’t give a damn about the mission. It cared about the mate, and the animal was closer to the skin than he had ever imagined.

  He watched as Jonas grimaced before staring back at Lawe and Rule.

  “Hey, Boss, don’t look at me,” Lawe ordered him. “I told you, I’m steering clear