Bengal's Heart

by Leigh, Lora

  ◆ CHAPTER 6 ◆

  It was fire and ice. It was a kiss unlike anything Cassa had ever known. It was infused with passion, with hunger, with the spicy taste of the mating hormone and the dark seductive taste of the man himself.

  The taste of the man himself was more potent in ways than even that of the mating hormone she could feel rushing through her system. Like the strongest narcotic shot straight into her system, it produced a sense of euphoria, of need, of a clamoring, fiery hunger invading her body.

  It wasn’t much different from the needs that had filled her before his kiss. The only difference was the physical burn, the taste, the sudden, overwhelming need for more. Now.

  Her hands dove into the thick gold and black strands of hair that lay to his shoulders. Her fingers clenched in the coarse mass, pulling him closer as she took his tongue again and again, accepted the taste of the mating hormone and gave herself to him.

  She had fought it. She really had. For over ten years she had tried to ignore it, just as he had. They had stayed as far apart from each other as they could. Now there was no ignoring it. There was no way to hide from it. They would never be able to hide from it again.

  Lips and tongues melded, stroked and sucked. His hands pushed beneath her T-shirt and Cassa felt the shudder that tore through her body as his calloused hands touched her bare back.

  She remembered the sensation of his skin touching hers, even before the hormonal influx that spilled from his tongue. So long ago, his hand around her neck as he swore he owned her. The touch of his hand then had nearly overwhelmed even her fear. Now his touch sent a rush of sensation, hard and brutal, to strike to the very core of her.

  It was too much, too soon. The hormonal fluid from the glands in his tongue shouldn’t react on her this quickly, not this hard. Not considering that for the past five years, she had been taking the hormone treatments given to mates. She shouldn’t be reacting this strong, this fast. She shouldn’t be, unless the hunger of the mating heat was reacting to her own desperate need for his touch.

  And it was desperate. It had been desperate for years. He had been the focal point of her deepest fantasies, her every desire, and she needed him.

  She needed him and she was going to take him. They could run from the need, but they couldn’t hide from it. For eleven years both of them had run, and now the running was over.

  “Damn you!” His growl was one of frustration and driving need as he tore his lips from hers long enough to watch, the amber in his gaze flaming, as he jerked her shirt over her breasts.

  The cold air met her heated flesh, adding another sensation. It was surrounding her, rushing through her until she could barely breathe for the need.

  “Damn you,” she panted brokenly. “You’ve screwed everything in sight for eleven years. You’ve ignored this. Ignored me.” And she hated him for it. Hated him for the years she hungered for him, the years he had kept that distance between them.

  “I spared you this!” His hand tightened in her hair as the fingers of the other flattened at her waist, stroked upward, then cupped one hard, aching mound of a breast.

  Cassa sucked in a hard, deep breath at the feel of his hand through the lace of her bra. The heat of his touch was brutal. The feel of his fingers was like a fever raging in her blood.

  “You didn’t spare me anything,” she gasped, glaring back at him even as her body rioted for more of his touch.

  “I spared myself then,” he snarled, a second before his head lowered, the sharp tips of his canines raking her neck as a growl rumbled in his throat.

  Sweet heaven that was good. Her head fell back for more, the feel of his lips, his teeth against her throat was both ecstasy and frustration. It was edged with a sharp pleasure that raked across nerve endings too sensitive to bear.

  She felt his hands, one cupping her breast, the other supporting her back. She felt his teeth raking her flesh, and shivered at the electric sensations racing over her.

  “I’ve needed you.” She hated the whimper, the weakness she revealed with those three little words, with the way her hands tightened in his hair, with the huskiness of her voice.

  She had needed him since that fateful day that the husband who had sworn his loyalty to her had betrayed everything she believed in. She had needed him, needed the power and the promise in the very threat she knew he was to her self-control, to her very survival.

  “God, Cassa.” He nipped at her neck, his fingers tightened on her nipple.

  Between her thighs Cassa could feel the growing wetness, the slick, heated essence of arousal coating the lips of her pussy, sensitizing them as her clit began to throb with erotic pain.

  She had waited so long, fought so hard to run from it, only to end up right here, in his arms. Finally.

  The same place so many other women had been.

  “I hate you.” The sob in her voice belied the words.

  “You’ll hate me worse before the day is over.” He pushed the cup of her bra over the throbbing flesh of her breast, and she lost her breath.

  Capturing a hard, too sensitive nipple between his fingers, he rolled the calloused pads against it and sent her senses spinning with the pleasure.

  They were in public. The park might be deserted now, but they could be discovered at any moment. God only knew where that hateful Coyote was, probably spying on them. She didn’t care if a whole damned pack of Coyotes were spying. She didn’t want to let him go. She didn’t want to lose this touch, his kiss.

  Gripping his hair, she fought to draw his lips back to hers. She wanted more than the spicy, addictive taste of the hormone that spilled from the glands beneath his tongue. She wanted more than just his touch. In his kiss, there was an intimacy she couldn’t define. As though only there, he allowed her to have all of himself.

  And he gave it to her. His tongue licked at her lips, his teeth nipped, lips rubbed then devoured her breathless moan as she arched closer to him.

  The naked peak of her breast rubbed against the rough material of his shirt. She wanted flesh against flesh. She wanted to feel the tiny, silken hairs that she knew covered his body. She wanted to see the stripes that were rumored to be so damned sexy.

  She wanted her Bengal. Her mate. She wanted what she knew no other woman would ever have with him, had never had with him.

  This. Mating heat.

  In the next instant, his lips lifted from hers as the words tore from them: “I’ll end up fucking you here.”

  Cassa stared up at him. The amber in his eyes was almost neon against the velvety dark green. Intense eyes, filled with hunger. His expression was drawn with the lust surging through him, his lips swollen from their kisses.

  Cassa stared at the strong, savagely hewn features and felt her heart trip from more than just the lust surging between them. There was such strength, so much hunger, and yet a thousand betrayals reflected in his eyes, in his expression. He could lust for her, hunger for her, but as she stared into his oddly colored eyes, there wasn’t a hint of the emotions, or the wellspring of need that she felt rising inside herself.

  Mates loved. Every mated couple that she knew loved, and they loved deeply.

  “Cassa.” His head lowered as he whispered her name once again, a grimace contorting his face as he took a quick kiss. Then another. The third became deeper, longer.

  Cassa felt herself falling beneath the pleasure of his touch once again. She lost time and place. She lost herself. There was nothing but this pleasure, this kiss, this man.

  “We have to get the hell out of here.” In the next second he was pushing away from her, taking the heat and the promise as he straightened her T-shirt before pulling back and pushing her into the seat.

  Cassa watched him as he closed the door, sealing her into the truck rather than the Raider he had used before. Pushing away from the door, he loped around the front of the vehicle to the driver’s side, got into the truck and started the engine.

  He didn’t pull out of the parking lot. He caught
the back of her head in his hand, pulled her head back and filled her senses with another of those long, deep probing kisses.

  Her nails dug into his arm as a whimper of need escaped her lips. She wanted him now. Waiting until they reached the hotel room was quickly becoming a hazy notion. She was beginning to wonder if it wouldn’t be possible to slip in a quickie in public after all.

  “Damn you. I knew you’d be fucking dangerous.” Cabal’s voice was tortured, as tortured as her feverish mind.

  And she wasn’t the one that was dangerous. It was him. His kiss, his touch.

  Breathing harshly, she forced herself to sit still, to keep her hands to herself. She wasn’t going to start stripping his clothes off in the pickup, but it was close, really close.

  He had a body to die for. Or one a woman would kill for. And if rumor was to be believed, then once those clothes came off, the hungry, powerful male animal beneath was unleashed.

  The thought of that was both anticipatory as well as irritating. Rumor came from all the damned bigmouthed women who thought they had to brag about sharing his bed. From the women who had touched him when he belonged to her. The women he had warmed through the nights when she had lain alone, wishing, dreaming, regretting.

  Thankfully, Glen Ferris wasn’t a large town; the inn she was staying in was only a few miles from the falls. Cabal pulled into the parking lot, shut off the engine and threw open the door. He didn’t bother striding around and helping her out on her side. Impatient Bengal that he was, he pulled her across the seat, ignoring her breathless little cry, before gripping her hips and setting her on the ground.

  Within seconds the vehicle’s locks were clicking in place and he was gripping her hand, pulling her toward the front entrance.

  Cassa could feel her head spinning. She wanted to protest, something. She wanted to demand more, but she wasn’t certain what she needed to demand. All she knew was the sudden need for the spicy taste of his kiss, for the heat of his touch. Just Cabal. The years of dreams and fantasies were finally coming together, and she found herself suddenly unable to wait. Unable to function without his touch.

  The journey to her room seemed to last forever, yet when Cabal took the key card from her hand and opened the door, she suddenly wished it had taken longer. Just a few more minutes to anticipate, to think, not that she was thinking much past the touching him, kissing him. But while her body knew what it wanted right at this moment, her emotions were screaming for more time to adjust, more time to center themselves.

  “Come here.” His voice was a deep rumble as the door slammed closed behind them and he pulled her into his arms.

  Cassa found her palms flattened against his chest as his gaze caught and held hers.

  “It happens so fast,” she whispered, feeling the effects of the mating hormone as they rose inside her. The arousal she had felt for him in the past eleven years was nothing compared to what she was feeling now.

  She felt naked, though she was clothed. Vulnerable when she needed to be strong, needed to sort through the emotions tearing through her.

  “Sweet Cassa.” His voice was low as his hand rose to cup her cheek, his thumb playing over her swollen lips as his brows lowered over brooding, intent eyes. “I tried to spare us both.”

  “With every woman in the continental United States,” she bit out querulously. “Maybe I should have taken your example and chosen a few lovers myself.”

  Except, it wouldn’t have helped. The hollow emptiness of shallow sex was something she never wanted to experience again. She’d had that in her brief, bitter marriage.

  “Only if you’d wanted to see blood spilled.” His hand cupped her jaw as his gaze glittered dangerously. “I would have killed any man that I suspected shared your bed.”

  Cassa shook her head. She wanted to argue that point, she wanted to rage over the years she had watched him screw his way through the groupies that followed the Breeds around. But her thoughts were too fractured, her desires rising too heatedly.

  She watched as his nostrils flared then, as he caught the scent of the moisture gathering between her thighs. As she watched, her gaze locked with his, his other hand lowered, flattened on her stomach and created a path of heated pleasure as his fingers pushed between her thighs.

  He cupped the swollen, aching flesh of her pussy, causing her to rise, to lift against him, to arch into the arm that suddenly curved around her back to support her.

  “Damn you,’ she whimpered. “Oh God, Cabal.”

  It was too much pleasure. Even through the material of her jeans and the damp fabric of her panties, she could feel the heat of his flesh, the power in his touch. His fingers cupped, his palm ground against the swollen knot of her clit and nearly sent her senses exploding.

  “I can smell how sweet you’re going to taste.” He nipped at her jaw, his canines raking her flesh erotically. “You always have the sweetest scent, Cassa.”

  She shivered at the sound of his voice. It was dark, rough, as potent as the strongest liquor.

  “Come here, baby.” He moved, backing toward the bed as his palm continued to rub against the sensitive mound of her pussy. “Let me taste you. All over.”

  Cassa felt mesmerized. The cadence of his voice stroked her senses as his hands stroked her body. A whimpering protest fell from her lips as his hand slid from between her thighs to grip the hem of her shirt. He drew the material over her head, lifting her arms until he could pull it free and toss it aside, leaving her clad in jeans and her bra.

  “So beautiful.” His hands cupped the hard mounds of her breasts, his fingers finding her nipples through the lace of her bra. “I’ve dreamed of sucking those hard little nipples, Cassa.”

  The front closure to the bra flicked free, and a second later he was pushing it from her shoulders and staring down at the rapid rise and fall of her breasts.

  Cassa couldn’t make her mind work, she couldn’t make her body do anything but lean into him, as his head lowered and his lips wrapped around one agonizingly sensitive point.

  The sensation of his lips drawing on her sent a shaft of pure pleasure striking from her nipple to her clit, as though the two were connected by nerve endings she had never known existed. Her hands dug into his hair. Her back arched and a strangled cry tore from her throat.

  She was only barely aware of his fingers at the band of her jeans, loosening them, spreading them apart. His fingers stroked her lower stomach and sent juices spilling from the aching flesh beyond.

  “Shoes,” he growled, his voice growing rougher. “Push them off, Cass.” He kissed the mound of her breast, licked it, then nipped it.

  She toed off her sneakers in record time, and he rewarded her by pushing her jeans and panties over her hips. Bending as he pushed them over her legs, he spread a series of kisses from her breasts over her stomach, her abdomen, both hip bones.

  By the time he pulled the material over her feet, she was a shaking mess of arousal. She could feel her juices dampening her thighs, hot and slick as her body prepared itself for him.

  “God, your scent.” He buried his head against her lower stomach, his hair caressing the flesh there as his hands gripped her thighs. “Sweet Cassa. I want to bury my tongue in your hot little pussy and feel you come for me. Taste you coming for me.”

  She nearly came in that second. The eroticism of his words struck an explosion that shuddered through her womb.

  Her fingers tightened in his hair as she fought to steady herself against the explosions of pleasure tearing through her body. She was only barely aware of him straightening, rising above her as he tilted her head back and took her lips in another kiss, this one hotter, hungrier than ever before, as she felt the world spinning around her.

  When his head lifted, she lay on the bed staring up at him, fighting to breathe as he jerked his shirt off. Sitting on the edge of the bed he pulled off his boots, then rose to his feet and undid his jeans.

  It was the most erotic thing she had ever seen, watching him undress.
Watching the denim material clear his thighs, revealing those darker gold stripes, edged with black as they curved around his hips and thighs and led to the thick, heavy weight of his cock.

  The mushroomed head pulsed erratically, the darkened flesh glistened with pre-cum, as the wide shaft rose from between his thighs.

  He looked like a sex god. Like the most erotic pleasure a woman could ever dream of.

  Before she could reach out to touch him, he was moving to her. His lips came over hers again, his tongue pumping into her mouth as he spread her thighs, his fingers testing the dampness that covered her pussy before circling her aching clit.

  Cassa arched into the pleasure, a cry tearing from her lips as her thighs tried to clamp on to his hand, only to be held apart by his powerful thighs.

  The fiery taste of the mating hormone filled her senses, spread through her body and left her gasping for breath as his head lifted.

  He had no intention of giving her a chance to catch her breath though. In the next second his lips were on one nipple, then the next. He sucked them into his mouth, tormented them with his tongue, drew on them, nipped at them and left her forcing herself not to beg for more.

  “Cabal.” Desperation filled her voice as he pushed her breasts together, bringing her nipples close to each other and licking them.

  The slightest roughness of his tongue could be felt there, rasping over the tender peaks and sending pleasure surging through her system.

  Arching against him, Cassa writhed in tormented ecstasy, reaching for that one touch, that one caress that would send her over the edge.

  “Not yet, baby.” He gave another lick across her nipples before his hands caressed down her sides to her hips, holding her in place as his lips trailed down her torso.

  She arched to him, her fingers gripping his shoulders, nails biting into his flesh as his lips, teeth and tongue created a path of incredible sensation to the curl-covered mound between her thighs.

  He paused there, his breathing rough, ragged as Cassa stared down at him. His gaze was broody and hungry, his lips parted in intent.