Bengal's Heart (24 page)

“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.