Bengal's Heart (48 page)

“By my standards perhaps. I doubt others would see it that way.”

She stared back at him silently for long moments, and he knew what she was waiting on, what she needed.

He lowered his head as he dragged in a hard, desperate breath.

“I never blamed you.” He finally lifted his head and caught her gaze once again. “Never. Not even that night when he accused you of knowing, I knew you couldn’t have.”

She frowned at that statement.

“Your scent,” he explained. “It was one of innocence, of desperation and sorrow. There was no guilt in you, Cassa. There never has been. From the moment I smelled that innocence, I wanted nothing more than to taste it. To touch it. To hold it as my own. All these years, I’ve longed for that alone, and I’ve been too damned scared to reach out for it. Too scared that fate would tear you away from me and take you forever.”

Terrified she would die. A part of him had always feared that this incredible gift that God had given him would be taken from him just as quickly.

“No more running.” Her fingers caressed a stripe.

“No more running, Cassa,” he swore. There was no place he wanted to be other than right here by her side. “I’ve loved you since the moment that sweet tongue licked across my blood. Since the night I watched you fighting so desperately to save me. I’ve loved you, Cass, and I’ve been terrified of losing you.”

Her fingers paused in the slow rubbing caress of the tips against one narrow stripe.

“Terrified?”

“Shaking in my boots.” He leaned closer, his lips against hers. “So terrified I ran as far and as fast as I could.”

She stared up at him, her eyes wide, so filled with hope. His Cassa. His brave, adventurous Cassa.

“No more running?”

He licked across her lips, tasted her, loved her. His hands framed her beloved face, his thumbs stroking across her jaw. He was nearly shaking with the need to assure himself she was fine. That she lived. That she was his.

“No more running, baby.”

He eased onto the bed with her, thankful that it was so damned big. They had to make room for large men in pain when they made the beds for the Breed intensive care facility. It was just large enough for him to lie on his side beside her, to hold her, to feel her warmth, to soak in the fact that she still lived. That she was still his.

“I love you, Cassa.” He gave her the words he knew she needed, and felt that last barrier toward her collapse.

If she died, he would follow her. He would avenge every moment of pain she felt, and then he would give up his life to be with her in death.

“Always?” she whispered.

She had always loved him. She would always love him. He knew it, felt it to the ends of his soul.

“Always, baby.” He brushed the hair back from the side of her face, lowered his lips and touched hers once again. “I’ll always love you.”

She would always be his mate. She would always be the Bengal’s heart. Man and beast, they existed for her alone.

“I love you, Cabal.” She sighed against his lips, drowsiness finally taking her as she went to sleep to his kiss.

“I love you, Cass.” He lowered his head beside hers and let his own lashes drift closed.

She was safe. She was his. She was the Bengal’s heart, the man’s soul. And forever the mate he would cherish.

◆ EPILOGUE
◆

Jonas entered the interview room of the maximum security prison that held the prisoners they didn’t want the world to ever know about.

There was a scientist in a cell. One of the most brutal and yet one of the most brilliant to ever live. She had bypassed genius level in her teens and was now considered one of the most dangerous creatures alive, even by Genetics Council standards.

There were several trainers here who had once worked for the Council and even a billionaire who had disappeared years ago behind the walls of this fortress, never to be seen again.

It wasn’t truly a harsh place to be. It just wasn’t a nice place to be. It was cold at night, a little warmer in the day. There weren’t a lot of conveniences, but there were doctors to oversee the health of the prisoners and there was nutritious food. Might not necessarily be food the prisoners were used to, but they were alive and they weren’t abused.

It was better than could be said of the treatment received by the Breeds that most of the prisoners had once overseen.

But none of those was the one he had come there to talk with now.

Jonas sat silently in the interview room and stared at the defeated pose Douglas Watts now used when facing him. His face was down. Once, he’d kept his person immaculate, his hair washed, his body in shape. In less than two weeks the hair had become dank and oily and the skin sallow. He was a man who had lost the will to fight.

“Are you in pain?” Jonas asked, though he knew Douglas wasn’t.

Douglas shook his head. “I feel nothing.”

Literally. From the hips down he was once again paralyzed, this time with no hope of recovery.

“The surgeon warned you that it could happen?” Jonas asked. He’d commanded that Douglas be given the warning.

Douglas nodded. “I was warned.”

The chip implanted needed months to interact with the nerve endings. By pushing himself as he had physically, Douglas had been the cause of his own demise.

“Then we’ll proceed,” Jonas stated. “I want the names of the final four of the Deadly Dozen.”

He was surprised when Douglas gave him the names. Three of them anyway.

“The fourth died,” Douglas sighed. “I heard about his death after I escaped. Ivan never was very smart. He pissed off the wrong man in his own government and paid for it.”

Ivan Vilanov, the former Russian elite officer that had once been an attaché to the United States.

“And the child of Patrick Wallace?” Jonas asked. That was the information he needed, what he wanted more than anything else.

Douglas lifted his head. “A boy. He was sold to this couple.” He gave their names easily. “They died. The report I have is that he has an older sister that disappeared with him a few years ago. I wasn’t able to find out more.” And Jonas believed him.

Jonas nodded as he checked the voice recorder he carried to make certain it was still recording everything.

“Did you know who Patrick Wallace was?” he asked Douglas.

Once again the other man nodded. “Azrael. The angel of death. We knew. He disappeared after that hunt. I knew he was wounded. I hoped he was dead. I was wrong.”

And now he was gone.

“And Brandenmore and Engalls?” Jonas questioned him. “Tell me what you know about their part in the hunts and the Genetics Council.”

There was two hours’ worth of information. Douglas didn’t pause, he didn’t argue or hide anything. Any question Jonas had, he answered. He was broken. There was no fight left in him because there was no longer a chance of escape, no longer a chance of enjoying the brutal games he had once enjoyed.

When Douglas had finished, Jonas turned off the recorder and rose to his feet. Douglas lifted his head then, his gaze piercing.

“You promised.” His voice was rough. Raw. “You promised I’d die if I told you everything. You promised mercy, Wyatt.”

He had. And he’d lied.

Jonas stared back at him coldly. “You don’t deserve mercy, Douglas.”

“And you do?” There was no anger, no rage, just dejection. “Kill me. You swore you would.”

“I lied.”

Douglas stared back at him as his eyes filled with tears. Jonas watched as the liquid overflowed, and wondered at the small spike of regret he felt.

“They know who you are,” Douglas whispered. “They know what you are. They’ll destroy you and all of your kind, Jonas. And you’ll deserve it.”

At that, Jonas could only quirk his lips ruefully. “They might destroy me, Douglas, but never the Breeds as a whole. Haven’t you figured it out yet? We’re here to stay.”

“You’ll die,” Douglas predicted.

“And of that, I have no doubt.”

With those parting words, Jonas left the room, closed the door behind him and walked the long expanse of hall back to the control room.

Douglas’s screams followed him. Enraged now, finally. Filled with pain, filled with broken, hollow anger. And Jonas had no mercy.

He was created to know no mercy. He was created to know no love. He was created to destroy his entire species, and he was damned if he would allow that to happen.

Turn the page for an exclusive look at the
next title in the Nauti series
by Lora Leigh
NAUTI DECEPTIONS
Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!

Now, how had she known the day was just going to suck. Caitlyn Rogue Walker watched as Principal Thompson entered the classroom after her freshmen students had left for the day. Following him were no more than the self-righteous Nadine Grace and her bully of a brother, Dayle Mackay.

She knew what was coming. Somehow they’d found a way to punish her for coming to a student’s defense the month before. She had been waiting for the shoe to drop, and she had a feeling when it fell, it was going to be an earthquake in her little life.

At least she didn’t have to worry about it coming any longer.

Maybe she should have heeded her father’s advice about coming here to his hometown to teach. He had wanted her to stay in Boston, he’d wanted her to be a lawyer rather than a teacher. Or better yet, the wife of a lawyer would have suited him fine.

Being the wife of a lawyer didn’t suit Caitlyn Rogue though. She wanted to teach, and she wanted to teach in the picturesque little town her father had told her so many tales of.

Perhaps she should have heeded the tales he had told her of Dayle Mackay and Nadine Grace though, as well as his warnings to make certain she stayed off their radar. But staying off their radar hadn’t been as easy as she had thought it would be.

And as her father had warned her, they would target her simply because she was a Walker. Nadine Grace and Dayle Mackay had tried to destroy her father when he was younger, and it seemed they were more than determined to destroy her.

She had lived in Somerset for one short year. Long enough to know she loved it here. Long enough to grow a few quick roots, to dream, and to meet the county’s beyond sexy sheriff.

The schoolteacher and the sheriff. What a fantasy. Because within months, she learned that her father hadn’t been exaggerating about Dayle and Nadine. At the end of the school term the year before, she’d been forced to enter their radar to defend one of her students against Nadine’s accusations that he had cheated on an exam that she had overseen as a member of the Board of Education. Caitlyn knew the boy hadn’t cheated, just as she knew that no defense would help her now.

As her gaze met the two, she could feel her stomach tightening in warning as her heart began a heavy, sluggish beat.

Brother and sister resembled each other in too many ways. The same black hair, the same squarish features. Nadine was built smaller, and her eyes were hazel rather than green. Dayle Mackay was taller, with thicker black hair and forest green eyes. He would have been handsome if the evil that was a part of his soul didn’t reflect in his eyes.

Neither Dayle nor Nadine spoke as they entered the room with the principal. Rogue remained in her seat, watching them cautiously as Nadine moved forward and slapped a small stack of pictures down in front of her.

The first one was enough to know exactly how Dayle and Nadine intended to destroy her.

Caitlyn stared down at them, feeling shame, mortification, defeat. She had never known defeat until she stared down at the pictures that she knew she could never refute. Not because she hadn’t done it, but because she had been unable to stop it.

Fanning the pictures out slowly, she had to bite back a cry that tightened her chest and had her hands shaking. She had somehow known that one night that she couldn’t fully remember had been a setup. She had sensed it then, but she knew it now, and the rage and pain festered in her chest like a wound she wasn’t sure would ever heal.

Rogue swallowed back the bile that rose in her stomach and ordered herself not to react, not show pain, fear, or anger. She had her pride and she would be damned if she would let these two know how much they were hurting her with these pictures. How much they were stealing from her.

“As you can see, Ms. Walker, there’s no way we can allow you to remain within the educational system,” Principal Thompson informed her with chilling morality. “Such actions cannot be condoned.”

No, they couldn’t be, Caitlyn would be the first to agree with him. If she had done it voluntarily.

The pictures showed her half undressed, her skirt raised well above her thighs, her legs spread for the male going between them. Higher, her blouse was undone and a female, her long hair obscuring her face, obviously caressed Caitlyn’s bare breasts with her lips.

Caitlyn blinked down at the photos. There was no fighting them, though she knew, whatever had happened that night, she hadn’t had sex. When she had awakened in the unfamiliar hotel room, the first thing she had done was schedule an emergency appointment with her doctor. But the school board wouldn’t care about that. No more than they would care about the blood tests that had shown that whatever happened, she hadn’t gone into it willingly. Rogue had been drugged, and betrayed.

She was still a virgin, but she would be branded as a whore.

She could fight it. She could call her parents. Nadine Grace and Dayle Mackay had no idea how powerful her parents were now, how eloquently they could seduce a jury, how enraged they would be if she ever let them know what had happened here. Brianna and Calvin Walker would descend upon this county like wraiths from hell with all the powerful Bostonian wealth they had amassed behind them.

Her grandparents, the Evanworths, were like icons. Her mother’s parents would destroy Grace and Mackay without a thought.