Bengal's Heart (9 page)

“Think that plan is going to work?”

She turned to him as he asked that question. “It’s worked so far.”

He nodded slowly, then reached out to touch the hair that had fallen over her shoulder.

“It won’t work if you stay here.”

Cassa felt her breath lodge in her throat as the backs of his fingers brushed over the material of the thick shirt covering her breasts.

“Meaning?” She was breathless now, waiting, telling herself she wasn’t going to let him torture her even as she almost welcomed the surge of sensation that tore through her body.

“Meaning, you’re too close,” he explained, his voice dark, filled with hunger. “Meaning, Cassa, get the hell out of Glen Ferris, or you’re going to find yourself mated. And I promise you”—he leaned closer as she fought to breathe through the stifling atmosphere of lust that suddenly filled the vehicle—“you won’t be writing this story then. You’ll be too exhausted to consider a story. I’ll make damned certain of it.”

Her teeth snapped together in offended fury as she curled her fingers into fists and leaned just close enough, just far enough that she knew he could feel her breath on his lips.

“And I promise you,” she stated tightly. “Nothing you do, no matter how you do it, is going to keep me from this story. Remember that, Cabal, before you make the worst mistake of both our lives.”

Before he could reply, she hit the latch at the side of the door. When she jerked the handle back to open the panel, it flew open and she jumped from the seat without bothering to look back. Back straight, pride bruised, she strode for the door to the inn.

She could feel him watching her. She could feel him wanting her. And she could feel every hair at the nape of her neck lifting in warning at the thought of exactly what he could do to her.

He could possess her. He could make her beg, and he could break her heart. And Cassa knew, breaking her heart was the one thing that could very well destroy her.

She wanted his love, not just his body. She had a very bad feeling though that love was the last thing Cabal wanted to give her.

◆ CHAPTER 4
◆

Cabal watched her, and he wanted her. Four hours after she left the inn two days later, he was still watching her broodingly.

What was it about her that had made nature decide that she belonged to him?

He tilted his head and watched as she walked down the bank of the Gauley River, following the path David Banks, the former mayor of the city, often took for his evening walks.

She had a nice, long-legged stride, though at the moment her slow, careful walk disguised it. He watched as her jeans conformed to the twin globes of her nicely toned ass. The low band of her jeans enticed him as well. It would take very little, so very little to touch the sweet mound of her pussy at the front of those jeans. The tip of his finger inserted beneath the snap.

He tightened his jaw, his teeth clenching together furiously as the riotous hunger raced through his system. His tongue was swollen; the glands beneath it were spilling the spicy taste of the mating hormone.

The Breed curse. That was his definition of it; others saw it differently. Those couples that had mated called it a gift. Cabal saw very little in the demented reactions of mating that could be a gift.

At the moment, every sense he possessed was focused on the woman rather than the mission he was on. The mission was close to taking a backseat to the mate he had denied himself for so many years.

And why had he denied himself what nature had decreed was his and his alone? What had made him insane enough to believe that he could ever be in the same vicinity without taking her?

Anger. A sense of betrayal. He could still see that flash of knowledge in her eyes when her husband had accused her of knowing what he was doing. Something inside her had already warned her of his deceit. Unless she had truly loved him. Love was blind, Cabal understood that; he saw it on a daily basis with the mated Breed couples. It was blind faith, blind trust, and it took the ultimate evil to tear away those rose-colored glasses.

Her husband had done that. In one moment, whatever she had sensed inside her husband had become clear, and she had seen him for the evil he was.

She should have seen it sooner, the jealous part of him argued. She should have sensed the evil of the man she slept with.

And there they were. The second reason why Cabal had restrained himself. Because she was his mate, because mating brought out the animal within the man and because it kept the man from hiding the true core of his nature.

He was a Bengal Breed—in some ways more, in some ways less, than most Breeds. More animal, more cunning, more savage and vicious and much more deceptive than the normal Breed. And less human.

It was documented, proven. It was what the scientist who developed the Bengal genetics had worked toward. Unfortunately, Bengals didn’t fare well in captivity. Those that had survived were impossible to train, as proven by Cabal’s team. His pride. Those that he considered his family.

A dozen male and female Bengals. Cunning, fierce, they had been working within the facility for years against the Council. They had smuggled out information, destroyed targets that were Council friendly as well as the targets the Council had sent them after.

They had shed innocent blood, that was true. But they had shed more enemy blood than innocent. And they had saved those that they could.

Cabal had played the reluctant Bengal. Attention was focused on him, while those considered weaker worked around the scientists, trainers and psychologists to destroy them.

So many had died. It was believed that all but Cabal had died; that was a belief that Cabal perpetuated. Those who lived should live free for a change.

Cunning was their strongest weapon, and his people were cunning. They were surviving outside the Breed communities. Cabal was surviving, barely, within it. The restrictions often chafed at him, smothered him. The hunger for freedom after the years of captivity was still a gnawing ache inside him.

The hunger for his mate was growing even stronger than that for freedom. The possessiveness, the need, the demand that he claim her was becoming overwhelming. And with it came the anger.

Cassa was the hardest battle he had ever faced, and he admitted it. He had admitted it more than once in the years since he had nearly killed her along with her husband.

Douglas Watts had been an abusive bastard. Cabal’s initial investigation into the man’s background had turned up surprising information. Information such as the fact that he had abused several ex-girlfriends. Yet there had been no proof that he had abused his wife, but Cabal knew in his gut.

Cabal hadn’t needed proof; he knew instinctively that Watts had to have abused his wife. He wouldn’t have changed his pattern, even for love. If he had known
how
to love, and Cabal had no doubt in his mind that Watts had not loved his wife. The investigation he had conducted had shown several instances where the man had cheated on his new wife.

Did Cassa know that her husband of barely a year had had a new lover every other month? Mostly one-night stands. Women he had barely known. He’d had the perfect, faithful wife, and he had betrayed not just her emotions and their vows, but the principles she had lived by and the battle that she had accepted as her own.

Breed freedom. He had sold Breed freedom for a paltry couple of hundred thousand dollars. He had sold information on the majority of the rescues he had covered with his wife. Not all of them, he’d been smarter than that, smart enough that he’d managed to slip past Jonas Wyatt, and that wasn’t an easy feat.

And here Cabal was, more than eleven years later, still in conflict with himself over Watts’ wife. Over his own mate.

He watched as she continued her slow stroll along the bank of the river, obviously scouring the area for some clue as to the missing former mayor’s fate.

There was nothing to find. Cabal and his team had searched that bank more times than they should have. There were no clues, it was that simple. Just as there had been none at the scene of Alonzo’s murder. It was as though David Banks had simply walked off the face of the earth. Or had been jerked from it. Which, Cabal couldn’t say for certain. The only thing he was certain of was that Banks had been a part of the Deadly Dozen, the group of men responsible for the abductions and deaths of Breeds who had escaped the labs before Breed Law.

Banks, as well as Watts, had been a close associate of Brandenmore and Engalls, the pharmaceutical giants currently under indictment for the attempted murder of Breeds as well as suspected illegal Breed genetic research. Both men had been known to hunt with the pharmaceutical family, for the four-legged variety of prey as well.

Watts had been as evil and as vicious as his scent had indicated seconds before Cabal had killed him. But did his wife know what he had been?

Cabal clenched his teeth at the thought of Watts touching her. For eleven years it had tortured him, knowing that she had been married to Watts. Tortured him? It enraged the man as well as the animal that lived within. It was like an acid burning in his gut, knowing she had lain with him, that she had loved him.

He watched her now, the glands beneath his tongue throbbing as he tasted the hormone seeping from them. The spicy taste was stronger now, the need to claim her growing more desperate.

He had to get away from her. If he didn’t, he was going to destroy them both. He could feel the need to snarl in rage at the thought of Watts touching her. The fact that he had been married to her didn’t matter. Cabal didn’t give a fuck. She’d had no business wearing Watts’s ring, allowing his touch.

And Cabal also knew he had no business blaming her for it. He shook his head. He was falling into the same pit he fell into each time she was too close for too long. The same conflicts. And the same angers.

He saw her, ached for her, and each time he saw the men and women who had died in that pit, because of her husband. Not because of her. It wasn’t her fault, he knew that. Douglas Watts had betrayed those rescues on his own. He hadn’t even needed his marriage to Cassa to do it. He had already been chosen to cover those rescues. So what the fuck was Cabal’s problem? Other than a green-eyed monster that refused to fucking let him go. And a hunger that threatened to destroy him.

His brother Tanner had warned him this was coming. The brother he hadn’t known he’d had until his rescue. His biological twin brother. Tanner had known on sight what they were to each other; it had taken Cabal a few months to accept it.

But only his blood could be as damned conniving as he was himself. Yeah, Tanner was his brother, and Cabal had accepted it. Just as he’d finally accepted that Cassa was his mate.

Cassa paused at the edge of the water and stared into the rock-strewn edge as minute waves lapped at the darkened soil.

This was the path David Banks normally took for his evening walk. He had been seen here the evening he had disappeared. Right here, in this very spot, below the falls and the old water management plant.

She stared across the water at the brick building with its hollow spillways and boarded windows. In the overcast light it appeared brooding, sinister.

Kanawha Falls. The water that crashed into the small lake ran its course back into the river and continued along its way. And here David Banks had been standing, staring up at the old plant, the last time he had been seen.

That had been two weeks before.

There had been an extensive search of the river. Divers had been called in, satellites had been aimed into the murky depths and remote search bots had canvassed the water for days. Nothing had been found.

The sheriff, Danna Lacey, had led search teams through the area. Not so much as a clue to what had happened to the former mayor had been found. It was as though he had disappeared off the face of the earth.

Shaking her head, Cassa turned and stared up the sloped bank that led back to the parking area and a small picnic location. Winter-dried bamboo saplings waved in the breeze, while the hulking skeletons of bare trees cast dark shadows out over the bank and reminded her that nothing in this beautiful little town was as it seemed.

Breathing out roughly, she made her way back up to the parking area before turning and heading into the edge of the trees that led back to the main river on the other side.

There had been nothing to indicate that David Banks had walked into the forested area. It wasn’t part of Banks’s known walking trail, and it had been searched many times. She didn’t expect to find anything to indicate that he had been there; rather, she was making note of whom she saw and what she saw.

One thing she had made note of was the fact that she was being followed by none other than Cabal himself. She had seen two other Breed Enforcers in town earlier, at the small café where she had breakfast. Rule Breaker and Lawe Justice had been quietly amused as they watched her. They had then traded off duties with Cabal after she left the café.