Bengal's Heart (23 page)

The rental cabin was built for year-round stay, and afforded plenty of room for the additional Breeds working the assignment with Cabal, when they were needed.

“Nice place,” she said as he closed the door behind them, then silently locked it.

“It works.” He shrugged, moving ahead of her. “Coffee?”

The last thing either of them needed was coffee. The caffeine played hell with mating heat and they both knew it.

“Sure.” Her smile was knowing, mocking, as she followed him into the open kitchen. She knew what caffeine did to the system, and she was daring him just as fiercely as he was daring her now. “Then we can talk.”

Talk wasn’t exactly what he had on his mind. Laying her down and licking her from head to toe—now that idea held some merit. He was curious though. How much longer would the mating hormone treatment she was taking allow her to hold out? She was doing damned good. A hell of a lot better than he was actually.

“Sure, we’ll talk.” He wasn’t promising what they would talk about though.

Awareness of her tingled over his flesh like an invisible caress and sent a shard of aching loneliness tearing through him. He knew what he was missing by holding back; he knew the completion he could find by claiming his mate.

But he also knew what he was risking if he allowed his emotions to become involved any more than they already were. He was risking his very soul, as well as hers. Unlike other Breed enforcers Cabal was a covert enforcer. He was unregistered and known for his complete lack of regulation. He was a suicide operative. He took the jobs the other enforcers couldn’t because of Breed Law or protocol. He took the jobs with a fatality rate much higher than most.

He was a mate now though. If anything happened to him, then the hell Cassa would live through was something he didn’t want to contemplate.

Once this mission was over, his enforcer status would have to be reconsidered. There were plenty of other Breeds who could take his place, and honestly, he thought he might be more than happy to step aside for them.

“What do you intend to talk about then? The fact that you don’t want me for a mate, or the one where it’s already too damned late to do anything about it?” There was a snap to her tone that had him turning and staring back at her silently.

Hell, he wouldn’t have imagined that mating could have started with something so simple as his blood against her tongue. She couldn’t have done more than taken a drop of his blood, but somehow, it had been enough.

Bullshit. He’d become more enraged than ever when he’d seen Cassa and her husband in the control room of the facility he thought he would die within. He’d watched her fight to release him, watched Douglas’s glee at the blood and death.

He’d claimed her then, he thought. Before he’d ever escaped that pit, he’d known he would claim her.

He could smell the scent of her desire now, almost taste it on the air around them. The night of his rescue he had smelled her fear, her anger. He’d smelled her rage and her pain. And when she had touched her finger to his face, then brought that finger to her lips, he had sworn he had tasted her tears and her regret in the air around them.

“Or we could talk about H. R. Alonzo’s dead body and the reason why the Breeds are protecting a killer.”

He could tell by the sound of her voice exactly which subject she was forging the most interest in. Her body was heating by the moment, but that sharp little mind of hers wanted answers first.

“The Breeds are not protecting a killer,” he informed her as he finished preparing the coffee and turned back to her. “We’re investigating David Banks’s disappearance, Cassa.”

She gave a delicate, ladylike snort. “Bull. You know the information I was sent, Cabal, don’t try to lie to me. I know you’ve managed to access my files as well as the emails from my server. You have my laptop tapped. I’m not stupid. You know exactly what I have, just as I know what you’re covering up.”

She was enough to make a hardened, coldhearted Breed want to laugh, or to at least smile.

She was right. He knew the information she had. He was doing nothing more than delaying the inevitable by pretending that he didn’t.

The soft metallic ring of the coffeepot completing its cycle sounded behind him. Grabbing two cups from the hooks beneath the counter, he poured the aromatic, decaffeinated brew into them and carried the cups to the long counter that separated the kitchen from the dining area.

He might want to silently dare her where the mating heat was concerned, but he wasn’t going to deliberately see her in more discomfort than need be. The caffeine in coffee aggravated the systems of mating heat, not the coffee itself.

“Lying to you isn’t something I had in mind,” he told her as she slid onto one of the bar stools across the counter from him. “I am investigating Banks’s disappearance.”

“As well as Alonzo’s death,” she pointed out knowingly.

“As well as several deaths.” He wasn’t going to admit to Alonzo. Admitting to anything where this woman was concerned was the same as giving her express permission for an interrogation. She should have been a prosecutor rather than a TV reporter.

“And you think I don’t know exactly how many deaths there are? The killer contacted me, Cabal. You know that. You’re more than aware of it, and you think you can continue to play this damned game with me?” Her voice rose as amazed anger began to fill her, to scent the air around her.

She was coming to the end of her patience. Cabal knew it, recognized it. Just as he knew that he was going to have to make a choice soon. Make her hate him forever by pulling them both out of the game, or allowing her in. Neither choice was one he wanted to face.

For a second, the barest second, his self-control slipped. Anger surged through him at the thought that she honestly believed she could so carelessly endanger her life and he would do nothing to protect her.

“I have the right to protect my mate.” He pushed his face close to hers, felt her surprise, saw it in her rounded eyes and the flush that suddenly mounted her skin as his voice rumbled dangerously. “However need be, Cassa, I claim that right. You’re in danger here. The very fact that that bastard contacted you tells me that he’s already targeted you. You know that as well as I do.”

“Well, you can unclaim that right.” Suddenly, she was nose to nose with him, her stormy eyes darkening further as they narrowed back at him angrily, daring him, challenging him. Hell, he was going to come in his jeans now. “Don’t think I’ll tolerate force, Cabal. Not from you or any other man. Never again. And don’t for one minute think that you can force me out of this. Mating heat be damned, I won’t allow it.”

Cassa could feel the anger she had been trying to stem over the past days rising inside her now, trying to break free of the careful self-control she used to maintain it. She’d focused on the story she’d come here to uncover; she’d even allowed herself to focus on her own guilt rather than his actions. That tunnel vision was beginning to expand though and her ability to continue to ignore his actions was eroding.

He had dared to manhandle her, to all but lie to her. He had frightened her, deliberately in the forest her first night here, and in the back of her mind she admitted to herself that she had always believed that no matter the circumstance, her Bengal would never treat her in such a way. He would never allow another Breed to chase her, nor would he try to push her out of something that was so important to her.

“Never again?” The golden glitter of the amber flecks in his dark green eyes intensified. “I know I’ve never forced anything from you, Cassa, so who the hell are you talking about?”

His voice lowered. There was a throb of latent violence in it now that sent a chill up her spine and made her wonder if the man she had been married to wasn’t lucky to be dead. He’d died easy. The look on Cabal’s face made her suspect he could make a man die hard.

“You deliberately allowed me to be chased through that forest,” she accused him furiously. “You let Dog terrify me. You let him run me from that valley so you wouldn’t have to deal with it. What you did was terrifying and painful and something I would have sworn you could never do to a woman, let alone your mate.”

She watched his jaw clench, the muscle ticking furiously beneath the flesh as he glared back at her. Let him glare. She felt like raging—hell, she felt like hitting.

“How dare you!” she yelled as she moved from the stool and slapped her hands furiously on the top of the counter. “How dare you do that to me.”

“How dare you risk your life in such a manner!” he yelled back at her. “How dare you to think I’d allow any Breed, no matter the reason, a chance to so much as breathe your air. Damn you to hell, Cassa. I nearly broke my own fucking neck getting to you that night.”

“Then you should have done more than attempt to run me off later!” she yelled. “You have zero respect for me, Cabal. And even less understanding of who I am, or you wouldn’t think you can lie and connive to get me off this story.”

“What the hell did you expect?” he growled out. “You’re like a fucking bulldog with a bone. I doubt death would stop you.”

She rolled her eyes at his male outrage. “Oh, forgive me for doing my job,” she bit out sarcastically. “Excuse me for giving a damn if the Breeds are framed or in danger of losing all this great public sentiment they’ve acquired over the years.”

“Public sentiment my ass,” he growled, and she couldn’t blame him. The majority of goodwill and expressive sympathy toward the Breeds was no more than an attempt at political correctness for many of the high-profile individuals that spouted it.

“I’ve worked hard, Cabal, as have other journalists that I work with, to make certain the Breeds are portrayed in the best possible light, while still staying within the bounds of truth. You aren’t helping me at all here.”

“Truth?” He came around the counter, his body tense, wired for action as his expression tightened in outrage. “What truth, Cassa? If you found a Breed bending over a bloody body, what would you do then?”

“The same thing I’m doing now!” she yelled, her hands going to her hips as she faced him defiantly and loved every second of it. “Investigating, Cabal. I have the pictures of an obvious Breed attack and death. Do you see any damned thing in print, or do you see me trying to figure out who the hell is trying to frame the Breeds and why?”

“I see you trying to get your ass killed. That’s what I see.”

She almost laughed at his expression. It was completely male, infuriated and filled with frustration. And she wasn’t frightened. She was facing him defiantly without fear.

He wouldn’t hurt her. He hadn’t allowed her to be hurt that night in the forest, and he wouldn’t do it now. He had frightened her, brought back memories of a past she wanted to forget and pissed her the hell off, but he hadn’t hurt her.

“Well, I guess you’ll just have to let me continue on my merry little way and hope I get lucky,” she snapped. “Because there’s not a chance in hell, Cabal, that you’re going to stop me.”

Cabal could feel the heat and hunger rising to a boiling point inside his mind. She knew better than this. He knew she knew better than this. She had been around Breeds long enough, especially mated couples, to know what such vocal and physical defiance did to a mate.

“We are not normal combatants, Cassa,” he warned her, his voice dropping as the growl in his throat echoed inside it. “You know what you’re doing.”

Her brow arched mockingly. “Do I really?” She turned away from him and paced a few feet before turning back. “What am I doing, Cabal? Refusing to give you your way? Poor little Bengal Breed. He’s been so spoiled by his little toys that he thinks all women are going to kneel down and worship those pretty little stripes he has on his ass. Sorry, babe, not me. Your arrogance is pandered to enough the way it is.”

The thought of those women, a damned parade of them who had visited his and his brother’s bed, was enough to set her teeth on edge. There were times she was certain that pissed her off more than the way he’d manhandled her and fought to keep her from getting to the truth in Glen Ferris. If there was a Breed groupie he and Tanner had missed over the years, then it wasn’t because he hadn’t tried to screw them all.

“Leave the stripes out of this.” He paced closer, his growl warning.

She should have known better than to mention the stripes; Cabal was also rumored to dare his lovers to mention them. It was said he hated the Bengal stripes, the oddly colored fine hairs that ran from a point along each buttock around his leg to end in a point on the inside of each thigh.

The unusual markings were highly erotic. She wanted to kiss every damned one of those hairs but hadn’t yet found the courage to try.

She widened her eyes in false innocence. “You mean all those snickering little debutantes you’ve fucked over the years didn’t dare mention them to you all? Why, Cabal, they were quite remiss. They’re sexy. They make me wet.” She was nose to nose with him. “They make me just want to pet you all over.”

His eyes narrowed on her. “You’re daring me,” he stated, his voice so dark and warning that it sent chills racing down her spine. “Why, Cassa? Why push me like this when you know where it will lead? Do you think I want to take you without thought? Without consideration? Why push me like this?”

If the glitter in his eyes was anything to go by, then he was more than ready to find out if he could make time.

“I never was one to enjoy playing second best.” She crossed her arms over her swollen, sensitive breasts and tightened her jaw as anger surged through her. “How many women have you had since you first suspected I was your mate, Cabal? One dozen? Two?”

“At least make the number believable,” he snarled back at her.

Cassa’s lips tightened in anger. She had watched him fuck his way through countless women over the years. He and his brother had once shared those women, had played sex games that would make most grown men blush.