Bengal's Heart

by Leigh, Lora

  Cassa could hear the throb of lust in his voice. It was hard to miss. The dark, husky pitch was a vibration of hunger and need.

  “That was my plan.” She ignored the regret that ached inside her just as she ignored the loneliness that wracked her at night.

  She’d found over the years that there was more to this reaction than just the physical. There were the nights when she’d lie alone and wonder which woman he was with, and hate them both. And there were nights when she wished she was the one he was lying beside.

  “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 e
nough 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.

  He’d been following her ever since.

  Didn’t he have his own investigation to see to? She was certain he had more resources in the area than she had managed to dig up, despite the fact that she was acquainted with several of the journalists in town, as well as the sheriff.

  There was a dead end here on Banks as well as H. R. Alonzo’s murder. And what made it even worse, one of the first news stories of the morning was the report that H. R. Alonzo had died in a blaze that had swept through his Missouri home. The cause of that blaze was yet to be determined, but the unofficial report was that HR’s fireplace and the fire that had burned within it had somehow been the cause.

  It would be ruled an accidental death, just as the others had been. Jonas Wyatt and the Bureau of Breed Affairs were amazingly efficient, at all times.

  It would make the story she was working on more difficult. It was hard to report someone had been murdered by a Breed when a human coroner ruled the death accidental. The pictures she held were next to worthless, but not a total loss.

  What the hell was going on? She couldn’t believe the Bureau would turn a killer loose, but she knew Wyatt and his enforcers. If there was a rogue Breed out there threatening the stability of the Breed community, then they would have neutralized that threat as quickly as possible. Which meant they didn’t know any more than she did.

  More than likely, they were being led on the same wild-goose chase she was being led on, and refused to admit to it.

  “Ms. Hawkins, you do like to live dangerously.”

  Cassa came to a hard stop as Dog stepped just far enough from the other side of a tree to allow her to recognize him.

  The overcast day lent a brooding, harsh quality to his expression. It cast shadows that did nothing to soften his features or to help him appear less threatening. Though Cassa doubted anything could make the Coyote Breed appear less threatening. And considering the fact that Cabal was likely not far behind her, the situation had turned into one with the potential to become rather dangerous. At least for Dog.

  “And you say I like to live dangerously.” She gave a short, sarcastic little laugh. “You must be suicidal.”

  “That’s the general opinion.” His lips quirked into a rueful, if not mocking, smile, and his strong white teeth gripped an ever present cigar. “But you’re definitely showing signs of following in my footsteps.”

  She gave a false shiver of dread. “Bite your tongue, Coyote. I can’t think of anyone who would want to do anything so foolhardy.”

  For a second, something dark and bitter flashed in his gaze, but then it cleared and the familiar icy disd
ain replaced it.

  “Neither can I actually,” he drawled. “Which leads me to wonder exactly why you’re still in Glen Ferris. You should be in Missouri covering H. R. Alonzo’s accidental death.” His lips tilted in a cruel, cold smile. “Poor bastard burned himself to a crisp.”

  “So I heard.” She shoved her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket as she watched him warily.

  “Coroner ruled an accidental death. Did you know his will states a wish to be cremated? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” His canines flashed warningly.

  Alonzo didn’t die in a damned house fire and he knew it. Dog had been in those mountains the night before, most likely for the same reason she had been there. To find proof that the Bureau was hiding a rogue Breed. Unlike Dog though, it wasn’t the killings she wanted to reveal, it was the reason behind them. She wanted a story that wouldn’t destroy the Breeds, while she was certain Dog was more inclined to see the worst possible scenario revealed. He was rumored to be part of whatever was left of the Genetics Council. He was the muscle—no one had quite figured out for certain who held his chain.

  “Why are you bothering me today, Dog?” She crossed her arms over her breasts and faced him suspiciously. “I think we’re both aware Cabal isn’t too far away.”

  “Yeah, those Felines have a rather good habit of keeping track of their mates,” he commented with a slow nod of his black-streaked gray head.

  The breeze whispered through the dark and light strands of hair as he turned his head against it and stared out at the river once again for long seconds.

  The coarse strands rippled over his shoulders and down his neck. Long hair for a Breed, she thought. She much preferred Cabal’s golden blond and black hair. It was soft to the touch; she remembered that suddenly. Feeling his hair against her face as he leaned into her so long ago.

  I own you.

  “I hope the memory is a pleasant one.”

  She was jerked out of her reverie by Dog’s mocking voice. She stared back at him suspiciously, watching the slow, cold grin that shaped his lips.