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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.
