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“Like hell you’re leaving.”
His voice was animalistic; it throbbed with lust and with demand as she felt his fingers curl around her arm, drawing her to a halt as he pulled her around to face him once more.
Bracing her hands against his wide chest, Cassa stared back at him, refusing to be intimidated by the sudden hunger reflected in his eyes.
“Like hell. You better believe I’m leaving. I’ll be damned if I need anything from you, Cabal. Need or want. I’ll just tromp my merry ass back to Sanctuary, have Ely increase the hormonal treatments, and you can go to hell.” She pushed against his chest, even as she knew he wasn’t about to let her go.
She could feel the power of the intent in his gaze now, the hunger and the lust that suddenly churned the air around them.
“You believe I didn’t claim you because of something so trifling as a desire for other women?” His fingers flexed on her arms. Not painfully, but as though his need to touch her, to caress her, was overriding whatever demands he was making on himself otherwise.
“I really don’t care why you didn’t claim me, as you put it,” she sneered back in his face. “I will never be claimed by you, Cabal. Not in this lifetime or any other. I was willing to work with you, to be a partner—there’s a difference.”
Work with him, and maybe learn what this hunger for him was all about, how the mating heat could give her something she had never had. Something of her own. A man to love her, a man to care for her. She hadn’t wanted him in her bed because he was forced there by the mating heat. She’d wanted him to want her. And she’d been too damned naive to realize it couldn’t work that way for her.
She’d been warned that mating heat was something that couldn’t be denied, even in its mildest form. She hadn’t believed it until the day she met Cabal St. Laurents face-to-face. Until she saw the torment that lined his face, saw the loneliness in his eyes and ached for everything he had lost in his life. Even more, she had ached for her part in what he had lost.
The need to go to him after his rescue all those years ago had nearly overwhelmed her common sense. She’d wanted to touch him, to ease him. She’d ached to do something, anything, to ease the pain she knew he had to feel at the loss of the pride he’d loved so dearly. She’d wanted to make up for what Douglas had done. She’d wanted to make certain he was safe. She’d just wanted to be a small part of his life. Something more than a bad memory.
“You’re a torment.” He pulled her closer, her breasts against his chest, his heavy thigh pressing against her legs as he pushed her back to the wall. “You torment my thoughts. You torture my body with need. Why the hell you’d walk into this mating as blithely as you have confuses the hell out of me, Cassa. You knew what you were facing by pushing me here. Admit it. You’ve always known.”
Yeah, no one had ever nominated her for the common sense prize, and they sure as hell weren’t going to do it now. It had been evident with her deceased husband that she had lousy taste in men, and Cabal was only proving that theory. Problem with this one was, it wasn’t just her fault. For some reason nature had decided to get in on the fun and help her screw her life up even more.
“Please be so kind as to excuse me for pushing you in any direction,” she ground out between clenched teeth. “Honestly, Cabal, all I want from you is the damned story. That’s it. Tell me what I need to know and I’ll just go on my merry little way and let you continue to screw yourself through the rest of the female population. Isn’t that what you want?” Was it even possible? She knew female mates couldn’t bear another’s touch, but could males?
She tried to push away from him again. She tried to ignore the feel of his erection pressing into her stomach, hard and insistent between the layers of their clothes. And she tried to ignore the need beginning to whip through her, the sudden desire for the taste of his kiss, the feel of his hands stroking over her flesh.
She wanted to deny it all.
“Damn you,” he growled. “I knew you would do this to me.”
“What? Refuse to let you think you’re lord of all you survey?” she bit out furiously.
One hand moved from her arm, cupped her cheek and held her head firmly in place as his head lowered.
“I knew you’d shred my fucking control,” he whispered, his voice tormented now, deep and dark and echoing with the same needs she couldn’t control any longer. “Damn you, Cassa. I knew you’d end up destroying me.”
Her lips parted to argue that statement. She even had an excellent comeback poised to shatter his ego. Before she could speak,
before she could flay him for making such a ridiculous statement, his lips covered hers. His tongue pushed into her mouth. The taste of cinnamon and spice filled her senses as heat exploded through the rest of her body.
Cabal’s taste. She loved the taste of him. His kiss. She ached for the feel of it again. Her fingers clenched on his forearms and she lifted to him. Her tongue touched his, tasted the spicy heat of the mating hormone, and she knew she was lost. Or was she found?
? CHAPTER 13 ?
Lips, teeth, tongues. The taste of lust, of need and heat, seared Cassa’s senses as Cabal jerked her to his chest and took the hungry caress with a force that fired her desires.
It was better than the last time. It was hotter. It was brighter. Sweet God have mercy on her, it was like being thrown into a vortex so blistering, so bright, that nothing mattered but the sensations ravaging her now.
Arrogance was so much a part of him. It echoed in his hungry growl as she tried to jerk back from him, and it added dominance to the hold he had on the back of her head to keep her in place for his kiss.
Cassa moaned as his tongue swiped over hers and spilled more of the spicy taste she was rapidly becoming addicted to.
She had definitely lost her sanity, because she had known what she was facing in accepting this, in daring him to take her as she had. She had known there could be no easy ending to it, but the need, oh God, the need was tearing her apart, driving inside her like steel stakes burning with hunger.
“Damn you.” The light nip at her lips had her lifting to her toes, desperate for more now. His kiss, even without that damned hormone speeding through her system, was still more than any other kiss she had ever known.
Hungrier, greedier, filled with more desire, with more lust than anything she had ever known.
