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She buried her face against his chest as he shuddered above her, his own release jerking through his body as Cassa fought back the tears that would have dampened her eyes.
For now, she held him. He would belong to her as much as she would belong to him. He couldn’t deny her now. He couldn’t make her leave; he couldn’t turn her away. The mating heat would ensure that. For now, he would have to share himself with her, and not just physically.
She felt his bite at her shoulder like a brand into her flesh, marking her forever. The little wound would never fully heal. It was a physical mark that would never go away entirely, just as she knew that her own bite on his palm still hadn’t fully healed.
The Breed’s and the mate’s bodies changed during mating. They shadowed each other, the essence of each blending. Cassa knew that, just as she knew that there hadn’t been a mating that hadn’t ended up in love. In a devotion between the two mates that had always made Cassa envious.
There was no longer a need for envy.
“My mate,” he growled at her shoulder.
Cassa held on to him tighter. She was his mate, for now. She would revel in him while she had him. She would pit her will against his, enjoy the hell out of the time they’d have together, but she promised herself she wouldn’t let herself depend on it. She would never fully become her Bengal’s heart, because she’d betrayed him. She would lose him. She was resigning herself to it. But she had never expected the pain that was coming from it. It had done her no good to steel her heart against this man, because she had a feeling it was going to be ripped from her chest anyway.
Losing him might well kill her.
Cabal held on to Cassa, his arms wrapped tight around her as he slowly loosened the bite against her shoulder. He could taste the primal mating hormone in his mouth as he licked against the wound, spreading it over the tiny bite marks he had left in her flesh once again.
Mating wasn’t easy, it wasn’t gentle. He was still shuddering at the force of the pleasure that had torn through him. The violence of his release left him shaking and suddenly much too aware of what would happen to him if he ever lost this woman.
Brushing her hair back from her perspiration-damp face, he let his fingers caress her cheekbone, her jaw, as he stared into her dove-soft gray eyes.
His woman.
He fought to hold back the possessiveness rising inside him, the feeling of something belonging to him. Just to him. He knew fate, and she laughed at him for sport. She snatched happiness from his fingertips with a sneer and a laugh.
He stared into Cassa’s eyes, and once again saw a flash of that ever hated fear in her eyes. Even now, seconds after the most incredible pleasure he had ever known, he still sensed her fear of him.
Perhaps it was something time would take care of for him, if he had time with her, he told himself. She would learn she had nothing to fear.
He would give his life for hers without thought. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that living without her now wasn’t something he could face doing. This hunger, this need, this total fulfillment of sexual pleasure was unlike anything he had ever known in his life.
And her touch. Her touch was a stroke of pleasure and of comfort. Living without that comfort wasn’t something he wanted to ever risk.
She was the other half of him, the one thing he had longed for ever since he had learned of the mating phenomenon. She was the part of his soul that had been missing and was now complete.
“I don’t like seeing that fear in your eyes,” he told her softly as the barb slowly receded and her inner flesh released its grip on it.
Her eyes flickered and he saw the lie coming. Placing his fingers over her lips, he held back the words.
“No lies, Cassa,” he told her softly. “If you can’t tell me why, then don’t bother to tell me I’m not seeing what I know I see.”
Her lips were pressed tightly together as a frown worried at her brow.
“When you’re ready to discuss it, then I’ll be here,” he told her rather than demanding the answers.
A man didn’t get far when demanding anything from Cassa. She was as willful as a woman could get, and twice as independent.
“Will you?” she finally asked, her lips whispering over his fingertips. “Will you, Cabal? Or will you walk away like you always do?”
His lips quirked mockingly at the thought of walking away now.
“I think we’re both very well aware of the fact that there’s no walking away now. Even if it was something either of us wanted to do.”
He moved against her, his hardening erection filling her flesh as her breath caught.
“See, Cassa? There’s no walking away, honey. We’re bound. Just as you knew we would be.”
He could see it in her eyes, in her expression. The knowledge, and the fear.
