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She was primal as well, but in a far different way. She controlled the primal impulses, she controlled what she showed and the power she fed to it. The base animal DNA that infused her, that ensured her survival and marked her as one of the most least predictable breeds, a Bengal, was becoming stronger by the day.
For far too long she’d been forced to hide who she was. First, she’d had to sleep, to hide, remember that there were others besides her at risk if she allowed herself to awaken. Then, once again, she’d had to pretend, to make everyone, even Raymond and Maria, believe she was Claire.
She didn’t have to pretend with Graeme. She didn’t have to submit, she refused to submit.
Why should she submit beneath him or bury the confidence she’d built over the past thirteen years? she asked herself as the primal awareness, that primal power, filled her.
He had created what she had become. He had worked with the lead scientist, he had dictated the genetic typing placed within her.
Now he could deal with it.
She would never stand behind him, she would stand beside him. And he might own her sexuality, but she would own his as well. And she’d make damned sure no other woman could claim it.
No other would ever have a right to touch him, to belong to him, but her.
Her incisors lengthened. She could feel them, top and bottom, pushing to their natural length. The need to bite, to mark him, was growing inside her. To rake the hard column of his neck, to lick away any hurt the bite might have left.
Sensuality and her emerging sexuality rushed through her. The need to fight who she was, what she was, didn’t exist here. Here, she could be the woman she had been forced to hide, the Breed she’d been forced to deny.
There was no fighting whatever bond the heat reinforced inside her; she knew it on a level so deep, so primal, that she didn’t even try to fight it. Just as there was no fighting the hunger that only rose by the day.
She didn’t
have to trust him to own him. Mating Heat went both ways. He may own her body, but she would own his as well. Trust wasn’t required.
This Bengal was hers.
The sound that escaped her throat wasn’t helpless longing this time. The tigress was awake. Determined, fierce, she would mark this Breed as hers, just as he’d marked her.
Where it counted.
• CHAPTER 13 •
Ahh, there she was, the tigress she kept hidden, kept locked away so deep, so tight, that even the scent of her was often impossible to detect.
That primal, perfect tigress that a monster had come to life to protect.
The growl that fell from her lips was one of sensual daring, the look in her hammered gold eyes a challenge he intended to accept. And right there, along the side of her face, two shadowed marks just beneath the skin darkening with a golden hue. They weren’t black as his were, but a rich, Bengal gold, gleaming with wild promise.
The sight of them made him harder, sent the erotic hunger digging into his already taut testicles.
“How perfect.” His voice was deeper than he liked, evidence that his own animal instincts were raging out of control.
Lifting his hand, he smoothed the pad of his thumb over one subtle stripe.
She was absolutely perfect, but he’d always known she would be.
“Kiss me or kill me, but do one or the other immediately,” she snapped up at him, her gaze gleaming with the challenge in her voice. “You’re wasting my time.”
Wasting her time, was he?
He’d warned her what would happen if he dared to kiss her. There would be no turning back.
“Foreplay?” he drawled.
“Foreplay? For a kiss? Get real, Bengal. And make up your mind, I don’t have all day.” Her gaze was on his lips, the scent of her arousal filling his brain, making him high on the unique scent, the evidence that she hungered just as he did.
Sliding his hand to the back of her neck, his fingers cupping the fragile stem, he didn’t stop to think. Burying his hand in her hair and clenching the strands, he pulled her head back, his lips lowering, his control shot.
