Bengal's Quest

  es and seen the child he’d betrayed with words when he’d severed her belief in his loyalty. He’d wanted to tell her he’d hurt himself far more than he’d ever imagined possible with the words that had flowed from his lips in his attempt to save them both. To save her the pain he could have caused her in accepting that transfusion.

  She would want explanations, though, and he couldn’t explain. To even broach why the rage had exploded inside him, why he’d rather have died than take her blood that night, was something he simply couldn’t do. Even for himself. Even at the time he’d not been able to fully understand it.

  He’d never been particularly sane, he admitted with a bit of morbid humor. Even at a young age he’d been called feral, untrainable, crazed. That night, the insanity had taken over, leaving him to exist on instinct alone for years.

  Until the Council had recaptured him and returned him to the research center. Until the night Dr. Bennett had lifted Graeme’s beating heart from his chest and given the order to find the reason for the odd properties in Graeme’s blood that kept him fighting, that kept him alive.

  That night, the monster had leapt forward and there was no ridding himself of it now. He could restrain it now. He could deal with it, live with it. But he’d never be free of it. And over the years, he’d realized he didn’t want to be free of it. The monster had always been a part of him, it had always existed. It only needed the right reason to show itself.

  He watched as Cat’s lashes drifted over her eyes, closing slowly as sleep finally came over her.

  A second later a single tear rolled from the corner of her eye along the silken flesh of her cheek. Glistening against moonlight-kissed skin, trailing slowly to her upper lip, where it was sleepily brushed away with a muttered little whimper.

  A whimper.

  Wiping his hand over his face, he forced himself to his feet, ignoring the twinge in his thigh and turning away from the sight of her.

  If only fate hadn’t decreed the necessity of Wyatt finding her. If only that bastard Raymond Martinez had known a sliver of loyalty, of honor. If only the Council hadn’t learned she was indeed alive.

  The suspected mate of the Bengal that had massacred a lab filled with scientists and soldiers less than twenty-four hours after his third vivisection. Oh yeah, they wanted her, and they wanted her bad. Bad enough that the monster that had slept for a while had awakened once again. And once again, it awoke hungry.

  Hungry for blood.

  But this time, there was another hunger as well, stronger and far less controllable than it had been when he’d first found her.

  That hunger was only growing, while the need for the enemies’ blood was becoming secondary.

  The need for her . . .

  It had never been secondary.

  • CHAPTER 4 •

  She was no crazy-ass Bengal Breed’s mate.

  Cat still couldn’t believe the insane statement Graeme had made the night before.

  She knew what mates were, just as she knew her cousin Isabelle and her friend Honor, who had taken the identity of Liza Johnson twelve years ago, were both mates to Breeds. Isabelle to a quiet, too intense Coyote, and Liza to a huge, dark Wolf Breed. Both women were crazy about their “fiancés” and shared a bond with them that the tigress she was had quietly acknowledged.

  The scent of the mating, the physical and emotional needs as well as the bond the couples shared was unmistakable to other Breeds. Some may not have a name to put to it, but the scent of it was a warning to Breeds of the opposite sex, as well as confirmation of a unique, enduring bond.

  They loved as well. Even before the mating scent became stronger, deeper, the scent of their emotional bonds had been clear.

  She and Graeme had no bonds. What might have grown from those early years, when he’d cared for her in the labs, he’d killed the night he’d vowed to kill her. The night he’d assured her that she’d been nothing but his own personal experiment.

  The sheer insanity it had taken to make such a claim almost matched the madness behind the number of cameras he’d placed in the house Reever had offered for her use.

  Upstairs, she’d found six, downstairs¸ so far, she’d found four and hadn’t even made it to the kitchen yet. And she had no doubt there were cameras she hadn’t yet found.

  Dumping the ones she’d collected into the kitchen trash¸ she was just opening the first kitchen cabinet door when the doorbell rang.

  Kneeling on the marble countertop, she threw a disgusted look toward the doorway.

  Who the hell was insane enough to ring her doorbell? Didn’t they know a crazy-ass Bengal Breed was lurking around somewhere? Hadn’t Jonas announced it to the free fucking world yet?

  Jumping down with a growl, she stalked through the house to the door, coming to a hard stop at the scent of the men on the other side.

  She didn’t need this. She didn’t need to deal with this. Where the hell were all the other crazy-ass Breeds when you needed them?

  Gripping the doorknob and jerking the door open, she faced the men with a hard frown.

  “What the hell do you want?”

  Raymond Martinez had his politician’s face on. The somber, compassionate face that fooled damned near everyone he came in contact with. With the light touch of gray in the black hair at his temples, dark brown eyes and swarthy skin, he was still a reasonably presentable man, though the heaviness at his middle and under his skin was ruining any chance at attractiveness that he may have had.

  His son, Lincoln Martinez, was another story. At thirty-two, Linc was in fine shape. On leave from the military, he was all muscle and a closed, brooding expression.

  Linc had obviously managed to secure leave from the military far quicker than she’d expected. She hadn’t expected him to arrive on her doorstep with his father though.

  “Claire, please . . .” Linc began.

  “Oh, give me a damned break,” she snapped at Raymond, the use of his daughter’s name infuriating her. He damned well knew what her name was, he’d been told the night his daughter’s body had died and her spirit had remained to watch over Cat. “Haven’t you told him I’m not his sister yet? You disappoint me, Raymond. I assumed you’d already blown that bridge to hell and back.”

  Raymond grimaced at the statement.

  “Can we do this in the house, Cat?” Linc growled, glancing around the yard, with its stone and pebble ground cover and succulents growing in carefully arranged small gardens. Well, evidently Raymond had told him.

  Or had he known? She’d always suspected Linc was part of the spirit warriors the Unknown, but if he’d become part of the secretive sect before or after his sister’s death, she’d never been certain.

  “Ah, I see you didn’t disappoint me,” she murmured, the sarcasm infusing her voice surprising even her as she glanced at the man who had once sworn to be part of a carefully coordinated circle of protection. “By all means, do come in.”

  Stepping back from the door, she waved them in. As they cleared the doorway she slammed the door hard enough that the resulting crack had Raymond jerking around in fear. Linc merely shook his head before rubbing at the side of his face and glancing at her in chastisement.

  Her tight, unapologetic smile was accompanied by the crossing of her arms over her breasts and a curious tilt of her head as she looked between the two men and silently compared their looks.

  “You know, Linc, I think you’ll be happy when you’re older that you’ve taken after Terran and Orrin rather than him.” She flipped her fingers toward Raymond. “He’s not aging well.”

  The dislike in Raymond’s eyes now was closer to what she normally faced and much more comfortable than the patently false warmth he’d tried to display.

  “You little bitch . . .” He sneered furiously.

  “Enough!” Linc’s voice was a lash of command that had Cat’s brows lifting in surprise when Raymond immediately silenced the harsh words.

  “Impressive,” she murmured, actually impresse
d by the sharp tone and underlying strength of it.

  “That goes for you as well,” Linc informed her sharply, shooting her a brooding glare. “We’re here to talk. I’m not in the mood to listen to insults between the two of you.”

  He wasn’t her alpha either.

  “Then I suggest you take him and leave,” she informed the man she’d once called brother. “Because as far as I’m concerned, he’s nothing but an insult to the human race. It’s rather hard not to point that out at every chance.”

  Jerking the door open, she threw both men a hard look before stomping through the entryway to the kitchen at the back of the house. She’d already had enough of this particular discussion.

  “Stay here, dammit,” Linc ordered his father as he ignored the open door and gripped her wrist firmly. “I can’t believe you’ve pissed her off like this. Where the hell was your mind? You were supposed to protect her, not antagonize her.”

  Cat inhaled sharply. Well, that answered one question. She’d always suspected Linc was part of the group called the Unknown, whose job it was to protect her from the Genetics Council should Raymond fail to adequately convince the world of her identity as his daughter. She had never been completely certain until that statement. Only a member of the Unknown or those present that night, would have known that information. Cat allowed him to pull her across the foyer, more interested in what he wanted than scratching Raymond’s eyes out at the moment.

  Turning, she faced him as he entered the kitchen. He was taller than his father, easily six two. His black hair was cut close, a midnight shadow over his scalp as his black eyes watched her with inscrutable mystery. A mystery she’d always seen in his eyes whenever he’d been around. Linc had been kind to her whenever he was home, but unlike others he hadn’t pretended a love or a connection that wasn’t there. She’d wondered if that was merely because he was years older than his sister, or if he had known the truth.

  At least he hadn’t lied to her as everyone else had. He hadn’t led her along that gilded path that led to the belief that she might belong somewhere. “Why are you here?” she demanded the second he cleared the kitchen doorway. “After all these years you suddenly find an overwhelming need to play brother? Where were you when Claire needed you?”

  When it had been Claire he faced within Cat’s body. During that time that Cat had slept, protected by a spirit that walked and talked within her body.

  Anger flashed in his dark gaze. “I’m not here to discuss Claire, Cat. I refuse to discuss Claire.” Something painful and dark filled his expression for a moment. “This is about my father. He may be an asshole, and he may not have always been kind . . .”

  She had to laugh at that.

  “Dammit, Cat, I won’t let Wyatt railroad him. If he was as terrible as those charges claim, then he would never have helped you.” Loyalty was something that dug sharp, merciless claws clear to the heart and soul of who Lincoln Martinez was as a man. Like his uncle and his grandfather, he was a man born to lead, one born to shelter others and it was evident Raymond had convinced him of his innocence.

  Who would he believe, she wondered. His father, or the woman his sister had sacrificed so much to protect?

  “It is inconceivable to me that you’ve allowed him to fool you,” she bit out in disgust, infuriated that such a smart, intuitive man couldn’t see the evil that infected his father. “Let Wyatt railroad him? Linc, if I could get away with it, I’d kill him myself. As a matter of fact, if I could have convinced several Breeds to let me, I would have murdered him, gladly, years ago.”

  Linc stared at her as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. After several seconds his expression hardened, became emotionless.

  “He wouldn’t have betrayed his daughter nor his sister like that.” The hard iciness in his voice was something to be wary of. It was dangerous, a warning of retribution if he felt it warranted. “I admit he wasn’t always kind . . .”

  “Kind?” she sneered in disbelief. “There wasn’t a day that Claire didn’t feel his hatred, and once I became aware once again, there wasn’t a day that I didn’t feel it.”

  Sometimes blood was thicker than water, it seemed. Funny, Linc had managed to surprise her. She’d expected him to at least be curious why she hated Raymond so deeply. Why she wanted to kill him, would have killed him, easily.

  “Believe what you want to. Why are the two of you here?” Pushing her fingers through her hair, she reminded herself that she shouldn’t have been surprised.

  Linc might have pretended to be her brother when he was home on leave, but he wasn’t her brother. She was nothing to him.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, still staring at her too intently, a brooding frown pulling at his brow as he watched her. “I was hoping you’d come to the tribunal with us, present a family front. If for no other reason than to preserve your own precarious safety. He protected you. He deserves that much.”

  He’d protected her?

  She blinked back at Linc before she had to laugh again, mocking amusement nearly choking her as she stared at him.

  “Is that what he told you? That he protected me?” She questioned him in disgust as one hand went to her hip in challenge. “He really managed to push those words past his lips without choking?”

  “Well, I’ll be damned if anyone found you while you were under his roof,” he claimed, frustration filling his voice. His gaze wasn’t filled with frustration though, it was hard, cold and analyzing.

  “Do you really believe that, Linc?” she asked, certain he had to at least suspect the truth. “They have proof that he contacted a known Genetics Council informant just after leaving the meeting where it was proven he not only sold his sister to them, but knew where she was all along. He let her die during one of the most horrifying acts anyone could endure.”

  Why had Terran and Orrin kept this from him? They knew the truth.

  “The hell they did. Cat, he was accused, not proven.” He was fighting the truth, she could smell it, sense it.

  “He was lying,” she snapped. “Everyone there knew he was lying.”

  She remembered the scent of Grandfather Orrin’s horror and his slow acceptance that his eldest son had done something so horrible. He’d known Raymond had done just as he was accused of doing. He’d sold his sister and allowed her to suffer to death beneath a surgeon’s scalpel.

  “Breeds?” Linc questioned, his voice, his jaw tight with fury. “They smelled his lies? And I’m supposed to accept that?”

  “I smelled his lies.” Staring up at him, fists clenched to hold back the claws she wanted to bare, she silently begged him to call her a liar.

  He blinked back at her, silent now, his face drawn so tight it could have been carved from marble.

  He knew what she was, knew what she had been to his sister, and if he didn’t know she had no reason to lie to him, then he’d learned nothing over the years since she’d come into his family.

  “Then why help you?” He didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to accept it, but at least he wasn’t denying it completely any longer.

  “Because he had no other choice,” she pointed out. “His brother and father were part of it. You were part of it and he knew it. He was told it was the only way any part of Claire would survive and he had to preserve the illusion that he loved his daughter. He couldn’t let any of you suspect how he truly felt. If he did, then he risked his secrets being suspected or even discovered. But don’t fool yourself into thinking there was a day of my life in that house that he was ever kind. Unless you were there.”

  Linc wasn’t a cruel man. He was a man driven by the need to fight for what was right, for justice. His belief in the Breeds’ right to exist had filled the better part of his life. He’d become involved in that cause even before joining the military. Once joining, he’d been part of several missions not just to protect them, but to completely destroy the Genetics Council.

  By essentially spying on Linc, Raymond had learned quite a bit
about missions against the Council, which he’d dutifully reported to his masters. The calls had been logged on satellite phone intercepts, but the phone had remained covert until Cat had found it just after they’d learned what Raymond had done to his sister.

  “If that’s true, why didn’t you report it?” The need to prove she was wrong was dwindling, she could see, though the need for loyalty lingered.

  Raymond was his father. Admitting what the man was wouldn’t come easily to Linc.

  “Because he would have revealed who I was, and where I was at a time that I couldn’t have defended myself, just as he often threatened,” she told him softly. “Just as he did once I refused to obey him and back him when his crimes were first suspected.” Bitterness ate at her. “Don’t ever ask me to help him again unless it’s helping him straight to hell where he belongs.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Fury flashed in his expression, in the low, grating sound of his voice. “Why didn’t you come to me?”

  She stared back at him, remembering how helpless she’d felt during those first years after she’d awakened to awareness and realized the life Claire lived.

  “Why didn’t Claire tell you?” She asked him sadly, watching the dark pain that flashed in his gaze. “There was no way for you to help, Linc. You were in the military. Any attempts to help would have only put you at odds there,” she breathed out wearily. “If you don’t want to believe me, then don’t. Either way, get that bastard out of this house before he infects it with the evil inside him. He’s a malignancy and I don’t want him anywhere around me.”

  Linc flinched.

  It was painful to see the sudden flash of indecision in his gaze, the glimmer of suspicion. He knew. He didn’t want to admit it, but he knew the truth. What he decided to do was another matter.

  His lips parted, but whatever he meant to say was disrupted by a sudden snarl and the sound of a man’s squeak of terror.

  Linc moved, fast. So fast that Cat found herself behind him as they rushed into the foyer and came to a sudden, stunned stop.

  Pure fury filled Graeme’s face. The stripes that would have revealed his true nature as well as his true identity weren’t apparent, but she had a feeling they weren’t far behind.

  One hand was wrapped around Raymond’s throat, the other the side of the door as he suddenly heaved the older man out of the entrance to the pebbled yard right on his ass. Then he swung around, clearly prepared to do the same to Linc.

  Coming to a stop, Linc lifted his hands, his expression closed as he faced what he believed was an enraged Lion Breed.

  “I’m just leaving, Graeme,” he assured him. “I should have never listened when he begged to come with me. It’s a mistake I won’t make again.”

  The fact that he seemed to know Graeme was surprising. She hadn’t expected that at all.

  “You should have never brought him here,” Graeme snarled. “It’s a mistake I promise you’ll regret.”

  Glancing through the door at Raymond as he lay on his back, groaning as though he’d been sliced open rather than just thrown out, Linc shook his head wearily.

  “It’s already one I regret,” he said softly. “And one I apologize for.”

  With that, he moved from the house. This time, Cat flinched as Graeme slammed the door with violence that nearly rocked the small house.

  “Well, that was really mature, wasn’t it?” she sneered as she crossed her arms over her breasts for the second time that morning. “Think you impressed them with all that Breed strength in beating Lobo’s door against the frame?”

  The stripes suddenly shadowed his face. Jagged dark marks beneath his flesh, extending over one eye, across his arrogant nose and opposite cheek. A sharp point ended at the corner of the other eye. Others curled around the side of his neck.

  Cat stepped back warily as the green of his eyes, normally amber flecked, became green-flecked amber, filling the whites of his eyes and obliterating the pupils.

  “Now, Graeme, all this fury is just uncalled for,” she informed him with far more bravado than she felt. “It would be a really good time to just chill out and calm down.”

  She didn’t know this Breed. Even his scent was tinged with something different, something elusive and so wild it went far beyond primal.

  “Calm down?” he snarled, the deeper, rougher growl causing her to wonder if perhaps she should have just remained quiet.

  “Yes, calm down.” In for a penny, in for a pound. Right? “I had all this completely under control and Linc would have never allowed him to attempt to do anything.”

  “‘Linc’?” His gaze narrowed on her. The predatory look was almost scary. “Now, mate, what is that scent of affection I can smell coming from you?”

  Oh, he really wasn’t going there. And what business was it of his who she was fond of and who she wasn’t fond of? As for this mate crap of his . . .

  “‘Mate’?” Propping her hands on her hips, she let anger override wariness. “Are you fucking crazy . . .”

  “Fucking bet on it.” He moved before she could anticipate it, before she could jump away from him.

  She found her back against the wall, lifted from her feet, thighs spread and gripping his as the fully erect proof of his arousal that strained his jeans pressed into the sensitive flesh between her thighs.

  Aroused?

  “Does manhandling me really turn you on?” Fingers gripping his shoulders, she wondered why the hell she wasn’t trying to rip him apart with the claws that emerged to hold to the hard flesh beneath his shirt.

  Because he felt so good.

  So hot and strong, his hands holding her hips, his muscular thighs parting hers, holding them open as his hips shifted to rub the denim-covered erection firmer against her.

  “It really turns me on,” he growled. “It makes my dick so hard I could fuck for hours.”

  Suddenly, she was aching. The sensitive folds between her thighs were moist, her clit throbbing, the depths of her vagina aching. She was becoming aroused where she never had before. Nerve endings were clamoring to get closer to him, parts of her body tingling that had never tingled before. Her breasts were becoming swollen, her nipples hard.

  “Then get a life,” she gasped. “Find someone else to get your jollies with.” She’d kill him if he did.

  “You are mine.” The snap of incisors just in front of her nose had her blinking back at him in surprise. “Allow that bastard to so much as caress your cheek and I’ll slice . . .”

  “The meat from his bones?” One of these days she might learn to just keep her mouth shut. “That one’s old, Graeme. You really need to learn some new material.”

  Her claws flexed at his shoulders, totally against her best judgment, but his hips shifted again, dragging the material of her jeans across the silk of her panties, which in turn rasped over her swollen clit. And it felt so damned good.

  “How’s this for new material? Let’s see what it does for you,” he bit out, but it wasn’t in anger. The stripes were receding as his head lowered, his lips moving to the bare flesh revealed by the thin straps of her cami top.

  He didn’t kiss her flesh. He didn’t bite it.