Bengal's Quest Read online

  ucking primal you wanted no part of me,” he snarled then, his incisors flashing in the darkness. “You called me to you when I was nothing but pure instinct. An animal, enraged and covered in blood, but I came when you called, Cat. I might have been unable to hold you, but by God I was here. I was here and I watched over you every night from the moment I arrived.”

  “Really, Graeme . . .”

  “Do you think I didn’t hear your sobs? Smell your tears?” The deepening of his voice, the primal rasp in it, had her watching him curiously now. “Do you think I wanted to touch you while I looked like this?”

  He stepped into the small amount of light spilling from the house, and the sight of him had her breath catching.

  “Gideon . . .” She whispered his name, the joy that flooded her reaching into a part of her being she hadn’t known existed.

  This was who she had longed for.

  Graeme was his safety, it was the face he showed the world. This was the Breed that belonged to her, though. The one she belonged to . . .

  Reaching up, she touched the dark gold and black stripes along his neck with the tips of her fingers and stared into eyes of hammered gold streaked with a wild, jungle green.

  The animal pulsed just beneath the man’s flesh, the wildness of the creature let free for her to see.

  And she loved him.

  She’d loved him as a child and dreamed of him as a woman. And when he’d come to her as Graeme, she’d feared he was lost forever.

  “Damn you, mate.” The hiss was filled with exasperation rather than anger. “You see the nightmare that plagues men’s fears and sigh as though he were a long-lost friend.”

  Clawed fingers gripped her hips, pulling her to him with a gentleness she had only barely remembered him using when she was a child, screaming out in pain.

  “I missed you.” Her breath caught as emotion swamped her. “I didn’t mean to make you so angry.” A sob tore at her voice. “I couldn’t lose you. I couldn’t . . .”

  She’d had no one else to call her own, then suddenly, she hadn’t had him either.

  “You left me . . .”

  “I never left you.” The tormented whisper at her ear sent a rush of pleasure racing down her spine. Of course, the feel of those claws scraping up her back in a sensuous caress might have had something to do with it as well. “Until they took me again, Cat, I never left you. I was always watching over you. Even after Orrin managed to hide you, even from me.”

  “But I didn’t know . . .” A gasp ended the protest as the feel of his incisors raking over her shoulder sent a shaft of pure pleasure and longing racing through her.

  Weakness flooded her entire being.

  “You knew,” he growled. “You want to deny it. You want to absolve yourself, to hold on to the anger and the pain that’s so much a part of you. You sacrificed yourself for your vision of protecting me, Judd, even Claire, and when I learned of that, I wanted to kill everyone involved.” His hold tightened on her, the scent of his frustrated rage surrounding her. “Sacrifice yourself again in such a manner, even risk yourself for another, and I promise you, if I survive the terror of it, I will make certain you never do so again.”

  She almost smiled when she should have taken the warning to heart. But this was Gideon. It wasn’t Graeme or any other name he’d used over the years to evade capture or detection. It was Gideon.

  Her Gideon.

  Her fingers moved to the buttons of his shirt.

  “Do the stripes still cover your body?” She breathed out, anticipation like a sizzle of electricity racing through her senses.

  Leaning back in his hold, she watched, releasing each button and smoothing the parted material to the sides until she reached the snug band of his pants. Once there, she didn’t hesitate. She didn’t bother with just pulling the shirt from the band, but released the button and slid the zipper of the dark-colored denim open.

  Freeing the last button, she smoothed her hands to his shoulders to push the material over them and down his arms.

  Her breath caught at the sight of him.

  He’d taken her, sent her to heights of pleasure she’d never imagined could be reached, but she hadn’t really looked at the body capable of loving her for hours at a time.

  In his primal state the stripes covering him weren’t black. They were a mix of black and tiger gold. Curling over his shoulders to his collarbone, over hard biceps, around his waist, across the tight, bunched muscles of his abs, they marked his body with animalistic beauty.

  “I’ve dreamed of you coming to me like this,” she revealed softly as he stood tense and waiting before her. “This was all I knew. The beauty of the man and the beast. When I recognized you as Graeme, I nearly cried for the loss of who I’d known.”

  As he’d grown older, even in the labs, the primal markings had eased until they’d disappeared entirely. The last year he’d been with them they’d gone entirely.

  “There’s no sanity in who I am here, Cat,” he said, and the sound of his voice, the hard, deep rasp of it, stroked over her senses, drawing her into a place where only they existed, along with the hunger building between them.

  “There’s no sanity in the world we have to face as others,” she corrected him softly. “Be my Gideon now, just for a little while? And I’ll be the Cat I’ve wanted to be for you for so long. Just for this moment? Let me have my Gideon.”

  • • •

  Jonas listened to Cat’s plea across the lines established by the communications nano-nit he’d managed to get in place. Staring at the holo-board controlling the almost microscopic device, he slowing reached out and deactivated it.

  Damn, he should feel a measure of satisfaction. He’d suspected Graeme was Gideon for months and hadn’t been able to prove it. There were nights it had nearly driven him crazy, that uncertainty, the need to know.

  Now, it was regret he felt.

  “She loves him, Jonas,” Rachel stated softly from where she stood behind him while he was testing the nit. “And he loves her.”

  Hell, he hadn’t expected it to work. Everything he’d had placed in Graeme’s vicinity seemed to malfunction.

  Until now.

  “They’re mates,” she pointed out when he said nothing. “Cassie will blow you out of the water if you attempt to bring him in after mating.”

  Yeah, Cassie would have quite a bit to say to him if he attempted to arrest anyone’s mate, especially Cat’s. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t do it if he had to. But that all depended on Graeme.

  “Jonas?” Rachel lowered her head until it rested at his shoulder. “What are you going to do?”

  Glancing at her from the corner of his eye, he let a smile quirk at his lips.

  “What I always do.”

  She groaned, dropping her forehead to his shoulder now as her slender hands gripped his shoulders. “I love you, Jonas, but one day, a Breed is going to kill you for interfering in their lives the way you do.”

  Yes, she loved him. She balanced him and often helped shape his plans as well as his views at any given moment.

  “I only interfere now when I have no other choice,” he promised her. “That Breed is possibly the most intelligent and most dangerous Breed ever created. The things he knows about Breed creation and physiology could terrify Genetics Council biogenetic engineers for centuries to come. He’ll never be free, Rachel. Even his concept of freedom is flawed.”

  “Is it, Jonas?” she asked softly. “Is it flawed? Or is it in opposition to your concept of his freedom?”

  • • •

  Let her have her Gideon?

  The maddened creature that became a monster?

  God, she had no idea what she was asking of him.

  “Cat, this isn’t what you want.” It couldn’t be. The blood that stained his hands concerned even him at times.

  His shirt dropped to the patio floor as her fingertips trailed down his arms to his wrists.

  “Would you accept me as less than who and
what I am?” she asked, the caress of those fingers moving to his sides, his abdomen. “Would you want less than who and what I am?”

  He couldn’t bear it.

  “Each time we’re together the pleasure is astounding, always better than before. But each time, I know something’s missing. A part of you is missing. I need all of you.”

  Would having all of him change anything?

  He couldn’t predict her answer to that question. He might have asked if she hadn’t chosen that moment to go to her knees.

  “Cat . . .”

  “You’re wearing your boots.”

  Nimble fingers worked at the laces, loosening them in what amounted to only a few heartbeats before looking up at him. Holding the leather footwear, she waited as he pulled first one foot, then the other, free.

  Reaching up, her fingers gripped his pants and tugged, pulling the fabric down his legs where he stepped from them.

  “Now what?” The growl in his voice was a natural rasp of his primal state.

  “They cover your whole body,” she whispered, touching one of the gold-hued stripes along his thigh.

  Fists clenched, claws digging into his palms, Graeme fought the impulse to pull her up, push her over the small table next to them and just mount her.

  That animalistic urge was growing like fire in his gut.

  Fully engorged and spearing out from his body, his cock throbbed with the harsh beat of his heart while his testicles were drawn so damned tight they ached. The need to take her, to spill inside her, was becoming more imperative by the moment.

  “Cat . . .” The warning in his voice should have been enough to assure her that time was becoming of the essence.

  A light sigh of laughter brushed across his thigh as she rose sinuously to her feet, gripped the hem of her shirt and pulled it free of her body. It dropped to the patio alongside his, her shorts quickly following.

  Fuck.

  What he saw was not nearly as prominent as his own markings, nor the stripes as wide, but her soft flesh was just faintly shadowed with a hint of gold in a pattern of Bengal stripes that amazed him.

  “You didn’t tell me.” Cupping her breast, he ran the pad of his thumb over one softly colored stripe arcing over the swollen curve and pointing toward her nipple.

  “You didn’t ask.” The mild retort was followed by a sensual little gasp when he caught the hard tip between his thumb and forefinger, applying just enough pressure to send pleasure streaking through her.

  The scent of that pleasure, of her hunger, had every muscle in his body tightening while his cock throbbed faster, the stiff length becoming further engorged.

  “You don’t have to wait for me to ask.” Sliding his other hand in the hair at the back of her head to hold her still, his lips lowered. “Volunteer the information.”

  “When you do . . .”

  He didn’t want to hear more.

  Covering her lips with his, Graeme gave her what she asked for, the mate that haunted both of them.

  Holding her firmly to him, he took her parted lips with a rising need made sharper for the little moan that turned more to a purr as his tongue flicked across hers.

  The taste of her was a sensual delight he’d become addicted to with the first kiss. Full of life, enriched with fight and the very nature of her stubborn independence. It was the essence of the most exquisite elixir and he ached for more. Ached for more of her.

  Tilting her head back, he took more even as she fought to share in the control of their kiss. Her very nature refused to submit, but her submission wasn’t what he hungered for. Not her submission and not just the fiery pleasure of finding release inside her.

  What he longed for in the deepest reaches of his maddened soul was her heart. A heart that even now, he knew he didn’t fully possess.

  • CHAPTER 18 •

  Cat tried to fight the pleasure, to hold back some part of herself, even though she knew there was no part Graeme hadn’t already marked.

  His kiss dominated her, fed into the hungers the Mating Heat was only strengthening and burned through her body like wildfire. One broad, callused palm cupped the swollen curve of a breast while the other smoothed down her side, her hip, before flattening against her lower stomach and pushing between her thighs.

  Long, talented fingers slid through the excess moisture that gathered between the folds there, sliding over her clit, curving and finding the entrance to the depths of her aching sheath. And once there he didn’t hesitate. As his palm cupped her mound, his finger slid inside her, parting the sensitive tissue as Cat went to her tiptoes with a gasp of pure delight.

  Curling his finger once inside, he found that ache deep inside, the one that only the barb had found when he released inside her. Now the tip of his finger found it, rubbed it, caressed it, stoking the rising need gathering inside her until she didn’t think she could survive if he made her wait much longer to climax.

  The pad of his palm rubbed against her clit, stimulating it further, increasing each sensation gathering inside her pussy until she was on the verge of begging him to take her. She needed him to take her, ached for it, would have screamed for it if his lips and tongue hadn’t trapped the sound inside her.

  Each firm caress of his finger against that bundle of inner nerve endings pushed her further, pushed her deeper into the rising waves of sensual destruction. One arm slid around her back, holding her close, keeping her against him when her knees weakened. His finger continued to torment her, delight her, driving her wild inside with the need to orgasm. The unruly hunger pulsing inside her had her hips rising and falling against the penetration, riding his finger as she began to gasp, desperate to find that touch, that one caress that would send her exploding into release.

  Graeme tore his lips from hers, moving his mouth to her ear to nip at the lobe as he eased a second finger in beside the first. The additional penetration had pleasure and pain riding side by side. Stretching heat sizzled through the intimate passage, building by the second as he filled her. Reaching inside her, both fingertips found that spot, stroked and rubbed, creating a storm of such sensation she became lost in the spiraling force of it.

  “You’re so fucking hot,” he whispered, nipping at her ear again. “So sweet. That’s it, baby, take it. Ride my fingers just like you’re going to ride my cock. That’s it, my little cat. Give it to me, let me feel you coming around me.”

  As though all she needed was his demand, her senses erupted. Spasms of repeated rapture rippled through the flesh hugging his fingers, tightening on him, holding him inside her as a wail of tortured pleasure filled the air around them.

  She could feel the rush of moisture as it spilled from around his fingers to her thighs, ripples of agonizing ecstasy racing from the tightening flesh of passage as pleasure exploded there to encompass her clit, where it detonated once again.

  She was jerking in his arms, perspiration dampening her flesh and his as he held her through the storm, groaning in hunger as he gave her release while holding his own back. She didn’t have to think about his pleasure, didn’t have to think about anything but the explosions tearing through her and sending waves of brutal pleasure throughout her body.

  The storm didn’t abate, though. Even as the cascading arcs of release tore through her she could still feel the fire burning inside her, the need for more rising rapidly. The hunger inside her for this Breed was like a fever she couldn’t escape. Even when she was certain she could contain it, still it slipped out of her control, rocked her senses and left her far too vulnerable, too weak to the need they shared.

  “That’s it, baby,” he crooned at her ear as the shudders began to ease and the grip she had on his fingers loosened. “Now you can ride my cock.”

  Before she could do more than catch her breath at his sudden move, he was lying back on a padded lounger and drawing her over him.

  “Ride me, Cat. Come on, baby, destroy me with your love.”

  With her love?

  Oh God, she lo
ved him.

  She hated him and she loved him. Ached for him, and ached because of him. And she couldn’t refuse either of them this shocking pleasure.

  Straddling his powerful hips, her knees settled into the cushions at each side of him as she leaned forward, bracing her hands on his chest. With her eyes locked on his, Cat shifted back with her hips, fighting to breathe as his jutting erection began to part the slick, swollen folds guarding her sheath.

  The gold of his eyes shifted to that wild jungle green, the stripes along his face slowly fading away. His hands gripped her hips, leading her gently, teaching her how to move against him, how to ride him with a steadily increasing pace.

  “What do you do to me?” It was a plea, a sob, an inability to understand why she succumbed so easily to him and to his touch.

  “I didn’t create you, Cat,” he whispered, the hoarse rasp of his voice multiplying the ache growing inside her. “You were created for me, to hold back the madness. You are my sanity.”

  Thrusting inside her with a surge of power, parting her snug sheath and burying to the hilt.

  “Oh God . . . Graeme,” she cried out, only barely aware that she hadn’t called him G, and she hadn’t called him Gideon.

  “Ride me, Cat,” he rasped, moving beneath her as the chaotic pleasure of moments before began to spiral inside her once again.

  Each forceful, burning penetration of his iron-hard flesh had a whimper parting her lips. The pleasure was brutal. Locked in his gaze, moving above him, lifting and falling into the heavy thrusts between her thighs, Cat became lost in him. Her lashes drifted nearly closed, the sensual weakness building even as the scorching pleasure burned out of control.

  “That’s it, Cat, take me,” he growled, his expression tightening, hands gripping her hips tighter as he pushed so deep inside her she swore he penetrated her soul. “Give to me, baby. Give me all of you.”

  He had all of her.

  “All of me . . .” The cry was torn from her as his thrusts became harder, faster, driving inside her in jackhammer strokes that pushed her over the edge of reason, of reality, and had her exploding in a kaleidoscope of flaming, overwhelming ecstasy.

  Beneath her, she felt Graeme tightening, a hoarse growl surrounding her as the blinding heat of his release jetting inside her sent her racing into another explosion of blinding pleasure. It was never ending, a rapturous pleasure she could never anticipate, found impossible to believe could be so incredible in the cold light of day.

  A pleasure that locked them together as the barb emerged and spilled a secondary release as it pushed her past yet another rocking orgasm. Her sheath tightened on him, locking around the engorged shaft, rippling over it, ensuring nothing, no one could tear him from her.

  For this moment he was here with her and he belonged to her alone. Not the madness, science or Jonas could tear her from him as long as she held him so deep inside her that she didn’t know where he ended and she began.

  Collapsing, Cat found herself sheltered against his chest, held by his powerful arms against the heat of his body and protected, for the moment, by the sheer strength he exuded.

  • • •

  Cat hadn’t expected to dream.

  She’d learned years before how to block from her mind the horrors she’d experienced as a child, so nightmares had been rare. Not that she hadn’t experienced many of them in the first few years after coming into the Martinez household. But never like this.

  She’d never been taken back to the research center she’d been raised in, where she’d experienced such pain she’d begged Gideon to let her die. She’d pleaded with him to just let her go.

  “He would have never survived if you had died, Cat.”

  She jerked around, her eyes widening at the image of the fragile woman-child whose life she’d been given. Claire Martinez could have been her twin, even before the minor plastic surgery that had ensured she was never suspected to be anyone else.

  She’d talked to Claire many times in the past years since her spirit had been bound to Claire’s through that ancient ritual the night of the girl’s wreck. But never like this. Never in a dream, and definitely never in this place.

  “What are we doing here, Claire?” she asked, staring around the enclosing cage warily.

  That was all it was, really. A cage. One wall was glaring white, the other three were steel bars reinforced with an electric charge. The only privacy had been a tiny toilet room. There hadn’t even been a shower. Just a toilet and a tiny sink to wash their hands and brush their teeth. Showers were under strict supervision.

  “You never left here, Cat,” Claire sighed, staring around the small area as she sat on the cot across from her. “You’ve always been trapped here.”

  Cat stared back at her, forcing her heartbeat to remain calm and steady.

  “So the past years have been a delusion of some sort?” She didn’t think so. No hallucination could be that messed up.

  Tucking a strand of long, caramel-colored hair behind her ear, Claire looked around sadly.

  “Where you are physically hasn’t made much of a difference,” she finally answered with somber reflection. “What’s important is that no matter where you went, no matter the enemies you faced, you were still locked in this cell, alone. You never left it after you realized Gideon had voluntarily left you here.”

  She wasn’t going to argue with a spirit, she rather doubted there was much point to it.

  Claire smiled a bit wearily. “You’ll deny it to your last breath, though, won’t you, Cat?”

  “I’d have to know what I’m denying first,” Cat informed her, shrugging. “Why don’t you take us out of here to somewhere nice. I don’t like talking here.”

  It was a dream, she knew it was.

  “It’s no dream,” Claire snapped, surprising her. She couldn’t remember a time when Claire had ever