Maneuvering the SUV along the mountainous roads, he glanced over at her from time to time, taking in her calm profile. The thick waves of her dark blond hair flowed around her face and shoulders, fell over her breasts and down her back.
His fingers itched to bury themselves in that silken mass, and he found that denying himself was only making the hunger grow. He felt lost in the need rising inside him. That need was threatening his control and the assignment he was on. She threatened the assignment he was on.
By the time he pulled the vehicle into the small driveway of the cabin he’d rented, Cabal felt as though his control had been stretched to its limits. It was the scent of her. Subtly sweet, heated with a hint of wild desire.
That was what tempted him past bearing, he decided, as he stopped the vehicle in front of the wide front porch and turned off the ignition. That hint of wild spice in her arousal.
“Here we are,” he announced as he turned to her.
“Convenient.” Her smile was tight as she turned to him before opening her door. “What are we, a few miles from that little valley I was looking for?”
Two maybe. He was surprised that she realized that.
“You have a damned good sense of direction,” he said, com plimenting her as he opened the door and stepped out of the vehicle, before loping to her side to help her out. Not that she needed any help. She was jumping out of the SUV as he moved to open the door. He should have known she would be too damned independent to wait for a man to do anything for her.
“My sense of direction has always been excellent,” she informed him as he placed his hand at the small of her back and led her to the front door.
The cabin was large and roomy. The lower floor, with its wide living room, spacious kitchen and spare bedroom, was neat and open. Upstairs, the master bedroom overlooked the door, and held a large master bath.
The rental cabin was built for year-round stay, and afforded plenty of room for the additional Breeds working the assignment with Cabal, when they were needed.
“Nice place,” she said as he closed the door behind them, then silently locked it.
“It works.” He shrugged, moving ahead of her. “Coffee?”
The last thing either of them needed was coffee. The caffeine played hell with mating heat and they both knew it.
“Sure.” Her smile was knowing, mocking, as she followed him into the open kitchen. She knew what caffeine did to the system, and she was daring him just as fiercely as he was daring her now. “Then we can talk.”
Talk wasn’t exactly what he had on his mind. Laying her down and licking her from head to toe—now that idea held some merit. He was curious though. How much longer would the mating hormone treatment she was taking allow her to hold out? She was doing damned good. A hell of a lot better than he was actually.
“Sure, we’ll talk.” He wasn’t promising what they would talk about though.
Awareness of her tingled over his flesh like an invisible caress and sent a shard of aching loneliness tearing through him. He knew what he was missing by holding back; he knew the completion he could find by claiming his mate.
But he also knew what he was risking if he allowed his emotions to become involved any more than they already were. He was risking his very soul, as well as hers. Unlike other Breed enforcers Cabal was a covert enforcer. He was unregistered and known for his complete lack of regulation. He was a suicide operative. He took the jobs the other enforcers couldn’t because of Breed Law or protocol. He took the jobs with a fatality rate much higher than most.
He was a mate now though. If anything happened to him, then the hell Cassa would live through was something he didn’t want to contemplate.
Once this mission was over, his enforcer status would have to be reconsidered. There were plenty of other Breeds who could take his place, and honestly, he thought he might be more than happy to step aside for them.
“What do you intend to talk about then? The fact that you don’t want me for a mate, or the one where it’s already too damned late to do anything about it?” There was a snap to her tone that had him turning and staring back at her silently.
Hell, he wouldn’t have imagined that mating could have started with something so simple as his blood against her tongue. She couldn’t have done more than taken a drop of his blood, but somehow, it had been enough.
Bullshit. He’d become more enraged than ever when he’d seen Cassa and her husband in the control room of the facility he thought he would die within. He’d watched her fight to release him, watched Douglas’s glee at the blood and death.
He’d claimed her then, he thought. Before he’d ever escaped that pit, he’d known he would claim her.
He could smell the scent of her desire now, almost taste it on the air around them. The night of his rescue he had smelled her fear, her anger. He’d smelled her rage and her pain. And when she had touched her finger to his face, then brought that finger to her lips, he had sworn he had tasted her tears and her regret in the air around them.
“Or we could talk about H. R. Alonzo’s dead body and the reason why the Breeds are protecting a killer.”
He could tell by the sound of her voice exactly which subject she was forging the most interest in. Her body was heating by the moment, but that sharp little mind of hers wanted answers first.
“The Breeds are not protecting a killer,” he informed her as he finished preparing the coffee and turned back to her. “We’re investigating David Banks’s disappearance, Cassa.”
She gave a delicate, ladylike snort. “Bull. You know the information I was sent, Cabal, don’t try to lie to me. I know you’ve managed to access my files as well as the emails from my server. You have my laptop tapped. I’m not stupid. You know exactly what I have, just as I know what you’re covering up.”
She was enough to make a hardened, coldhearted Breed want to laugh, or to at least smile.
She was right. He knew the information she had. He was doing nothing more than delaying the inevitable by pretending that he didn’t.
The soft metallic ring of the coffeepot completing its cycle sounded behind him. Grabbing two cups from the hooks beneath the counter, he poured the aromatic, decaffeinated brew into them and carried the cups to the long counter that separated the kitchen from the dining area.
He might want to silently dare her where the mating heat was concerned, but he wasn’t going to deliberately see her in more discomfort than need be. The caffeine in coffee aggravated the systems of mating heat, not the coffee itself.
“Lying to you isn’t something I had in mind,” he told her as she slid onto one of the bar stools across the counter from him. “I am investigating Banks’s disappearance.”
“As well as Alonzo’s death,” she pointed out knowingly.
“As well as several deaths.” He wasn’t going to admit to Alonzo. Admitting to anything where this woman was concerned was the same as giving her express permission for an interrogation. She should have been a prosecutor rather than a TV reporter.
“And you think I don’t know exactly how many deaths there are? The killer contacted me, Cabal. You know that. You’re more than aware of it, and you think you can continue to play this damned game with me?” Her voice rose as amazed anger began to fill her, to scent the air around her.
She was coming to the end of her patience. Cabal knew it, recognized it. Just as he knew that he was going to have to make a choice soon. Make her hate him forever by pulling them both out of the game, or allowing her in. Neither choice was one he wanted to face.