Beastly Desires by Nikki Winter Read Free Book Online

hollow look in her eyes was going to choke on every disc in its own spinal cord. Kaisal would personally make sure of this. She’d given him basic, cut-and-dried answers, clearly wary of revealing too much—clearly wary of him. She didn’t need to be, but whoever was after her and Cal should be gravely concerned. There were things he’d been taught never to tolerate, and the victimization of innocents was at the top of that particular list. Kam was innocent. He knew it like he knew the striped pattern on his pelt.
    Whatever she’d done, wherever she’d come from, she and Cal were innocent . And the thought of someone forcing her into this detached position, making her feel as though she couldn’t simply eat a meal while her son laughed, was like raking a stick against the bars of his beast’s cage. The primal instincts he’d been fighting—the ones that made him seek out his enemies and end them without any notice, warning, remorse—were rising within him, and it was a struggle to tamp down on the bloodlust, a struggle to tell his tiger no.
    Kaisal thought that when he’d retired from the Navy the prompting would stop, the need to crush vertebrae, would stop. It obviously hadn’t, and it only increased every second that he’d watched Kam stare avidly after her cub, never allowing herself to become too comfortable. What had pushed her here? What had shoved her into becoming a vessel for the steady hum of rage he felt vibrating in her when he’d brushed his hand across hers? It doesn’t matter , his tiger decided. It would die. No logic. No reason. No compromise. It. Would. Die. Kaisal would revel in it. He’d relish the moment he was able to stop their heart, stop their next inhale, end their too-long existence. It mattered not that he’d only known her for six hours or that he only had half of their names or that he was confused about the emotions she provoked with her scent alone—they were now under his protection. They were now his responsibility. And may whatever deity her enemy worshipped have mercy on their soul, because when they crossed that tenuous line, Kaisal would skin them alive and offer up the remains as a sacrifice to his own god.
    “Kaisal?”
    Callum’s small voice pulled him away from the vision of red that had begun to bleed into his sight. Kaisal swallowed and looked to the racing game next to him. “Yes, young prince?” Somehow, the moniker seemed natural. Callum carried himself in a way that was extraordinarily regal for him to be so young. Then again, most male felines did. Arrogance was ingrained in them from the womb to their first roar.
    Burnished eyes watched him without blinking. “Thank you.” That was all the cub said before he returned to his game. That was all Kaisal needed before returning to his own.

Five
    “Exactly why,” Nico questioned in a low murmur, “is it taking so long to find one female and her bastard?” He rocked back in his seat, listening to the quickening heartbeats of every pride member standing inside what he now deemed to be his office. A place he’d coveted—as well as other things—for a very long time. His attempts to achieve the type of opulence the Oriades possessed for his own pride had been unsuccessful. Sadly, wealthy goals were harder to meet when you were a part of a clan of swamp cats who others didn’t see as good enough to even wax shoes.
    Where Nico came from, he should’ve been dead by now. Not in prison, not in rehab, but dead. That was the way things occurred in his line. His family was full of nothing but thieves, murderers, and sociopaths. He’d always thought himself above that, more of a strategist. When he’d left the rest of his pride behind after killing his father and bitch of a mother, he’d begun to plan an uprising of his own empire, making a mark on their world that couldn’t be erased.
    They’d been nothing short of two-bit criminals up until now. They stole, took a few pay-offs to get rid of the enemies