Tanner's Scheme (19 page)

She stared at the computer, fighting the need, fighting the words on her lips that would reveal everything.

“He hired your ex-lover to kill you, Scheme. He murdered your child before it ever had a chance at life. Do you really want to die too?” he said gently.

She shook her head desperately. She was trying to protect herself. Oh God, she wanted to trust him. She needed to trust him, and she knew she couldn’t.

One hand flattened on her abdomen as she reminded herself why. She was empty, her life was empty. Her child had been cut out of her body and a tubal performed while she was unaware. She would never conceive again without the general’s permission. She would always remember the consequences if she did.

Jonas had warned her to trust no one but him. That even he couldn’t vouch for any one Breed until he was certain of the identity of the spy working within their ranks. He had made her promise. Made her swear it. If he couldn’t vouch for Tanner himself, how could she be certain?

Because she loved him, her heart whispered.

And she had loved before, the dark part of her soul reminded her. Remember where that led?

“Don’t…” She shook her head desperately. “I don’t have what you want, Tanner. I don’t have your answers.”

“Scheme, help me save you. For both our sakes.”

She lifted her gaze to his, his features blurry through the tears that still fell from her eyes. Why couldn’t she strike? She had killed, regardless of what he thought. A Coyote that had caught her helping another Breed escape. A soldier who had slipped into her room intending to rape her. A knife was her preferred weapon; she knew how to use it. Dammit, she knew how to kill, how to maim; why couldn’t she strike against this one man?

“There’s no saving me,” she finally whispered, accepting that fate. “For both our sakes, Tanner, stop trying.”

CHAPTER 14

Sighing wearily, Tanner pulled Scheme into his arms before lifting her gently into his lap. She lay in his arms like a babe, fighting to control her sobs, her breath hitching as tears dampened his shirt.

He had taken a risk, he knew. The chances of her sliding that knife into his side had been high. Too fucking high. He could have been bleeding out on the stone floor rather than wrapping his arms around her and holding her against his chest.

So why wasn’t he bleeding? He’d been almost certain she would attempt the blow. What bothered him was the fact that at that point, he had almost decided to let her have it.

She had to trust him. There wasn’t enough time left to gain her trust or to hope for the best. He had so little time left. Even less if Callan or Jonas became suspicious and guessed where the general’s missing daughter really was. He didn’t worry about anyone else, but Jonas was naturally paranoid, and Callan, well hell, Callan just knew him. He didn’t doubt that his pride leader had already guessed what he was up to. What Callan decided to do about it would be anyone’s guess.

“You’ve never had a problem doing what you had to before,” he murmured against her ear. “Why couldn’t you do it, Scheme?”

“I don’t want to die in these stupid caves.” She jerked at the hold he had on her.

“Stop fighting me.” He held her closer, one hand cupping her head and pressing it to his shoulder. “And stop lying to me.”

“I don’t need you to hold me,” she cried out. “I’m not a baby. I don’t need your comfort. I need you to let me go.”

His jaw clenched with the effort to hold back his frustration.

“Did you see those soldiers on the monitor, Scheme? Who the hell do you think they’re looking for?”

“You!” she screamed. “It’s your stupid cabin, isn’t it?”

He laughed at that. “Come on, baby, even the Council is smarter than that. They know what killing me will do to their cause. Don’t you listen to the news? The world loves me. The outcry against the Council and the pure genetics groups would be horrendous. They wouldn’t dare. They’re here because they suspect I have you. Not because they want me dead.”

It was amusing to even consider it. How many times had he sneered at the Council soldiers who trailed him whenever he left Sanctuary? As much as they hated him, they couldn’t kill him, and what’s more, they couldn’t allow him to die, not yet. Not as long as public sentiment toward him was so high.

She struggled against him again, her breath hitching, her deliberate restraint over her tears breaking his heart.

The scent of her, a mix of guilt, fear, pain and longing, twisted inside him. He couldn’t have expected this when he kidnapped her. How she would set him on fire and break his heart at the same time.

She made him feel things he had never felt before, and that scared the living hell out of him when he paused long enough to consider it.

He nipped her ear gently. “Do you really want me to let you go? You’re scared, Scheme. I can take that fear away.”

A surprised, almost cynical laugh left her lips. “Are you crazy?”

“My pride leader says I am.” He bent her back in his arms, much as he had done the day before. “Want to test his theory?”

Her chocolate eyes were nearly black, staring back at him in confusion, passion and anger as her hands gripped his forearms, her lips parting just enough to cause his cock to jerk in response.

“You’re a hazard to your own health,” she bit out. “How did you know I wouldn’t use that knife?”

“I didn’t,” he admitted with a small smile. “I think I even expected you to go through with it.”

Her gaze flickered heatedly. “Why would you let me, Tanner? Why would you do something like that?”

He reached out, his thumb brushing over her cheek, catching a tear before staring at it thoughtfully for long seconds. How could he explain that to her when he couldn’t explain it to himself?

“Because I had to know if I’m more to you than just your captor.” He lifted his gaze back to hers. “Because you are much more to me, Scheme, than you ever should be.”

She swallowed tightly, her gaze becoming shuttered now.

“That’s crazy.”

“Yeah, it is,” he admitted with a smile. “But no crazier than this is.”

His head lowered to her. He had to taste her lips, dampened with her tears. The sweet salty taste of her went to his head like a narcotic. The touch of her lips against his, like warm satin, her tongue a stroke of fire, sent raging impulses of pleasure to tighten his cock further and draw his balls tighter.

Her kiss heated him faster, hotter than a volcano at eruption point. It was like being in the middle of an inferno.

“I went crazy every time I saw another man touch you,” he growled against her lips, his hand threading into her hair to hold her in place as her eyes jerked open in surprise.

“Someone had to watch the surveillance.” He nipped at her lips with his teeth. “In case one of you talked business in the fucking bed.” He caught her lower lip, pulling at it, scraping over it with his teeth as her eyes narrowed back at him. “I went crazy,” he repeated. “Every goddamned time I would be feral for days.”

Her lips trembled. “Then why did you?”

He couldn’t keep himself from touching her face, from smoothing his fingers over her delicate jaw.

“Because I couldn’t bear for anyone else to do it.” He would have had to kill anyone else who dared to see her like that. Naked. Vulnerable. Reaching for something she never found. He had seen it in her eyes, that dissatisfaction, that need. Just as he felt it in his soul with every other woman he had been with.

“Why doesn’t it bother you?” He would have been enraged to learn his privacy had been invaded in such a way. She should have been clawing his eyes out instead of lying back in his arms and staring up at him.

Not that her rage would have made a difference. With his luck, it would have only made him hotter.

Resignation tilted her lips. “Because you didn’t let anyone else see it.” Her whisper sliced through him. “And because it was you.”

And for the first time he paused. “Why does that matter, Scheme?”

She shook her head slowly as her hand lifted to curl around the side of his neck. “I don’t know why it matters,” she said, her tone so stoic, so somber, it clenched his heart. “But it matters.”

Then her head lifted, her teeth catching at his lower lip as she tugged at it erotically.

“You said you made lists?” she asked then.

He smiled slowly. “I made many lists, pretty girl, and all on exactly how many ways I intended to please you.”

“So please me, Breed,” she whispered heatedly. “Show me everything I’ve been missing.”

It sounded like a dare, a brazen challenge. But he heard the desperation in her voice, saw it in her eyes. She needed this as much as he did, needed to lose herself in the pleasure and the heat that built with each touch between them.

Lifting her in his arms, Tanner carried her to the bed, keeping his eyes locked with hers, his senses focused on her.

She was confused, desperate. He could feel the raging pain inside her, the need to understand the fires that built so quickly between them.

Why wasn’t she his mate?

As he laid her on the bed, Tanner stared down at her, memorizing her features, the soft pale skin of her face, the dark chocolate of her eyes. Her sable hair fanned out around her; the violet velvet of her outfit whispered over her slender body.

She would have made the perfect mate. Strong-willed, passionate, built for endurance and survival. She should have been his mate.

She would be his mate. Fuck science and the damned scientists at Sanctuary. This was his woman, no matter what nature or blood tests decided. He would lay down his life to protect her.

“Take off the clothes. Slowly,” he told her, his voice hoarse from the strength of his lust, his need.

Her hands moved to the elastic band of the lounging pants before her hips lifted to push the material over her sensuous curves.

Her silken tummy slid into view, slightly rounded, soft. Kissable. Then rounded, well-toned thighs, the bare, glistening curves of her pussy. And those curl-shrouded folds were more than kissable. They were devourable.

“You have the prettiest damned pussy I’ve ever laid eyes on,” he said and sighed as she finally kicked the soft pants free. “I could spend hours eating you.”

He glanced at her eyes just in time to see the flare of response.

“He never did that for you, did he, baby?” His fingers went to the buttons of his shirt as hers gripped the hem of her shirt. “St. Marks didn’t appreciate that pretty pussy. He gave it no more than a lick and a promise, didn’t he?”

His shirt dropped to the floor as his hands went to his belt.

“You were watching,” she whispered. “What do you think?”

“I don’t think, baby, I
know
he didn’t know how to appreciate what he had,” he growled.

He had watched those surveillance videos. St. Marks hadn’t known what to do with a woman who felt that sex was more than an itch to be scratched.

The shirt cleared her swollen breasts, then came over her head. Her eyes gleamed dark and hot, her face flushed with excitement now. Nearly as flushed as the swollen folds of that slick, wet pussy.

He kicked off his jeans before reaching down and pulling off the socks he wore. But his eyes never left her body. He wondered if he could watch her enough, ever stare long enough that he wouldn’t be surprised every time he saw something he had missed the time before.

Like the silken shimmer on the underside of her breasts. The mature curves, not overblown, not really slender. Sweet, soft differences that proclaimed her an adult woman in every way.

“Are you going to do anything, or do you intend to think it to death?”

She was impatient in sex. It was one of the things he had learned about her through those surveillance videos. But then again, St. Marks hadn’t exactly gone out of his way to hold her interest.

“I don’t need to think about it.” He reached out, touched her thigh, then trailed his fingers to the silken wetness between her legs.

There, his thumb circled the swollen little bud of her clit peeking from the apex of the folds. She trembled beneath his touch and his cock jerked in response.

“I can’t wait to bury my lips there again. I’d rather eat you than breathe.”

Her legs shifted, falling further open as he removed his fingers and came to the bed. Last night had been hard and rough. This, he wanted this to last. He wanted to make her come so many times that by the time he finished she could do nothing but shudder in the grip of an orgasm that seemed to never end.

“First on my list was feeling you come around my tongue,” he growled as he settled his knees between her thighs and leaned over her. “And that was good, Scheme. That was really good.”

He stared into her eyes as he bent to her mouth, sipping at her lips as her fingers moved hesitantly to his shoulders. She always touched him hesitantly. As though she wasn’t certain if she should even touch.

And oh, she should definitely touch.

“Come here, sugar.” He rolled to his back, pulling her with him, grinning up at her as she stared back at him in shock. “I’m all yours,” he growled, helping her to her knees before pushing his head between them. “And you’re all mine.”

“Tanner, this doesn’t work.” She didn’t bend forward as he’d expected.

His hands slid up the outside of her thighs as he turned his head and pressed a kiss just above her knee.

“Have we tried it before?” He raked her lower thigh with his teeth, smiling as a tremor rippled beneath the flesh.

“I don’t like this position.” Her voice was smoky, breathless.

“Have we tried it before?” he asked her again, nipping at her thigh with enough force to make her moan.

Oh yeah, she liked that. He raked along the side of the opposite knee. Her hands flattened on his abdomen.

“I’ve done this before,” she gasped. “I didn’t like it.”

“Hmm.” Yeah, he remembered that one. That one hadn’t pissed him off too bad, because he remembered watching her eyes. St. Marks had been less than ineffective. “Maybe you’ll like it better with a pro.”

Tanner lifted his head, distended his tongue and swiped it through the drenched slit directly above him. While there, he made certain to flicker his tongue over the sensitive flesh before rounding her clit with a delicate, purring lap.