Tanner's Scheme (26 page)

Panting, exhausted, she held herself still, trembling in his hold as she felt a single tear fall. She wouldn’t cry over this, she told herself. Not this. Tears wouldn’t change his course, and it wouldn’t help her find the strength to endure whatever he had planned.

“Do you love Tanner, Scheme?” Cabal whispered at her ear, his voice so soft it was barely heard.

She closed her eyes, knowing any lie she told he would smell.

“I love him.” And it made no sense. How could she love the man who had left her to be raped by another?

“Why do you love him?” He nuzzled her neck, his hold never weakening, the careful readiness in his body never changing. “Tell me why you love him, Scheme, and I’ll let you go.”

He wouldn’t let her go. She knew this trick, the insidious promise of freedom for something so little, so destructive.

She leaned her head away from him, the fear rising sharply within her as she felt his incisors rake her neck, felt the subtle threat in the action.

“Because I’m too stupid to live,” she whispered. “Too stupid to know hell when I see it.”

Oh God, his touch hurt her. It was agonizing. The lightest of touches, but suddenly it felt like daggers digging into the flesh of her arm. She screamed out in agony as his hands quickly released her, but his body still held her to the wall. The knowledge that she couldn’t fight him sent a surge of insanity through her mind.

“It’s okay,” Cabal whispered, his voice gentle. “He’ll be back for you, Scheme. One more second, he’ll be back.”

She wasn’t in a coffin buried beneath dirt, but the same suffocating, terrifying fear racked her mind. She wouldn’t survive this; even if she lived, she would never survive this man taking her.

As she bucked, fought, she was certain she didn’t have the strength to scream again, but an enraged snarl, a roar of fury, echoed around her as she was suddenly free, the momentum of her fight throwing her to the floor, her hair cascading over her face as she caught herself against the stone.

The sound split the air again. An animal’s roar of killing rage.

Swiping her hair back from her face, Scheme stared across the room in shock.

Tanner. He had placed himself between her and Cabal, snarling back at his brother as he crouched protectively in front of her.

“I didn’t tell you to rape her.” The sound of his voice was horrendous. Animal and man, a snarling, graveled sound rife with violence.

Cabal flicked her a glance, amusement glittering in his eyes for but a second before they jerked back to Tanner. Scheme could feel the throb of murderous rage in the room now, hear it in the rumbled growls coming from Tanner’s throat.

“You gave her to me,” Cabal reminded him gently. “How I take my mate is my decision. Isn’t it, brother?”

Tanner’s responding roar was filled with challenge and fury.

“Mine!” The single word that left his throat had Scheme flinching in shock as Cabal tilted his head and watched his brother carefully.

He raised his hands slowly, a gesture of surrender.

“I won’t fight you for her,” he said softly, gently. “She’s all yours, Tanner. She always was.”

He backed slowly to the doorway, throwing Scheme a cocky wink as Tanner watched him carefully.

It had been deliberate? Cabal had been deliberately goading Tanner? Pushing him? Why?

Scheme moved slowly to her feet, shaking, watching the two men carefully. Breath sawed in and out of her lungs as she tried to understand what the hell was going on. She could feel the undercurrents of a savage fury and, when she glimpsed Tanner’s face, the savagery of a naked, primal lust.

His eyes glittered gold as he watched his brother back slowly from the room, the primal growls that vibrated in his throat more animal than man. As though some inner demon had slipped its leash and taken control of the man.

Rubbing at her arms, Scheme backed away, wondering now if there was a way to escape Tanner. This wasn’t the Breed the world knew, the soft-spoken, smiling, public relations wizard. This was the animal the Council had created, the killer it had trained.

He swung around to her sharply, as though he had somehow heard the thought.

“Do you think I would hurt you?” he snarled, his lips pulling back from his teeth as he straightened from the dangerous crouch.

There was nothing relaxed about him though; danger pulsed around him, as did lust. It gleamed in his eyes, naked and intense as he ate her with his gaze.

“I didn’t think you would leave me to be raped by another man either,” she panted, but where she had retreated from Cabal, she held her ground with Tanner. “You left me here to be fucked by another man, Tanner.”

Anger slammed through her. Unfortunately, there was nothing on hand to throw at him. Her fists clenched at her sides as she faced him, shaking with emotion, betrayal.

“You are mine,” he snarled, stalking close to her, his movements fluid, filled with animal grace and sexual intensity.

She sneered in response. “Am I yours? I don’t think so. I belong to no man.”

A hard, carnal smile crossed his lips. “Not a man, a Breed.”

She jumped to avoid him, but he was fast, faster than she gave him credit for. As she turned to run, his arms surrounded her, his chest cushioning her as he jerked her against him, his cock pressing into her lower back.

“My mate.” Growling, intense, the words were followed by his hand jerking the neckline of her shirt aside and his teeth sinking into her shoulder.

He bit her.

Scheme screeched, not so much from pain, but from the sudden overriding certainty that he had done more than mark her physically. His incisors were lodged in her flesh, his tongue flickering over her skin as his mouth sucked at it.

It hurt, but not as it should have. A sexual intensity she hadn’t expected bloomed within her as her head fell to the side and her nails bit into his wrists. It shouldn’t ride a hard edge of pleasure; it shouldn’t send ribbons of electricity to strike at her nipples, her womb, her clit.

She shouldn’t be burning for more.

“What are you doing?”

He was growling behind her. His hands, her nails still digging into his wrists, moved beneath her top, slid over skin so sensitive she moaned from the touch of calloused flesh running up it, until they cupped her breasts.

Her nipples were hard, hot, pressing into his palms pleadingly as his fingers tightened on her flesh.

“Mine,” he growled again, his teeth sliding from her flesh with an erotic shift of pleasure so intense that her vagina flexed in hunger.

“Tanner,” she whimpered, feeling a slow, pulsing burn in her shoulder as his tongue licked over the wound. Heat and liquid-hot sensation began to move from the four small puncture wounds to weave through her body.

As though some powerful narcotic had hit her bloodstream, her knees weakened and her womb clenched with a sudden hunger so intense, so driving, she gasped at the strength of it.

———

Cabal had to swallow the bile rising to his throat as he escaped through the tunnels, putting as much distance as possible between himself and what he had just done.

Had he pushed too far? He had terrified her. He had savaged her emotions. And he had known before doing it how horrifying she would find it.

It was the bond. The animal could sense the mate’s pain. He had sensed it between other mates. It wasn’t a conscious thing; it was something the mates never truly recognized, but it was there. Just as it was there with Tanner and Scheme. He had to force Tanner back to her. He had to force the animal to claim her.

But had he gone too far?

He had gone too far for his own comfort. He just prayed he hadn’t gone too far for his brother to ever forgive him.

CHAPTER 20

His mate!

She belonged to him.

Tanner knew he was out of control. Knew he had lost the self-imposed restraint he had always forced on himself and that he was teetering on the edge of complete primal meltdown if he didn’t manage to pull back. Just a little.

He threw his head back, his knees bending to press the tortured length of his cock against Scheme’s buttocks as his hands curled around her breasts.

He had bitten her, tasted her blood and licked the wound with a tongue painfully swollen, the glands at the side of his mouth spilling the sweet, dark taste of lust into his mouth.

Each time he swallowed, he burned.

He bit off an oath as he thrust against her buttocks, feeling the heat of her flesh through the soft velvet of her pants and the denim of his jeans. If he didn’t get inside her, if he didn’t fuck her, he was going to die.

She was his woman. His mate.

He had known it. For years, despite his denials, he had known this woman belonged to him, and yet he had stayed back. Some impulse, some knowledge he couldn’t make sense of, had kept him from taking her, from stealing her away from her home and hiding her for his pleasure alone.

The animal inside roared in triumph as he turned her, wrapping his arms around her and slamming his lips to hers. There was no time for finesse. No time to consider each touch for pleasure or pain, no control to temper the animalistic lust with tender words or with comforting kisses.

There was hunger. God, the fucking hunger was going to kill him. He speared his tongue past her lips, growling in satisfaction as she immediately enveloped it, her mouth tightening, suckling it.

Sweet God.

His hands tore at her pants, ripping fragile material, hearing in a distant corner of his mind the rending of the material. But he felt her flesh, naked, soft as satin, hot and arching toward him.

Pleasure burned through him as she sucked the sweet hormone from the glands in his tongue, and with each pulse of the liquid she moved with deeper sensuality, moaned against his kiss with strident need.

It was burning her. He could feel it. Smell it.

This wasn’t just mating heat. This was more, so fucking much more.

He had been insane, crazy to think that he could ever allow Cabal to touch her without losing his mind. To believe that another could ever mark her, hold her, and he would survive it.

He could barely survive having Cabal in the same room with her. He had forced himself to walk away. Forced himself to do what he thought he had to do.

The animal, though, had known. He had pushed that beast so far back into the darkest corners of his mind that when it slipped his bonds, there had been no stopping him.

His nails raked over her back before he clenched his hands in her top, ripping it from her. He wanted her naked. Wanted her hot and wet and dripping over his cock as he slammed inside her.

And she was dripping. His fingers tucked beneath her buttocks, thrusting inside her pussy, feeling the slick hot cream covering his fingers, easing his way inside her.

Her hands were in his hair, her arms bracing against his shoulders as she reached for him, trying to climb against him as his lips slanted over hers and she sucked deeper at his tongue.

Mating heat was slamming through him now. Grasping control of the animal and the lust was impossible. Tanner had never known a time that he didn’t control the animal and the sexual hungers. There hadn’t been a woman he couldn’t control, couldn’t finesse. Until now. There was no controlling this.

He didn’t bother to pull his shirt off. Pulling it off required breaking the kiss, the suckling heat of her mouth that was spilling more and more of the hormone into both their systems. He couldn’t allow that.

He ripped the buttons apart before shrugging the material from his shoulders. His hands moved immediately to his belt, tearing it loose before loosening his jeans, pushing them just past his hips and freeing the engorged length of his dick.

He had to fuck her. If he didn’t get inside her hot pussy and screw the painful need from his system then he was going to implode. He was melting beneath the heat burning through his body, causing sweat to drip from his pores and growls to vibrate unceasingly from his throat.

He gripped her thighs, spread them, lifted her.

A primal, muttered snarl vibrated from his chest as her pussy settled on the tip of his cock. Fuck yes. Her cunt was hotter than fire, lava-hot, melted-iron-hot, and he needed more.

She was tight. The wide crest pressed inside her, parting clenching tissue and muscle as he pumped his tongue in her mouth and staggered to the wall.

No time for the bed. It was too far away. He had to get inside her now. All the way inside her.

He tore his lips from hers to breathe, his lashes lifting to check her face. God, she had to need this. He couldn’t bear to see the pain in her face that he had smelled as he raced through the tunnel to the cavern.

There was no pain. No expression of it, no scent of it. Pleasure, rich and vibrant, suffused her expression, tilted her eyes further and gave her an exotic, otherworldly appearance that had his hips jerking, forcing his cock deeper into her snug pussy.

“I won’t let you go,” he snarled, his hands clenching on her hips. “Ever.”

Her eyes were so dark they were nearly black, staring back at him languorously, damp with tears, stark with hunger.

“What are you doing to me?” She panted for breath, her nipples raking his chest as her pussy flexed and spasmed around his burrowing cock.

He lowered his head until his lips were brushing hers, his eyes staring into hers. “My mate,” he whispered, almost wincing at the guttural, primal sound of his voice. “Just mine.”

Her lips parted as she moaned, a low keening sound of pleasure as her tongue swiped over her lips, his.

“Something’s wrong.” Her lashes fluttered over her eyes a second before a harsh cry left her lips and he felt her orgasm.

He had penetrated no further than halfway into the snug depths of her pussy and she was already coming for him, washing his dick with the heated cream flowing around it.

“No. Nothing’s wrong.” He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t hurry. It was so good, so fucking hot and good, sliding into her, working his cock into the clenching muscles milking at him. “It’s right, Scheme. It’s all just right.”

“Tanner. I’m scared.” Soft, subtle, the scent of her fear infused her pleasure.