Tanner's Scheme

He was rewarded with an almost imperceptible intake of breath on her part. Her expression didn’t change, and neither did the look in her eyes, but her scent did. Once again, he could smell the heat of her need. It was there, sweet, soft, edging around the harsher scent of her forced detachment.



“As a matter of fact what?” Her curiosity was almost as legendary as her cold, unemotional facade.



“As a matter of fact, I intend to make you feel very, very good. I’m going to make you so damned hot you’ll burn both of us alive.”



“As I said, you’re a little overconfident, Breed.” The derision in her voice belied the scent of her passion. But it was the scent he went with. The scent that calmed the beast raging inside.



“Let’s see if that’s true.”



Nothing mattered but kissing her, holding her, sheltering her from the past that he wasn’t sure he could protect her from. And from the moment his lips took hers fully, he was lost in her. Not that he had expected anything less. Pleasure began to wrap around him, to emanate from her and lick his body with burning flames.



God, her kiss was good. She wasn’t hesitant; she reached for him, ate at his lips as eagerly as he ate hers. Slender arms twined around his neck; sharp nails scraped against his scalp and had a growl rumbling from his chest.



He had to touch her. Not just kiss her. Nothing mattered except this. Her body flush against his as he lifted her, her knees lifting, thighs parting, the towel falling away and her swollen breasts pressing into his T-shirt.



God yes, this was what he wanted. One arm wrapped around her back, the other moving to the firm mound of one tit. He had to taste her. Have her. Just one taste of those pretty, berry-ripe nipples.



He tore his lips from hers, scraped his teeth down the graceful column of her neck, then moved to the delectable fruit awaiting them.



And it was good. The growl that tore from his throat joined her cry as his lips covered the flushed, eager tip. His tongue lashed at it as he sucked it in deep, his teeth scraping tender flesh with lush eroticism as she shuddered against him.



“You taste like candy.” He would have winced at the gravelly sound of his voice if he’d had enough mind to do so.



“We can’t do this.”



He didn’t want to hear her denial, he wanted her to cry out his name, wanted her to beg him to fuck her.



That’s what he wanted to hear from her lips.



He nipped at the hard peak.



“Tanner.”



“Sweet nipples, perfect tits.” He groaned. “I could suck your tits for hours and never get enough.”



He went back to her, filling his senses with the feel of her, the taste of her, the heady scent of her wet pussy in the air.



“This is crazy.” Her voice was weak, but the scent of her lust—now, that was strong. Strong enough to intoxicate. Strong enough to mesmerize.



“Naw, darlin’, not crazy. Hot. Wicked. Never crazy.” He pressed closer between her thighs, feeling the heat of her pussy through his jeans, searing his dick.



“You’re forgetting who I am again,” she whimpered, but her head came forward, her lips pressing to his neck as every muscle in his body clenched in response.



“I know who you are, pretty girl.” His teeth scraped her other nipple as her responding cry sent a shock of satisfaction raging through him.



This was why she was still alive, why he couldn’t hurt her, could never harm her. For this pleasure, the taste of her, the heat of her. Nothing else. When he was finished, when he had sated himself with the need clawing at his insides, then he would pack her ass up and haul her to Sanctuary. Callan could do whatever the hell he wanted to with her then. If there was honor in her, Callan would find it.



“I can’t do this,” she whispered again as he continued to nip at one berry-ripe nipple while he bore her to the bed. “You don’t understand.”



“I understand my dick is so hard I’m going to come in my pants if I don’t get inside you,” he growled as he laid her back on the bed. “I understand you taste as sweet as sugar and you’re hotter than fire. What the hell else do I need to know?”



He leaned back, staring down at her pale face, her wide chocolate eyes. Sable hair spread out around her head like a silken fan, and excitement had flushed her breasts the color of a pale sunset.



She wasn’t exactly beautiful, except to him perhaps. Her irregular features—the little stubborn chin, pert nose and high cheekbones—and the faint Asian set of them combined to make her infinitely unique.



“I don’t want this, then.” Her head shook as her face mirrored some inner desperation.



“Don’t you, Scheme?” Before she could tighten her thighs to evade him, his hand slid between them, cupping the fiery mound of her pussy as his teeth snapped together at the heat filling his hand.



“You’re so fucking wet I could drown in you,” he said accusingly, using his fingers to part the swollen curves and find the honey beyond.



She jerked, shuddering as his finger slid along the narrow cleft to find her swollen clit.



“You’re close,” he growled. “I can smell your heat. Feel your pleasure growing. You’re so close to coming you’re having to fight it.”



“No.” She shook her head, fighting him, fighting the pleasure.



“No?” When she was this close? “Sweetheart, you’re so primed I could get you off with a few licks of my tongue. Wouldn’t you like that? To feel your hard little clit in my mouth, sucking you, tonguing you?”



“I don’t fuck animals,” she snapped, desperate anger filling her voice as the words whiplashed in his mind, causing him to still above her, his fingers poised to rub against the distended little knot of nerve endings awaiting his touch.



Before he could stop himself, an enraged snarl left his lips, causing her to pale further before he managed to jerk back from her, whipping the blanket over her naked body as he fought for control.



“You’ll fuck me,” he growled furiously. “Before you leave here, you’ll be on your knees begging me to fuck you.”



“Not even if you had the finest carpet covering the floors,” she shot back furiously. “If I wanted to fuck one of your kind, I could have had my pick of you at any time. Coyotes aren’t the only Breeds still beneath my father’s command, Tanner. Remember that.”



He bared his teeth, the predator raging inside him, roaring for release, for surrender. Her surrender.



“Get dressed,” he snapped. “Now. And the next time you call me an animal, Scheme, I’m going to show you exactly what your goddamned father helped train for all those years.”



He stalked from the room, taking the nearest tunnel, and headed topside again. If he didn’t get away from her, if he didn’t get the smell of her out of his head, then he was going to end up forcing that surrender. And that was something he had sworn he would never do.



CHAPTER 7



Oh God, what had she done? She had a death wish; it was that simple. Because she had seen murder in Tanner’s eyes the second she’d thrown that final remark at him.



Desperation. Fear. Scheme Tallant was rumored to never know fear. She was ballsy. Deceptive. Scheming. She did not know fear.



Not true fear anyway. She had grown used to the threat she lived under beneath her father’s command. That threat, to a point, had been controllable, though, until she began taking more and more chances.



Running her hands over her face, she fought for a way out of this one. Even now, her skin felt fevered, burning for him. One touch and he made her hotter than she had ever been in her life. He made her weak. He made her remember what it was like to be young, to need to feel warmth. The brief affairs she’d had in the past were pale comparisons to what she needed now.



She was thirty years old, but sometimes she felt twice that age. Right now, she felt a hundred. As long as Tanner had been watching her, she had been watching him. He was on her short list of suspects where the Breed spy was concerned. He was privy to the Breed Cabinet’s innermost secrets. He knew security, communications and long-range plans. Things her father’s Breed spy seemed to know as well. He was exactly where he would need to be to destroy the Breeds. And to destroy her. He was a weakness.



Pushing herself to the edge of the bed, she let her feet dangle, watching the soft shadow they cast from inches above the floor.



She had needed to be touched like this once before, years ago, and she had let Chaz into her life. Chazzon St. Marks. He had played the game so well. She had needed someone so desperately that she had let him convince her that he loved her. That he needed her. What he had needed was to follow her father’s orders, track her movements and learn if she could be trusted.



She had covered her tracks well enough to keep herself from actually getting killed. But she hadn’t escaped the beatings for being ineffective in her job.



The job of tracking and seeing to the killing of Breeds who’d been entrusted with high-level information and assignments during their training within the labs had fallen to her. And she had gathered much of that information.



Some of the Breeds had escaped. And some—their deaths would always weigh heavily on her soul.



Crossing her arms over her breasts, she gritted her teeth and fought the arousal still burning through her. It had never been this strong with another man. It had never sensitized every cell in her body and made her ache for his touch.



Even her need for Chaz had never been this strong.



Chaz. She fought back the pain again. He had taken the job to kill her, coldly, methodically. She had loved him once, before she had learned that her father was paying him to fuck her. Before she had learned he was an assassin. Before she had found out he had been part of her father’s plan to abort her child. Her father was well capable of sacrificing Chaz to learn the secrets she was holding, though.



She had to get out of here. By the second it was becoming more imperative that she get as far away from the deceptively lazy Bengal Breed as possible.



Especially now.



Clothes. She got wearily to her feet before turning and dragging the heavy black bag Tanner had brought in toward her. Gripping the zipper, she pulled it open, then flipped the top back before staring into it in shock.



They were her clothes.



Her comfortable clothes, the outfits she wore to relax in, to be herself in. Soft velvet lounging pants with matching sleeveless tops and overshirts. There were silk shorts, silk pants, comfortable shirts, socks and jeans. And on top of the carefully folded clothes was her favorite vibrator. What the hell? He had packed everything but damned shoes.



She pulled a black silk, French-cut thong from the top of the pile. No bra. And she knew she had bras.



How the hell had he managed this? How close to home was she? Or had he done this after he drugged her?



She dressed quickly in the panties and black velvet lounging pants and sleeveless top. And on her feet she pulled on matching velveteen socks. Who needed carpets?



And what was she supposed to do now? Pace the floors more? Check out tunnels she had already checked a thousand times, top to bottom, and still not found the entrance?



The television didn’t work. She had tried it earlier. The stereo didn’t work, but the appliances did.



She was stuck. Until she could figure out how he was getting in and out, she was stuck there.



“There’s a washer in one of the connecting caves if you need to wash anything,” Tanner growled as he reentered the main cavern. “And you can hang your clothes—”



“In the smaller cave off this one.” She turned to face him as he exited the bathroom cave. “Are you trying to drive me insane? How the hell do I get out of here?”



“You don’t.” He stalked across the room to the suitcase, lifted it from the bed and carried it to the smaller cave on the other side of the bed. “Remember that if you decide to kill me in my sleep, little Schemer. I die here, so do you.”