“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.

“Trust me, Scheme.” His chest clenched at the scent. “Please. Just this once. Just right now, sweetheart. Trust me not to hurt you.”

“I can’t…” A sharp cry left her throat as he pushed inside her to the hilt, his cock pulsing, throbbing with the heated grip she had on it. “Oh God, Tanner, I can’t stand it. What are you doing to me? You can’t do this.” Her fingernails were pricking at his scalp sensually, her hips writhing against his, her legs tightening around his back as her pleasure began to increase.

“You can’t control this, Scheme.” He wanted to smile. She was as much a control freak as he. She needed to know every step she was taking, needed to acknowledge it and understand its consequences. There was no understanding this. No controlling it.

“I have to.” She was gasping as he moved against her, stroking his dick inside her, caressing her, driving them both crazy as sensations built, one atop the other, pushing them headlong into a dark, unknown center of lust.

“Give to me, Scheme.” He didn’t want her frightened. She had feared too much in her life, known too much pain, too many betrayals. “Just here, just now, little love, trust me.”

She stared back at him, tears welling in her eyes as he pulled back until only the head of his cock remained inside her, before he slowly, with agonizing pleasure, penetrated her once again.

“Just don’t hurt me, Tanner. Please don’t hurt me.”

And he knew she didn’t mean physically. She was begging him not to betray her.

He smiled sadly. The beast had known his mate, but he hadn’t. The woman Scheme kept hidden deep inside her, the woman that wept, that feared, trusted him. It was the conscious woman, the one who had known unbelievable pain, who feared.

“My mate.” He paused, buried full-length inside her, his cock throbbing, surrounded by hot, tight silk. “I would die for you.”

He licked at her lips, slid his tongue inside her mouth, growled as she opened to him, her tongue tangling with his, tasting the dark brew that released from the mating glands and giving herself to him.

No fear. She accepted him, if only as this, for now.

His hands clenched her buttocks, his hips moved and he was lost in her. Pleasure burned and built. It raced through his body and left him climbing, reaching…dying in her arms.

She couldn’t make sense of the pleasure. But she never had. From the first touch, days before, knowing he could kill her, destroy her, the pleasure that came from his touch hadn’t made sense.

Her body trusted him; she couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t hold on to the distrust and the fear when he touched her. And now. Something was different now. From the moment he had bitten her, his teeth sinking into her flesh, his tongue numbing the wound and then burning it—it had changed.

The need, the hunger, wasn’t just indescribable pleasure any longer. It was a firefight inside her body. Whipping lashes of burning sensation that bordered on pain increased the pleasure, forced her to ride a boundary between the two so fine it was terrifying.

Swirling vortexes of lightning resounded beneath her flesh. Charged with erotic intensity and weakening carnality. It was like sinking into a whirlwind of such heated delight that the senses exploded. There was too much pleasure.

His lips on hers, his tongue tasted of a storm, lightning-charged, damp and earthy, sweet. There was nothing to compare it to, no other taste she had ever known that even came close.

And she needed more. She tangled her tongue with his, sucked at it and let herself fall into the wicked vortex overtaking her.

The pleasure would kill her. Her arms tightened around his neck, her legs around his back, and she moved against him, forcing his cock deeper with each stroke inside her swollen, overly sensitive vagina.

She had never been so sensitive, so swollen. His cock felt like a fist inside her, stretching her, stroking sensually as she felt her muscles spasming around him.

“Tanner.” She could barely breathe, let alone speak. Yet she couldn’t stay silent. She couldn’t process the pleasure fast enough to find a steady shore amid this storm.

She was going to come again. She could feel it racing it toward her, like a tidal wave preparing to swamp her.

“Tanner. Help me.” Her hands clenched in his hair as it began to beat at her womb, convulsing it, tightening it. “Please, Tanner,” she tried to scream. “Help me.”

He thrust harder inside her then, faster. Heat seared hidden nerve endings, pushing her closer as fingers of blistering sensation began to clench in her womb.

The orgasm ripped through her. Arching, tightening, she screamed his name, her hips writhing, pushing harder on the impaling flesh, fucking him back with mindless hunger. It tore through her senses and flung her through a velvet-dark landscape of such ecstasy she didn’t know if she could ever survive without it.

“God yes, sweetheart,” he was growling at her ear. “So tight. So hot. Fuck me back. Damn you, yes! Fuck me, Scheme.”

They were moving. The cold wall became the cushions of the couch. Her lashes fluttered open as she felt her thighs being pushed back, her hips lifted and his cock spearing so deep inside her she screamed again from the pleasure.

It was too much. Too much for her body. Too much for her mind. His touch was like fire, the stroke of his cock inside her like pure energized sensation. Wicked, destructive, carnal, his expression was dark with it.

“It’s not over,” he grated, growled. “More. Come more for me.”

She was dying from the pleasure. Her hands gripped his forearms as she shook her head, feeling perspiration running along her body, the burning heat inside her spiking to a point that she wondered if she would combust.

“Tanner…” It was building again; she could feel it, the need unlike anything her brain could process.

“All of you,” he snarled. “I’ll take all of you.”

He came over her, pushing her legs around his back, pumping his cock hard and deep inside her as one hand moved around her rear, his fingers caressing, stroking, then finding an area so sensitive, so erotic, that when his fingers parted the little entrance and slid home, she lost her mind.

Her teeth locked on his shoulder, mindless guttural screams leaving her throat as his fingers pumped inside her ass, his cock pumped inside her vagina, and she was destroyed.

She thought there could be no greater pleasure. She thought she had reached the pinnacle. Until she felt his release.

His cock throbbed inside the tight muscles of her vagina, then seemed to swell, just beneath the thick crest, like a thumb reaching out, locking into an area inside her that had never been touched, just behind the convulsing muscle, stroking, pulsing and burning with destructive heat as she felt him begin to spurt inside her.

He was locked inside her. His teeth at her shoulder again bit into her even as her teeth locked on his flesh. Growls left his throat. One hand clenched on her hip as two fingers of the other stretched her rear, and Scheme knew she was lost.

Destroyed. The woman she had been buckled, and the wall between innocence and pain collapsed beneath the orgasm that swept not just her body, but her soul, as she realized in one blinding second that not only had the man’s body taken her, but the animal he was had just marked her forever.

CHAPTER 21

Tanner sat on the couch, his head lowered, his hands clasped between his knees as he turned his head and stared at the bed.

Scheme had cried. She hadn’t sobbed. But as he laid her carefully in the bed, her slight body had shuddered as tears ran from beneath her closed lashes. And he couldn’t comfort her. She wouldn’t let him.

“Just leave,” she had whispered. “Please. Just leave.”

He couldn’t leave. He had covered her with the quilt and retreated to the other side of the room instead, trying to make sense of what he sensed inside her.

There was no pain. Weariness. Resignation. But no true pain. And love. The scent of that emotion was unmistakable. He had smelled it between other mates, sometimes, even before the mating. It was a scent unlike anything else. Summer and heat, chocolate and liquor. It was pure emotion, addictive and soothing, yet Scheme wasn’t soothed. And neither was he.

The mating hadn’t been easy. Son of a bitch. He grimaced at the knowledge of what he had allowed to happen. The animal inside had gained its freedom in a way he had never expected. It had taken over, claimed him and his mate in a way Tanner couldn’t have anticipated. In a way he would have stopped if he had the control to do so.

He ran his fingers wearily through his hair, his head lifting before he pulled himself painfully to his feet.

The torn edges of his shirt draped over his chest as he turned to face Cabal, seeing the heavy knowledge in his brother’s face as he entered the room.

Tanner moved slowly, wearily, to the cabinet, where he pulled out the whiskey and two glasses and gestured to the tunnel. He moved ahead of Cabal, leading the way to another smaller cavern farther into the system of caves.

Lights flickered on as they entered the cave, revealing a secure communications room equipped with computers, camera monitors and surveillance equipment that linked to the hidden remote cameras scattered around the properties Callan owned.

Scheme had found this room days before. Tanner’s lips quirked at the knowledge of the time she had spent in there trying to get the equipment to work until she realized it was fingerprint, DNA, and pupil-scan protected.

But she had tried. He had to give her give her credit for her persistence; she wasn’t a quitter. She was strong and courageous, passionate and sassy. And he loved her. God, he loved her until it broke his heart in half.

A couch, table and several comfortable chairs sat in a rounded corner of the room. Tanner threw himself in the couch, leaned forward and poured himself a healthy drink.

“Liquor affects the mating heat, Tanner,” Cabal reminded him softly as he took a seat in one of the chairs opposite the couch. “You know it makes it worse.”

“It can’t get worse.” Tanner wiped his hand over his face before tossing back the burning liquor, grimacing as it burnt its way to his gut.

Rubbing at his beard-stubbled chin, it suddenly struck him that for all the Breed males’ lack of body hair, none of them had a problem growing a beard. Sometimes he wondered about the genetic mix they were learning they were. Was the world truly better off without them?

Lifting his gaze to Cabal, he breathed out roughly. “You knew.”

His brother had known Scheme was Tanner’s mate; there was no other explanation. Cabal would have never walked away from the woman his soul screamed out for.

Cabal leaned back in the chair and sipped at the whiskey, his gaze somber as he stared back.

“I’ve suspected it for years,” he said. “I caught a scent of her just after I’d healed from the pits. My first assignment under the new Bureau was to shadow her for a few weeks. Each time I caught a scent of her, I could sense a connection. It just took a while to figure it out.”

“How long since you’ve figured it out?” Tanner growled.

Cabal’s gaze flickered. “Six, seven years maybe.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” His jaw clenched in anger. “Why?”

Cabal leaned forward, lowering his head to stare into his glass before sighing deeply and lifting his head.