Tanner's Scheme

He pushed her hair forward, suddenly as reluctant to ask the questions as he knew she would be to answer them. Sometime in the past Cyrus Tallant had killed her child. Tanner had heard the pain in her voice, the bitterness as she refused to discuss it with the father who had aided Tallant in the vile act. But that didn’t mean she had any loyalty to his enemies. Until he knew for certain, he would have to play his game very carefully.



The scent of honor he had detected from her, mixing with deceit, anger and bitterness, could have been there for many reasons. She could believe in what she was doing. It was possible. She could hate her father and yet believe in his battle against the Breeds.



At this point, nothing was certain except the need to learn the truth.



CHAPTER 5



Why was she letting him do this?



She was never this weak. It wasn’t acceptable.



Scheme stiffened her body, attempting to lift her head, to deny the erotic thrill of calloused fingertips working over her scalp.



“Shh. Relax.” Those diabolical hands gripped her neck, and strong fingers began to work the tense muscles as she forced back a moan.



She had never had a man bathe her. Ever. And now she knew why. The intimacy of the act was a weakness itself.



Swallowing tightly, she kept her head down, forcing her breathing to become regular while he wrung the water from her hair and twisted it expertly into a towel.



“Lean back.” His voice was insidiously soft, his hands firm as he gripped her shoulders and forced her to recline against the back of the porcelain tub.



“There you go. Just rest,” he murmured. The sound was a purr of male satisfaction, one she wanted to fight.



She was in dangerous territory here and she knew it. Her father could have more than one spy in Sanctuary, and she knew that at least the one she knew of was in a very high position. She couldn’t discount Tanner.



At this point, anyone within Sanctuary was suspect. Especially Tanner. He was trained in non-weapon warfare. Before he was fifteen years of age he had excelled in guerilla infiltration and subversive techniques. The Council scientists had determined he had the mental capabilities and lack of emotion to excel at it. He could just as easily be one of the spies her father had managed to secure within Sanctuary as any other Breed could be.



Trusting him was too dangerous.



Just because Tanner had rescued her from Chaz didn’t mean he could be trusted. Her father knew about the message she had destroyed; he knew she wouldn’t break if he hurt her, or if he buried her. Tanner could have been her father’s insurance. He could have been in place to gain her trust, even if it meant killing Chaz.



General Cyrus Tallant was nothing if not diabolical, and he left very few things to chance. He would have wanted that information above all things, if possible.



“What do you want from me?”



“There are a lot of things I want from you.” He eased around the tub, a bath sponge in one hand, a bottle of bath gel in the other.



Scheme watched as he squeezed the gel onto the sponge then set the bottle on the floor.



“Like?”



His eyes were alive. The colors within them brightened and dimmed, shifted and shadowed.



“Should I make a list?” He dipped the sponge into the water before lifting her arm and beginning to bathe her.



“Yes, make a list,” she said. “I’ll read it later. And I can bathe myself.”



Strength. All she needed was a little more strength. Moving jerkily, she had gone to push herself upright, when firm hands, not rough, but firm, insistent hands, pressed her back.



“You’re as weak as a kitten,” he purred. “You don’t have to fight me, Scheme.”



“No, I just have to lie back and allow you to molest me.” She didn’t fight him. She had learned long ago there were better ways to meet force rather than head on.



“Molest you?” The sponge paused on her arm. “How am I molesting you?”



“I prefer not to be touched by you, Tanner.”



“I didn’t ask your preference.” His jaw tightened.



Scheme shrugged lazily. “Then the technical term for such force is molestation, Mr. Reynolds.”



He dropped her arm into the water. For the smallest second, she assumed she had won. Now, what did they say about that word? Assume. Something about an ass, she thought in amusement.



A second later he had reached across the tub and gripped her other arm.



“Fine. I’m molesting you.” His hard shoulders shrugged in return. “Breeds weren’t trained to be politically correct or sexually polite either. We were trained to take what we want.”



And it was obvious that among other things he might want, he wanted her.



“Do you ever take no for an answer?” she asked as he let her arm drop into the water once again before dipping his hand below and lifting her knee.



“Rarely,” he answered. “Now prop your foot on the edge of the tub.”



“You’re pissing me off.” But she did as he asked, her gaze focusing on the sponge traveling over her leg.



How much more humiliating could this get?



“Why did your father beat you? And don’t deny it, I heard every word St. Marks said.”



Damn Chaz and his loose lips. He should have just broken her neck and kept his damned mouth shut. She didn’t need all these questions.



“Because I’m into pain?” She glanced at him from the corner of her eye as she let a smile tug at her lips. She did mocking amusement rather well when needed.



“Do you practice that look in the mirror for effect?” he asked as he lowered her leg back to the water before lifting the opposite knee.



“Do you get off on torturing women? What the hell do you want? You’ve been watching me for years. I know you have, you know you have. Why? Why rescue me? Why kidnap me? And why the hell do you think I need you to bathe me?”



She jerked her leg back from him and jackknifed upright as she glared back at him. His hand snapped out and wrapped around her neck as the growly thing turned dangerous.



There was no pressure. Only the threat of it.



“Do it,” she lashed out at him, amazing herself with her own daring. “Go ahead. Snap my neck. You know you want to. Get it over with.”



She had lived with the fear of punishment and death for twenty years. She had sacrificed more than he would ever know and in doing so had come to realize that death wasn’t the terrifying specter she had once imagined.



Cause for regret, yes. Terrifying, no.



She had realized it long before she knew that the man she had once loved was going to kill her.



“Your father ordered your death,” he snapped. “He sent your former lover to do the deed. The father of the child you never had. And he was going to kill you, Scheme. He wasn’t having second thoughts. Why did General Tallant suddenly decide to kill his only child?”



“Why do you want to kill me?” She kept her voice cold. Hard. “Really, Tanner, do you think I give him any less trouble than I’ve given the Breeds?”



“Your father beat you!” Rage flamed in his eyes. She swore the swirling amber nearly blazed.



“And you care why?” Her fingers locked around his wrist as she reminded herself that his fingers weren’t tightening on her throat. That she really could breathe.



“I’m going to kill that son of a bitch,” he suddenly whispered, his face coming closer, his lips pulled back from his teeth to reveal the wicked incisors, top and bottom, at each side. “Do you hear me, Scheme? I’m going to gut him with my bare hands.”



“Are you—”



She gasped, the words cut off as his lips suddenly covered hers and an explosion of pleasure began to storm her body.



It was just a kiss. That was all. Lips meeting. His tongue pressing forward, invading, licking…Oh God, he was licking at her mouth, purring into the kiss, and flames were searing her.



This wasn’t just a kiss. This wasn’t just pleasure. It was a claiming. And she was helpless beneath it.



The hell it was. This was a kiss that stole into the soul and stoked flames she had never known existed within her. It was a fiery invasion that had her reaching for more, had her hands moving to his hair, tangling in the silky mass to hold him to her. She heard her own moans slipping past her lips to his and reveled in them. For the moment.



It was the closest thing to ecstasy she had ever known in her life.



“Damn you!” Just as quickly as he had taken the kiss, he broke it off.



Scheme stared back at him in shock as he jerked back from her, surging to his feet with a force that stunned her.



“Get out and dry off,” he snarled, his expression filled with disgust. “And don’t take all day. If I have to come back in here, I’ll bend you over the damned tub and drown your ass while I show you what it’s like to be fucked by a Breed. Let’s see what you think about pain then.”



She could only stare back at him. For once, her normal glib responses were absent, her brain in chaos. For some reason this kiss was more destructive than the orgasm he had given her in that hotel room.



He turned and stomped from the bathroom, jerking the curtain so hard he nearly ripped it from the heavy rod holding it.



“Oh hell,” she whispered as she stared at the closed curtain, fighting to swallow. To taste something other than the fierce, heated taste of Tanner’s lust. And damn if his lust didn’t taste good.



CHAPTER 6



There had to be a way out of here. Somehow he had managed to drag her into these caverns, and that meant there had to be an entrance. He was a Breed, not a ghost. Well, not the dead kind of ghost, anyway. In the last forty-eight hours he had snuck out of the cavern without her seeing him and disappeared for several hours. And she had yet to even find the damned exit.



There had to be twenty tunnels running around in a maze that led directly back to the main cavern. There were no extra tunnels, at least none that she could find.



She had to get out. She had already been here too long and she knew it. She had to find Jonas, give him the information she had and secure her own safety. Then she could deal with Tanner on her terms rather than his.



This was incredibly bad.



Moving through the narrow tunnel she had been investigating, she reentered the storage cave and made her way back into the cavern and the man waiting on her. He sure as hell hadn’t been there when she began investigating tunnels, so he had to have slipped in while she was searching. Which just pissed her off.



“I’m getting tired of playing this game,” she snapped as she came face-to-face with Tanner’s mocking smile.



Tightening her hold on the large bath towel she used to cover her body, she glared at him, not in the least surprised that her anger wasn’t affecting him in the slightest.



“You won’t find the exit, Schemer; you can stop looking.” He turned his back on her, moving across the room to the bed, where he dropped a large black bag on the mattress.



When he turned back to her, his gaze was considerably hotter, though his lashes drifted over his eyes with drowsy sexuality. He had been giving her those looks for two days now. Sexy, body-licking looks. She could almost feel his tongue stroking over her flesh.



“You can’t keep me here forever, Tanner.” He wasn’t listening now any more than he had listened to her before.



“I brought you some clothes.” He indicated the black bag. “I assumed you were growing tired of running around here naked.”



She glanced at the bag. There were enough clothes there for several weeks if he had any clue at all when it came to packing. She assumed he did. She hoped he did.



“Tanner.” She crossed her arms over her breasts, holding the towel in place. “There are things at stake here. You have to let me go.”



“What’s at stake, Scheme? Another strike against Sanctuary? Another plan to kill Breeds? Tell you what, tell me what your precious daddy has planned and I’ll think about letting you go. Better yet, tell me what he was willing to kill you for.” His expression was friendly; his eyes were roiling with danger.