Tanner's Scheme (23 page)

“You’re seriously starting to piss me—
Oomph
.”

Before she could say anything more, he lifted her. He didn’t jerk her or drag her; he lifted her into his arms before snarling over his shoulder at the surprised stranger.

Or at least he was a stranger to her.

“I’ll just, uh, put the stone back in place.” The other man cleared his throat. “You go ahead and just do whatever. I’ll wait here for Cabal.”

Tanner’s body tensed further.

“Stop it.” She slapped his chest sharply. “That sound is really starting to get on my nerves. I don’t like it.”

Surprised, he stared back at her.

“The growly thing when you’re getting hot and wild is one thing. This let’s-kill-somebody rumble really makes me ill. I’m going to throw up on you if it doesn’t stop.”

There was a snort of laughter from behind Tanner. She threw a frown over his shoulder before bringing her gaze back to the dangerous Bengal Breed.

His lips were curved, maybe into a smile. Well, at least he wasn’t snarling anymore. Not that the smile on his face was much more comforting. It was a bit hard, calculating, laced with a fair amount of anger.

“I’m in trouble, aren’t I?” she asked, flattening her hands on his chest as she stared up at him. “How much?”

“Plenty.”

She licked her lips nervously.

“I have a very good explanation.”

“No, you don’t.” With his arm around her waist, he picked her up off her feet, just that easy, and began moving down the tunnel.

“I can walk.”

“So I saw,” he growled. It wasn’t the growly, but it wasn’t the death-is-coming sound either.

“I really do have a good explanation.” She cleared her throat, wondering just how bad this was going to get.

“There were Coyote soldiers breaching the tunnels?” he asked.

“Umm, no.”

“Of course, how stupid of me,” he snapped. “You wouldn’t have reached the cover stone if there had been. One way in, one way out.”

“That’s rather foolish of you,” she pointed out. “Anything could happen. A secondary escape route is always advisable.”

That might not have been the best thing to point out. A second later she found herself pressed firmly against a wall, her feet still dangling above the floor, staring into fierce, gleaming eyes.

“Dog kills: over three dozen reported. Mercy level: zero. Proficiency level: off the fucking charts. Your father’s senior blood soldier.” His voice deepened, roughened, became savage as he spoke of the Coyote. “Do you have any fucking idea the danger you were in?”

Well, duh! She had seen the bastard kill. Her heart had nearly stopped at the sight of the Coyote. Right now, he looked a shade more understanding than Tanner.

She licked her lips. “Pretty much.”

She ran her hands from his chest to his shoulders, softened against him and bit her lip at the warning growl that rumbled in his chest.

“Pretty much?” he snarled, furious. “Pretty much?”

His hands tightened on her hips as she stared back at him, wondering if she wouldn’t have been better off facing Dog than Tanner at the moment.

She licked her lips again and let her knees lift, bending to brace on his hips as his body jerked, nearly slamming against her.

He was hard. Thick and hard, his cock driving against her pussy, shifting, stroking over the velvet lounging bottoms and the silk of her panties. And it felt really good.

Even if she was just a bit concerned. Tanner really looked just a shade pissed.

“I missed you.” And she had. Like chocolate, like coffee. The farther she had gotten away from the caverns, the more she had been certain she was making a terrible mistake.

And she had been.

His gaze flared, sexual heat burning with the anger now.

“You ran from me,” he rasped. “You nearly got your ass killed, Scheme. He could have taken you, so easily.”

“You wouldn’t have let him.” Her fingernails scraped over his shoulders to his neck, pushing beneath the collar of his shirt as the muscles in his jaw bunched.

His fingers flexed at her hips again as he lifted her, rubbing her against the erection behind his jeans. And he was really filling out those jeans.

“I might not have been able to stop him!” he bit out, his voice rough, violent. “He reached you first, Scheme. He could have killed you as easily as he let you go. Do you understand that?”

“More so than you,” she cried out. “I’ve seen him kill.”

“And you dared to fucking leave the safety of the goddamned caves?” he roared.

Damn. Whoa.

Scheme blinked back at him. Maybe he was a little bit more than pissed.

“You wouldn’t let me go,” she whispered as she gripped the collar of his shirt and jerked at it.

“I can’t let you go,” he grated, one hand moving to her hair, tangling in it and holding, pulling her head back roughly. “Even for your sake, I can’t fucking let you go.”

His lips came down on hers in starving demand. As though he had to have the taste of her. And she had to have the taste of him. To live. To breathe. To go on for another second she had to taste him, hold him. She had to be a part of him.

She had nearly walked away from this. From the one thing she had believed she could never have. And yet the one thing she had always craved. Deep down inside, where she hid the hopes and dreams, the needs that festered within a wound that never healed. This was what she craved.

“I can’t lose you,” he muttered against her lips, and her heart tripped, speeding up, nearly smothering her with the excitement racing through her as he nipped at her lips. “I can’t, Scheme. Not now. I can’t lose you.”

———

He was dying inside. Her kiss was every fantasy he had ever dared let himself imagine, and a few he hadn’t. Her hands in his hair, her tongue meeting his, licking, rubbing against it. Rubbing against a damned tongue whose mating glands were dormant, normal, and refused to swell with the mating hormone that would mark her as his forever.

What the hell was he going to do? How was he going to survive letting her go to another man?

He knew his kisses were desperate. As his lips slanted over hers, hunger clawed at his guts, his balls. The need to mark her was so overwhelming that when he found his teeth opening over her shoulder, it sent a surge of shock tearing through him.

Not his mate.

Fighting for control, he dropped his forehead against the silken flesh instead and closed his eyes. Instantly, his sense of touch and smell sharpened. He could feel her need for him, smell her arousal, but something was different.

Scheme never relaxed against him until those minutes after her orgasm when she had no other choice. She was wary, always cautious, always on guard. Until now.

“I knew I shouldn’t have left even before I saw Dog,” she whispered at his ear. “I shouldn’t have left you.”

A part of his soul was dying at her admission. Trust. He could feel her beginning to trust him, and he was going to have to let her go. He couldn’t ignore the truth any longer. There were no mating signs.
She wasn’t his mate.

He pressed his lips to her neck though he stepped back, forcing her legs to release him as he found the courage to lift his head and stare down at her.

“We’ll talk later.” He scowled at the effort it took to force his hands to release her hips and allow her to stand on her own.

“I don’t want to talk later, Tanner. I have to tell you—”

His fingers covered her lips. He could sense what she wanted to say. The sweet spice of the emotional storm brewing within her would rip his soul out. If she whispered the words, he would never survive what he had to do.

“Later,” he whispered, feeling the words tear from him. “Come on, Cabal will be here in a few minutes.”

“Cabal?” Confusion filled her eyes.

“That mountain out there is a fucking war zone, Scheme.” He grabbed her wrist and began to pull her through the tunnel. “You’re damned lucky you didn’t run into more trouble than just Dog.”

He had to push the thought back. He had to force himself to do what had to be done here. He had never shirked his responsibilities; he had never tried to hide from the truth of his life, no matter how much it had sucked at times.

Right now, he wanted nothing more than to hide. To find a place outside of reality where he and Scheme could exist together forever.

And it wasn’t going to happen. No matter how much he wished it could. Which left only one last resort to save her. To give her to her true mate.

CHAPTER 18

Other than the color of his hair and eyes, Cabal St. Laurents was identical to Tanner. The difference in the hair was a matter of transposed colors. Tanner’s was black with burnished gold streaks. Cabal’s was a burnished gold with black streaks. Tanner’s eyes were deep, rich amber with flecks of brilliant green. Cabal’s were green with flecks of amber. Both men were exactly six feet and two inches tall. Both men were hard, muscular and had the looks of a fallen angel. Neither could, by any stretch of the imagination, be called angels though. They were equally dangerous.

Scheme’s father had once had extensive files on the two Bengal Breeds, their training and strengths, as well as their weaknesses. Scheme had nearly memorized those files. During his stay in the labs, Tanner had played the game perfectly. He had excelled at every obstacle he was pitted against, killed with proficiency and proved to the psychologists that he was a loyal Breed Killer, even at a young age.

He was considered one of the labs’ greatest failures now, and one of Callan Lyons’s greatest weapons in rescuing the Breeds from the New Mexico labs.

Cabal had been another story. His training had been filled with pitfalls. He refused to practice the maneuvers taught to him, and used his own. He refused to kill when ordered, but had no problem killing soldiers and trainers. He refused to talk to the psychologists and was labeled psychotic by the doctors working with him.

At the age of twenty-five he was declared a failure, without hope of training, and listed for cancellation along with nearly two dozen other Breeds. He had survived weeks in a pit designed to kill with torturous precision.

“I don’t think your friend trusts me, Tanner,” he commented hours after his arrival, as Scheme moved slowly from the bathroom into the main cavern.

Tanner stood by the counter, a beer in one hand, the other tucked into the pocket of his jeans while Cabal sat at the table, relaxed in his chair, his beer sitting in front of him.

“Is my trust required?” Scheme finally asked as she moved to the refrigerator and pulled free a bottle of water.

She had bathed and changed clothes and, for the first time since walking out of the caverns, felt warm again. Safe. God, she hadn’t realized the toll her life had taken on her over the years, until now.

And now she had to wait just a little while longer. Cabal would leave soon, and when he did, she could talk to Tanner. She could explain why she left, and why she needed so desperately to talk to Jonas.

“Perhaps not.” Cabal shrugged, his gaze boring into her. “At least not right now.”

She gave him a distrustful glare before moving past Tanner and heading to the seating arrangement located in front of the television.

“You know, your daddy was on the television last night,” Cabal announced. “His cheeks even got wet with tears as he begged for your return.”

She paused before turning to face him.

“Cabal, let it go,” Tanner ordered him softly.

Cabal’s green eyes flicked to Tanner before returning to Scheme with a gleam of predatory interest and satisfaction.

“Let what go?” she asked them both.

Her heart was heavy, sluggish, bordering on panicked. She hated that feeling, the premonition of danger, a sense of warning.

“Nothing,” he finally murmured, a mocking grin tugging at his lips as he glanced back at Tanner. “It can wait.”

Tanner shook his head as though in resignation, while Cabal’s grin deepened.

“Call me the impatient sort then,” she responded tightly.

“I already had that one pegged.” Cabal lifted his brows mockingly. “You know, I
can
smell your arousal as well.”

She didn’t flush or blush. Instead she sighed.

“It takes a lot more than that to humiliate me, Mr. St. Laurents,” she informed him. “Try again.”

“I think I could come in my jeans just watching his cock stretch your pussy,” he responded. “It would be enough to make a hungry man lick his lips in anticipation.”

She glanced at Tanner, watching the way his brows lowered and his stare toward his brother became dark.

What the hell was going on here? It was as though Cabal were deliberately trying to piss her
and
Tanner off.

“Those lips are the only thing you’re going to be licking where I’m concerned,” she told him sweetly. “If you and Tanner have an itch to play more of your games, then you can play them somewhere else.”

“It won’t be the first time you’ve let your lover share you, Scheme,” Cabal pointed out. “What made you trust that assassin more than you trust the Breed that saved your ass?”

She turned slowly, staring back at Cabal silently, furiously. Why bring this up? The fact that Chaz had shared her with another man shouldn’t be anything to Cabal. Had Tanner shown him the videos? They had shared women, she knew. Had they shared viewing the video feed Tanner had watched?

“He didn’t see the surveillance, Scheme.” Tanner’s voice held a note of resignation. “It was in my report.”

“You reported on what you saw?” she asked past the tightness in her chest.

“When needed.” He shrugged. “Allowing St. Marks to bring an FBI agent believed to be loyal to the Breeds to your bed was of interest to Security.”

“What was St. Marks paying him for?” Cabal asked. “And I should point out, that while you showered, the agent thanked St. Marks nicely for the two of you meeting his price so easily.”

She stared back at them blankly. It was one of the last times Chaz had touched her. Not that the experience hadn’t been pleasurable, but the hollow sense of shame that had filled her later had followed her for years. And now it was back.