Tanner's Scheme (9 page)

“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.”

She clenched her fists at her side.

“All this just to get fucked?” she asked derisively. “Fine, Tanner. Fuck me and get it over with.”

He grunted, obviously still angry. “All this to get the answers I want,” he retorted. “When you give me that, then I’ll let you go and make certain you’re safe.”

Oh, she had a lot of information her father would kill for. Information he would do anything to attain if he learned she held it, and that she was still alive.

Not the least of which was the message she had destroyed.

Her smile was mocking.

“My father knows everything I know,” she said softly. “I’m not hiding anything, Tanner. I hold enough information that I’m a risk. It’s that simple.”

She was a risk. She would have only one chance to walk away from her father when the time came, and even that could be jeopardized if she didn’t find some way to reach her contact.

“It’s that simple?” His expression was calculating, disbelieving. “Why don’t I believe you, pretty girl?”

“Who cares?”

“Why did Tallant send St. Marks to kill you? He was once your lover. The father of your child?”

“Because he trusted Chaz to get the job done,” she whispered, swallowing tightly. “You heard what he said, Tanner. He agreed with Father’s decision.”

“Why did you stay after that?” Tanner snarled furiously. “Why, Scheme? Why give your loyalty to that bastard after he killed the baby you so obviously wanted?”

What could she say? She couldn’t force the words she’d thrown at her father when he questioned her on it. General Tallant was maliciously efficient.

Why do you still love me, Scheme?
he had asked.
I took your child, yet I have your loyalty?

You did what you thought was best, Father,
she would respond sadly. She would do it so well that the Coyotes trained to smell a lie never detected the deceit.

But she couldn’t say it now. She couldn’t betray that child she had wanted so desperately by excusing even one more time the monster that had taken it away from her.

“Get ready for bed. It’s nearly midnight,” Tanner snarled when she refused to answer him.

“I’m not sleepy.” Her skin was itching and she was tired of his attitude. She was tired of being a captive. Tired of the emotions that refused to stay locked away. “Really, Tanner, have you considered the black mark this is going to become against the Breeds? Kidnapping General Tallant’s daughter? Father will let me live for years more once this becomes known. It could bring the entire Breed community down.”

“Who says you’re going to come out of here alive?” He didn’t even pause. He stripped off his shirt as he asked the question, before tossing it to the end of the bed and staring back at her. “I didn’t say anything about it.”

“Oh well, that puts me in my place,” she snapped back. “So what, you get the obligatory fuck before you break my neck?”

“I wasn’t trained to break necks,” he pointed out as his hands went to the buckle of his belt. “I was trained to rip your heart from your chest with my bare hands. Remember? Thought you had my file, pretty girl.”

Yes. He was. He was trained to kill painfully, as well as silently.

“You would have killed me by now if that was what you meant to do.” She spoke with more confidence than she felt.

“I haven’t fucked you yet. Spread your legs, keep your damned mouth shut and let me get off, then I’ll kill you.”

Her lips twitched. He was angry, and because of it, he was striking out at her. What had he said before? He had spent nights jacking off watching her sleep.

Then she frowned.

“You actually watched me. Have sex?”

“Of course.” He arched a brow at the question.

“Why?” Outrage colored her voice and she knew it. “There’s no way you could have monitored me. You’re lying.”

She refused to look down. He had already removed his boots and now he was pushing his jeans over his hips. She would not look.

“When you use that cute little blue vibrator, you always run it gently, so gently, around your clit first. It takes three times to get it in your tight little pussy. But when you do, your lashes flutter before you force yourself to hold them open. Afraid someone’s going to come in on you, darlin’? I packed the vibrator, by the way.”

He wasn’t lying. He had been watching her.

“Why?” She could feel herself trembling. Shaking. If he had been watching her, in her bedroom, then she could be in more trouble than she had ever imagined.

“Because I loved watching you trying to find what I knew didn’t exist anywhere but with me.” He tossed his jeans to the bottom of the bed, and before she could stop herself, she looked. And looked.

Oh. My. God.

Surely that couldn’t be real. It wasn’t that he was overly large, though he was large. Heavily veined. Darkly bronzed. And so fucking tempting her mouth was watering.

Her eyes jerked back up.

“You’re crazy,” she whispered, suddenly knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt at this moment that his insanity was entirely possible. Just as she knew he had no intention of hurting her. Yet.

She knew General Tallant didn’t have the control over his spy that he would have liked. That there were weeks, sometimes months before a report came through, and when it did, it was often sarcastic and bordeline insulting. That would suit Tanner’s profile. He did what he wanted, not what others expected.

For the moment, maybe, she was safe.

“Get undressed and get in the bed, Scheme. If you’re a good girl, I’ll even turn the television on for you while you’re going to sleep.”

The television? Her eyes narrowed as he smiled back at her benignly.

“That is so not fair,” she grated out. “Put some pants on at least.”

“Take your clothes off and get into bed or I’ll go to sleep while you’re standing there and there will be no television for a week.”

Her teeth clenched. “Do not talk to me as though I were a child.”

He slid into bed before pulling the sheet over his nude body. His eyes gleamed back at her, rich, golden, daring her. He was daring her to get into that bed with him.

“I can do without the television.” She shrugged, moving for the seating arrangement and the overstuffed couch. It looked more than comfortable. “Good night, Tanner.”

One minute she was walking to the couch, the next she was practically flying through the air and bouncing on the bed. Just that fast. He had moved just that fast across more than ten feet of space, counting the king-sized bed, and tossed her to it as though she weighed nothing.

Scheme fought to push her hair out of her eyes as she glared back at him.

“You’re being childish.” She kicked at him as he jerked the bottom of her pants, pulling them off. “I just put those on, you damned pervert.”

Before she could fight him off, he gripped her arms and had her up and the top wrestled off her body faster than she had managed to put it on.

“Damn you, you son of a bitch.” Breasts heavy, anger thundering through her system, her fingers curling, she tore her arms from him and went for his eyes.

“Tsk, tsk. Ladies don’t fight like that.” He batted her clawed fingers back, laughing at her. The bastard was laughing at her.

“Fucking pussy,” she snarled, her fist curling as she jumped for him.

She didn’t know who was more surprised, her or the Breed who had been laughing, when her fist connected with the side of his face.

They stared at each other in shock.

“Now…” He pushed her back to the bed, following her down, his hands pinning her arms above her head, his hard body covering hers. “You can kiss it and make it better.”

Kiss it and make it better? Scheme froze, wide-eyed, her nipples rasping over his broad chest as she fought to breathe.