“That was a mistake.” Oh yeah, big mistake. That was why every cell in her body was reaching out for him. Good going, Scheme, just keep up the good fight there, her inner voice of reason chided her.
“The mistake is in lying to me, pretty girl,” he growled, his eyes flashing with a dangerous mix of lust, danger and anger. “Now, we’ll assume the good general has decided his daughter is no better than his coyotes and you’ve just become a liability. So why stay?”
Ahh, the reasons. Just let her count them. Of course, it could take days.
“And go where?” she asked. “By the time I was strong enough to run, your people were free and many of them would have eagerly killed me if they had caught me. They would have hunted me. Just as my father would have hunted me.”
“You had enough information against him to turn evidence during the hearings in the Senate and secure your safety.”
Scheme gave him a droll stare. “I was twenty years old, and I was still fighting the conditioning Father had used to raise me. When you train a child rather than raise it, Tanner, you condition it to certain things. I was conditioned. By the time I had the strength to break away, it was too late. And I knew it. He would have never let me live. And he’ll be even more determined now to see me dead.”
To a point, it was the truth. Once she had found the strength to break her conditioning though, the hatred had been all she lived for. It was then that she had secretly met with Jonas Wyatt and made her bargain. In exchange for her complete safety when the time came, she would help him bring her father down. He had enough information now. And she had more that she had held back for insurance when that time came. She could have waited. She could have tried to gain the last vital pieces of information that she needed to access the inner sanctum of the Genetics Council, but her time had run out.
If she didn’t get away from him soon and get to Jonas, then it would be too late for the pride leader’s son. And if that happened, then the Breeds world would quickly go to hell in a handbasket. Because nothing would restrain their rage then.
Her time had run out. And Tanner was deceptive enough, merciless enough, that he could be trying to gain her trust for one reason only. To gain the information her father’s agent had sent, the location of the first Leo and his child. That information couldn’t get into the wrong hands. Until she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Tanner wasn’t her father’s spy, then she couldn’t trust. She couldn’t afford to ever trust her heart or her hunger again. Chaz had taught her better than that.
Her eyes were cold. The dark chocolate gaze was unemotional, uncaring. She could have been talking about the weather. But what he saw and what he could smell were two different things. His eyes saw a cold, hard shell. But he rarely depended on his eyes alone.
He could smell her pain, just as he could smell her fear and the anger she was tamping so deep inside her that it festered like an open wound.
She was fighting desperately to shut it all down. He could sense that. She had to obliterate all emotion to survive the darkness her father had placed inside her. And he couldn’t allow that. Smelling her fear made the animal inside him pace and thirst for blood. It did nothing to keep the man he was in control.
He knew all about conditioning and training. He had lived beneath Tallant’s guidelines for the first fifteen years of his life. As an animal. A weapon that had to be molded for effectiveness.
“Once you had the strength to break away, why was it too late?”
Her gaze flickered with shadows of deceit. He hated that deceit.
“I was already created,” she whispered then with a mocking smile, her gaze meeting his with icy knowledge. “It was too late. And it’s too late for this, Tanner. Go ahead and kill me. You’d be doing the world a favor. Wouldn’t you?”
“I won’t hurt you.” He forced the fury back and focused on his desire rather than his rage. On the hunger rather than the bleak memories he glimpsed in her eyes. “As a matter of fact, pretty girl…” He let his lips brush hers with the barest touch.
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 br**sts 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 ni**les.
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 f**k her.