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 f**ked 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 cl*t first. It takes three times to get it in your tight little pu**y. 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 f**king 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 pu**y,” 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 ni**les rasping over his broad chest as she fought to breathe.
Breeds were thought to have no body hair. Few people knew the truth: that the hairs on their bodies were so tiny, the color so perfectly matched to their flesh, that it was like a thin pelt. And at the moment, she could feel every tiny hair her ni**les were raking as her br**sts heaved beneath him.
The sensation was exquisite. Fiery. So heated she could feel herself melting against him, losing strength, losing control.
“God, you’re warm,” he murmured, lowering his head until his lips were close to her ear, his abused face next to her lips. “Now kiss me better, pretty girl, so we can go to sleep.”
Helplessly, hopelessly she turned her head, her lips touching the small spot of blood she had drawn at the side of his mouth.
His body tightened violently; his breathing became harder, heavier, as his jaw clenched. A violent groan tore from his lips as she licked at the cut at the corner of his lips, the salty taste of his flesh mingling with the coppery flavor of his blood.
And it should not have been erotic. It shouldn’t have gotten her so wet she could feel her juices gathering all along her pu**y, thick and hot and making her crazy with the need to be touched.
“Enough.” He was gone as fast as, if not faster than he had grabbed her.
Hard-on bobbing out from his body, his expression set and furious once again.
Scheme sat up as he threw himself back into the bed and jerked the blankets over his body. She wondered if he had any idea how close he’d come to making her beg that time.
“Has anyone ever mentioned that you’re not exactly stable?” she finally asked.
“Yeah, every time they caught me and Cabal double-teaming one of our lovelies,” he snarled. “Now f**king go to sleep before you find out exactly what one-half of the last two surviving Bengal Breeds can do.”