Tanner's Scheme (11 page)

His hand smoothed over her ass again.

God, she had the prettiest butt. Rounded and creamy, though blushing now from the erotic little spanking he had given her.

He flipped the top open on the lubricating jelly and spread a line along his fingers, grimacing at the hunger eating at him. God, he needed to fuck her. He had to fuck her or he was going to die from the hunger.

Laying the tube aside, he used one hand to part the rounded cheeks of her rear before preparing the tiny entrance for a deeper caress. He smeared the gel over the opening, pressed the tip of one finger against it, smiled tightly, then added the second finger.

And she took him. She opened up like a dream, taking the penetration, begging for it.

Her back bowed. Her cry echoed around him. The scent of her pussy had his mouth watering and his dick jerking in demand.

A hard, gravelly growl left his throat as his fingers slid inside her, feeling the tender muscles tighten around them as her hips jerked back, driving him deeper.

He twisted his wrist, rotating his fingers in the little hole. The scent of her arousal was invading his brain now. He could smell nothing else. Taste nothing else.

Gripping his cock, Tanner moved closer.

“Tell me to fuck you,” he snarled. “Ask for it.”

“Damn you!”

“Ask for it.”

He couldn’t take her without it. He wouldn’t take her without it.

“Tanner, please.”

He pushed his fingers deeper, scissored them, felt her shudder.

“Ask me for it, Scheme.”

“I hate you!” she snarled.

“You want me.” He pressed his other hand between her thighs, feeling the saturated curls before he ran his fingers around her straining clit. “Now ask me for it.”

“Fuck me!” She drove her hips back.

His fingers buried inside her as the head of his cock slid against moist, swollen curves.

Pulling his hand back from her wet curls, he fought to breathe as he positioned his straining flesh. Pressing into her pussy was like entering a super-heated, super-tight furnace of liquid silk.

Sweat ran down his face, his chest, as he eased into her. Hell, she was so tight. Too tight.

“How long?” he snapped. “How long since you’ve had another?”

“You watched me,” she stuttered. “You know.”

He paused. It had been more than a year, perhaps two since a man had been to her bed.

“Outside your bed,” he growled.

Her head shook desperately, her hips straining against him.

“Only my bed. Not theirs.”

He snarled again, pulled his tortured cock back before working inside her again.

“Does it hurt?”

“God yes!” she cried. “More. Just do it. More.”

His head tipped back on his shoulders as his hips pressed forward. Pulled back. Gave her more. Her sharp cries were breaking his control. He needed to bury inside her. He needed the full length of his tortured dick surrounded by all that tight, wet heat.

“Please, Tanner.”

Her strangled scream, the scent of her need, her pussy flexing around his cock and her tight little rear tightening on his fingers were too much.

His control broke.

Scheme screamed. She couldn’t help herself, not that the sound held any true power. You had to breathe to scream effectively. She couldn’t breathe. She was too hot. She was burning, fevered with lust and so full, stretched so tight the pleasure/pain of it was just short of too much.

Her shoulders fell to the mattress, her fingers clenching in the quilt as she cried. Tears actually squeezed from beneath her lashes. There was too much pleasure. Too much of the sensations she had never experienced before but always reached for.

“Fuck, you’re tight.” He was snarling behind her, growling. “So fucking tight.”

His fingers moved in her rear, rotating, rubbing. His erection pulled back, spreading the excess moisture along the sensitized channel before spearing inside her again.

It was too much. The first orgasm was a hard, drowning wave. It rushed through her, over her, shuddered up her spine and sizzled in her brain. It caught her so off guard that she was gasping, clawing at the bed, her own mewls of ever-increasing ecstasy stealing what breath she had left.

“Damn you!” he cursed.

He stilled inside her, his cock throbbing, the needs inside her far from sated.

She needed it again. Oh God please, just one more time.

“Please…” She was barely aware she was begging, pleading. “More. More.”

The hand gripping her hips snaked around the front of her thighs, his fingers finding her clit. His fingers moved more demandingly in her rear, and his hips thrust. Hard. Powerful. Deep plunging strokes as his fingers milked her clit.

And that growly thing.

The heat in her rear.

The overstretched flesh of her pussy.

More deep plunging strokes. Hard, forceful, stripping away her inhibitions, tearing past her restraint.

The second orgasm destroyed her. It exploded in every cell of her body, every molecule. She felt the muscles of her vagina tightening on him, heard his curses behind her, and felt the deep, hard pulses of her juices meeting the forceful spurts of his release. She was lost within a maelstrom she could have never imagined existed. A whirlwind of so many sensations, so much pleasure, that her brain just couldn’t process it all.

But when it did, the fever was calmed, sated, exhaustion washing over her and sending her collapsing to the bed.

She was barely aware of him falling to the mattress beside her. For some reason, she was very aware of his arms coming around her though, pulling her tight to his chest as he jerked the quilt over her rapidly cooling body.

For the first time in her life, after sex, she was sated. Even more, she was content.

———

B
UREAU
OF
B
REED
A
FFAIRS
W
ASHINGTON
, D.C.

GENERAL’S DAUGHTER MISSING

Jonas stared at the newspaper laid out on his desk, one finger rubbing thoughtfully over his pursed lips.

“Any leads?” he asked the Breed agent standing across from him, staring back at him, his expression grim.

“Nothing.” Lawe sighed. “Her house is bugged though, and not by us. The electronics are identical to those Tallant and his purist and supremist groups use. He’s been watching her.”

“Interesting.”

He knew all this, but he held his tongue. He had known what was getting ready to happen when he found the message on his PDA from Scheme Tallant. She had been at the ball. She had been with Tanner. Now she was gone. He was adding up two and two and coming up with the proper answer, he was certain. He had to ensure that this played out exactly. It was a risk, using Scheme and Tanner to catch the spy at Sanctuary. But fate had handed him the chance and he was going to take it.

“The night she disappeared she had a room reserved at an upscale D.C. hotel. She had ordered a late platter of meats, cheeses and breads. When room service arrived, she was gone. Luggage, laptop, purse, the whole nine yards.”

Jonas relaxed further in his chair. If Tallant had her, he wouldn’t have bothered taking her luggage. They would have found her body and nothing more. She was still alive, he was almost certain of it. But if Tanner had her, that was another story.

“Scents?”

Lawe narrowed his eyes. “The room had been inundated with her perfume.”

Jonas restrained a smile. Heavy perfume could affect Breed senses, hide the scent of another Breed or even a person. “I’d suspect damn near a full bottle of something even I couldn’t pronounce. Cabal said French, around two grand an ounce. The place had been sanitized, but Merc managed to identify the scent of blood in the carpet. Not hers, male blood though.”

“A Breed has taken her,” Jonas mused as he stared beyond Lawe, eyes narrowed, his brain working with possibilities. “Tanner was at the party that night?”

Lawe nodded. “He left a little before ten and returned to his hotel, from where he headed out to Sandy Hook on vacation. He’s currently incommunicado and refusing to take messages. Callan refuses to send them.”

Jonas’s lips twitched. “Tanner’s been planning this vacation for over two years.” That and much more.

“We need him here, Jonas. This is a public relations nightmare.”

“They can’t lay this at the Breeds’ feet,” Jess Warden, the Bureau’s lawyer, spoke up from where she sat on the couch across the room.

Jonas turned his eyes to her. Tall, cool as a mountain lake in winter, as blond and composed as an icy peak.

“I wasn’t worried about that in the least.”

“I’m aware of your concerns.” Her brow drew into a frown. “Anyone with a modicum of public speaking ability can handle this. Popular opinion will hold in the Breeds’ favor.”

“Tanner is our public relations genius,” Jonas reminded her. “It doesn’t matter if anyone else can do it. Tanner can do it better.”

She shook her head at the futility of arguing with him. She had been doing that a lot lately. It wasn’t a good sign.

His attention turned back to Lawe.

“What did Callan say?”

Lawe grimaced. “He said he will contact Tanner if need be. Until then, as he reminded me, Tanner does have an assistant now.”

This time, Jonas grimaced. “Geez. His assistant stutters.”

“She’s on standby to fly in to Washington if you change your mind.”

Jonas sighed. The timid little panther female Tanner had chosen as his assistant and trainee wasn’t exactly a prime choice in his opinion.

“Hell, I couldn’t do any worse than she does,” Jonas sighed.

Jess piped up in a droll challenge. “I dare you.”

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. She was focused on the papers though, as if his ire or disapproval didn’t matter in the least.

“We’ll continue as we are,” he finally said. “Continue to investigate the disappearance. Has Cabal checked the room?”

“He was first on the scene. He and Jackal were still in D.C. after Tanner left.”

Jonas covered his smile. Ah yes, and so the threads were indeed coming together. Tanner would have left Cabal and Jackal behind to foul any attempt Jonas made at tying Scheme Tallant to Tanner.

“Where are Cabal and Jackal now?” Jonas asked.

“They’re in the barracks below. Waiting on orders.” There was a faint vein of mockery in Lawe’s voice.

“Let them wait.” He pursed his lips. “I’m certain they need the rest. Tell them they’re on call.”

It would be best to keep both men close at hand for the time being.

He loved it when a plan came together. Jonas was certain Cyrus Tallant thought he had managed to keep Jonas out of town with that piddling attempt at an attack that a group of purists had made against him that evening. They hadn’t come close.

Evidently Tallant had learned that Scheme was betraying him. Jonas had found the message on the relay system when he returned to the office. Her request for pickup and asylum and the information that she would meet him at the ball that was held that evening in D.C.

There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Tanner had Scheme Tallant. Which meant she was exactly where Jonas wanted her to be. With Tanner. Safe for the time being while he pulled the rest of the threads of this little web. Shift a pawn here, pull in one there, whisper the proper words and then wait for the fallout.

“Put Alpha team on covert alert at Sanctuary,” he ordered Lawe. “I want anything out of the ordinary reported to me. Any Breed behaving out of character, asking any questions concerning Ms. Tallant, anything that seems suspicious. And monitor each outgoing transmission, no matter the means made. Cell phone, sat phone, landline and broadband. If so much as a drum taps in rhythm, then I want to know about it.”

Suspicion glinted in Lawe’s gaze. Alpha team was the special, highly organized team of investigative agents working within Sanctuary to uncover Tallant’s spy.

Lawe nodded slowly. “Got it, Boss.”

Jonas’s lips twitched. “Take care of it, Lawe. I expect you to coordinate from here. Check with Mia and she’ll set you up an office.”

Mia, his superefficient, stranger-than-hell secretary. If he hadn’t seen her file himself, he would have never believed she was a Breed.

“Don’t put me behind a desk, Boss,” Lawe snarled, his incisors flashing. “That’s just going to piss me off.”

Jonas arched his brow and stared back at the agent. He just stared. No expression. No comment.

“Goddammit,” Lawe cursed.

Jess spoke up then, her tone chastising. “There’s a lady present. Act like a snarling animal when Jonas lets me leave. Until then, remember a few manners.”

Lawe frowned before jerking his gaze back to Jonas. “Where did we learn manners?”

Jonas sighed.

“You don’t curse in front of women, Agent Justice,” Jess snapped. “Doesn’t matter who she is, where she comes from, how she talks or your opinion of her. Pretend she’s a child. Would you speak like that in front of a child?”

Lawe frowned, his gaze suddenly flickering in indecision. Jonas held back his smile. He knew damned good and well that the only child Lawe allowed himself to interact with was David Lyons. And David’s vocabulary at nine years old was impressive.

“My God,” Jess muttered, turning to make a note on a legal pad. “We’re going to have to work on this.”

“Boss, I’m going to find that office now.” Lawe cleared his throat. “I’ll uh, let you deal with this.”

Jonas watched as Lawe turned and hurried from the office, casting Jess one last suspicious gaze.

“This isn’t going to work, Jonas.”

“Not now, Jess.” He wiped his hands over his face as he blew out roughly. “First things first.”

“And when one of your Breeds makes the mistake of speaking to the wrong person at the wrong time in that manner? Visiting dignitaries? Allies? What then?”

“Not now, Jess.”

One mess at a time. Yeah, that was going to happen. He was presently juggling close to a dozen messes. This one just happened to be his pet project.