Tanner's Scheme (37 page)

“We have a problem,” he grated, stopping at Tanner’s door as Cabal moved ahead of them and entered the rooms.

Scheme watched as Cabal grabbed the electronic detector and began moving over the room, finally nodding the all-clear.

“Your father has just held a press conference.” Callan directed the disgusted comment to her. “He’s claiming you’ve been kidnapped and brainwashed. Reports are already coming through of the pure blood societies arming and preparing to go hunting. They’re going after Breed hides.”

“We expected this,” Tanner pointed out to him. “The party tomorrow will alleviate a lot of the suspicion.”

“Callan!” Jonas stalked into the room. “We just blocked a transmission out of Sanctuary. Someone’s attempting to upload information on the mating heat. We broke the encryption on it; it was sloppy for a change. They have everything.”

“And if it gets out, we’re fucked!” Callan’s growl was a primal, furious rasp. “I want a complete blackout on transmissions out. Cell phones, sats and landlines as well as Internet. Whoever our spy is, they’re getting ready to make their move.”

“I’ll get a statement together and prepare for a news conference after the party tomorrow announcing the engagement,” Tanner informed them quickly. “Jonas, have you tracked where the transmission came from?”

“We’re working on it. It was bounced around Sanctuary like a damned ball. It’s just a matter of time.”

“And the spy knows that,” Scheme informed them. “He’s getting ready to make his move. He’s trying to get the information on mating heat to Father to create chaos within Sanctuary when it’s released. That will allow him the break he needs to take David and get him out of the estate.”

“Move.” Callan nodded to Jonas. “Do whatever it takes. I want that bastard found. Now!”

Jonas’s gaze was fiercely intent as he turned and left the room, the accompanying Breeds following quickly behind him.

“Tanner, get that statement ASAP,” Callan rasped. “Let’s defang this bastard before I have to kill him myself.”

And he could do it. Tanner watched as the pride leader stalked from the room, his expression savage, his eyes cold amber. Callan had protected them for nearly ten years before the world ever knew they existed. He had killed, silently, remorselessly, and he had assured the safety of the other members of his main pride as they healed and grew to enjoy the freedoms he ensured for them.

Tanner knew Callan wouldn’t hesitate to go hunting Council members or collaborators again if the need arose. It was a risk they couldn’t take. Not now, while the world was watching them so closely.

Grimacing, he turned to Cabal as his brother made his way to the connecting suite.

“Cabal, find that bastard,” he growled.

His brother shot him a cold smile. A smile of promised agreement. “I’ll slip out of my rooms and go hunting.”

Tanner blew a restless breath out before turning to Scheme. She had the television on, working the remote to show several major news channels at once on the screen, searching for threads, for hints of how her father would attack next.

“It’s only a matter of time,” she murmured then. “News of the mating heat is going to break. Ten years is too long for anything that explosive to stay hidden.”

“We’ll counter it.” His eyes narrowed as she shifted, subtly pressing her thighs together as the scent of her heat filled his sense once again.

She had been burning for hours and refused to sate the need. He could smell it building in her now. Hell, he had scented it building within her the first hour after they had left their bed that morning.

She shifted again, finally sitting down in the chair at her side and leaning forward as she watched the news. Her gaze was restless as she scanned each view on the television screen, listening to the alternate statements, one of which was a review of General Tallant’s accusation that the Breeds had kidnapped his daughter and were now brainwashing her.

“He always has a fallback position,” she murmured. “What’s his fallback this time?”

“Hell,” Tanner suggested, moving to her as he stripped his shirt off.

He was tired of waiting. The scent of her need called out to him, stroked over his senses like vibrant fingers of an electrical charge. Like static. Sensitizing him and reminding of the pleasure he had only ever found with her.

He pulled his boots off behind her chair, released the belt of his jeans as he straightened, and released the snap and zipper as he rounded her seat. By the time he was beside her, she was turning to him, her brown eyes like rich milk chocolate, melting and heating as he stripped the jeans from his legs.

“I should be watching this,” she breathed out as he knelt in front of her and lifted the remote from her hand. “I have to figure out what he’s planning.”

“In a minute you can watch it,” he promised. “The playback works really well on that model. You won’t miss a thing.”

His fingers gripped the bottom of her sweatshirt and lifted, revealing her creamy tummy as she leaned back in the chair, her hands going to his bare shoulders.

Her nails scraped at his flesh, reminding him of a cat’s kneading. Smiling tightly at the thought, he leaned forward and nipped at the skin he revealed, drawing her shirt up and over her breasts before she lifted her arms and removed it herself.

Her braless breasts were swollen, the hard tips of her nipples lifting out to him. They made his mouth water. Made need claw at his balls. But the glimmer of emotion and need clenched at his heart. God, she made him relish every moment that he breathed. He had never felt so alive, so filled with power as he did when she looked at him like that. Like he was the center of her existence at that moment, the forefront of her focus. Like he belonged to her as much as she belonged to him.

It hit him then. As her slender fingers eased the material of her sweatpants down her thighs, it slammed into him. He belonged. To someone. For someone. He was a part of a whole, rather than a cog in a community fighting to survive. If he died today, the world would go on without him. If he died today, this woman would always remember him. His touch, his kiss, his warmth as he held her at night. She would be alone. Forsaken by the heat that bound them. Unable to ever love again as she loved at this moment.

And he couldn’t allow that. He would survive for her. And he would make certain she survived for him.

He took the material of the pants from her hands as they cleared her knees and finished removing them before he spread her thighs and stared at the dew-laden curls between them.

She was so wet that her cream glistened on the soft pink folds and silken curls.

“Don’t leave me,” he whispered.

“Never,” she whispered. “You make me whole.”

He had to clench his teeth against the emotions that swept through him. She made
him
whole.

His hands slid up her thighs, then to her hips, pulling her forward as he moved closer. He wanted to worship her. He wanted to show her all the pleasure she gave him. He had every intention of lowering his lips to the sweet essence that eased from her pussy, but he found himself pressing into her instead.

Her breath caught. He heard it.

Her womb spasmed with pleasure as the head of his cock snugged inside her. He could smell it. That pleasure. Racing through her, making her wetter as she stared back at him from beneath hooded eyes, her hands wrapped around his wrists as she watched him begin to work his erection inside the sensitive flesh of her heated sex.

Tanner paused there, his eyes closing at the feel of her surrounding that sensitized crest. Beneath the head he could feel the barb throbbing just beneath this skin, preparing to swell, to erect at the point of his release and lock him inside her.

“I love your soft curls,” he whispered as he pressed deeper into her, grimacing at the flexing of her inner muscles, at the tremulous sigh that left her lips. Those soft curls were clinging to his shaft as he retreated, drawing his gaze, holding him mesmerized with the wondrous sight of her response to him. Silky soft cream glistened on the head of his cock before it disappeared inside her once again.

“’Cause you don’t have any,” she gasped.

“Maybe.” He had to fight to breathe. To keep from taking her hard, fast. To work his cock inside her with slow, steady thrusts, a little deeper each time, feeling her shift, lift, her legs wrapping around his hips as her hands smoothed over his shoulders.

Why had he never taken her like this before? he wondered. In this big overstuffed chair, on his knees before her, watching as each inch of his erection possessed her. It was the most erotic sight of his life.

“Tanner, I’m dying.” She was panting.

“In a minute.”

He knew her need for release was escalating rapidly. Each slow thrust inside her and she was tightening further on him, her inner muscles caressing him, drawing him deeper into the vortex of need that threatened to consume him.

“Now.” She tightened again, flexed, rippled, and he had to grind his teeth to keep from coming for her then and there.

“Naughty Scheme,” he grated out, clenching his teeth to hold back.

But he couldn’t resist moving inside her harder, faster. The pleasure was like a whirlpool sucking him in. His eyes lifted from where he was pressing inside her to meet her gaze. Melting chocolate. That’s what her eyes reminded him of. Hot, rich, glittering with the hunger and need as her hand lifted to his face.

“All my life,” she gasped. “All my life, I’ve prayed for you.”

“All my life, I’ve loved you.” He bent to her, taking her lips with his, giving her the spicy, erotic taste of his kiss and sharing the burning need threatening to sear his nerve endings.

Nothing mattered now but stilling those flames. Taking the kiss deeper, letting it get wilder as he began to thrust powerfully between her thighs, taking her cries as his own and throwing them both into the tempest racing through them.

He felt her orgasm first. The steady tightening, the tension building until she bucked beneath him, screaming into his lips as her nails dug into his back. Then he gave in to his own, tearing his lips from hers to throw his head back, a primal snarl leaving his chest as his semen pulsed from his cock and the barb became painfully erect, locking him inside her, stealing his mind.

He felt reborn within her. Renewed. Locked inside her, spilling his seed into the heated depths as he spilled his soul into hers. His head lowered, a growl rumbling in his throat as he locked his incisors into the mating mark he had given her at the caves.

She cried out again, spasmed around his cock, and spilled more of the sweet release that he knew was his alone. Just his. His mate. His woman.

Moments later, he collapsed against her, sweating, panting, drawing her against him as his tongue lapped at the wound on her shoulder and his senses filled with the taste and scent of her.

This was what he lived for now. Not revenge or hatred, but this. For love. For Scheme.

CHAPTER 28

Scheme hadn’t expected that the Breeds would ever throw a party such as the one she prepared for the next night. Of course, the fact that there were several reporters there to report on the “engagement” of Tanner Reynolds and Scheme Tallant had nothing to do with it. The only thing missing inside the opulent mansion was the news crews parked outside the iron gates of Sanctuary’s main entrance.

She hadn’t expected this. When Tanner had said “party,” she had assumed he meant some sort of small event. Just the main families within the estate house, not the guests that had arrived in heli-jets for the past few hours.

Of course, she should have known better. This was what she would have done herself to counter General Tallant’s accusations. And they had grown in the past twenty-four hours.

Her father was frightened. She had seen it in his eyes in the last news interview. He was terrified of what she was going to say, what she was going to do. What proof she might have of his actions. And she had plenty. Proof that she knew Jonas was now downloading from the secured site she had been storing it on over the years. Her insurance, she had always called it, just in case she needed it.

As she swept her hair into a fashionable twist, she met her own gaze in the mirror and nearly flinched at the grief in her eyes. Why should she feel grief that the monster that had haunted her living nightmare would soon be falling? It wasn’t as though he had been a loving father.

In his eyes though, he had been, and she knew that. Her father was a psychopath of the worst sort. He believed in what he was doing with total conviction. He believed he had done the best by his daughter—the daughter betraying him in what he considered the most heinous matter.

He had killed her mother, and Scheme knew he would have killed her given the chance. He would have done it with love in his heart and belief in his soul that he was saving the world.

She shook her head at the thought before securing the last pin in her hair and surveying her image carefully. She was known for her scarlet dresses, and she wore one now. Scarlet silk with a daring slit cut to the thigh and black stockings peeking through. The silk swept over her curves and molded her breasts before the straps tightened at her shoulders and crisscrossed behind her back.

Having checked her makeup one last time, she slid her stocking feet into scarlet pumps, picked up the little evening bag that matched her stockings and left the bathroom.

“Ready?” Dressed in a tux and looking sexier than any man or Breed had a right to, Tanner rose from his seat at the bottom of the bed, his gaze moving over her with slow appreciation.

“You look good enough to eat.”

“I’m nervous as hell.” Her skin was sensitized, warning her that the mating heat was playing hell with the nerves, as Ely had warned her it would.

“Just remember to keep enough distance between you and others to keep them from accidentally touching you. You know the reporters. You’ve dealt with them before. You know how to work them. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Everything was going to be fine.

“Cabal will be keeping watch from outside,” he continued. “David is secure in Callan and Merinus’s suite. There are about two hundred guests; none are known associates of your fathers or the Council’s, but they’re influential in politics and financial affairs. The reporters are well respected and known for their impartiality where the Breeds are concerned.”