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.

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 nipples were raking as her breasts 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 pussy, 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 fucking go to sleep before you find out exactly what one-half of the last two surviving Bengal Breeds can do.”

Her breath caught. Her eyes widened, and she turned slowly as he picked up a remote, pressed it, and the sound of a television droned behind her.

“Double-teamed?”

“Double-fucked,” he clarified.

She blinked. He smiled. And it wasn’t a comforting sight.

“Night, night, pretty girl.”

She couldn’t sleep. The television had flipped off more than an hour before, the lights were dim, but sleep had never been further away.

She ached. Every time she closed her eyes, she swore she felt Tanner’s fingers sliding between her thighs, the heavy weight of them inside her, stroking her, burning through her common sense. And her eyes would jerk open to stare miserably into the cavern once again.

Despite the width of the bed—it was a king-sized bed, after all—she could still feel Tanner’s heat. It blazed against her back, wrapped around her and made the quilt he’d tossed over her stifling.

She was dying. She needed to be fucked worse than she had ever needed to be fucked in her life.

God, she was so pathetic. She had already had one close call with one of her father’s assassins and now she was looking to form an emotional bond with another? And she knew it would end up being emotional. She wasn’t stupid. Tanner touched not just her body but something inside her. Some part of her that she hadn’t known existed.

And she wanted it touched again. How stupid was that? Chaz had been her father’s killer; could Tanner be his spy?

“You know…” She flinched at the silky rumble of his voice. “There’s always the vibrator.”

Scheme flipped around, clutching the quilt to her breasts as she stared back at him.

“And do what?”

His hand lifted, the long fingers wrapped around the thick length of the blue vibrating toy.

“I loved watching you use this,” he murmured with a wicked smile. “Want to try it now?”

Her lips parted.

“I could help you.”

The suggestiveness in his voice had heat pulsing through her.

“How?” Oh Lord, was that really her voice? That breathless phone-sex murmur that had his eyes nearly glowing with lust.