As he turned to the next tunnel, Tanner paused, a growl rumbling in his throat at the sound of an almost animalistic keening echoing from the cavern.

There was no way anyone could have invaded the caverns without him knowing. Jerking the electronic remote to the sensors from the holder at his side, Tanner deactivated the automatic lights before crouching and moving quickly toward the main chambers.

He could smell terror, thick and cloying. Scheme’s terror.

The small, guttural sounds of uncontrolled hysteria sliced through his soul and brought the Bengal lurking just beneath the surface to violent life. Tanner could feel his lips peeling back in a silent snarl as he tested the air, but found no scent other than Scheme and her terror.

His night vision picked up the area, if not perfectly, then with enough clarity to be certain no enemies were lurking or waiting for him.

A frown pulled at his brow as he slid silently into the cavern.

“I don’t know anything,” she sobbed. “Please. Please turn the lights on. Please, Tanner…” Her weeping was strained, exhausted. Hysterical.

“Scheme?” Tanner moved quickly across the room, finding her huddled in the middle of the cavern floor, naked, her hair and arms wrapped around her body as she curled on the cold stone defensively.

Kneeling next to her, he reached for her, his fingers curling around her arms when she erupted.

Clawed fingers raked his cheek as her cry shattered his senses. There was no sanity in that cry. There was only pain, fear and the need to escape.

“Scheme.” He gripped her wrists, jerking her to him, trying to hold on to her as she fought like a wildcat. One small fist found the side of his head, her knee came impossibly close to his sensitive balls.

Fractured sobs echoed around him as he restrained her. He wrapped his arms around her from the back, locking her to his chest as one powerful arm held her and the other reached for the button of the remote at his side.

Soft, gentle light filled the room as she suddenly stilled. And then he got his first look at her face.

Deathly pale, her brown eyes nearly black, her face streaked with tears. The sight of it was heartbreaking. Enraging. This was not a normal reaction to being caught in the dark.

“I don’t know anything,” she cried again as he allowed her to jerk away from him, rising quickly to his feet as she stumbled back to the bed. “Leaving me in the dark won’t change that.”

“You think I left you in the dark to punish you?” he asked her slowly, grief filling his soul at the implications of her hysteria.

“Didn’t you?” Her voice was shaking, hoarse, as she jerked the quilt from the bed and wrapped it around her shuddering body. “The lights wouldn’t come on. There was no power to the appliances.” She was gasping, fighting for breath as she tightened her hold on the quilt and moved to the bottom of the bed. “Do you really think it’s going to work?” she screamed, her expression twisting painfully.

“Think what is going to work?” He wanted her in his arms. He couldn’t bear to see the remnants of terror that filled her expression.

“Do you think turning the lights off here is worse than being tied hand and foot in a fucking coffin? You son of a bitch, you don’t have a clue.”

Rage, uncontained, filled with pain, fear, with the resounding echo of horror, filled her voice and filled Tanner’s soul.

“Someone buried you alive?” It was all he could do to keep his voice calm, to keep the outrage and fury out of his voice.

Her laugh was bitter, cynical. “Oh, really, Tanner. You’ve investigated me. Watched me. For how long? Were you watching me the last time I disappeared for a few days?”

He had been. He nodded slowly.

“Would you like to know where I was?” Her voice was low, guttural.

“You were at your father’s estate,” he said. “You stayed a week.”

“I was buried alive in a coffin, in my father’s basement, because my profile of his favorite Coyote was weak. The Coyote was spying on Father for the Breeds and got away with it. I paid for it. Or did you already know that, Tanner? Tell me, did you know the punishment I would receive when Cyrus found out your Coyote was working for you?”

His hand clenched at his side. That had been his decision, placing the Coyote in Tallant’s camp, using him to gain information not just on Tallant, but on Scheme. But this wasn’t in that Coyote’s report.

“For three days, Tanner,” she snarled. “I was locked in a coffin, my hands and feet tied while a goddamned electronic voice counted down the hours of oxygen I had left.”

The animal inside him roared in rage. A rage so black, so violent, he had to restrain the need to leave, to go hunting for the bastard who would dare to do something so evil to her.

“He took me out two minutes after my oxygen expired,” she said. “You left me air. You can’t die if you can breathe.”

You can die of sorrow, Tanner thought grimly as he felt grief well inside his soul. And he was ready to expire from it.

“The lights are on motion sensors with a remote backup.” He stared around the room, seeing the tangled blankets trailing over the side of the bed, their disarray indicating that she had fallen, or stumbled, from the bed. “Once you move from the bed and actually stand up, they come on. You have to stand up.”

She stumbled again; obviously shuddering so hard she could barely stand.

Fuck this. She was shaking like a leaf, adrenaline and terror still racing through her. He could smell her refusal for comfort, her distrust of him, and that was just too fucking bad.

He had to hold her. If he didn’t hold her he was going to break apart himself.

“Don’t you touch me.” She fought him. He had known she would.

Lifting her into his arms, Tanner ignored her struggles as he wrestled her to the couch, sat down, then pulled her into his lap.

“It’s okay, Scheme,” he whispered against her hair. “It won’t happen again.”

“I don’t need you to comfort me, cat,” she spat furiously. “I don’t need you to touch me at all.”

Tanner tightened his arms around her, burying his face in her hair as he forced back the snarl that tugged at his lips.

God help him, he wanted to kill. He wanted to gut her father and watch him bleed for what he had done to her. The hunger to kill was almost overwhelming, but stronger was the need to hold on to her, to calm the scent of terror still emanating from her.

If he didn’t, then the beast was going to break free, and if it ever broke his control, then it might never be reined in again.

“Maybe I’m the one that needs comforting,” he growled into her hair. “I’m sorry, Scheme…”

“I don’t need your platitudes.” Her fists clenched tighter, the muscles of her wrists tensing further as he held on to them.

The fact that she wasn’t fighting him hurt. Deep inside, in places he hadn’t known existed within himself. She was just sitting in his embrace, unresponsive, fighting to distance herself.

“I don’t have platitudes.” He buried his face deeper in her hair, inhaling the scent of peaches and of fear. He had to get rid of that scent of fear. “I don’t have excuses.” His lips brushed her ear. “It will never happen again.”

“I survived. I always survive.” She jerked her head to the side, and he had no choice but to follow. His lips grazed her neck, and for less than a second, he smelled her response.

“You always survive,” he whispered against her ear. “It was your father’s favorite mode of punishment, burying Breeds alive. He released you. He never released a Breed.”

A low, keening moan left her lips as her head lowered and a tear dropped to his arm.

“You survived, Scheme,” he whispered. “For this.”

Long, rough fingers touched her cheek, turning her face to him as Scheme felt the regret, remorse, the destructive emotions that always came with the knowledge that she had survived. She had survived when so many had died.

“I have always survived. Even death.” She stared into his eyes, gold and green, shifting with lust, rage and undefined emotions.

She fought back the sobs that wanted to escape, that wanted to break from the self-imposed exile she had placed them in so many years before. “Sometimes, it’s the only way to succeed. Sometimes, failure is an option, Tanner.”

“You don’t fail.” His lips touched hers, and she swore she wouldn’t respond, that she didn’t care. She didn’t need the pleasure; she didn’t want it. Not now, not ever. It weakened and destroyed from the inside out. “You survive. I won’t let you die, Scheme.”

What was he doing to her? He was a liar. A deceiver. He was created and trained to deceive and to kill. He was created to destroy her. Because only destruction could come of the pleasure whipping through her from just the touch of his lips. Slightly rough, like dark velvet, brushing over hers as his tongue peeked out to dampen the seam.

“I want to taste you.” His eyes stared into hers, darkening, filling with heat. “Just like this.”

His tongue lined the seam of her lips again as they parted, flickering, caressing with damp heat.

“All over your body,” he sighed as she felt herself melting.

She couldn’t melt.

“Don’t,” she pleaded roughly, feeling another tear as it tracked down her cheek and his hold shifted, lowering her further back in his arms as he leaned over her.

“I have to, Scheme.” One hand moved below the quilt, flattening on her bare stomach. “Don’t you see, pretty girl? I can’t fight it. Can you?”

“I’m not weak.” The shudder that raced through her body belied her declaration and she knew it.

“Never weak,” he agreed, his voice roughening, rasping. “So strong. Show me how strong you are, Scheme. I can’t defeat you, can I? No matter what I do.”

No matter what he did.

Her lips parted as his brushed against them again.

“Be strong for me,” he growled. “Because I don’t know if I’m strong enough to survive knowing what he did to you.”

Her cry lacked fear; it lacked strength. It was filled instead with hunger. With need. Her lips parted fully, her arms reaching for him, curling around his neck as pleasure began to swamp her.

“Yes. Fuck yes. Take me, Scheme,” he growled again between nips to her lips. “So strong.”

And she was devouring him. Had any kiss ever been so good? Enraptured. She could taste his arousal, smoky and dark, causing her senses to reel as she reached for more.

Her tongue twined with his, drew it in and savored the wild taste that filled her senses. It was so sharp, so deliciously intense that when he filled his hand with the heated weight of a swollen breast, it felt natural—his fingers on her flesh, surrounding her nipple, pressing in on it and sending fiery shards of sensation to tear through her pussy.

She needed to be touched. Sweet God, from the inside out, she needed his touch. The hunger for it, the overriding desperation was ripping through her body, making her not just need, but crave.

“I’m going to make you scream for me,” he growled as his lips pulled from hers, his teeth scraping over her jaw before moving to her neck. “Beg me. I want you to beg me to hold you, to take you. Beg for my cock pushing inside you.”

Her head fell back on his arm as his explicit demands sent spasms of destructive need to attack her vagina.

“I don’t beg,” she moaned.

“You beg.” He moved suddenly, twisting until she was beneath him, her legs spread, his hard body stretched between them. “I watched you,” he snarled. “Hours where that bastard assassin touched you, made you beg. Made you come. You’re going to beg harder now. You’re going to come harder.”