“Sure.” Damn, he could still form words. He was doing good. “Tell me why your father sent your ex-lover to kill you.”
Tallant was a dead man for that alone. There would be no way in hell that he could stop himself from killing the other man now.
Her eyes closed as she turned her head from him.
“Watch all you like.” Her lips quirked. “Exhibitionism excites me, didn’t you know that?”
Oh yeah, he knew that. He knew all the nasty erotic adventures she had experienced over the years. Knew about them and relished the thought that when he got her beneath him, he would have a woman who understood pure pleasure with a dash of the extreme.
She wasn’t promiscuous really. After Chaz St. Marks, she had chosen her lovers outside her father’s organization. Men who understood the brief affairs she was looking for, men who tried to give what she needed without asking for more themselves. He wondered if she had found exactly what it was she was looking for in those affairs. He knew that for himself, he never had. No matter how extreme, how depraved, nothing had ever stilled the hunger for her that rode him.
“You haven’t answered my question.” Anything to hear her voice. It stroked over his senses in a way that made him check his tongue against his teeth again.
Her lashes peeked open once more, giving him a glimpse of chocolate brown eyes so deep, so dark, he swore there was a chance of drowning.
“Which one?”
“Why did your father send St. Marks to kill you?”
“The assassin.” Her smile was bittersweet. Son of a bitch, she felt something for the bastard willing to kill her. “You enjoyed killing him, didn’t you?”
“What do you think?” The only sign of emotion was the slight flinch of her lashes.
“I think you enjoyed it very much. In answer to your question, he believes I betrayed him.”
“And did you?”
Her expression was weary, sad. “Perhaps I’ve just been sloppy. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in the past few years. I’ve become a liability.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie, but Tanner could detect a shadow of deceit. It wasn’t sitting well with him.
“So you heard everything?” she asked then.
“Pretty much.”
She didn’t say anything more. Instead, she lifted one gracefully turned ankle out of the water and used it to shut off the water.
Her expression wasn’t cold, but neither was it one of emotion. It was reflective. Almost thoughtful.
“And then you kidnapped me,” she said. “Why?”
“Some would say I saved your ass,” he pointed out.
“I’m free to leave then?”
Tanner grinned at that. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“And why did I expect that answer?”
She was avoiding the discussion coming. He could see her need to hide from it, to distance herself from what she knew he’d heard.
“You should have guessed it,” he agreed, moving away from the entrance and stalking slowly toward her. “Sit up and let me wash your hair. It’s so damned long, it dragged the ground a time or two.”
“I can wash my own hair.”
He doubted she could wash her own face at the moment. She was stiff from the bruises and from sleeping so long. Abused muscles stiffened up after time, and he had been forced to keep her under longer than he would have liked.
“Don’t make me force you to sit up. It’s going to end in something you don’t want.”