“You!” she screamed. “It’s your stupid cabin, isn’t it?”
He laughed at that. “Come on, baby, even the Council is smarter than that. They know what killing me will do to their cause. Don’t you listen to the news? The world loves me. The outcry against the Council and the pure genetics groups would be horrendous. They wouldn’t dare. They’re here because they suspect I have you. Not because they want me dead.”
It was amusing to even consider it. How many times had he sneered at the Council soldiers who trailed him whenever he left Sanctuary? As much as they hated him, they couldn’t kill him, and what’s more, they couldn’t allow him to die, not yet. Not as long as public sentiment toward him was so high.
She struggled against him again, her breath hitching, her deliberate restraint over her tears breaking his heart.
The scent of her, a mix of guilt, fear, pain and longing, twisted inside him. He couldn’t have expected this when he kidnapped her. How she would set him on fire and break his heart at the same time.
She made him feel things he had never felt before, and that scared the living hell out of him when he paused long enough to consider it.
He nipped her ear gently. “Do you really want me to let you go? You’re scared, Scheme. I can take that fear away.”
A surprised, almost cynical laugh left her lips. “Are you crazy?”
“My pride leader says I am.” He bent her back in his arms, much as he had done the day before. “Want to test his theory?”
Her chocolate eyes were nearly black, staring back at him in confusion, passion and anger as her hands gripped his forearms, her lips parting just enough to cause his c**k to jerk in response.
“You’re a hazard to your own health,” she bit out. “How did you know I wouldn’t use that knife?”
“I didn’t,” he admitted with a small smile. “I think I even expected you to go through with it.”
Her gaze flickered heatedly. “Why would you let me, Tanner? Why would you do something like that?”
He reached out, his thumb brushing over her cheek, catching a tear before staring at it thoughtfully for long seconds. How could he explain that to her when he couldn’t explain it to himself?
“Because I had to know if I’m more to you than just your captor.” He lifted his gaze back to hers. “Because you are much more to me, Scheme, than you ever should be.”
She swallowed tightly, her gaze becoming shuttered now.
“That’s crazy.”
“Yeah, it is,” he admitted with a smile. “But no crazier than this is.”
His head lowered to her. He had to taste her lips, dampened with her tears. The sweet salty taste of her went to his head like a narcotic. The touch of her lips against his, like warm satin, her tongue a stroke of fire, sent raging impulses of pleasure to tighten his c**k further and draw his balls tighter.
Her kiss heated him faster, hotter than a volcano at eruption point. It was like being in the middle of an inferno.
“I went crazy every time I saw another man touch you,” he growled against her lips, his hand threading into her hair to hold her in place as her eyes jerked open in surprise.
“Someone had to watch the surveillance.” He nipped at her lips with his teeth. “In case one of you talked business in the f**king bed.” He caught her lower lip, pulling at it, scraping over it with his teeth as her eyes narrowed back at him. “I went crazy,” he repeated. “Every goddamned time I would be feral for days.”
Her lips trembled. “Then why did you?”
He couldn’t keep himself from touching her face, from smoothing his fingers over her delicate jaw.
“Because I couldn’t bear for anyone else to do it.” He would have had to kill anyone else who dared to see her like that. Naked. Vulnerable. Reaching for something she never found. He had seen it in her eyes, that dissatisfaction, that need. Just as he felt it in his soul with every other woman he had been with.
“Why doesn’t it bother you?” He would have been enraged to learn his privacy had been invaded in such a way. She should have been clawing his eyes out instead of lying back in his arms and staring up at him.
Not that her rage would have made a difference. With his luck, it would have only made him hotter.
Resignation tilted her lips. “Because you didn’t let anyone else see it.” Her whisper sliced through him. “And because it was you.”
And for the first time he paused. “Why does that matter, Scheme?”
She shook her head slowly as her hand lifted to curl around the side of his neck. “I don’t know why it matters,” she said, her tone so stoic, so somber, it clenched his heart. “But it matters.”