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 cock 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 fucking 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.”

Then her head lifted, her teeth catching at his lower lip as she tugged at it erotically.

“You said you made lists?” she asked then.

He smiled slowly. “I made many lists, pretty girl, and all on exactly how many ways I intended to please you.”

“So please me, Breed,” she whispered heatedly. “Show me everything I’ve been missing.”

It sounded like a dare, a brazen challenge. But he heard the desperation in her voice, saw it in her eyes. She needed this as much as he did, needed to lose herself in the pleasure and the heat that built with each touch between them.

Lifting her in his arms, Tanner carried her to the bed, keeping his eyes locked with hers, his senses focused on her.

She was confused, desperate. He could feel the raging pain inside her, the need to understand the fires that built so quickly between them.

Why wasn’t she his mate?

As he laid her on the bed, Tanner stared down at her, memorizing her features, the soft pale skin of her face, the dark chocolate of her eyes. Her sable hair fanned out around her; the violet velvet of her outfit whispered over her slender body.

She would have made the perfect mate. Strong-willed, passionate, built for endurance and survival. She should have been his mate.

She would be his mate. Fuck science and the damned scientists at Sanctuary. This was his woman, no matter what nature or blood tests decided. He would lay down his life to protect her.

“Take off the clothes. Slowly,” he told her, his voice hoarse from the strength of his lust, his need.

Her hands moved to the elastic band of the lounging pants before her hips lifted to push the material over her sensuous curves.

Her silken tummy slid into view, slightly rounded, soft. Kissable. Then rounded, well-toned thighs, the bare, glistening curves of her pussy. And those curl-shrouded folds were more than kissable. They were devourable.

“You have the prettiest damned pussy I’ve ever laid eyes on,” he said and sighed as she finally kicked the soft pants free. “I could spend hours eating you.”

He glanced at her eyes just in time to see the flare of response.

“He never did that for you, did he, baby?” His fingers went to the buttons of his shirt as hers gripped the hem of her shirt. “St. Marks didn’t appreciate that pretty pussy. He gave it no more than a lick and a promise, didn’t he?”

His shirt dropped to the floor as his hands went to his belt.

“You were watching,” she whispered. “What do you think?”

“I don’t think, baby, I know he didn’t know how to appreciate what he had,” he growled.

He had watched those surveillance videos. St. Marks hadn’t known what to do with a woman who felt that sex was more than an itch to be scratched.

The shirt cleared her swollen breasts, then came over her head. Her eyes gleamed dark and hot, her face flushed with excitement now. Nearly as flushed as the swollen folds of that slick, wet pussy.

He kicked off his jeans before reaching down and pulling off the socks he wore. But his eyes never left her body. He wondered if he could watch her enough, ever stare long enough that he wouldn’t be surprised every time he saw something he had missed the time before.

Like the silken shimmer on the underside of her breasts. The mature curves, not overblown, not really slender. Sweet, soft differences that proclaimed her an adult woman in every way.

“Are you going to do anything, or do you intend to think it to death?”

She was impatient in sex. It was one of the things he had learned about her through those surveillance videos. But then again, St. Marks hadn’t exactly gone out of his way to hold her interest.

“I don’t need to think about it.” He reached out, touched her thigh, then trailed his fingers to the silken wetness between her legs.

There, his thumb circled the swollen little bud of her clit peeking from the apex of the folds. She trembled beneath his touch and his cock jerked in response.

“I can’t wait to bury my lips there again. I’d rather eat you than breathe.”

Her legs shifted, falling further open as he removed his fingers and came to the bed. Last night had been hard and rough. This, he wanted this to last. He wanted to make her come so many times that by the time he finished she could do nothing but shudder in the grip of an orgasm that seemed to never end.

“First on my list was feeling you come around my tongue,” he growled as he settled his knees between her thighs and leaned over her. “And that was good, Scheme. That was really good.”

He stared into her eyes as he bent to her mouth, sipping at her lips as her fingers moved hesitantly to his shoulders. She always touched him hesitantly. As though she wasn’t certain if she should even touch.

And oh, she should definitely touch.

“Come here, sugar.” He rolled to his back, pulling her with him, grinning up at her as she stared back at him in shock. “I’m all yours,” he growled, helping her to her knees before pushing his head between them. “And you’re all mine.”

“Tanner, this doesn’t work.” She didn’t bend forward as he’d expected.

His hands slid up the outside of her thighs as he turned his head and pressed a kiss just above her knee.

“Have we tried it before?” He raked her lower thigh with his teeth, smiling as a tremor rippled beneath the flesh.

“I don’t like this position.” Her voice was smoky, breathless.

“Have we tried it before?” he asked her again, nipping at her thigh with enough force to make her moan.

Oh yeah, she liked that. He raked along the side of the opposite knee. Her hands flattened on his abdomen.

“I’ve done this before,” she gasped. “I didn’t like it.”

“Hmm.” Yeah, he remembered that one. That one hadn’t pissed him off too bad, because he remembered watching her eyes. St. Marks had been less than ineffective. “Maybe you’ll like it better with a pro.”

Tanner lifted his head, distended his tongue and swiped it through the drenched slit directly above him. While there, he made certain to flicker his tongue over the sensitive flesh before rounding her clit with a delicate, purring lap.

She jerked, a gasp coming from above him as he raked his fingernails along the outsides of her thighs.

“I can’t do this,” she moaned as he gripped her thighs and flicked the tip of his tongue over the curves of her pussy again.

“Why can’t you do this, baby?” He kept the purr in his voice. Damn, she liked that sound, or the touch of his tongue, because the dampness increased exponentially.

He tried the purr again. This time without words. Just a long, drawn-out purr as he laid his lips against the swollen folds.

“Oh my God, Tanner.” She weakened, bent, her head falling to his thigh as her long hair cascaded over his cock and balls. And oh, he liked the feel of that, almost as much as he liked the feel of her hard breath against his flesh.

“Sure you don’t like this, pretty baby?” He purred again, just over her clit, and was rewarded by the prettiest sight in the world. A small, hot little drop of cream that he caught with his tongue.

But Scheme. Ah, his sweet little Schemer, she wasn’t without her own brand of torture.

Her sharp little nails dug into his outer thighs as her head lifted, her hair sliding over her shoulder and his thighs like living silk as she flicked it back and her hot breath washed over the sensitive head of his cock.

And damn, that was good. His hips jerked up in reaction as he let a growling moan slip past his lips. But that didn’t stop his tongue. He flicked teasingly over the curves, lapping at her, licking at the sweet drops of syrup beading on her flesh.

“Mmm. Sweet.” He caught one of the curves between his lips, drawing the cream from it before moving back, flickering his tongue around her clit with purring strokes and checking for more of the sweetness.

Ohh, yeah, there it was. Dew drops. Sweet, syrupy, feminine dew.

He smiled and licked. Purred. Whispered a growl over her flesh and then got a chance to devour ambrosia as the dew drops increased.

Luscious.

Rawr.

She exploded.

Scheme jackknifed upright, a muted scream tearing from her throat as fiery ribbons of orgasm began to tighten through every muscle of her body.

“Damn you.” She shuddered, her thighs clenching around his face, holding him in place. Oh God, she had to hold him in place as her hips rocked, dragging her enraptured wet flesh over his lips and tongue as she forced the pleasure to echo and re-echo through her clit, vagina and womb.

Oh, it was so good. Nothing had ever been this good. And never had this position even come close to good. Let alone this good.

He chuckled as his hands pressed her thighs open and his head lowered.

“Can you keep up, Schemer?” His voice held a dare. “Am I better than you are?”

Better than she was? He was better than a fantasy. He was better than her vibrator. Hell, yes, he was better than her.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t keep up. It didn’t mean that she didn’t know a few tricks of her own.