“Enough already,” Callan ordered, his frustration level evidently reaching its breaking point as he stood to his feet and faced the other man. “Deal with your personal life off my time, Kane.” Then he turned to the youngest of the Breed males. “Tanner, get into town tonight. See what you can find out from those sources you have in place. I want to know who and what is involved in all this.”
“I’d start asking our new visitor first.” The rough, grumbling voice that entered the fray came from the kitchen doorway.
Roni recognized the Breed from the night before. Merc, she thought they had called him. He stared at them with placid, deep brown eyes, but nothing could hide the aura of death surrounding him.
“Meaning?” Callan asked him softly.
“Meaning, I caught him trying to sneak around the weapons shed earlier. When I put a stop to that, one of the men assigned to watch him caught him trying to break into the communications offices. That boy has the Grim Reaper sittin’ on his shoulder, Callan. And I’m of a mind to set that dark visage free.” Chapter Thirty-Two
“I want you to makeReginald leave now.” Roni turned to face Taber as they entered the sheltered garden area outside the kitchen.
It was the only outside area Taber and the others would allow the women to go to when the house became too stifling. It was a large courtyard, but stretching overhead, from wall to wall, were thick wooden beams holding a multitude of sheltering vines. Even in the full heat of the day it was a cool escape from the tension slowly filling the house.
She moved deeper into the small grotto, brushing against the thick, sheltering shrubs and low growing trees that had been placed around a central fountain.
A variety of flowering bushes filled the air with the heady scent of their blooms. The fountain splashed playfully, infusing the area with moisture, lending to it an air of sensuality and relaxation. An atmosphere she fought desperately as she tried to convince Taber to have her father escorted from the estate.
She laid her palm against her abdomen, trying to still the nerves that roiled within her stomach. The severe heat that had afflicted her over the past days was steadily easing. She was pregnant and she was terrified. More frightened than she had ever been in her life.
“Roni, let us do our job,” Taber told her softly as she turned back to him, watching her with a warmth, a caring she couldn’t face yet.
“And what exactly is your job?” she asked him bitterly. “Standing around waiting on someone to kill you? Waiting forReginald to do whatever he came here to do?”
“My job is to contain any threat to this estate.” His voice was pitched low, but she heard the rough grumble that echoed in his chest. “Do you think I can’t protect you?” Roni rolled her eyes in frustration. “It has nothing to do with my faith in you and everything to do with what I knowReginald is capable of.” Her hand sliced through the air between them as she went nose to nose with him.
She could feel the fear building in her, feel the sick, awful sensation in the pit of her stomach that warned her thatReginald was scheming at his worse. It had been in his gaze, in the calculating demand as he was pulled from the house the night before. He was neck-deep in trouble and determined to pull her into it as well.
“You forget, I know him just as well as you do, Roni,” he reminded her carefully. “I know what he’s capable of.”
She hated that restrained sound to his voice. As though he was choosing each word, each move with her. As though he only gave her the parts of himself that he wanted her to see.
“Why give him the chance, Taber?” She wanted to scream at him, but she kept her voice to a careful hiss as she paced farther along the courtyard. “Why? The risk is too great.”
“What can he do?” Taber asked her logically. She hated logic. She hated his logic. So cool and confident. “We need to know who hired him and what he wants. If we run him off, we may not know until it’s too late to contain the threat. We can’t risk that, Roni.”
“You’re risking your life instead.” She shook her head, pushing her trembling hands into the pockets of her jeans as she sat down on one of the wide stone benches at the farthest edge of the courtyard.
“My life is at risk every day, baby.” He sighed roughly as he sat down beside her, pulling her into his arms. “You think I don’t know what you’re fighting so hard? That I don’t know you’re carrying my child, Roni? That I couldn’t sense the change in your body as it happened?” She stiffened in his arms. “You can’t be certain of that.”
“Merinus went out of heat when she conceived. The desperate need isn’t driving you insane now, Roni.
It’s easing.” He nuzzled her neck, his warm breath blowing across her skin with such pleasure she shivered.
“That doesn’t mean anything.” She tried to shrug him away, to keep her mind from becoming clouded with need as another, more intense heat began to fill her. “Just because Merinus is pregnant doesn’t mean I am.”
The natural desire was something she thought she would never feel again. Something she could have done without. She could have denied the hold Taber had on her so much easier if he didn’t make her crazy to fuck him with just the feel of his breath on her neck.
She arched involuntarily to the caress, her breath catching on a sigh of longing. The shaded grotto-like atmosphere suddenly turned heated, too moist, sensitizing her, sucking her into the earthy lust that always shook her at the mere sight of him.
He chuckled. The sound was low, heated, as he lifted her against him, turning her until she sat draped across his lap.
“Let me up.” She struggled against him, but knew her heart wasn’t in being released.
His arms held her easily as he looked at her, his eyes narrowing, becoming darker, more intense. Roni shivered under the look. “I still want to fuck you crazy. Right here, Roni,” he whispered wickedly as his hand slid up her thigh, beneath her soft cotton shirt then curled around the curve of her breast.
Roni felt her nipples peak in throbbing expectation. They throbbed, ached for his touch, his mouth, anticipating the feel of his tongue rasping over them erotically. Her womb clenched in need, her pussy weeping, preparing for the invasion that every cell of her body screamed out for.
“Someone will see us.” She fought not to pant. “Besides, we were arguing…”