“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. ”
She should have been embarrassed. Humiliated. He had watched her have sex. He had watched her search for something she had come to believe didn’t exist. Something she had found with Tanner. Satisfaction.
But she wasn’t embarrassed, or humiliated. It was exciting. Enthralling.
“Touch me. Don’t let me think, Tanner. ” Her nails raked down his shoulders and her fingers came to the buttons of his shirt.
She gripped, ripped, her breath catching in excitement as the buttons popped from the shirt, scattering around them, revealing his hard, bronzed chest.
“I’ve dreamed of doing the things they never did. ” His lips peeled back from his teeth, revealing the sharp, wicked incisors at the side of his mouth. “I made lists. ”
Hands still gripping his shirt, she stared back at him in shock.
“Years. ” His head lowered. “I watched you for so many years, aching, dying inside because I couldn’t have you. ”
Her lips parted, but not for his kiss.
“Why did you watch?”
“Because I needed to know you,” he whispered. “To see you. I needed to assure myself, each time, that even though they touched your body, those bastards didn’t own you. ”
She saw it in his eyes. He might be lying about many things; he could very well be the spy her father fought to control. But in this, he was telling the truth.
She shook her head slowly. “No man owns me. ”
“I do. ”
CHAPTER 11
Scheme stared up at Tanner in bemusement and shock as he shrugged the remains of the shirt from his shoulders. Muscles rippled over his chest and biceps, the restraint he had placed on himself clearly visible in the tense set of his expression and the brilliance of his eyes.
Did he own her? If he didn’t now, then he would soon.
“You watched everything?” She was naked beneath him, the quilt lying beneath her and falling away from her body as his eyes raked over her.
“Everything. ” His voice was an exciting, roughened hiss. “Your lovers were good. But I’m better. ”
Her heart raced as his hands dropped to the belt cinching the jeans beneath his waist.
“Prove it. ”
“I’m the best you’ve ever had. ” He smiled tightly. “I saw that the other night, Scheme. I knew it. ”
“Prove it. ” She needed him to. She needed to still the screaming demand pulsing through her now. Terror, pleasure and danger combined as the rushing adrenaline began to build inside her. “Prove it, Tanner. Now. ”
Scheme watched in anticipation as his head lowered, his lips parting. She ached for that kiss. Needed it.
But it wasn’t a kiss that came. His teeth raked over her neck, the incisors sharp and wicked, scraping over her pulse before moving to her shoulder.
Then he bit her. Not deep. Not enough to break the skin, but the flashpoint of pleasure/pain that had her arching to him, a moan sizzling past her lips.
“Do you think I can’t?” He growled as he moved from her then picked her up quickly in his arms.
The next second she was bouncing on the bed, hard fingers gripping her ankles to jerk her forward, pulling her sex directly to his waiting mouth.
She hadn’t expected it. That was the only excuse she had. She had expected soft, gentle. Plenty of foreplay and lots of teasing. That’s how men reacted when they felt they needed to compete with a woman’s past lovers. They teased. They drew out the foreplay and the pleasure until she lost all desire to finish the act.
But this wasn’t teasing.