“There were Coyote soldiers breaching the tunnels?” he asked.
“Umm, no. ”
“Of course, how stupid of me,” he snapped. “You wouldn’t have reached the cover stone if there had been. One way in, one way out. ”
“That’s rather foolish of you,” she pointed out. “Anything could happen. A secondary escape route is always advisable. ”
That might not have been the best thing to point out. A second later she found herself pressed firmly against a wall, her feet still dangling above the floor, staring into fierce, gleaming eyes.
“Dog kills: over three dozen reported. Mercy level: zero. Proficiency level: off the fucking charts. Your father’s senior blood soldier. ” His voice deepened, roughened, became savage as he spoke of the Coyote. “Do you have any fucking idea the danger you were in?”
Well, duh! She had seen the bastard kill. Her heart had nearly stopped at the sight of the Coyote. Right now, he looked a shade more understanding than Tanner.
She licked her lips. “Pretty much. ”
She ran her hands from his chest to his shoulders, softened against him and bit her lip at the warning growl that rumbled in his chest.
“Pretty much?” he snarled, furious. “Pretty much?”
His hands tightened on her hips as she stared back at him, wondering if she wouldn’t have been better off facing Dog than Tanner at the moment.
She licked her lips again and let her knees lift, bending to brace on his hips as his body jerked, nearly slamming against her.
He was hard. Thick and hard, his cock driving against her pussy, shifting, stroking over the velvet lounging bottoms and the silk of her panties. And it felt really good.
Even if she was just a bit concerned. Tanner really looked just a shade pissed.
“I missed you. ” And she had. Like chocolate, like coffee. The farther she had gotten away from the caverns, the more she had been certain she was making a terrible mistake.
And she had been.
His gaze flared, sexual heat burning with the anger now.
“You ran from me,” he rasped. “You nearly got your ass killed, Scheme. He could have taken you, so easily. ”
“You wouldn’t have let him. ” Her fingernails scraped over his shoulders to his neck, pushing beneath the collar of his shirt as the muscles in his jaw bunched.
His fingers flexed at her hips again as he lifted her, rubbing her against the erection behind his jeans. And he was really filling out those jeans.
“I might not have been able to stop him!” he bit out, his voice rough, violent. “He reached you first, Scheme. He could have killed you as easily as he let yo
u go. Do you understand that?”
“More so than you,” she cried out. “I’ve seen him kill. ”
“And you dared to fucking leave the safety of the goddamned caves?” he roared.
Damn. Whoa.
Scheme blinked back at him. Maybe he was a little bit more than pissed.
“You wouldn’t let me go,” she whispered as she gripped the collar of his shirt and jerked at it.
“I can’t let you go,” he grated, one hand moving to her hair, tangling in it and holding, pulling her head back roughly. “Even for your sake, I can’t fucking let you go. ”
His lips came down on hers in starving demand. As though he had to have the taste of her. And she had to have the taste of him. To live. To breathe. To go on for another second she had to taste him, hold him. She had to be a part of him.
She had nearly walked away from this. From the one thing she had believed she could never have. And yet the one thing she had always craved. Deep down inside, where she hid the hopes and dreams, the needs that festered within a wound that never healed. This was what she craved.