“I can’t lose you,” he muttered against her lips, and her heart tripped, speeding up, nearly smothering her with the excitement racing through her as he nipped at her lips. “I can’t, Scheme. Not now. I can’t lose you. ”
He was dying inside. Her kiss was every fantasy he had ever dared let himself imagine, and a few he hadn’t. Her hands in his hair, her tongue meeting his, licking, rubbing against it. Rubbing against a damned tongue whose mating glands were dormant, normal, and refused to swell with the mating hormone that would mark her as his forever.
What the hell was he going to do? How was he going to survive letting her go to another man?
He knew his kisses were desperate. As his lips slanted over hers, hunger clawed at his guts, his balls. The need to mark her was so overwhelming that when he found his teeth opening over her shoulder, it sent a surge of shock tearing through him.
Not his mate.
Fighting for control, he dropped his forehead against the silken flesh instead and closed his eyes. Instantly, his sense of touch and smell sharpened. He could feel her need for him, smell her arousal, but something was different.
Scheme never relaxed against him until those minutes after her orgasm when she had no other choice. She was wary, always cautious, always on guard. Until now.
“I knew I shouldn’t have left even before I saw Dog,” she whispered at his ear. “I shouldn’t have left you. ”
A part of his soul was dying at her admission. Trust. He could feel her beginning to trust him, and he was going to have to let her go. He couldn’t ignore the truth any longer. There were no mating signs. She wasn’t his mate.
He pressed his lips to her neck though he stepped back, forcing her legs to release him as he found the courage to lift his head and stare down at her.
“We’ll talk later. ” He scowled at the effort it took to force his hands to release her hips and allow her to stand on her own.
“I don’t want to talk later, Tanner. I have to tell you—”
His fingers covered her lips. He could sense what she wanted to say. The sweet spice of the emotional storm brewing within her would rip his soul out. If she whispered the words, he would never survive what he had to do.
“Later,” he whispered, feeling the words tear from him. “Come on, Cabal will be here in a few minutes. ”
“Cabal?” Confusion filled her eyes.
“That mountain out there is a fucking war zone, Scheme. ” He grabbed her wrist and began to pull her through the tunnel. “You’re damned lucky you didn’t run into more trouble than just Dog. ”
He had to push the thought back. He had to force himself to do what had to be done here. He had never shirked his responsibilities; he had never tried to hide from the truth of his life, no matter how much it had sucked at times.
Right now, he wanted nothing more than to hide. To find a place outside of reality where he and Scheme could exist together forever.
And it wasn’t going to happen. No matter how much he wished it could. Which left only one last resort to save her. To give her to her true mate.
CHAPTER 18
Other than the color of his hair and eyes, Cabal St. Laurents was identical to Tanner. The difference in the hair was a matter of transposed colors. Tanner’s was black with burnished gold streaks. Cabal’s was a burnished gold with black streaks. Tanner’s eyes were deep, rich amber with flecks of brilliant green. Cabal’s were green with flecks of amber. Both men were exactly six feet and two inches tall. Both men were hard, muscular and had the looks of a fallen angel. Neither could, by any stretch of the imagination, be called angels though. They were equally dangerous.
Scheme’s father had once had extensive files on the two Bengal Breeds, their training and strengths, as well as their weaknesses. Scheme had nearly memorized those files. During his stay in the labs, Tanner had played the game perfectly. He had excelled at every obstacle he was pitted against, killed with proficiency and proved to the psychologists that he was a loyal Breed Killer, even at a young age.
He was considered one of the labs’ greatest failures now, and one of Callan Lyons’s greatest weapons in rescuing the Breeds from the New Mexico labs.
Cabal had been another story. His training had been filled with pitfalls. He refused to practice the maneuvers taught to him, and used his own. He refused to kill when ordered, but had no problem killing soldiers and trainers. He refused to talk to the psychologists and was labeled psychotic by the doctors working with him.
At the age of twenty-five he was declared a failure, without hope of training, and listed for cancellation along with nearly two dozen other Breeds. He had survived weeks in a pit designed to kill with torturous precision.
“I don’t think your friend trusts me, Tanner,” he commented hours after his arrival, as Scheme moved slowly from the bathroom into the main cavern.
Tanner stood by the counter, a beer in one hand, the other tucked into the pocket of his jeans while Cabal sat at the table, relaxed in his chair, his beer sitting in front of him.
“Is my trust required?” Scheme finally asked as she moved to the refrigerator and pulled free a bottle of water.
She had bathed and changed clothes and, for the first time since walking out of the caverns, felt warm again. Safe. God, she hadn’t realized the toll her life had taken on her over the years, until now.
And now she had to wait just a little while longer. Cabal would leave soon, and when he did, she could talk to Tanner. She could explain why she left, and why she needed so desperately to talk to Jonas.