He swung around to her sharply, as though he had somehow heard the thought.
“Do you think I would hurt you?” he snarled, his lips pulling back from his teeth as he straightened from the dangerous crouch.
There was nothing relaxed about him though; danger pulsed around him, as did lust. It gleamed in his eyes, naked and intense as he ate her with his gaze.
“I didn’t think you would leave me to be raped by another man either,” she panted, but where she had retreated from Cabal, she held her ground with Tanner. “You left me here to be fucked by another man, Tanner. ”
Anger slammed through her. Unfortunately, there was nothing on hand to throw at him. Her fists clenched at her sides as she faced him, shaking with emotion, betrayal.
“You are mine,” he snarled, stalking close to her, his movements fluid, filled with animal grace and sexual intensity.
She sneered in response. “Am I yours? I don’t think so. I belong to no man. ”
A hard, carnal smile crossed his lips. “Not a man, a Breed. ”
She jumped to avoid him, but he was fast, faster than she gave him credit for. As she turned to run, his arms surrounded her, his chest cushioning her as he jerked her against him, his cock pressing into her lower back.
“My mate. ” Growling, intense, the words were followed by his hand jerking the neckline of her shirt aside and his teeth sinking into her shoulder.
He bit her.
Scheme screeched, not so much from pain, but from the sudden overriding certainty that he had done more than mark her physically. His incisors were lodged in her flesh, his tongue flickering over her skin as his mouth sucked at it.
It hurt, but not as it should have. A sexual intensity she hadn’t expected bloomed within her as her head fell to the side and her nails bit into his wrists. It shouldn’t ride a hard edge of pleasure; it shouldn’t send ribbons of electricity to strike at her nipples, her womb, her clit.
She shouldn’t be burning for more.
“What are you doing?”
He was growling behind her. His hands, her nails still digging into his wrists, moved beneath her top, slid over skin so sensitive she moaned from the touch of calloused flesh running up it, until they cupped her breasts.
Her nipples were hard, hot, pressing into his palms pleadingly as his fingers tightened on her flesh.
“Mine,” he growled again, his teeth sliding from her flesh with an erotic shift of pleasure so intense that her vagina flexed in hunger.
“Tanner,” she whimpered, feeling a slow, pulsing burn in her shoulder as his tongue licked over the wound. Heat and liquid-hot sensation began to move from the four small puncture wounds to weave through her body.
As though some powerful narcotic had hit her bloodstream, her knees weakened and her womb clenched with a sudden hunger so intense, so driving, she gasped at the strength of it.
Cabal had to swallow the bile rising to his throat as he escaped through the tunnels, putting as much distance as possible between himself and what he had just done.
Had he pushed too far? He had terrified her. He had savaged her emotions. And he had known before doing it how horrifying she would find it.
It was the bond. The animal could sense the mate’s pain. He had sensed it between other mates. It wasn’t a conscious thing; it was something the mates never truly recognized, but it was there. Just as it was there with Tanner and Scheme. He had to force Tanner back to her. He had to force the animal to claim her.
But had he gone too far?
He had gone too far for his own comfort. He just prayed he hadn’t gone too far for his brother to ever forgive him.
CHAPTER 20
His mate!
She belonged to him.
Tanner knew he was out of control. Knew he had lost the self-imposed restraint he had always forced on himself and that he was teetering on the edge of complete primal meltdown if he didn’t manage to pull back. Just a little.
He threw his head back, his knees bending to press the tortured length of his cock against Scheme’s buttocks as his hands curled around her breasts.