Tanner's Scheme

“So he beat you?”

“Not always.” She was lying, and she was a very adept liar, so he could barely detect the scent of it. She didn’t want him to know she was lying. For some reason, this woman who should have been his enemy didn’t want him to know he had been the reason for any pain she had felt.

He nipped her ear.

“What was that for?” Her head tilted back, a frown creasing her brow as she glared back at him.

“That was for lying to me, pretty girl,” he growled, lowering his lips to hers because he couldn’t resist them. Because he needed the taste of her, needed it to clear the scent of her lie from his head. “Never lie to me.”

He didn’t take her easily, he didn’t ease her into a kiss, and he sure as hell didn’t ask for permission. Asking for permission from this woman was an instant debate.

She struggled without force as he shifted to the side, moving her into the crook of his arm to allow for a deeper penetration of her mouth.

One hand pressed into his chest, the other into his side. Her sharp little teeth nipped at his tongue; his nipped at her lips.

She pulled back; he buried his hand in her hair, cupped her scalp and forced her mouth back to his and let her teeth nip at it.

Damn, it was good. The sharp little sting, a flick of her tongue, and he was ready to come in his jeans. His other hand gripped her jaw, holding her still, his fingers controlling her ability to bite as his lips covered hers, his tongue impaling her mouth with a hunger that should have worried him.

Flickering, inquisitive, her little tongue met his, battling, a heated erotic battle that ended with one of her hands buried in his hair and her breasts pressing into his chest as she turned to him, her legs straddling his hips, rising over him, taking control.

Fuck. He gripped her hips, pulling her down to him, grinding her pussy against his jeans-covered cock. Slender fingers tangled in his hair as she began to ride him, the silk of her pants sliding against his jeans, her heat seeping through and raking over his dick.

Hell. He was going to fuck her. If he didn’t fuck her, he was going to die. Last night wasn’t enough; it had only whet his appetite for more.

He had unclenched his hands from her hips, lifting for her breasts, when suddenly, just that fast, she was gone. Stumbling, whirling around, her hair creating a silken fan as she faced him, pushing it back impatiently.

“Watch Gilligan,” she rasped. “I told you not to do that.”

“Hell.” He laid his head against the couch and stared up at the stone ceiling, almost to the point of begging her. Damn, if he’d thought begging her to ride his cock would work, he’d have been on his knees in front of her.

“Yes, hell,” she snapped in agreement. “Find something else to amuse you while you hold me here, Tanner, because I’ll be damned if I’ll stand in for your stupid reruns.”

He lifted his head as she stalked to the cavern doorway.

“Where are you going?” he called out on a sigh.

“I’m finding my out of here,” she retorted. “Right now. I’ve had enough of you and enough of stone walls. And when I do, I’ll find those stupid trout and shove them up your ass for Jonas.”

With that, she stalked down the darkened tunnel, soft lights glowing to light her way as Tanner’s lips twitched. If she could find the hidden access, then she was welcome to it.

He picked up the remote and changed channels, chuckling as he caught Gilligan working the bike-powered washing machine.

He might be so horny he was about to explode, but he had time, he assured himself. Time to figure out why she pulled at him, time to figure out how to save her.

CHAPTER 10

Scheme hadn’t found the exit out of the caves, and the dark mood it put her in did little to ease the frustration rising inside her. In desperation, she crawled into the bed, pulled the blankets over her head and prayed for sleep.

Sleep that finally came despite the knowledge that Tanner was naked beside her. Naked and hard and waiting to still the warmth growing inside her. It was a restless sleep though, one plagued by bad dreams and a certainty that Tanner would be the death of her. They followed her, shadowing the landscape of her sleep, until finally, she forced herself awake, and faced the real nightmare.

It was dark.

But her eyes were wide open.

Her eyes were open and her heart was racing as panic began to set in.

It was pitch-black dark.

“Tanner?” She sat up in bed, her fingers clenching in the blankets as she listened.

There was no light, no sound.

“Tanner, where are you?” She was not going to panic.

Forcing the fingers of one hand from the blankets, she felt across the bed, ignoring the tremors beginning to build in her body.

She had been here before, she reminded herself. In the dark, lost, uncertain where she was or what awaited her.

“Tanner, don’t play these games with me,” she snapped, her voice loud in the dark as she found only emptiness on his side of the mattress. “Where are the lights?”

She hadn’t found light switches in the past two days. If they were here, they were very cleverly hidden, just as the exit was.

“This is going too far, Tanner,” she cried out, staring around frantically, seeing nothing but the darkness, hearing nothing but the sound of her own heart beating, her own gasping breaths.

She was not going to lose it, she promised herself. She hadn’t lost it yet, and she wasn’t going to start now.

But it was so dark. Her breathing hitched in her throat. With the lights out, it was like…She shook her head as she inhaled roughly.

She was not buried alive. She was in a bed, a very comfortable bed. The cavern was at least ten or twelve feet high, she remembered. She had plenty of room. Plenty of air.

And she was buried alive.

“Tanner. Tanner, where are you?” She screamed out his name as she struggled to get herself out of the bed.

Suddenly, the mattress wasn’t a mattress, it was a coffin, enveloping, smothering. Her feet tangled in the blankets, tripping her, tossing her to the cold, hard floor as her fingers clawed at the stone.

She could feel the rock biting into her knees as she tried to find her feet, only to collapse again as her legs refused to hold her up.

It was fear, that was all, she told herself frantically. Her mind had been screwed with too many times, the dark used against her in too many ways. She had survived it then without giving away her secrets; she could do it now. She was stronger than this, she told herself. She could survive this.

But she knew her father’s weaknesses. She had no idea how far Tanner would go, or if he would even return. He could have left her there to die in the dark. To smother in her own fears.

“Tanner, don’t do this to me,” she screamed, shuddering, feeling the chill of the air wrap around her. It was cold. So cold.

It was too dark. She had to find light. There had to be light here somewhere. Appliances. Where was she in the room? Where were the appliances?

Inhaling roughly, she tried to push back the fear. It took what seemed forever, each second filled with the sound of her heart thudding and her gasping breaths.

She could do this. This was a cavern; it wasn’t a coffin. All she had to do was get her bearings.

Still kneeling on the rough floor, she reached out around her, feeling the stone slowly. Methodically. She had to take this a step at a time. She had to be patient.

She was whimpering. She heard her own panicked gasps as her hands found the footboard of the bed. Okay. She was at the bottom of the bed.

She knew this cavern. She had spent days pacing it off, getting to know her territory. All she had to do was make her way across the room to the counter. There was a light inside the dishwasher.

She looked around desperately, realizing that the digital light that had been on the dishwasher before was no longer there.

There was no power.

No power.

“Oh God, Tanner, please don’t do this to me.” She couldn’t scream now. Her voice was weak, and she hated the pleading sound of her voice.

She was not going to do this! Scheme clenched her fists as she bent over, pressing her clenched fingers into her stomach as she fought to hold back the bile boiling there.

She wasn’t going to be sick either.

She should have known she couldn’t trust him. She had been close though, so close to considering it. He had seemed so concerned, so furious for her sake that Chaz had tried to kill her.

And as she had suspected, it was all an act. Just an act. A trick to get the information her father wanted. He needed to know what was on that fax. He had worked decades for that information.

“I don’t know anything.” She keened before slapping her hands over her mouth to hold back the sobbing pleas. She had stopped begging years ago. She had learned to accept that her father was a rabid psychopath; no amount of pleas would change whatever he had planned for her. And no amount of pleas would change whatever Tanner had planned.

But she did know something. She knew too much. She knew David Lyons, Callan Lyons’s son, would be kidnapped. She knew that the first Leo still lived and where he could be found. She knew the rumors of the Breeds mating rather than just loving were true. She knew enough to ensure that her father faced Breed law rather than just federal law.

She couldn’t breathe. Her hands moved from her lips to her throat as she gasped for breath.

It was so dark. She rocked forward slowly, fighting to hold on to her composure as she felt the coffin surrounding her, smelled the scent of her own fear and urine around her.

It wasn’t real. Her hands swiped out around her desperately. There was no coffin. Just a cavern. And there was an exit somewhere.

And Tanner would be back. He would wait, wait until she was completely hysterical before he came back. He would try to soothe her. To make it better. Then while she was weak, broken, he would ask her questions. He would probe.

She didn’t try to stop the tears from falling. She was fucking terrified; hysteria wasn’t that far away—there was no way to fight that. She knew her weakness, and so did her father.

The dark. Complete darkness, restraint, though at least this time her hands and feet weren’t tied. She was mobile. Hysterical, but mobile.

“You bastard!” she screamed. “You son of a bitch. You think burying me alive is going to get you something I don’t have to give?”

She laughed. The sound was sharp, desperate and disintegrated into sobs.

She really, really hated the dark.

Tanner dropped from the opening in the tunnel’s ceiling before reaching up and pulling the stone cover carefully back into place.

The lights blinked on, activated by the motion sensors hidden in the stone, providing a faint glow to light the way through the tunnels.

The motion-activated lights allowed for greater freedom of movement as well as an early warning system if the tunnels were ever breached.

Small pinpoints of warning activation would now be lighting through every tunnel, cavern and cave that Callan had wired. The tiny red sensors would emit a pulse of sound, similar to a hum of electricity.

He flipped open the panel at the side of the wall; the fake stone hid a small digital keypad that he punched his password into automatically. The hum would evaporate and the cavern’s motion-activated lights would flip on as he made his way to the main cavern.

Scheme was obviously still sleeping. He had left the sensors active there when he left. If she had awakened and gotten out of the bed, the lights would flip on. Once she got into the bed, they would dim and within an hour extinguish, just as the lights and television had the night before.

He had just spent longer than he would have liked fielding several very heavy suggestions from Callan Lyons that he return to oversee any potentially harmful media that arose from the disappearance of one Scheme Victoria Tallant.

That middle name never failed to make his lips quirk, whether in disgust or amusement he was never certain.