Her lips quirked at the thought of that silver-eyed Lion Breed. Very, very few people knew his secrets. She was one of them. And because she knew them, she had trusted him. He would have bled out in the most painful ways before betraying his own people. Or betraying someone attempting to help them.
He was her only chance. All she had to do was get to Jonas. She couldn’t trust Tanner, no matter the demand inside her that pushed her to do just that. No matter the pain that holding her silence cost her.
A part of her was certain that Tanner wasn’t her father’s spy. But there was that dark voice within her soul, the one the had awakened the day she realized her lover had helped destroy his own baby. The voice that whispered of Cyrus’s manipulative, calculating evil.
Breeds were deceptive; it was part of their training. And Tanner’s training, even at a young age, had been extensive. And Cyrus had been part of his training. To date, he still controlled more than half of the Breeds he had helped train himself. He had helped train Tanner before the escapes from those New Mexico labs. He could still have enough hold over Tanner to control him.
So why did she need to trust him? Why was it such a battle to force herself to remember what he was, and what he could be?
Because she loved him. Because he had touched her inside when she was certain she could never be touched there again.
Because a part of her believed so strongly in him that it was willing to give him anything, everything he asked for, and to trust him. Everything inside her wanted that but that shadow of realism that kept reminding her of her child. Kept reminding her that the one person who should have been willing to die for it was its father. The man who had helped destroy it.
She could afford to wait, she told herself. She could afford to trust that if Tanner loved her now, then he would love her later. First, she had to get to Jonas. And time was running out. She had only a few weeks left before everything would be in place to kidnap Callan Lyons’s son. Such a small amount of time to save a child.
CHAPTER 13
He was a good cook.
Scheme laid her fork on her plate and breathed in deeply before picking up her coffee cup and finishing the last of the rich brew he had placed in front of her with the ham, eggs, homemade biscuits and surprisingly good grits.
She had never eaten grits in her life, had turned her nose up at them and laughed if anyone suggested she would eat such a thing. If she managed to survive this little venture, then she would have to learn to make them.
“More coffee?” He lifted the pot suggestively.
“Please.” He filled her cup, and she ignored his gaze as she lifted it and sipped, hiding her pleasure in the taste. His lips curved knowingly though. His damned sense of smell. He could probably smell her pleasure as easily as he could smell her lies.
She inhaled slowly, trying to ignore other things as well as his amusement. Her arousal, her knowledge that he could smell it. The longer she sat there across from him the stronger it was growing. Her nipples were pressing into the dark violet velvet of her top, her breasts so swollen they were sensitive.
Between her thighs, her clit was engorged, throbbing, and her panties were damp.
She ached for him. Needed him. Never, not even in those first tempestuous months with Chaz, had she been so aroused.
If she survived, doing without Tanner’s touch would be hell. She needed to feel his hands stroking over her body, his lips against her flesh.
She flicked him a look, watching as he leaned back in his chair and drank his coffee silently. He hadn’t said much since she came out of the shower; his lazy tiger personality was fully in effect though. The gleam of amusement in his eyes, the quirk of a smile on his sensual lips. His long, black-and-gold striped hair fell to his shoulders, framing the fallen angel features perfectly.
He really was too good-looking for any woman’s peace of mind.
Her emotions, her attraction to him and this unexplained hunger were getting the best of her. She had to escape. Now. Before he broke her. Before his promises and his insistence that she trust him broke through her woman’s heart.
Today, she had to escape.
“So where’s your brother?” She lifted the cup and sipped again, staring at him over the rim as she attempted to distract his attention from her.
“My brother?” His brow arched perfectly. Damn, she wished she could do that.
“Cabal,” she intoned mockingly. “You two are normally shadows of one another.”
“And what makes you think we’re brothers?” he asked curiously, setting the cup back on the table.
Scheme breathed in deeply. “You forget, the Council had your full file, Tanner, not just the remnants that survived the lab’s explosion. I know you and Cabal are identical twins. You don’t have to lie to me.”
He crossed his arms on the table and leaned forward slowly. “And how extensive are your files?” he asked.
She shrugged easily. “Somehow, the files in the Council’s database were destroyed. Most of what Father has is from memory only, which isn’t extensive. But I remember reading the file when I first took over the job as his assistant.”
His eyes narrowed. “The files were destroyed?”
“You didn’t know?” She arched her brows in question. “I assumed the Breeds had found a way to get a spy into the main headquarters of the Council databases. Most of the files on the Breeds were destroyed several years ago when a virus was implanted into the network. The Council is still trying to recover from that one. I applaud whoever managed it.”
She had managed it, along with Jonas’s help. The headquarters in Sweden were considered impenetrable, their computer and backup networks impossible to infiltrate. But they had done it.
His eyes narrowed. “We had no idea how extensive the damage was.”
“It was catastrophic.” She sighed. “Somehow, someone implanted a virus that corrupted every file with the Breed extension. An explosion at the secondary facility that housed the disc backups took care of those as well. We assumed it was a Breed assault.”
Jonas was even more closemouthed than she had given him credit for. Once he had managed transferring the Council file databases, he had implanted a virus so insidious that it had taken the Council computer geeks months to catch it. By then, every Breed file they possessed, as well as backups, had been corrupted. The explosion at the secondary facility had been a stroke of genius as well.
“So there’s nothing left?” he asked softly.
She shrugged again. “There were hard copies of some files, though those contained very little information. Mostly training stats, genetic source, and so forth. Many of the photos are lost forever though. They’re still attempting to put their files back together.”
Tanner’s lips pursed. “We knew about the explosion, and the virus, but we had no idea how extensive the damage was.”
“Of course you knew.” She smiled. “I remembered your file though; I read it several times after you were appointed the head of Public Relations at Sanctuary. You and Cabal were created as twins, then separated after the first year for training purposes. If I read correctly, he wasn’t as cooperative as you were with the training.”
Her chest clenched at the thought of how uncooperative he had been. Cabal had been horribly abused at the German lab in which he had been confined.
“He was nearly dead when we found him,” he stated. “Which makes me wonder why you’re asking about him. Your father was the head of the committee that decided life or death, Scheme. His signature was on Cabal’s cancellation papers.”
“Mine wasn’t,” she pointed out.
She hadn’t known of the cancellation orders that had gone out that month. If she had, she would have made certain that one was shredded. The mode of death had been particularly horrific.
“I found him in that pit,” he suddenly snarled. “Half-dead, surrounded by the Breeds that had been thrown in there with him, their bodies already decomposing. He had almost bled out from the strikes those knives had made at him.”
The only thing that had saved Cabal was the fact that the soldiers had overfilled the pit with Breeds. The smooth stone walls were fitted with deadly sharp daggers that struck in a random pattern. The fact that he had evaded a deadly thrust was a testament to his training. He had managed to calculate the timing and direction of each thrust as other Breeds died around him.
Her father had helped design that pit. It was first implemented as a training pit; the random thrusts of the dagger-sharp blades were used to train and test the Breeds on their ability to sense where and when danger would strike. One or two Breeds at a time in the pit and the blades did little damage. But once it was determined that as a training tool, the pit was ineffective, then it had been used instead as a means of mass murder. It was quite effective in that.
“He survived,” she reminded him, steeling herself against the knowledge of the horrific crimes committed against the Breeds.
“And now you’re asking about him.” He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest and staring back at her with a glint of anger.
“I was merely curious. The two of you are rarely seen apart now.”
“You don’t want to know about Cabal, Scheme,” he half-snarled. “His hatred for your father is deeper than most Breeds’. He would break your neck before I could stop him.”
“What difference, him or another?” She rose from the table, lifted her plate and cup and carried them to the sink. “Forget I asked.”
“Are you ready tell me why your father wanted you dead?”
She had known that question would return.
“I assume he believes I’m betraying him. It’s normally the only reason he goes to such extremes.”
She slipped the knife she had managed to slide her fingers over into the hand she had placed behind her back as they talked.
“He didn’t entrust me with as much information as the Breeds assume he did. I was a very small cog in the whole organization. But I know enough to make him uncomfortable with a few things that have happened lately.”
“Such as?”
She shrugged, forcing a mocking smile to her lips. “Various plans he had made with the pure blood societies, a few reports he gets on missions going out from Sanctuary. Nothing too incriminating, but as I said, uncomfortable.”
And he could tell she was lying. She could see it in his eyes.
“This isn’t helping you.” His golden eyes were narrowed on her and filled with suspicion as he rose to his feet.
Scheme tucked the knife into the band of her pants before pushing her hands into the pockets. He barely glanced at the movement as he rose from his chair and collected his own dishes before moving to the sink.
Dammit, she needed him to sit back down.
“I believe I told you I didn’t need your help.” But she did. She needed his help, his heat, his honest passion for her. And it was destroying her.
She retrieved the coffee she’d set on the counter and moved back to the table. Seconds later he did the same.
She had to escape and contact Jonas as soon as possible. She had to get away from Tanner before he stole her soul. She was desperate, suddenly more terrified of herself and her own emotions than she was of the risk she was preparing to take.
She needed that electronic remote she knew Tanner carried. It had to be the way out of there. She had checked every corner, every crack and crevice. There had to be a hidden doorway that remote worked.
He continued to stare back at her, the brilliancy of the green-flecked gold eyes almost mesmerizing. The Bengal was perhaps the most dangerous of the Breeds created, which was one of the reasons so few were designed. They were naturally, deceptively lazy, appearing to heel easily. The tiger genetics had taken decades to manipulate, and the scientists had learned early that the animal, as well as the Breed, wasn’t always dependable. The moment you thought you had tamed one, he struck. That made them a threat.