She should have been embarrassed. Humiliated. He had watched her have sex. He had watched her search for something she had come to believe didn’t exist. Something she had found with Tanner. Satisfaction.

But she wasn’t embarrassed, or humiliated. It was exciting. Enthralling.

“Touch me. Don’t let me think, Tanner.” Her nails raked down his shoulders and her fingers came to the buttons of his shirt.

She gripped, ripped, her breath catching in excitement as the buttons popped from the shirt, scattering around them, revealing his hard, bronzed chest.

“I’ve dreamed of doing the things they never did.” His lips peeled back from his teeth, revealing the sharp, wicked incisors at the side of his mouth. “I made lists.”

Hands still gripping his shirt, she stared back at him in shock.

“Years.” His head lowered. “I watched you for so many years, aching, dying inside because I couldn’t have you.”

Her lips parted, but not for his kiss.

“Why did you watch?”

“Because I needed to know you,” he whispered. “To see you. I needed to assure myself, each time, that even though they touched your body, those bastards didn’t own you.”

She saw it in his eyes. He might be lying about many things; he could very well be the spy her father fought to control. But in this, he was telling the truth.

She shook her head slowly. “No man owns me.”

“I do.”

CHAPTER 11

Scheme stared up at Tanner in bemusement and shock as he shrugged the remains of the shirt from his shoulders. Muscles rippled over his chest and biceps, the restraint he had placed on himself clearly visible in the tense set of his expression and the brilliance of his eyes.

Did he own her? If he didn’t now, then he would soon.

“You watched everything?” She was naked beneath him, the quilt lying beneath her and falling away from her body as his eyes raked over her.

“Everything.” His voice was an exciting, roughened hiss. “Your lovers were good. But I’m better.”

Her heart raced as his hands dropped to the belt cinching the jeans beneath his waist.

“Prove it.”

“I’m the best you’ve ever had.” He smiled tightly. “I saw that the other night, Scheme. I knew it.”

“Prove it.” She needed him to. She needed to still the screaming demand pulsing through her now. Terror, pleasure and danger combined as the rushing adrenaline began to build inside her. “Prove it, Tanner. Now.”

Scheme watched in anticipation as his head lowered, his lips parting. She ached for that kiss. Needed it.

But it wasn’t a kiss that came. His teeth raked over her neck, the incisors sharp and wicked, scraping over her pulse before moving to her shoulder.

Then he bit her. Not deep. Not enough to break the skin, but the flashpoint of pleasure/pain that had her arching to him, a moan sizzling past her lips.

“Do you think I can’t?” He growled as he moved from her then picked her up quickly in his arms.

The next second she was bouncing on the bed, hard fingers gripping her ankles to jerk her forward, pulling her sex directly to his waiting mouth.

She hadn’t expected it. That was the only excuse she had. She had expected soft, gentle. Plenty of foreplay and lots of teasing. That’s how men reacted when they felt they needed to compete with a woman’s past lovers. They teased. They drew out the foreplay and the pleasure until she lost all desire to finish the act.

But this wasn’t teasing.

She screamed his name, and she’d sworn she wouldn’t. But the pleasure exploded through her body as his tongue slid through her saturated flesh, before his lips capped over her clit and his tongue grew hungry.

The orgasm that tore through her was exquisite. Terrifying. There was no warning, no reason for the detonation of ecstasy that ripped through nerve endings and convulsed her womb in spasms of release, but there was also no containing it. And no stopping him.

As the rippling pulses of ecstasy convulsed through her vagina, he was there. His tongue licked, lapped, pushed her higher, sending her blazing into an intensity of pleasure she couldn’t have expected.

“Tanner…” She screamed his name as her hands buried in his hair, her upper body lifting, jerking in response to the sudden, fiery release that attacked her again.

Her thighs clenched around his head as her hips rocked, her lungs struggling for air as she stared sightlessly toward the ceiling.

He gave her no respite. He touched her, from the inside out. His hands, his lips, his tongue. Heated sensations, trigger points of electric ecstasy vibrated through nerve endings that had gone without touch for much too long.

He touched her body; then he reached inside and touched her soul, whispering his need for her, his hunger for her, driving her to the limits of her own sensuality before she flew higher, reached for more. Perspiration dampened her body, making her slick, wet, inside and out, as the sounds of his pleasure ricocheted around her. This was touch. Pure touch. How had she lived without it before this? How had she lived without Tanner’s kiss, without his husky voice whispering his pleasure to her, without his hands drawing her closer, soothing her, arousing her, warming the cold places inside her?

Never. She had never known this. She was lucky to orgasm once during sex, let alone twice, with another building, burning, exploding through her as she arched, driving her pussy tighter against his mouth as her legs trembled in response to the grip she had on him.

Bucking beneath him, she did as he had sworn she would. She begged. She pleaded, and she swore the dampness on her face was perspiration rather than tears as she felt the darkness inside her soul reaching for the heated warmth that began to build inside her chest.

Before she could anticipate or even consider his next move, he jackknifed away from her, his hands gripping her wrists as he pulled her up off the bed.

And he was naked. Gloriously aroused, his cock standing out from his body, flushed and engorged.

“You taste like fucking sunshine,” he snarled as his hand gripped her waist only to toss her back on the bed. The next second he was on one knee in front of her, the other foot planted across her body as he pulled her back into a sitting position. “Now, darlin’, let’s see how hungry you are for more.”

She was hungry. Hungry for all of him. Desperate. Aching.

His one hand gripped her hair as the other gripped the straining length of his erection.

“Come on, Schemer. Undo me, pretty girl. Make me beg now.”

His eyes were gleaming gold as her lips opened, her tongue swiping over the engorged crest. She could feel rising within her the dangerous, destructive sexuality she had always fought.

Some things could be too good. Too addictive. Like breathing. Like Tanner.

“Hell yes,” he groaned as he slowly fed the damp head into her mouth. “Take me, darlin’. Show me how hungry you are.”

And she was hungry. Hungry enough that now nothing mattered except his pleasure and her own. Because each growling moan that came from his throat only fed her lust.

“Oh yeah.” He was watching as her mouth surrounded the straining length of his cock. His eyes centered, not on hers, but on her lips. “There you go, pretty girl. Suck my dick. Show me how good you are.”

And he knew how good she was. Scheme felt her face flame at the wicked knowledge that he had watched her do this at other times. With other men. And as he had promised, nothing that had come before him could compare to this pleasure.

“There’s no pulling out, Scheme,” he warned her then. “You’ll take it all. Every fucking drop of cum I can spill into that hot little mouth.”

She whimpered, as much from the domineering eroticism as from the act itself. But if he thought surrender would come from her, he was wrong. She would accept only what she wanted. And she would be damned if she would give it to him easily.

Her eyes narrowed as she pushed at his wrist, forcing him to release the hold he had on the treat she craved.

Her hand couldn’t surround him, but she knew how to compensate. Her favorite vibrator had often played her lover, and he knew it. He knew how she longed to taste, to touch, and she gave him what he had watched and more.

Her other hand cupped his tight balls, her fingers playing them, rolling them as her palm gripped the sac firmly.

He snarled again, a hard growl leaving his throat as the muscles of his thighs flexed and the head of his cock throbbed.

“I watched you with that damned vibrator you played with sometimes,” he told her then. “Sucking it, filling your mouth with it.”

She moaned in response.

“I felt it. I felt your mouth on my cock as you sucked it. Felt your teeth…” The little roar that left his lips had her juices spilling from her vagina. “Fuck, yeah.” Her teeth raked over the bulging head before her mouth sucked him back in and her tongue began to play with flickering caresses.

His hands tightened in her hair, his fingers flexing against her scalp, pulling at the strands, sending racing arcs of pleasure/pain to streak to erogenous zones she hadn’t known she possessed.

“I loved watching you pleasure yourself.” Both hands were in her hair now as his hips began to move, his cock fucking her in short, hard strokes. “Seeing what you wanted and couldn’t give yourself.”

She was ensnared by his eyes, the golden amber flecked with green, glittering behind the thick, gold-flecked lashes.

“I would dream about fucking your mouth.” His voice deepened, roughened.

Her tongue raked beneath the head, pressed, stroked, and she was rewarded by a pulse of pre-cum, heated, earthy, the taste of it firing an almost explosive response inside her.

“Dream of feeling your tongue. Fucking over it.” He pulled harder at her hair. Her eyes nearly closed at the pleasure. “Watching you.” His strokes increased. “Feeling you. Suck it deeper. Deeper, baby.” He slid nearly to her throat, where no man had been allowed before, until now.

Her tongue flattened, raking the sensitive flesh beneath his cock, and she felt another pulse of liquid fall from the engorged flesh.

“I’m going to come.”

Her fingers tightened at the bottom, her middle finger finding the heavy vein that led up the shaft, stilling his release.

His head fell back, his body tightening further, his hands gripping her hair harder as she began to suck him deeper, filling her mouth with the thick, hard flesh throbbing erotically over her tongue.

The sound of their breathing filled the room, rough, harsh gasps. His growls, her moans as she worked her mouth over the thick crest and impossibly hard shaft.

“There you go baby, work my dick,” he snarled. “Show me how bad you are, sweetheart. Give it to me.”

The hand working his scrotum moved to the thrusting shaft as he threatened to go deeper than she could bear. The fingers of her other hand continued to play the vein at the back, holding off his release, forcing the sensitivity in his cock higher.

She had dreamed of doing this. Of controlling her lover’s release, finding a lover willing to let her play as well, to let her taste, touch and work them both into a frenzy of need.

And Tanner liked to play. One hand dropped from her hair, ran down her shoulder, then cupped a swollen breast.

His fingers gripped her nipple, tweaked it, plumped it, alternating caresses of fiery splendor with delicate strokes as his cock fucked her mouth.

“Hot little mouth.” He grimaced. “Fuck, you love this, don’t you, pretty girl? My dick filling your mouth, controlling it?”

Oh, she did. She was flying on it, each snarling growl, each purring hiss as she pleasured him. Driving not just him insane but herself as well.

And she was losing control. The need to taste him, to feel his release, was overwhelming her need to play, to tempt and control.

Her fingers moved on the shaft, stroking him as she gloried in the hard-driving rhythm of his cock in her mouth. The pressure at the base of his erection lessened, and within seconds a roar filled the cavern as he drove into her mouth, his hands locking her head in place as his semen began to spurt into her.