“What are you up to?” His eyelids drooped in sensual response, and the look seemed to stroke over her body.

“Loving you?” She loosened the black slacks. He was shirtless, his dark bronze chest rising and falling sharply as his hips lifted, allowing her to draw the material from his powerful thighs and down his legs.

“Hmm, very nice.” She gripped the hard rise of his shaft with both hands before leaning forward and licking over the broad crest. “Have I mentioned lately how much I do love you?”

“I could stand to hear it again.” He groaned, his hands threading into her long hair as she filled her mouth with the engorged head, working her tongue over and around it, moaning at the taste of his flesh, the dark lustiness that filled her each time she experienced it.

“I love you very much.” She lifted her head and placed a kiss on the throbbing crown before rising to her feet and shedding the robe slowly.

His golden gaze flared as his hands gripped the arms of the chair, fingers digging into the padded softness as she smiled back at him.

She cupped her breasts, her fingertips thrumming over her nipples as he bared his teeth in arousal.

“I need you,” she whispered.

“I’m yours, pretty girl,” he growled. “Come take me before I have to spank you.”

“It might be worth the spanking,” she drawled as she straddled his lap and began to lower herself to him.

“I’ll spank you anyway,” he promised thickly as he gripped her hips, drew her down, then bit back a curse as the hard crest began to push inside her.

Flames were licking over her flesh even as he leaned forward, his tongue licking over her nipples as her hands gripped his shoulders.

Slowly, so slowly, he took her. Working inside her, stretching her, filling her, reaffirming the fact that she was alive and she loved. She loved and she was loved.

“Oh God, Tanner, it’s so good.” She moved on him, pressing lower, forcing him deeper until he was seated fully inside her and throbbing pulses of heat began to whip through her body.

It was always like this. So intense. So filled with warmth. With the knowledge that she belonged. Finally Scheme Tallant belonged.

“Beautiful,” Tanner breathed out roughly. “So damned beautiful you steal my breath.”

She couldn’t speak; she could only feel. Feel his hands moving up her back, calloused fingertips stroking up her spine as his erection began to stroke inside her. She leaned to him, needing his kiss. The mating heat wasn’t as harsh as it had been before Tamber’s attack and the subsequent kidnapping attempt. But the need for his taste still filled her head.

He was there for her. His tongue licking over her lips, then flickering over her tongue and spilling the stormy taste of the mating hormone into her mouth. Within seconds she was desperate for more, arousal rising sharper, sweeter than ever before, and it had been damned sweet to begin with.

The mating hormone sensitized her further. It seemed to open each nerve ending in her body, allowing deeper sensation, more heat, more pleasure and, finally, an orgasm that tore through her brain with sharp, blinding pleasure and sent her flying.

She was flying. Free. Her cries echoed around her as she felt the barb emerge, felt it lock straight into an area so sensitive, so filled with nerve endings that she exploded again. Over and over, flying higher, her soul opening and taking Tanner in ways she would have never believed possible before the night he kidnapped her.

“I love you.” She tried to scream the words, but they were only gasps. “Tanner. Oh God, Tanner, I love you.”

She collapsed against him, holding tight to him, only barely aware of his incisors locked once again in her shoulder, piercing the mark he had left there countless times before.

It should hurt, she had once thought. Now she knew it would never hurt. It was the proof that she belonged, that she was now a part of a whole rather than drifting along half-alive.

Tanner completed her.

“My Schemer,” he finally whispered roughly at her ear. “Forever, my Schemer.”

She was Tanner’s Scheme. But she was her own person as well. And beneath his love she had come to learn that being her own person meant giving her soul where it belonged. Within Tanner’s care.

As Scheme slept, Tanner moved across the room to the phone, picked it up and dialed a secure number.

“I don’t have much time,” John Bollen announced as he answered the call.

“Were you contacted?”

“Right after the arrest,” John revealed. “I’m under scrutiny.”

The inner Council needed the Tallant organization to carry out its objectives, and now John controlled it.

“Did the order go out?” Tanner asked.

“An hour ago. He’ll be dead before the week is out. The Council can’t afford to have him talk. They’re taking care of it.”

A cold smile pulled at Tanner’s lips before his gaze sliced back to the bed to see his mate watching him knowingly.

“Let me know if you receive warning.”

“Jonas will let you know. Now go away, I can’t afford these calls this close to success. Practice patience.”

Tanner disconnected the call and stared back at Scheme.

“Patience was never one of my virtues,” he informed her unapologetically.

Her arms opened wide for him. “Mine either. And mine has run out. I need you again.”

They wouldn’t speak of it, he realized. She was smart. She knew what would happen. She knew that if he could, Tanner would kill the bastard himself. And she understood, because she knew that monsters couldn’t be allowed to roam unchecked.

Speaking of it wasn’t something he wanted to do anyway. Sometimes, it was best that his Scheme be allowed to ignore the merciless animal that lurked just beneath the flesh of the man. The animal willing to kill to protect all he held dear.

The animal that understood that sometimes, only blood could ease the rage beneath, and assure the safety of the woman that held his soul.

His woman. His mate. His Scheme.