He hurt her. He could smell the scent of her inner pain, and he hated it.
"Why did you choose me? Why not the head of security? Or the head manager? Why a lowly assistant manager with limited power?"
He snorted at that. "You mean the lazy manager who has shifted all the work, responsibility, and information to your shoulders, while claiming the fruits of your labor?" He asked. "I didn't have to smell the laziness on that woman to know the truth of her. All I had to do was read the file that had been prepared on her."
"How did you know Albrecht would be here during the security upgrade?"
"I have my sources." He shrugged.
"How many of you are working together?"
Matthias flashed her a grin. "How many of us did you see?"
"You had help," she bit out. "How else did you manage to get my luggage or have my car moved? You couldn't have done this alone."
"I kill alone and this is all that matters." He wouldn't tell her different. There was always a chance she wasn't the person he thought she was, and he didn't dare betray the others. "Stop asking me questions, Grace. We'll talk when we get to the cabin."
"Stop touching me then. And I swear to God, if your fingers go any higher, the first chance I get I'm cutting them off your hand."
His hand had slid higher, inches above her knee, and despite the vehemence of her order, she was enjoying it. The smell of her arousal was now covering that of her fear. The air around him was indolent with the scent of a wicked storm. He could feel the wild pulse of her blood beneath her flesh, and he knew it matched his own.
"I've been dying to touch you, Grace," he finally admitted. "Holding back these past weeks has been hell on my control."
"Well isn't that just too damned bad," she snapped, though he could hear the breathlessness, the hunger inside her. "Because you don't have a chance in hell now. Unless it's rape you're after, big boy, you fucked up when you pulled that trigger. I wouldn't sleep with you now if all that mating heat crap the tabloids printed were true."
He almost winced. Those tabloids had no clue. And neither did she. Because he would have her, and by the time the mating heat was finished with them, they would both be begging for it.
SHE couldn't believe this mess. She couldn't believe Matthias had actually killed, in cold blood. He hadn't even given Dr. Albrecht a warning.
She shuddered at the memory of it. The memory of his face, so dispassionate. There had been no anger, no fury, it hadn't even been emotionless really. Just unconcerned. What he had done had caused not so much as a flinch of remorse.
How many others had he killed? Would he kill her the same way?
Grace turned her face away from him and stared at the door of the SUV. The seat was reclined fully: that, in combination with the dark night and the rural area they were driving through, left her completely out of site.
She was stretched out, bound, helpless. Most women would have been begging for their lives, screaming, crying. She was trying to think instead. To wait. To steal a chance to escape. If one came.
She had a feeling one wouldn't come. And begging would do her no good. It wouldn't have done Albrecht any good, either.
She had been falling in love with Matthias, and perhaps that was the part that hurt the most. They had spent most of her breaks sharing coffee in her small office, and the evenings enjoying quiet dinners together, or long walks in the park.
He fascinated her. Drew her. Knowing what he was, the horrors he had experienced had pricked at her heart, and her woman's heart had wanted to erase those horrors with softness.
She had even told her family about him. About the Wolf Breed whose eyes were so filled with loneliness. Who smiled as though he hadn't known he could do so. Who watched her in a way no other man ever had. Her father had wanted to meet him. Her mother wanted to cook for him. Her brothers offered to teach him to play football.
She blinked back her tears at the loss. At both their losses. He had no idea what he was missing out on when he lost her family.
She liked to say she was fully a part of reality, and reality demanded that she accept that Matthias wasn't just going to let her go. He couldn't afford to. The whole Breed community would suffer for what he had done tonight, if the authorities ever learned of it. And Grace was well aware of his loyalty to not just the pack he claimed as his own, but to the Breeds in general.
She closed her eyes as she felt his fingertips stroking her leg again. His palms were horribly scarred, the faint ridges from those past wounds rasped over her flesh, and her soul. They brought pleasure and pain. Pleasure from his touch, pain at the knowledge of all he had endured.
She thought she had gotten to know him. She knew he could kill. He'd told her of some of the assignments he had been sent on during his time in the labs. She'd known he had killed since then in the confines of the investigative work he did. She hadn't imagined he could kill in cold blood, though. Shooting a man from the behind, without warning, somehow seemed worse than killing one face-to-face.
She knew there were rumors that Albrecht had been part of the Genetics Council. Rumors that he had ordered deaths, worked on the genetic alterations, and perhaps even been a part of what the press called the twelve-member directorate. He had been the head of the Genetics Council—the shadowy figures that financed, directed, and oversaw each stage of the Breed development.
All Grace had ever seen was a mean, disillusioned old man, though. One that didn't even have the common sense to close the door to his suite and who was constantly searching for his appointment journal.
If the rumors were true, he should have been arrested rather than released after the inquest into the Breed atrocities. He shouldn't have been killed the way he was.
"Grace, the smell of your fear is killing me." His voice was soft, gentle. "I promise, I'm not going to hurt you."
"And I'm supposed to believe that?" She turned her head to stare back at him, seeing the flash of somber regret in his gaze before he turned back to look at the road.
"You will believe it," he said, his voice as heavy with regret now as his gaze had been. "But you won't die. Not by my hand, or by any others, as long as I can protect you."
"What? You think you can make me forget what I saw?" She hated the tears in her voice, but even more, she hated the damned disillusionment. She hated looking at him and fighting herself to believe what she had seen with her own eyes.
"Not forget it," he admitted. "I'm hoping, though, that you'll understand it enough to keep the knowledge of it to yourself."
He was crazy. That was all there was to it.
"Oh, well, if that's all you want, then I'm all for it." Living was worth lying for. "Let me go now, and mum's the word. I promise."
He flashed her a chiding smile.
"I can smell your lie as easily as I can smell your arousal, Grace. Have you forgotten that?"
Her eyes widened. Cream flooded her pussy and wept to her labial folds, rushing to surround her clit. That little bundle of nerves was pulsing now, engorged and swollen. The sound of his voice was rasping, filled with male lust and determined aggression.
"Yon never mentioned the arousal part," she gasped.
"I didn't, did I?" His fingers slid higher on her thigh, and, traitorously weak, her legs trembled, her breathing became rougher, and her juices thicker.
His fingers grazed the damp crotch of her panties, and Grace heard the low, weak moan that betrayed her slip past her lips.
"The scent of your arousal has made me crazy." His voice deepened, as a growl rumbled in his chest. The sound should have frightened her; it turned her on instead.