by Lora Leigh
And why should she care what she found for him? This was the man who had had his own sister captured. The man who had blackmailed that sister, laid her head on the chopping block of Breed Law, and he would have gone through with it. He would have killed Harmony if she hadn’t done as he ordered.
Just as he killed others.
He thought she didn’t know the things he had done. The trips the Breed heli-jet made to an active volcano, one that bubbled and churned and waited with greedy anticipation for the sacrifices he fed to it.
The bodies he had dropped into it. Council scientists who had been wiped away within the boiling mass of molten stone. He and his pilot, the wild-eyed Jackal.
Jackal. Damn him. He was protecting Mercury as well, and he was furious with her. And he was just as much a killer as Jonas was himself. Everyone knew it. Even Kane, head of Sanctuary’s security, knew it. Jackal was a murderer. He should have been born a Breed rather than a human.
She dug her fingers into her neck, trying to rub away the pain there. There had to be a way to convince the Ruling Cabinet that Mercury had to be confined and forced to undergo the testing she needed. It would be easy to duplicate the drug the Council had used to control him. He had lived well then. He would live well again, and there would be no risk of death. No risk of losing those she cared about.
She breathed in deeply, forcing the calm she needed, and moved back to the computer and testing equipment. She was the scientist. The Ruling Cabinet respected her opinion, and she knew Callan had called the cabinet together for a meeting. A very secretive meeting. She would make certain she was prepared. And she would make certain she saved Mercury. As with the others, she cared for him. He was her friend and losing him would leave a vacant hole inside her. She didn’t want to see him killed. The feral displacement wasn’t his fault. It was the fault of those bastards who created them. And she would find a way to save him. No matter the friends she lost in the process.
Mercury put away the groceries as Lawe unpacked them, the other Breed’s acute sense of smell going over each item.
Mercury liked the grocer. The man was a hell of a hunter and always seemed willing to embrace the Breed cause. But Mercury had seen betrayal come from all sides. He was cautious, he told himself.
When they finished, Lawe left again, locking the door behind him, and Mercury stared at Ria’s closed door. She hadn’t come out, and Lawe had informed him with a hint of amusement that the scent of her anger was filling the house.
Her anger. And he knew where that anger came from. That damned purr she had convinced herself she heard. He shook his head and moved to the door, opening it slowly and stepping into the bedroom.
“I thought I’d fix dinner,” he told her, forcing himself to stand in the doorway as he stared at her.
She was sitting in the middle of the bed, her laptop opened in front of her, a silky robe covering her, the soft, shimmery fabric slipping over one shoulder.
“Pizza is fine.” There was no accent in her voice, but he could tell she was controlling it ruthlessly. Her expression was smooth, her eyes the color of bitter chocolate as she glanced at him.
“I’m going to cook,” he said. “You need something more nourishing than pizza.”
“There’s nothing more nourishing than pizza,” she informed him. “Besides, after drinking the coffee you make, I’m flat terrified of any food you fix.”
He inhaled slowly and stepped forward, closing the door behind him. “I can cook. I told you I couldn’t make coffee.”
“If you can’t make coffee, then there’s no hope for even the slightest talent at something as simple as boiling water.” She turned her gaze back to the computer, dismissing him. “Call out for something. That’s what I do.”
He grimaced before tightening his lips and reining in the natural impulse to do something about the subtle challenge she was throwing out to him.
He reminded himself that Jonas would be here soon. He would have enough of a battle with her then. And when Vanderale sent that heli-jet for her, then he was going to have the devil’s own battle keeping her here. He couldn’t leave yet. But he had a feeling the battle she would learn they faced might appeal to her more than leaving would.
“Ria, if you don’t dress and come into the kitchen with me while I cook, then we may end up doing something on this bed that’s only going to make you angrier.”
Because he was about two seconds from ripping that robe off her body and enjoying some of the more wicked acts he’d considered doing with her.
“Something could make me angrier?” she asked him then.
“I’d have to know what made you angry to begin with,” he stated. “And since you don’t seem willing to discuss it . . .”
“Who said I wasn’t willing to discuss it?” With that, she closed the laptop and stood from the bed, facing him.
She crossed her arms over her breasts and that robe barely covered her thighs. He was going to tear it off with his teeth.
“You were the one that stomped out of the living room,” he pointed out.
“And you just let me walk out, didn’t you, Mercury?” Her voice was still calm and even, but he could see the shadows of anger and pain in her eyes. “It didn’t matter to you then and it doesn’t matter to you now.”
“What doesn’t matter?” he growled. “The fact that I’ll never have a mate of my own? Does that make me a robot, Ria? Incapable of caring? The woman that could have been my mate is dead,” he snarled. “Does that change anything between us?”
He watched her inhale roughly, saw the betraying tremble of her lips as he crossed the room to her.
“Ria, I’m not dead inside.” He gripped her shoulders and forced her to stare up at him. “What you do to me, no other woman has ever done, even the woman that could have been my mate. She was a child. She was killed. She doesn’t exist any longer. But we do.”
Her arms uncrossed slowly as her expression clenched, then the confusion and uncertainty he sometimes felt himself crossed it.
“I don’t know what to do about you,” she whispered then. “I don’t form attachments, Mercury, and you seem determined to make me do that here. When it’s over, where does that leave me? Alone again?”
“Do you want promises from me?” he asked her, wishing he had so much more than that to give her. “If that heli-jet arrives for you, you’re going to have to fight me to get on it. When it’s time for bed, I won’t be sleeping away from you, you’ll be sleeping in my arms. And when tomorrow comes, and the tomorrow after that, as long as Ely hasn’t had me confined in a damned padded cell and pumped up on drugs, I’ll be curled around you when you wake up. What more can I give you at this point?”
What more could he give himself?
Finally, she shook her head. “I knew better than to come here,” she whispered. “I knew you were going to completely mess with my head and my life, Mercury. I knew I should have stayed where I was.”
“But you came.” He lowered his head, caught her lower lip with his teeth and stroked over it with his tongue. Her eyes darkened then; the anger and bitterness left them and heat began to flicker in them.
“Come for me again.” He released her lip, only to stroke both lips with his tongue, tasting her, loving her warmth. “One more time, Ria, before both our lives go to hell.”
He took the kiss he needed then. His lips moved over hers, relished the feel of her, the heat of her, and his tongue pierced the tender seam, sinking into her mouth.
Her moan met his kiss. Her tongue twined around his, and the pleasure of that shouldn’t have been so intense. He shouldn’t have felt her stroking of his tongue echo in his cock. He shouldn’t have felt the warmth of her sinking into the very pores of his body.
He let her hands remove his shirt before he returned to her lips. He let her unbuckle his belt, release his jeans. And when her soft hands wrapped around the heavy length of his erection, he had no choice but to draw back from her.
He pushed her robe f
rom her shoulders and growled at the sight of the one-piece silk-and-lace teddy she wore beneath it.
“Take that off.” He moved back from her after unwrapping her fingers from his shaft. “I don’t want to destroy more of your clothing.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed and jerked his boots and socks off. He wasn’t going to fuck her with his boots on again. He wanted skin on skin, heat matching heat.
When he rose and shed his jeans, she still stood before him, her eyes going over him with hunger as she licked her lips with a nervous little stroke.
“You’re huge,” she finally whispered, reaching out for him again.
“And you’ve already taken me once, so we don’t have a problem there.” He didn’t want that growl in his voice, but it was still there. Animalistic. Rasping.
“Maybe more of a problem than you think,” she told him, her eyes, her face, her scent—hell, he could scent her now—becoming demanding.
“No problems,” he informed her as her hands pressed against his chest.
“I want to taste you now.” She pushed against him, pressing him to the bed, shocking him with the demand.
Women wanted him to fuck them. They wanted him wild and hungry on their bodies, but Mercury had to admit this was the first time one had wanted to taste him.
And this one, he knew, could destroy him with her touch.
CHAPTER 12
Ria was surprised when Mercury submitted to her need that he lie back. He moved until he was in the middle of the bed, his savage features wicked, sensual. His tilted eyes, the flicker of blue in them, and the sexy quirk of his lips were enough to make any woman wet.
But his approval at her touch sent her juices spilling from her. That sexy grumbling little growl as she stroked her hands up his legs, moving between them, coming over him, made her heart race.
And his body. That body was definitely the talk of many a woman that had glimpsed it. The online blogs and Breed sighting websites were filled with talk of this body. Six-four and broad. Proportional. Legs that were muscular and strong, the strength and power beneath his flesh would bring out any woman’s more feminine instincts.
The instinct to submit beneath him. To have him cover her, take her, draw screams of pleasure from her.
But she hadn’t expected him to be willing to lie beneath her touch so easily. The male animal inside him was stronger than most men; she knew that just from the time she had spent with him. And he was hungry. Hard and aroused. The thick length of his cock rose from the heavy sac between his thighs, along the hard planes of his muscular abdomen.
Thickly veined, the flesh a golden bronze, matching the rest of his skin. But that heavy shaft was absent the fine pelt of body hair that covered the rest of his flesh.
It was silk over iron, the broad head throbbing, damp with pre-cum. And with a Breed, there was no need to worry about birth control or STDs. They were the perfect lovers. He would break her heart and she knew it.
But until then, she could enjoy. She lowered her head and stroked her tongue along the length of his erection, licking and stroking. She tasted the thick crest, drew the essence of him onto her tongue and moaned at the taste. It was like midnight. Like a fire burning in the hearth as a cold wind blew outside. Earthy. Not sweet, not tart, but clean and completely male. And she wanted more of it.
Her tongue flickered over the tiny slit, aware as she did so that his hands clenched in the comforter as he arched to her.
So much power. She could feel it throbbing in the air around them and beneath the broad head of his erection. And it filled her. The power of one woman over the sleek animalistic male beneath it. It was heady. An aphrodisiac all its own. And when she filled her mouth with him, that power intensified. His body tightened, his hips jerking as though he wanted to do nothing more than thrust into her mouth as he had taken her body earlier.
“Damn you,” his voice rumbled. “That’s so damned good, Ria.”
She licked as she sucked at the broad cock head. Teased and stroked and let her senses fill with him. The taste of him, the heat of him.
One hand lifted from the blankets, cupped the side of her face, and he watched her. As though the experience were special, as though he had never had a woman suck him into her mouth.
How could any woman resist? The sight of the blue intensifying in his eyes made her crazy with lust. The small taste she’d had of his semen had her craving more, as though it were addictive. As though the taste of him were all she needed to survive.
She worked her mouth over his straining cock head, sucked it to the back of her mouth, flicked her tongue against the sensitive underside and moaned at the dark arousal filling her when his hands clenched in her hair.
She had never liked the power games men played in bed. The pain that they believed would force submission of her sexuality to them. The calculation in each act. With Mercury, there was none of that, but each hard tug at her hair had her moaning with pleasure. She liked it with him. It wasn’t calculated. It was pleasure. It was the man following her into that shadowed realm of hungers that she knew had never been sated until his touch. And then, it had only been satisfied until he touched her again.
“Beautiful,” he groaned. “The feel of your mouth, Ria. Damn.” He arched, pressing more into her mouth as she retreated.
She wrapped her fingers around the heavy stalk of flesh, with no hope of surrounding it completely, and stroked. Her lips slid from the head, caressed down the shaft, and she licked and sucked at the tight sac below, as his hands deepened the fire in her scalp.
She felt the scrape of his nails against her head. Those blunted claws, the physical representation of the animal inside him, and she nearly came from the feel of it.
Her clit was swollen, throbbing. Need was knifing through her body, and the hunger for more of him was driving her mouth.
“Keep this up, Ria, I’ll come.” His voice was thick, almost a purr itself, with a growl throbbing beneath it. “I’m going to fill that pretty mouth if you don’t stop.”
She sucked him deeper, tightening her lips and her mouth around the broad head and working it with her tongue, with the roof of her mouth. She loved it, laved it; she moaned around it.
His hand tightened more and she whimpered with the ecstatic pleasure. She sucked him more, needing his taste. She needed it, ached for it.
“Ria. Damn you.” He pulled at her hair again.
Moving one hand from his cock, she raked her nails down his thighs and would have cried out at the force with which his hips jerked.
His hands held her still then; a snarl left his lips and his seed spurted hard, hot, filling her mouth with that wild taste as she fought to consume each heated pulse.
She was almost coming herself from the sheer excitement of it, the taste of him. The taste was like fire, burning through her cells and filling her with something just as wild as the lust burning between them.
When she had taken all he had to give her, he surprised her again. Shocked her. He pulled her along his body, gripped her hips, and before she realized his intention he’d buried several hard inches inside the weeping depths of her pussy.
He was still aroused. Still iron-hard and hungry.
Resisting the force of his hands, she lifted, opening her eyes to stare down at him before she took those inches again, working herself on the thick intrusion and loving every second of it.
She had never had a lover take her after finding his own release. Hell, she had never been with a man who could find his release more than once in a forty-eight-hour period.
“Take me.” Mercury stared back at her.
She smiled into the fierce set of his features. Savage lust gleamed in his eyes, in the hard, sharp angles of his face.
“Make me.”
Challenge. Defiance.
Mercury stared into Ria’s eyes and saw the things he had never seen in another woman’s. Acceptance.
The animal lust was rising inside him, something he had always fought
before, something he had no ability to fight with Ria. And he saw her acceptance of it.
He’d never had a woman go down on him. They feared his release, the infection of his semen. He’d never had one take him. His Ria was taking him. Struggling against him, challenging him to take her, begging him to.
“You don’t want me to do that, Ria,” he groaned, his hands clenching on her hips. “Take me, baby. Don’t do this to both of us.”
He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want to release the primal lust pounding in his veins and demanding that he fuck her as he wanted to.
She gave him a sexy little pout, lifted her hips, wiggled against his hold and teased him more. Her tight pussy, so fucking tight it burned into his flesh, clenched and milked at the engorged head of his cock. But just the head. She was tormenting him with the hold she had on him. She was tempting a part of him he had never allowed to rise inside him.
“Maybe that’s exactly what I want, Mercury.” She leaned forward and nipped his lips.
When he tried to catch her kiss, she shook her head and a light, sexy laugh left her.
“Ria.” The warning was ignored as she lifted again, nearly freeing her body of him before he slammed his hips upward, taking more of her, but not enough. “This is the wrong time to tease, sweetheart.”
“Take me again, Mercury,” she whispered, her nails digging into his chest. “I dare you.”
He could feel the sweat building on his chest as he tried to force more into her and she fought him further. She was in a position of control, slippery and wet, and tempting him. Tempting something he didn’t recognize within his own lust.
He tried to breathe in, to clear his head of the red tide of lust sweeping over him, but all he could smell was her challenge, her need ripping through his senses.
He strained against her and she lifted again. His hands tightened on her hips to slam her down on him, and she wiggled, fought until she was free of him.
It was the final straw.
“I dare you,” she groaned.
With a surge of power, he lifted her, flipped her to her stomach and rose over her. He wrapped an arm beneath her hips, lifted her, held her and buried himself inside her.
She took part of him in the first thrust with a strangled cry. She took more with the second; on the third powerful stroke of his hips, he was buried full-length inside her and almost roaring out his triumph as she screamed out her pleasure.
It was pleasure. Her sheath convulsed around him, her juices spilled along his shaft, and her body writhed with impending release.
“Taken.” He rose over her, locked his teeth on her shoulder to hold her in place and began thrusting inside her with all the raging lust and hunger that had been inside him for a lifetime.
It didn’t take either of them long. The hard, powerful strokes of his cock inside her sent them both hurtling into ecstasy. Mercury felt her tighten, felt her pussy spasm and heard her release in the strangled scream that filled his head. Her cries mingled with his growls as he felt his own release begin spilling from him. And still he thrust, stroked, snarled with the power of the pleasure. Until he had given her all he had, more than he had ever thought he could give a woman, and collapsed over her.
Hell, he hadn’t even taken her gown off. He hadn’t stroked or sucked her pretty breasts. He hadn’t tasted the sweet flesh between her thighs again. He had just taken her. Savagely. And never had completion been so deep, so satisfying.
He still lay over her, hating the thought of pulling free of her, of releasing her from his possession and once again facing reality.
She had no idea the power of her hold on him, and it wasn’t just physical. It went deeper. It called something from him that made no sense, something he knew he should be wary of, and yet couldn’t find the strength to search for answers to.
“If you move I’m gonna kill you,” she sighed drowsily.
“I’m heavy.” He kissed her shoulder.
He had bit her. A smear of blood stained her shoulder now; the print of four sharp canines were indented into her flesh.
“You’re so warm,” she sighed, and he could hear the exhaustion in her voice. “I’m so tired of being cold, Mercury. Keep me warm, just for a few more minutes. Inside and out. Let me stay warm.”
He stilled against her, looked at her profile. Her lashes covered her eyes, and he swore she was but seconds from sleep. And she wanted only to be warm for a little while longer.
Could he deny her that? He knew what the cold felt like, that feeling that there was nothing to warm him, that the loneliness had dug its way so deep inside him that he would never know what true warmth was.
Yet she had warmed him.
He realized that. Something frozen inside him had been warmed the moment he glimpsed her, and right now, holding her just like this, there wasn’t even the slightest chill inside him or outside of him.
He wouldn’t deny her that, when she had given it to him.
He held her, let her slip into sleep, then pushed the forgotten laptop to the corner of the headboard before jerking the comforter around them and easing beside her.
She moaned at the loss, but only until he wrapped himself around her. He surrounded her with his arms, embraced her legs with his and let her head tuck against his neck, the feel of her breath against him there comforting.
And he felt the need for sleep himself. Just a nap. Just something to restore his sense of balance. Because somehow, somewhere, Ria had shaken his life up as nothing else ever had.
The animal watched from eyes that were wary of detection. It forced the sleeping man’s eyes open, looked around and saw only the darkness of the room where they slept.
It looked down and saw the woman. Into its ragged, pain-ravaged soul it felt the first sliver of peace arise. That little bit of light that gave it hope.
The woman had made the man’s control weak, made him less diligent, less suspicious when the animal came to awareness.
The man’s emotions were finally breaking free, and with that, the animal could feel freedom just at the edges of its mind.
How tired it was. How it hurt, locked so deep within the man’s mind that its captivity was like hell filled with its own roars.
Sweet Ria. The man thought of her as Sweet Ria. The animal saw more. So much more. As the man slept, it stretched out slowly and touched her hair. Emotion clenched its weary mind, gave it strength. She gave the man and the animal strength.
Her hair was soft, so soft. The animal let itself experience the feel of it through the man’s hand. The man slept deeply wrapped around her, but still the animal moved cautiously, so cautiously. It couldn’t allow this woman to escape it. The man believed she would try to leave. He was preparing himself for it. The ani