Authors: Lora Leigh
“Dane’s your father?” he asked.
“No. Dane’s my biological uncle. My mother was a Breed that Leo and his force rescued. She was created using the genetics stolen from the Leo and Elizabeth. I’m their natural granddaughter. My parents disappeared from Leo after their mating. When my father died, she returned, but never told them about me.”
“They deserted you, Ria,” he said, his voice quiet, but filled with anger. “They should have raised you.”
“They should have done exactly as they did.” She turned and faced him then. “Actually, they should have done much less, in order to fully protect themselves. I’m a hybrid, Mercury, and not even a particularly effective hybrid. My talents are simple, my instincts regressed. For all intents and purposes, I’m merely human. They risked themselves in what little they did, and I’m grateful for it.”
“They didn’t love you,” he growled.
She smiled sadly at the accusation. “They loved me, Mercury. And they love me now. I didn’t tell you what I was because I’ve never forgotten the value of silence. My lover died in front of me. Begging me for mercy. Begging me to stay Dane’s wrath. Because my lover betrayed me. He risked my capture, as well as the Leo’s, Elizabeth’s and Dane’s. My bad judgment could have destroyed us all. And it never will again.”
The limo door opened as she finished speaking. Drawing her jacket closer around her, she never felt the cold as she stepped out into it. All she felt was the heat, clawing at her insides. She had waited too long and she knew it. Sating the horrific arousal tearing her apart wouldn’t be easy. Nor would it be gentle.
Mercury escorted her to the cabin, stepped inside ahead of her and waited as she entered. He closed the door slowly, then locked it.
The sound of the click was like a bomb going off inside her mind. Her knees weakened, and her tongue began to itch. She closed her eyes. She didn’t have the glands beneath her tongue that Mercury did; she didn’t have the hormone needed to induce mating heat. But she could still feel the anomalies in her own body. She had felt them since the first time she had come in contact with him.
“What was his name?” Mercury asked her.
Ria knew who he meant. She shrugged out of the leather coat before sitting down and unlacing her boots.
“His name was Jason. He was the son of one of Leo’s contractors. They never realized what happened to their son. Dane had his body flown back to Jo’burg and placed where he would be found. It appeared an act of random violence.”
“He deserved it, Ria,” Mercury growled.
She turned to face him slowly. “He didn’t deserve it. I could have saved him. Dane looked back at me before he killed him. He gave me the choice and I remained silent. Because I knew if I stayed his hand, Leo, Dane and the Breeds they had rescued over the years would never be safe again.”
The choices Dane had been forced to make broke her heart. The choice she had made that day had never broken her soul.
“Which doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell your Breed mate that you’re a Breed,” he pointed out, and though his voice was calm, she could feel his anger.
“Because I no longer consider myself a Breed, hybrid or otherwise,” she said. “And I wouldn’t have, as long as I could have kept that part of me in submission. There was no reason to tell you, simply because I had no intentions of allowing it to be free.”
His lips lifted in a silent snarl as he paced to the other side of the room. He didn’t try to touch her. She was burning, in agony; the pain that swept through the arousal was killing her.
“Are you regretting the mating?” she asked him then. She had expected this, but that didn’t mean she welcomed it.
He turned back to her slowly. “Have I said I do?”
“You haven’t touched me. All day.”
His expression transformed. It became hard, savage, relentless.
“You want it, you’ll take it. No excuses. Claim what’s yours or you can suffer for it. Knowing what I know now, I’ll have no mercy, Ria. You’re a Breed, and whether you like it or not, the instincts of that animal are inside you. You can use them, by God, or we’ll do without all that wild, hot sex we’re both dying for.”
She stared back at him in surprise. “You’re not serious, Mercury. Breed males don’t wait for their mates to make the first move. When did you lose your senses?”
“When you screwed up my mind and my soul with every emotion I swore I’d never feel for a woman,” he snarled back at her. “When I realized you’ll walk away before you’ll fight for any damned thing you want. A man has his pride, and a Breed has even more. You want it, mate? Come and get it.”
CHAPTER 25
Ria’s eyes narrowed on Mercury. Those leather pants cupped and loved the erection straining beneath them. The heavy boots made his legs look more powerful, stronger than ever before. The T-shirt made her mouth water at the way it stretched across his chest.
Her mouth watered period. She needed his kiss. She needed the mating elixir filling her senses, taking her down that dark path of sexual hunger and need. It was a craving. A greedy addiction. Her nails curled at the thought of taking it, of tasting it, becoming gluttonous with the taste of him.
“Take your boots off,” she warned him.
His brows arched, but he obliged her. He sat down on the couch, releasing the buckles and pulling the boots off before he leaned back and stretched his arms over the back cushions.
Ria’s breathing became heavy, laborious.
“Anything else?”
She licked her lips nervously. “The shirt.” She paced closer to him, her lips parting as she fought to breathe.
The shirt came off, teak flesh became available as she felt a moan rising in her chest. Dazed hunger began to assail her; the pain in her womb had her gasping, her hand pressing to her stomach as Mercury suddenly frowned, his eyes narrowing.
“You let yourself go until you hurt?” he asked her, his voice dark, heavy.
“Take the pants off. Now.” Her voice strengthened as she gripped the hem of her shirt and all but ripped it as she tore it free of her body.
The red lace push-up bra framed her heavy, swollen breasts. Her nipples pressed into lace that barely topped them, did little to contain them. Her fingers tore at the snap of her jeans as Mercury shed the leather.
She shimmied out of the jeans, leaving them where they dropped as she crossed to him, straddled his lap and slammed her lips down on his.
“Gimme,” she moaned, nipping at the lower curve, so hungry now, pain lancing through her as his flesh touched hers.
His lips slanted over hers, his tongue impaled her mouth, and she was waiting on it. Desperate for it. Wild lust filled her mouth, rose inside her mind like a haze of red and had her suckling at him, greedy. The glands beneath his tongue were heavy with the hormone now, and it spilled to her mouth. It infused her senses like a storm infuses the land, and had a smothered cry tearing from her chest.
She had waited too long. She had known she was waiting too long even as she pushed herself, refused to take what she needed. Because taking meant she was accepting. It meant she was allowing that careful hold on what she allowed herself to slip.
The animal took what belonged to it. It was the woman that had always held back. The woman who feared she belonged nowhere.
It was the woman and the animal that took now. The beast she had come to know as a child stretching indolently and hissing in hunger as the mating hormone began to rage through her.
Her hands stroked his shoulders; she wanted to lick his flesh, but not yet. Not until this need was sated.
Between her thighs she felt his erection where it rose between them, pressing into her mound. He was so thick, so hard. She needed him inside her. But not yet. She needed other things with greater desperation and she would have them.
The kiss inflamed her; the erotic images that swept through her mind, hungers she had never allowed herself to sate before, began to cascade through her imagination. If she was going to take, then she was going to take it all.
Mercury could feel the desperation in her kiss, and now that they were alone, and that incredible control she possessed was slipping, he could sense the physical pain brought on by the need to mate.
He’d wondered about it through the day. Why he hadn’t sensed it. Because he would have never allowed her to hurt through her own foolishness. There had been no indication of it, no scent of it. Uncomfortable, yes. A bit angry sometimes. Frustration. But none of the pain he knew mated females felt if they didn’t sate the need to be with their mates.
Damn her. He forced himself to leave his arms at the back of the couch, to let her take the lead, to let her take. He pumped his tongue into her mouth, feeling the liquid lust spilling from the glands beneath it, filling her mouth, her senses.
He could smell her heat now like an addictive drug, fueling his senses. He could smell her pain, her need, the emotions tearing free of her control, and sweeter than anything else, he could smell the luscious scent of a Breed female taking her mate.
There could be no more arousing scent in the world, he thought. It was more arousing than the scent of her burning for him just as his mate, and he had believed nothing could be hotter, sweeter than that. Until now.
A Breed female burned with a special scent. Equal parts of him and her, and a heated, underlying subtle scent that made him wild.
He clenched his fingers, fought to hold on to something, anything, rather than grabbing at her and ripping those pretty panties from her body before burying himself inside her.
He couldn’t take her. This was for her. Her taking. Her claiming. She was far too strong to ever submit, to accept pretty phrases or reassurances that she was his. No, to claim her mate, this Breed female would have to establish her own, innate sense of strength.
And damn was she establishing. After the first frantic moments suckling at his tongue and the hormone that flowed from him, she slowed. The movements of her mouth became more sensual, more sensuous. She began to relish the taste, to draw it in, let it linger on her tongue before returning for more.
She twined her tongue with his, rubbed against it, stroked it and made him crazy. Growls were coming from his chest, deep rumbles of pure pleasure as she took him to the edge of madness before drawing back.
She licked her lips. Ran her tongue over them as her hooded, drowsy gaze had him clenching his jaw, wishing he had more to give her.
“I didn’t think I would make it,” she whispered, but the sound was more a feminine purr of pure pleasure as her hands stroked over his shoulders, her nails scratching at his tough hide.
“You waited too long.” He tensed, pleasure racing down his spine to stab at his balls at the feel of her nails. “I should spank you for letting yourself hurt like that.”
She undulated against him, rubbing the lace of her panties over the sensitive shaft of his cock and pressing her clit into the heat and hardness of him.
“I wanted to rub against you all day.” She leaned forward, her nipples searing into his chest as she did just that, rubbed against him as he watched her eyes darken, the iris turning nearly black as her lips moved to his neck.
Mercury could have never imagined he had the self-control to sit there and be tortured like this. The damp heat of her pussy was like a brand through the sheer material of her panties as she rubbed against his cock.
Her touch was exquisite. Her lips over his shoulders, her hands stroking down the corded length of his arms as her hips undulated against him.
“Keep teasing me and I might not make it until you get to the taking part,” he groaned.
She nipped his neck in retaliation.
“Damn you!” He tilted his neck to give her better access, cursing the pleasure that had his hips arching against her, his cock head pulsing in delicious torture.
She nipped him again, then laved the little pleasure/pain center before her lips went lower. Tilting his head, he watched her, watched her expressive face, so filled with pleasure as she licked at his flesh, raked her teeth over it.
When her hot little mouth covered the hard disc of his male nipple, he swore he was going to come. Every muscle in his body tensed to hold back. His balls ached. His cock flexed, throbbed, and a vicious groan tore from his throat.
That didn’t stop her. He saw the smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth as she sucked the hard disc into there and flicked her tongue over it. Her expression was mesmerized, mesmerizing. Flushed and filled with sensuality. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever laid his eyes on.
“Are you ready to take me yet?” She kissed to the center of his chest, pulling back, going to her knees on the floor as he stared down at her, nearly helpless with anticipation.
“That wasn’t the deal,” he groaned.
“We had a deal?” She nipped his stomach, just above the throbbing crest of his erection.
“Understanding?” He gasped.
“Maybe I don’t understand why.” She lifted her lashes and stared back at him, and he saw the vulnerability in her gaze, the hint of confusion.
“Then maybe you need to figure it out.” He stared back at her, implacable. He wouldn’t be moved from this. No matter how much either of them hurt for it. No matter the stubbornness he could see raging inside her. She had to understand whom he had mated. Whom his soul belonged to. To do that, she had to choose to accept, to take what was hers. Just as he had taken what was his.
“Breeds are stubborn.” She lowered her head and blew a damp breath of air over the too-sensitive crest of his cock.
“You should know,” he said hoarsely, then nearly gave a shout of agonizing pleasure when her mouth covered the flared, engorged crest and drew it into her mouth.
“Ah hell,” he snarled as his hips jerked, plunging his flesh deeper into her mouth. “Ah God, Ria. You’re killing me.”