Authors: Lora Leigh
It was exquisite. The agony and the pleasure of filling her, and the rage. Because there was no mating. And yet Mercury knew in his soul she
was
his mate. This woman. She held on to him, her tears dampening his neck, his knowledge that she felt that missing part of him eating inside him.
As the tremors of release eased and he could think, could find balance again, he held her to him, placed his own back to the wall and slid to the floor.
There, he held her against him, his head still buried against her neck, his eyes closed.
“You’re my mate,” he whispered against her neck, against the mark he hadn’t allowed to heal. Because he kept biting it, kept wounding her in ways that went far beyond those tiny marks at her shoulder.
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, Mercury.” She lifted her head and stared back at him, causing his heart to tear in half.
There was no recrimination there. Her eyes were damp, but languorous pleasure filled them, and emotion. She was open to him now. He could smell the sweet scent of desire that could renew with his lightest touch, and emotions he hadn’t smelled in so many years. He could sense them now, swirling through him, digging into his soul.
“I love you anyway.” She touched his jaw, smoothed her hand down his neck. “Just as you are, just as we are now. I love you.”
“I love you,” he repeated, the words comfortable, easy on his lips. She wasn’t just his mate, no matter the lack of mating heat. She was his heart.
She laid her head against his shoulder and breathed out with a little sigh of completion, and of weariness.
“We could hibernate tonight,” she finally suggested with a grin he felt against his neck. “Just hide.”
And he chuckled. Despite the pain, the betrayal he felt, by his own genetics and the body that refused to produce the mating heat, he had to laugh at the amusement in her voice.
“You call Dane and I’ll call Callan,” he told her, and he meant it. If she didn’t want to go, they wouldn’t go. It was that simple.
But she sighed. “Dane would pout. He’s not nice when he pouts.”
“Callan doesn’t pout,” Mercury laughed. “Games aren’t his style. He would understand.” He touched her hair, smoothed his hands down it. “But I’d probably lose vacation time. That fun in the sun you were talking about.”
“Hell. Figures. Dane just gets stingy with the bribes. He doesn’t bother revoking my vacation time.”
“Do you ever take vacation time? Somehow I doubt you do.” He helped her to her feet before dragging himself from the floor.
He looked at her then-her messed hair, torn clothes-and couldn’t believe the hunger that had swept through him as they entered the cabin.
She wrinkled her nose mockingly. “Know-it-all.”
He stared back at her, knowing he was totally besotted with her. “You will be now. I promise you, Ria. You’re going to be begging for vacation time now.”
If she stayed with Vanderale Industries. Sanctuary needed her more than Dane or Leo Vanderale. And Mercury needed her with him. He would do what she needed to do, what she wanted to do, but he didn’t think she was as happy working for Dane as she would be here.
“Damn parties,” she muttered, turning away from him and walking toward the bedroom before casting him a heated little look over her shoulder. “Want to shower with me?”
“Wrong question,” he growled. “Because you keep me from it.”
He followed after as she laughed, the thought of playing with Ria in the shower again causing his cock to jerk in anticipation.
Hell, it might not be mating heat, but it was damned close. For now, for tonight, he would content himself with that. But he was going to have to stop rubbing his tongue against his teeth, hoping. Because he swore he was making it raw.
Later that evening, as Ria stepped from the bathroom, clipping the pearl earrings to her ears that she had chosen to wear, her hair pinned behind her head, it was all Mercury could do to hold back his growl.
He was in his dress uniform. The severe black pants and jacket were confining enough. The dress boots were a pain in the ass, but he tolerated them when he had to. He wore the insignia of his rank, that of second commander, a narrow golden bar attached to the left shoulder of his jacket. On the right was the gold lion’s head denoting his genetic ranking, and below it the brass Bureau of Breed Affairs pin, a simple brass pin with the initials BBA.
The dress uniform was a necessary evil. Ria’s hair pinned up wasn’t.
“Take your hair down.” He’d meant to make it a request as his gaze swept over the simple black gown she wore. The long sleeves covered her arms, while the material reached to the base of her neck in back.
The front was cut lower, scooped and rounded over her breasts, leaving the barest hint of cleavage.
She wore pearls around her neck to match the earrings, and nothing more.
“I’m not taking down my hair.” She moved to sit on the bureau and checked her earrings. “It would be… Mercury.”
As she talked, he had moved behind her, pulled the anchoring pins and watched that thick, silken mass of hair as it unraveled down her back.
“You did not do that.” She turned on him, incredulous. “Damn you!”
His eyes narrowed back at her. “Get as mad as you like. I want it down.”
Her eyes narrowed back at him. “I want that damned cheesecake I mentioned before. Doesn’t mean I’m going to get it.”
He growled. “There will be four different kinds of cheesecake on the buffet. I requested it. Just for you. All chocolate.”
For a second he could have sworn her eyes glazed with something akin to approaching ecstasy.
“I’m going to revise my opinion of you.” She pouted with charming irritation. “You’re a cruel, evil man. Teasing me with cheesecake. I’ll get you back. You watch.”
He smiled back at her, his brows arching as he pushed his fingers through her hair and restrained the need to kiss her. If he kissed her, he would never get out of that cabin with her.
He let his gaze go over her again, noticing as he did so that the cut of her dress hid the bite he had placed on her shoulder. For some reason, that bothered him.
“Leave the hair down,” he told her. “We’ll discuss the dress later.”
“Yeah, with a whip and a chair in my hand,” she informed him archly. “Don’t start giving orders, Mercury. I don’t obey so well.”
Ria allowed him to get away with the hair, simply because she was learning how much he enjoyed it down. But her clothes, as much as she sometimes disliked them herself, were imperative.
Clothing style, makeup and presence were a hazard in her job, and at parties such as the one Sanctuary was hosting tonight she met many of the people she was sent to investigate.
“You should be able to dress as you like,” he growled. “I swear, Ria, I can feel your dissatisfaction with that dress.”
She looked at him sharply. She hated this dress. It was simple, the cut and design elegant enough. And it was unassuming. She had never hated unassuming as much as she did tonight.
“The dress is like your dress uniform, less threatening and more civilized in ways than the uniform you work in. My line of work requires that I appear unthreatening at all times. No matter the job or the event.”
She moved to the closet and pulled a pair of low heels from the shelf inside. She had to keep herself from staring at them in regret. As with the dress. Simple. Unassuming.
She put them on anyway and turned back to Mercury.
He was staring at her, his expression somber, his eyes that odd color once more, as though something lived inside him that he wasn’t always aware of.
“I won’t tolerate it,” he suddenly bit out.
“Tolerate what?” she retorted. “My refusal to do as you order?”
If he turned arrogant Breed on her now, she was going to get violent herself.
“Your refusal to do as you wish,” he snapped. “That dress. Those shoes. I didn’t even have to see your face to feel how much you hated those damned things. Where are the pretty clothes, Ria?” He stalked to the closet and looked in, growling at the sight of more of the same. Simple clothes. Dowdy skirts. “Where are the clothes you want to wear?”
“In the stores.” Her voice was clipped, her own anger rising now. “Where they belong. If they’re here, I’ll wear them. That simple. I told you, Mercury, I can’t risk the people I investigate suspecting that there’s more to me than they’ve always believed. The Vanderales’ poor orphan employee could never afford those clothes. A paper pusher? Really! How long do you think they would believe that if they saw me dressed in the clothes you’re talking about?”
“Who put that in your head?” He raged, stalking from the closet, stomping from it actually. “Dane? The Leo? I’ll be damned if it will continue. You’re a beautiful woman and you love pretty things. Why shouldn’t you have them?”
“Because it’s detrimental to my job,” she pointed out, her voice rising. “My job, Mercury. Remember? Would you have believed I was no more than a paper pusher researching your damned accounts if I had arrived dressed in silk and heels?”
He stared back at her, the blue lights in his eyes firing deeper, darker. “I wouldn’t have had the brainpower to think,” he finally muttered. “I’d have been too busy fucking you before you ever arrived at Sanctuary.”
She wanted to roll her eyes at him. “Neither you nor Jonas would have ever taken me seriously.”
He pushed his fingers through his hair, his gaze raking over her. “That’s a cop-out,” he informed her. “One look at you, Ria, and anyone knows better than that. Do you think the reason the companies you investigate aren’t suspicious of you is your clothes? That’s not true, Ria. They’re not suspicious of you because they’re arrogant and too certain of their own intelligence to believe anyone could be smarter than they are.”
She shook her head. She didn’t want to hear this. It wasn’t true. It was the job, and it was that simple. She owed the Vanderales. They had kept her safe until she was grown, they had given her a job, they had given her a life when she was alone, deserted.
“You hide, Ria,” he stated. “Those clothes aren’t because of your job. Those clothes, your demeanor, the way you dress-it’s so you can hide.”
She shot him a scathing glare before pulling away from him and jerking her wrap from the end of the bed.
“Are you ready to go?” She pulled the heavy cape over the dress and latched the closure at her throat.
“It didn’t keep me away, did it, Ria?” he asked her as he continued to watch her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The dowdy clothes. Your hair twisted into that perfect, tight little bun. It keeps everyone at a distance. It shouts
Go away
. But I didn’t go away.”
Not yet he hadn’t.
“No, you haven’t gone away,” she finally whispered. And she wondered what she would do when he did.
That small warning instinct inside her wouldn’t stop. It continued to echo caution, and she continued to ignore it.
But she hated the dress and the shoes more than she had when she put them on. His arguments had made her remember the few dresses she owned that made her feel alive. The ones she longed to dress in, the ones that fit the makeup she preferred, the heels she loved. And she was reminded each time she “dressed up” that she was alone. There was no one to see her. Because she had always been safer alone.
She couldn’t be broken, if no one knew her well enough to break her.
Until now.
Through the ride back to Sanctuary, and their entrance into the secured glittering beauty of the mansion, Mercury’s accusations played within her mind.
She glimpsed Dane across the ballroom, immersed in talks with several of the high-level corporate shareholders she had investigated in the past. Dane moved among the crowd, his silver eyes watching everything, the blond lawyer he was rumored to be involved with at his side.
Breeds filled the mansion in dress uniform, as did Kane Tyler’s personal security force, the men he had brought with him when he came to Sanctuary in those first steps the Breeds had taken into the world.
She moved through the room with Mercury, watching the gazes that slid over her, dismissing her. They always dismissed her, and until now she had never realized how much she hated dressing down to allow for it.
Mercury saw something completely different. As they moved around the room and he introduced her to the men and women present for the party, he saw how many recognized her name or her.
He saw how easily her cool, stark beauty intimidated others. The women saw the simplicity of her clothes and the regal grace that showed through, and they moved on. The men took one look at her on Mercury’s arm, and most knew fear at the thought of tempting a Breed’s anger over his woman. It wasn’t done. To become forward with a Breed mate was to take one’s life in one’s own hands.
And he felt her dissatisfaction. Her need to let all that wildfire inside her free. She only let herself go when he was taking her, loving her. But that fire burned inside her eternally.
He could see her in reds-garnets and the vivid scarlet. She would light up the night with her long hair, high heels and the dresses he knew she would love. And she would light up everyone around her.
But she was frightened. He could feel her fear, and it pricked at the animal he could feel stretching inside himself, called free by that primal response in the woman he loved.
He hadn’t felt that instinct in over eleven years. Until her fear. Until the smell of it as they entered Sanctuary drifted around him and he felt it come awake inside him, stretching past the bonds of control, easing into his mind. Watching. Waiting.
And more. He felt something
more
, and it made no sense.
As they mingled and talked, she sipped at her champagne and watched the CEO of Engalls Pharmaceuticals as closely as decorum allowed.