her entire consciousness.
She had to let go of him to scream. To buck against the furious thrusts powering the whipping sensations racing from nerve ending to nerve ending.
Her head ground into the pillow. She knew she was clawing his shoulders and she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t scream. A starburst of color exploded before her eyes as she felt him give one last, hard lunge, and then his release spilled into her.
His release and something more. She felt the barb. Felt it extend, engorge, press into flesh convulsing, tightening around his cock, locking him inside her. Her upper body jerked forward, but his hard chest held her in place, his strong teeth tightened on her, his tongue licked, and this time, she did scream. The pleasure was too much to contain. The sheer violence of another orgasm tearing through her, stealing control of her responses, her body. She jerked and shuddered, writhed and arched, desperate to escape, to get closer.
The barb was blunted, like the tip of a thick, heavy thumb pressing into her, oh God, stroking her, pulsing as though it were coming as well.
She could feel his semen blasting inside her, and from that extension, the barb male Lions possessed, she felt a burning ejaculation to add to her pleasure.
Mercury jerked above her, his head lifting from her shoulder, a roar of triumph leaving his lips, filling the room as he bucked against her again, driving his cock and the barb deeper inside her.
The animal was free, and she should have been terrified. She knew what this meant. She knew it wasn’t for her. But she couldn’t let go of him. She held on to his arms with desperate hands, his hips with enclosing legs. She let the pleasure take her like a tidal wave sweeping across the land. She was helpless before it. Rocked to her soul by it. And now bound by chains that would never allow her to walk away from him.
She was mated to him. His mate, whether it was meant for her or not, and satisfaction should have filled her. It should have blazed inside her. She had won the man and the beast. He was hers. He loved her. He had mated her. But nothing could overshadow the fact that it had been another woman that called the animal free inside him.
CHAPTER 21
Mercury eased slowly from Ria’s exhausted body, grimacing as the overly sensitive flesh of his cock was stroked by the snug grip of her pussy.
Damn, he was still hard. Still hard and so fucking aroused it was painful. But he had his senses back, his sanity.
He pushed her hair back from her face, watching as her lips pouted and she burrowed against his chest as though she were cold.
A little moan passed her lips as her hard nipples raked the pelt over his skin. They were still engorged, reddened. And he wanted to suck them. He wanted them against his tongue, the sweet taste of her flesh in his mouth.
He inhaled harshly and pulled the blankets over her, coming down beside her as she stretched against his body and let him wrap himself around her. His hands played in her hair, touching it, petting it. Loving the feel of it.
He loved the feel of her.
He frowned, thinking back to the confrontation with Alaiya. Distaste had clotted his senses when she touched him. And when her lips had pressed to his, he’d had to freeze, to force himself not to kill her. She knew; the moment she saw him, smelled him, Alaiya had known he belonged to another. And still, she had pretended to play the wounded mate.
What game was she involved in here? Definitely one he knew he wanted no part of, but one he knew had the potential to destroy Ria.
Alaiya was a perceptive creature. She was as cold and calculating as Jonas in many ways. Though the director of Breed Affairs didn’t have the cold-blooded maliciousness Alaiya possessed.
He rubbed a heavy strand of Ria’s hair between his fingers as he considered this problem. His Ria. She was confident, powerful, a force to be reckoned with when it came to what she knew. Codes. Tracking threads of deception. She was the best he had ever seen, even within the Breed community.
It was the woman she hid that concerned him. The one he could see in her, feel in her, the one she refused to release. That woman would be wild, powerful, a mate who could endure the years it seemed mated Breeds were being allowed.
She kept that part of herself vanquished, refused it freedom just as Mercury had refused his beast freedom. Because a woman’s confidence was so easily shattered. That woman had never been free because Ria was terrified of losing the one last part of herself that gave her strength.
She was a contradiction, there was no doubt. The woman inside hid, while the logic and business sense of the woman faced the world. The woman who faced the world hid the one that longed to wear sexy dresses and high heels. To be vivid and wild.
Because vivid and wild drew attention. They made such a woman an object of speculation, of gossip, of men who wanted nothing more than her name notched into their bedpost.
And Ria couldn’t afford that shame, that hurt. Just as she couldn’t afford to appear to be more than the employee the Vanderales depended so highly upon.
There it was. He frowned at the thought. Ria couldn’t afford to become visible, because she feared losing the advantage she had in her job. Wallflowers faded among the crowd. No one noticed them. No one feared them, she had told him. But it was more than that. She held an advantage. One the Leo approved of, needed. She was a tool he used quite effectively. And the Vanderales were the only enduring thing in Ria’s life.
She feared losing that one certainty. The family that had saved her. They hadn’t raised her, but they had overseen her raising. They had educated her. They employed her. She was the poor orphan child everyone thought the powerful family felt sorry for.
The inner woman had no confidence in herself, in her ability to command the attention and power Mercury knew was her due.
He growled at the thought of it, his eyes narrowing into the dusky light of the room as he considered each avenue open for him to proceed.
He was her mate. It was his job to protect her, to assure her security, her happiness.
She was never going to believe he had mated her. That part of her that refused to allow her to accept anything as her own would always pull back. Because the mating heat hadn’t made itself fully known until Alaiya’s appearance.
He couldn’t fully blame her, and yet he did. And he knew when she awoke, the fury of a woman terrified that she had something that didn’t belong to her would blaze as high and as hot as the mating heat.
Simply telling her would never be enough. And it wasn’t enough for him. She had enraged him when she ran from him. Torn at his own pride and sense of worth. This was his mate. She would fight for him. She would fight for him or there would be no fury greater than his own.
He lifted his head and focused on the open closet door. Within it were those ugly clothes she insisted on wearing. He looked at the clock, and a hard, determined smile pulled his lips back from his teeth.
He eased away from her, tucked the blankets around her and moved for that closet. He had a few hours before the heat would awaken her. Before the need would begin clawing through her.
He stepped into the large closet, closed the door behind him and switched on the light. He turned, and his eyes narrowed on the clothing before he looked down at his hands.
The clawlike nails were blunted, but they were still dangerous. He took the first skirt from its rack silently, and only the rending of cloth whispered through the night as he began the destruction. Every shred of dowdy, miserable clothing she had in her possession was dropped to the floor of the closet, shredded. Skirts, tops and slacks. Sweaters and blouses. They were all rent beyond repair.
The shoes came next. Excellent quality, perfect workmanship. They were no hindrance to the silent rage working through him. His mate hid, even from him, and he would allow it no longer.
When he finished with the closet, he moved to the dresser and chest. He left nothing but the sexiest underwear, the lightest, skimpiest gowns. He dropped each item to the floor as he finished with it. Ripping
it, tearing it, destroying every last article that she had brought with her.
Except one outfit. One pair of jeans. One shirt. A pair of leather ankle boots. She would need something to wear when he took her into Buffalo Gap and bought her new clothes. Clothes that befit the woman he knew she was.
Arrogance surged through him. He had an abundance of it, there was no doubt. And he knew that the fury he would face tomorrow would be one he might wish he had avoided. But there was more at stake here than her anger, her pride. Her confidence and belief in him were at stake, and he’d be damned if he would lose any of that.
He was her mate. Damn her for thinking she could so easily give him to another. That she would simply walk away. He knew, had sensed and felt and been rocked by, the complete love that surrounded him when she stared at him. She was devoted to him. He knew this. And still, she had walked away.
Her selflessness went far deeper than his ever could. Because he would kill the man that tried to take her. Even before the mating, he would have torn any competitor for her heart, limb from limb. Shredded him just as he shredded her clothing.
Then, as though those shreds of fabric were no more important than the sigh of satisfaction he gave, he returned to the bed.
He curled around her once again, and as sleep came over him, he smiled. Ria was right, he could purr.
She was burning. Ria could feel the blistering arousal dragging her from sleep, imperative, tearing at her body and at her mind as she fought awareness. She didn’t want to wake up. She wasn’t ready to face reality.
She wasn’t ready to face her own emotions. The ones that clawed at her far deeper than the arousal did. The satisfaction, because he had chosen her. Willingly, though she hadn’t believed it was possible for a Breed to make such a choice. According to Elizabeth Vanderale, it wasn’t possible. But Mercury had made that choice.
He had walked away from the woman whom nature had chosen for him years ago, and he had come to her. He had loosed the full force of all that savage hunger on her and she had taken it eagerly. Not just physically, but emotionally.
Something inside her had eased, while another part of her tensed. He chose her, for now. She was terrified the other shoe would drop later.
God, this was why she didn’t involve herself in relationships. She had been terrified of caring to this depth about anyone. Scared of loving to the point that she didn’t know how to walk away. And that was how she loved Mercury. When she did walk away from him, she didn’t know how to go any further than the bed they shared.
His touch fed a part of her soul that had always been closed off from others.
But her body was ready to be fed now. It was hungry for the taste of Mercury. For the feel of him. His possession and his kiss.
She moved against him, feeling his erection pressing against her stomach, his hand petting her hair. Her own hands were pressed against him, the feel of his flesh warming them, exciting them.
He was awake, so why didn’t he just take her? He could smell her need, she knew he could. She had watched him inhaling her scent last night, pulling it into his nostrils and growling with pleasure.
So why was he waiting? Her fingers curled against him as she fought to restrain herself. To keep from attacking him. Devouring him.
“If you want it, then you’ll have to take it yourself, mate.” The hard growl in his voice assured her he wasn’t asleep. Assured her he was still as volatile, still as wild as he had been the night before.
She struggled to open her eyes, feeling her heart pounding in her chest as he stared down at her with those arctic blue eyes. Eyes that sank inside her and reminded her of the lab photos she had studied before coming to Sanctuary.
“Your eyes changed colors,” she whispered, remembering that from the night before. The color was even more vivid now.
“My eyes were blue until they tried to destroy what I was,” he informed her, a flash of anger sending sparks of gold through the blue. “It’s not my eye color you need to worry about, though.”
The tone of his voice was just on the edge of pissing her off. The storm, the emotional upheaval from the night before, had passed. Thinking was still a delicate process, but she was getting there. Her emotions were volatile, though. She could feel them rising inside her, pushing her, straining to break free of her control. She would have to deal with them later, though. As soon as he put out the fire blazing in her body.
“What do I need to worry about then?” She pulled the sheet over her swollen breasts as his gaze flicked to the covering.
“Do you want me, Ria?” he crooned, his voice heating with his own arousal.
Nervousness rose inside her as she tried to fight it back.
“That’s a stupid question, Mercury.”
He grinned as she pointed that out.
“Then come to me,” he told her. “It’s my pleasure to relieve your heat. All you have to do is take what’s yours.”
She flinched. He had to say it like that. And he knew what he was doing; she saw it in the narrowing of his eyes, the tightening of his features.
She lifted her chin, staring back at him furiously. It hurt. He couldn’t realize how much it hurt, fearing that she would eventually lose him to a woman who didn’t deserve him, who hadn’t come to him when he needed her. Instead, she had waited until someone else loved him, needed him.
“You were supposed to be the nice Breed,” she stated, trying for cold, but her voice trembled with need.
“Oh, I was very nice,” he assured her. “I still am. Notice if you will, I haven’t yet paddled your ass for running out on me last night. Though, the option still remains.”
She needed to protest that. She really did. But as he spoke, he shifted the sheet from his hard body and she lost her breath, her will to fight.
His cock was thick, reaching nearly to his navel, the thick, engorged head throbbing dark and powerful.
She licked her lips. She felt dazed, so hungry, suddenly so desperate for that hard, heated flesh inside her body that she whimpered.
She reached out, touched the hard plane of his chest, stroked her hand to the middle of his stomach and stopped. She wanted to go lower, wanted to touch and taste and take everything she longed to claim as her own.
“Mercury.” She lifted her gaze to him. Imploring.
“It’s so easy, Ria,” he whispered. “To take what you need. It’s always my pleasure to give it to you, you know that.”
“Take what isn’t mine,” she bit out, anger rising inside her at the thought, the affront that the mating heat hadn’t shown up for her. She hadn’t drawn its force. Another woman had.
The dark, warning growl that rumbled from his throat had her flinching.
He kept his arms behind his head, but they bunched, the veins beneath the flesh bulging as the muscles did.
“Don’t push me this morning, Ria,” he warned her. “This is no place for it, and my patience is raw enough as it is. If you need me, I’m here. If you don’t, then I’ll suffer through the hell of it, shower and get on with the day’s business.”
“Damn you!” she cried, aching, bleeding inside from the emotional storm rising inside her.
“Damn you for your stubbornness!” he bit back. “You’re my mate. You will accept that fact or we’ll both suffer for it. Now make up your mind. Are you going to fuck me or fight with me?”
She had every intention of doing both, but she had her priorities. He wanted to torment her? Torture her? Then she would play his game as well, for as long as she could stand it.
She swung one leg over his waist, above the heavily engorged head of his erection, and leaned forward as his hands shot from beneath his head and spread into her hair.
Her lips came down on his.
“Give it to me,” she demanded, nearly panting for the taste of him now. “Give it to me now.”
All if it. His touch, his possession, his heart as fully as he claimed hers.
His head lifted, his lips slanting over hers a
nd his tongue in her mouth. The glands beneath it were swollen and heavy, spilling the electric taste of lust into her mouth. It was addictive. She needed it. Needed it even as it made her writhe. She pressed her mound against his hard abs and whimpered at the feel of her swollen clit caressing the taut muscles there.
She reveled in the pleasure, in his touch, in the knowledge, that for now, this moment, he was all hers.
She sucked at his tongue, tangled her own with it and felt his kiss rock her soul. It was as deep, as hungry, as her own. A growl rumbled in his chest, caressed the hard tips of her breasts and sent a vibration of pleasure streaking through her.
She was too needy, too hungry to wait. He said to take what she needed. And she needed desperately. Needed all of him, physically, emotionally.
Her hips lifted, slid down until the engorged crest met the slick, swollen folds of her sex.
Mercury pulled his tongue back, nipped at her lips and then returned that spicy taste to her as she began to work herself on his hard cock.
Excitement exploded inside her. She controlled this. Her nails bit into his shoulders as she felt the hormone from his tongue invading her system. She devoured every taste of it as her hips worked against his cock. She eased down the length of it, crying out into his mouth as his hands cupped the swollen mounds of her breasts.
His fingers flicked over her nipples. His tongue pumped into her mouth as she fought to hold on to it. But she controlled the erection—the depth she took with each movement of her hips, the length of the stroke, how it stroked her, how it stretched her.
She controlled the powerful, primal force of the male below her, and she could feel it. She gloried in it. He growled beneath her, but he didn’t attempt to stop her.
When her head drew back, she stared down at him, watching the sweat bead on his forehead, the grimace that revealed the wicked canines at the side of his mouth.
“Do you love me, Ria?” he groaned. “Give me that, baby. Love me.”
She stared down at him, loving him with everything in her soul.
“I love you past sanity,” she finally whispered, and cried out in pleasure as his hips jerked beneath her.
She barely had half the length inside her. He was stretching her; she swore that damned hormone either made him larger or her smaller, because the pleasure/pain of the entry already had her on the verge of coming.
“God, you’re so thick,” she moaned.
“You’re so tight,” he growled back, his head grinding into the pillow. “Take me, Ria. I’m going to have a fucking stroke waiting.”
She paused. A slash of red stained his cheekbones; gold glittered in those artic blue eyes and arousal twisted his expression.
He had the look of a man hanging on to his control by only the thinnest grip. But the fingers that plucked at her nipples didn’t hurt her. Each touch was primed for her pleasure. For her excitement. For her needs. His gaze filled with tenderness, loving her just as he had before another woman had destroyed her world. She had no choice but to love him the same, to love him more, because she was desperate to fill herself as deeply with him as possible.
“Ria. Move dammit,” he growled. “Fuck me.”
She moved slowly, lifting and lowering her hips as she watched him. Was this how she looked when he took her? Demented with pleasure? Dazed with the need ricocheting through her?
Hunger, need and desperation filled his expression. It throbbed in his cock, pounded inside her pussy and had her twisting her hips against him and moaning at the effect.
His teeth clenched, jaw bunching with tension.
“You’re killing me,” he groaned, his eyes narrow slivers of blue as he stared back at her.
He was killing her.
She lifted and took more of him, her back arching, thrusting her breasts out to his hands as she braced herself against the hard planes of his stomach.
This was exquisite. Taking him an inch at a time, feeling him stretching her at her pace, experiencing sensations she had never known before.
“Ria, sweet Ria,” he groaned desperately, his hands sliding from her breasts to her hips as she worked more of him inside her. “Ah, baby. Take all of me.”
“Not yet,” she panted, shaking her head, feeling his hands grip her hips though he did nothing to force her farther onto the erection impaling her.
“When?” His voice was tortured, half laugh, half growl.
She tightened around him and moaned as an animalistic snarl filled the air.
“You’re torturing me,” he accused her, but she heard something akin to joy in his voice as she moved against him, tightening, working him inside her, milking him and easing farther down on him.
Moments later, he was buried fully inside her, every throbbing inch burning her as she felt her control disintegrate.
Need was a lash of furious pleasure building to ecstasy. It was Mercury’s hands tight on her hips, his head thrown back in pleasure as he lifted his hips and gave himself to her. Remaining still otherwise, letting her find her pleasure as well as his.
It was riding him while he was stallion-hard, thick, throbbing with his own need to release, yet holding back for her. It was watching the rivulet of sweat trail from his forehead to the thick strands of his hair. Another down his powerful, corded neck as her orgasm began to tighten inside her.
Her body was a pulsing mass of need. Lightning flickered over her nerve endings, every nerve ending. Pleasure was cell-deep, soul-deep, and taking him was fueling something wild and powerful inside her as well.
“Mercury.” Her head tilted back as she cried out his name. “Oh God. Mercury!”
She tried to keep moving as she came, tried to plunge him into his own release, but it was tearing her apart. She was shaking, shuddering, feeling it exploding inside her, and he gave it to her then. Took her. His hands tightened on her hips as his moved beneath her, thrusting hard and deep, impaling her with the thick intrusion of his flesh, until his hoarse shout, then a primal, smothered roar, tore from his throat and his release joined hers.
That didn’t mean it was over. She collapsed to his chest, barely aware of her nails digging into his forearms as she felt the barb extend, felt it throw her higher, deeper, into a release that stripped her bare and left her begging him. Begging him for mercy, because the pleasure was tearing her apart and remaking her, and she didn’t know how to live with being remade.
It was a long time later before she could lift her head, before she could drag her sated body from his and roll to the side of the mattress.
Sitting up, she pushed her hair from her face, her gaze on the floor, and she froze.
Those weren’t her sturdy winter boots, in shreds? That wasn’t her gray wool skirt? Her panty hose? Her shoes?
Oh God.
She turned and stared at the closet. The door was open, the light was on, and she felt herself pale. She felt Mercury tense as he lay still beside her, his gaze on her, watching her carefully.
She couldn’t look at h