Authors: Lora Leigh
It stepped forward slowly, opened the man’s eyes and stared at the woman. She slept curled against the man’s chest, her expression at peace. There was a part of her that wasn’t at peace, though.
The animal could feel her pain, even in her sleep, and it sought to comfort her. It let a soft rumble of a purr free, let it vibrate against her cheek as it reached out and felt her hair against the man’s fingers.
She relaxed, a little. A little smile touched her lips, lips that parted to take the man’s pleasure, the animal’s pleasure. During those moments the animal could ease closer, feel more, and the man was unaware.
But still, the woman wasn’t bound to him enough. The man feared her leaving. The Breed, the hybrid that had invaded their lair earlier, thought to take her from him later. The animal had felt the strength of that man’s inner animal. There was no threat of a mating, but there was the threat that the man could touch her, mark her, possess her.
The animal couldn’t allow it. It feared what the man feared, and no other could possess its mate. It slipped further from its cell, let itself stretch, just enough, just enough that the glands in the man’s tongue began to thicken the slightest bit.
And the man searched for his woman, laid his lips against hers and slid his tongue inside.
The animal snarled silently, and made certain there was more of the taste that would bind the woman to him. Enough to feed into her system, to make certain no other could take her, no other would be allowed to claim her.
As the kiss aroused both man and animal, it retreated once again. The man sighed and tucked his head against her shoulder, his tongue licking over the primal bite he had left on her once again.
The remainder of the hormone fed into that bite, into her flesh.
The power it took for the animal to slip so silently, to control itself with such exacting precision was wearying. If only the man did not regard the animal with horror. If only the man didn’t reinforce the chains surrounding the animal each time he awoke, it wouldn’t have been so hard.
The animal would merge with the man if he would allow it. It would protect that man and the female. It would pour its strength into the man and allow him to be the Breed he had been created to be.
For now, weariness flowed over it. It collapsed within its chains once again and let itself rest. Not a true sleep, for there was fear of the darkness and the eternal night it had known for so many years.
The next morning dawned cold. There was a hint of snow in the air, and as Ria and Mercury stepped from the cabin to the limo waiting outside the door, she realized winter was definitely on for the mountains where the Breeds made their home.
She was bundled tight in a long leather coat Mercury had produced for her. She wore another skirt, but only because he had taken her jeans away from her when she went to dress.
Not that Ria was a jeans person; she wasn’t. Even her casual wear was mostly dresses. Jeans were only used where a skirt or a dress couldn’t or wouldn’t apply. She had to admit the skirt outfits and dresses she had brought with her were the worst she owned, though. They were her “persona” clothes, not her preferred attire.
Today she wore one of the better outfits she had brought, however. The skirt wasn’t bulky; it was soft cotton with a little flare at the knees, and the drab gray color didn’t detract from the attractive cut of the cloth. The matching long-sleeved light sweater made her brown eyes seem darker, maybe a little bit prettier.
Ria wasn’t big on her own looks. She knew she was rather plain. Her eyes were her best feature; they were thickly lashed and dark and matched her darker flesh, compliments of her father’s Puerto Rican-American roots.
As she slid into the warmth of the limo and Mercury moved in snugly against her, Ria couldn’t help but think about the mother she barely remembered, the father she hadn’t known since his death while she was still an infant.
She had been so alone that sometimes, over the years, she had ached at that loneliness. Until Mercury. Until he stepped forward and filled all those cold, empty places, and made her wonder how she had survived without him.
But you couldn’t fully appreciate, or fully miss, what you had never had, she reminded herself silently. Until Mercury, she’d had no idea the depth to which she could belong to another person. She hadn’t known how easily she could lose in a man’s arms the core element of exactly who and what she was.
And she had done that last night. When he had whispered that she was the mate of his soul. That she was his soul. When he had wrapped her in his arms, sheltered her with his body and eased her to sleep with his vows.
“You worry too much.”
Ria looked up at her lover as his hand slid past the opening of her coat and smoothed beneath her skirt.
She had been off balance since waking. She couldn’t seem to decide if she needed to cry or to throw his body to the ground and rub herself against it. Take him. Explode with him in ways she hadn’t exploded with him yet.
He had taken her in the shower. He had taken her after that first cup of coffee, and still she burned inside for him.
“It’s going to be difficult to make certain we have everything in place once we manage to trap the traitor in Sanctuary.” She spoke low, even though Mercury had raised the window, and the driver, the Breed Lawe, had been present during the meeting the night before.
“Oh, he’ll be caught. And he’ll be dealt with.” The underlying growl in his voice was one of retribution.
Ria shook her head. “There’s more than one. Just one person couldn’t pull this off.”
“It doesn’t matter how many there are.” His hand slipped higher, causing her breath to catch as his fingers touched the damp material of her panties.
This time, his growl was sexy, sensual.
“You’re still wet for me.”
He lifted her into his arms, staring down at her, approval and arousal building in his eyes now.
“You’re addictive, even without the mating heat.” She pushed the fingers of one hand into his hair and drew his lips to hers.
She loved his kiss. The feel of his lips moving over hers, his hands holding her to him as his tongue twined with hers, and she swore there was just a hint, the slightest flavor from her dreams.
“That camera’s coming out of that office today,” he muttered against her lips. “Crowl can shove it up his ass if he wants to. There’s no way I can wait all day to have you again.”
Her heart raced at the knowledge that he hadn’t had enough of her. And she was woman enough to admit that it fed that small little part of her ego that was completely female.
“Crowl might shake in his little shoes if you try to choke him again.” She smiled against his lips, loving the feel of being this close to him. So close that they kissed as they spoke. That she could hear his heart beat against the side of her breast and the warmth of his body wrapping around her, stealing through the leather coat.
He pushed the leather from her shoulder, nudged her sweater to the side and stole her breath as he licked over the mark he had left on her.
“I’ve never marked another woman,” he told her, kissing the small bite gently. “Only you, Ria.”
She hadn’t known she needed that information, but she had. The vague fear rising inside her stilled at the knowledge that no one else, not even the girl who should have been his mate, had carried his mark.
Her head tilted farther to the side, and for the few moments of privacy that they had left, she luxuriated in his touch.
And Mercury liked to touch her. Stroke her hair. He’d refused to allow her to pin it up that morning. It flowed around her now, the thick, heavy length perfect for him to run his hands through and fill her with pleasure.
She kept her hair long for very specific reasons. The old maid look didn’t go very well with short hair. Besides, short hair had a tendency to make her face look a bit chubby, not quite studious or severe enough. She had needed the studious look.
But she knew she would never cut it again now. Because of this. Her eyes fluttered closed in pleasure as his hands stroked through her hair and his tongue lapped at the wound on her neck.
“We’re almost there,” he growled.
She didn’t want to be
there
. She wanted to be right here forever.
Suddenly, Ria had a very bad feeling about Sanctuary, one that went far deeper than the conspiracy she knew was building there. That female part of her was rising inside her, warning her. She had given too much of herself, and now she risked losing it all.
CHAPTER 15
Callan and the others were taking care of adding the ghost program to the compound’s server and systems, and within the office, camera covered, Ria took care of sending the various files and information through the independent program she had attached to a ghost drive she was now able to use on the computer system she had been given to work with.
There were no outside lines on the computer; it was completely self-contained. It wasn’t even attached to the main compound server. There was no way out of it, no way inside it except from the seat she was sitting in.
The ghost drive was simple. It attached to the computer as another hard drive, but once it disconnected, all signs of it were wiped completely from the computer it was attached to. There was no way to tell it had ever been there.
Efficient for her, because it allowed her to go through the files she needed to decrypt to reveal the code; very bad for Dr. Elyiana Morrey, though. Because many of the transmissions Ria had questioned had come from her office.
As she worked, she was very much aware of Mercury sitting across from her. He did as he always did, read one of the magazines lying on the table beside the chair, but unlike always, her skin prickled with the need to rub against him.
Rubbing against him was a pleasure in and of itself. The fine, supersoft hair that covered Mercury’s body was-unique. The sensation was-oh, she really shouldn’t go there.
“The look on your face is going to get you fucked.”
Her head jerked up and she felt a flush suffuse her face at the look he was giving her.
“Locking the door is easy.” He glanced to that lock. “And very simple.”
She shook her head and turned back to her work. This part of her job was child’s play. It was simply gathering the suspected files, sending them through the program, then saving to the ghost drive those that needed decrypting. The real job came when it was time to decrypt them.
“How close are you and Dane?” he asked a few minutes later.
Ria lifted her head slowly and stared back at him. He had laid the magazine aside and watched her, slouched in that chair, one ankle lying on the opposite knee, his elbow propped on the chair arm as he rubbed at his chin with his index finger. The pose was so sexy, so virile, she wanted to come from the sight of it alone. But the question, posed with just the right amount of serious interest, warned her there was more beneath the surface than a sexy, brooding male.
“Haven’t we been through this?” she asked.
“No, we have satisfactorily answered whether or not you’ve slept with him or intend to sleep with him,” he said to refute her. “That doesn’t answer the question why he felt he could invade your bedroom or why he displays such an air of protectiveness toward you.”
She shook her head at that.
“My mother worked for Vanderale. In the main office. When a neighbor heard of my mother’s death, she contacted Dane to find out if I was in the car with her, because she hadn’t heard one way or the other about a child. Dane was the one who found me in our apartment three days later.”
She had been hungry, though there had been food in the kitchen. She had been thirsty, and there was water available. But her mother hadn’t been there, and she had been a good girl. She didn’t climb and she didn’t try to cook. And her mother hadn’t contacted the neighbor to watch Ria that weekend because the neighbor had been ill. Ria’s mother had had secrets, and she had taught Ria how to stay alone if she needed to.
“Mom was just supposed to be gone for a few hours,” she said softly. “I was to be good until she returned.”
“And she didn’t return?”
Ria shook her head. “Dane arrived. He stepped into the bedroom, and the moment I saw him, I knew my fears that my mother wasn’t returning were true.”
She remembered that as clearly as she remembered yesterday. Staring back at him as he stepped into the room, his expression lined with sorrow as he moved to the bed, picked her up and carried her from the apartment.
She shook her head. “I’d drank water from the bathroom tap. I could reach it.” She shrugged. “There had been some cheese, a bit of fruit in the fridge and I’d eaten it. And I slept. Huddled in my mother’s bed.”
For three days, alone. Mercury stared back at her, hearing a child’s horror in the too calm words that the adult spoke.
“The Vanderales took good care of me.” She cleared her throat. “They found a foster family to take me in. And when that didn’t work out, they found a better one. We finally struck it lucky the third time, but I was already in my teens. They compensated the families for taking care of me. Dane would often take me shopping for the clothes I needed and school supplies. He brought me Christmas presents, and sometimes, I’d spend an odd weekend here and there on the Vanderale estate when they were there.”
But she had never had a family of her own. She’d been shuttled from one place to the other, and he had a feeling a few of those places hadn’t been happy ones.
“How did you come to work for them?” He watched her, piecing the information Jonas had on her together with what she said.