Dane arched a tawny brow mockingly. “Feral displacement,” he murmured. “Interesting.”
Mercury glared back at him. “She’s not in any danger.”
“I never imagined she was.” He grinned. “You know, I have to admit, life has livened up a bit since the Leo revealed himself to this pride. I can see I’m going to have to pace the amusements or I may burn myself out.”
“Shut up, Vanderale,” Jonas ordered him as Mercury stared back at Dane, refusing to be baited by him.
“Invade her bedroom again and you’ll be more than burned out, you’ll be bled out,” he told him.
“Hmm,” Dane murmured. “Too bad you can’t mate though. She would have made a fine mate. A wonderful mother.”
Mercury’s chest clenched. He stared back at Dane, wishing he had killed him when he had the chance.
“Dane,” Jonas growled. “That’s enough.”
“Yes, it is.” Dane shot Mercury a caustic look. “No worries, my friend. When she’s had enough of the hardheaded Breeds here, she’ll return home.” His smile was smug, confident. “And when she does, I’ll be waiting.”
CHAPTER 14
Mercury closed the bedroom door, locked it, then attached the small, rectangular temporary alarm over the crevice between the door and the frame.
He moved to the window, attached another alarm and then turned to face her.
Ria resisted the urge to rub her hands over her arms as she stepped from the bathroom, once again in her gown, weariness dragging at her as she caught a glimpse of his face.
Primal and wild just didn’t do his expression justice. It was suffused with sensual lust, his eyes glowing with it, the flesh stretched taut over the hard planes and angles of his face.
The clean white silk gown she wore might as well not have been on her body. The way he was looking at her stripped it from her, revealed the hardened tips of her breasts and the dew she knew was accumulating on the curls between her thighs.
“Has Vanderale been your lover?” he asked her, his voice rough, grating with animalistic fervor.
Ria swallowed tightly. “Not in this lifetime. I grew up watching that man play more games than a chess master.”
She had no intentions of allowing him to play games with her heart or her emotions. And Dane wasn’t above it. He was a good man, but his focus was set on the protection of his parents and the Breeds rapidly making their mark in society. He would do whatever it took to protect both. And if that meant breaking her heart, he would apologize, he would regret it, but he would do it over and over again.
“And when you leave here?” He stripped his T-shirt off his body, before sitting down in the chair in the corner and unlacing his boots efficiently. “Will you take him to your bed after being with me?”
When she left here. She turned her back on him, straightening the laptop and files she had placed on the small table by the bed, trying not to let herself feel hurt at his easy acceptance that she would leave him. That things wouldn’t last between them.
She finally shrugged and said, “I have no intentions of going to bed with Dane.”
Could she allow any man in her bed now that she had been with Mercury? The thought of it sent a sharp, painful spike of denial racing through her mind.
She straightened and turned back to him, breathing in roughly at the sight of him naked, aroused. Damn, were all Breeds this sexual?
He moved to her, muscles rippling beneath the dark bronze flesh, the light in the room picking up the shimmer of that fine, silken pelt that covered them.
She loved the feel of those tiny hairs against her flesh, stroking over her, caressing her.
“Are you ready for me to leave already?” she whispered, trying to hold back the hurt as she couldn’t hold back the question.
She didn’t want to leave him. She never wanted to be without him.
“Can I kidnap you?” he asked her as his hands stroked over her shoulders, her fingers curling against his chest. “When this is over, I want to tie you to my bed and make certain Dane Vanderale can never bribe you away from my side.”
She stared up at him, feeling her heart melt. His eyes softened, filled with hunger and desire, and truth.
“You don’t want me to leave?”
“I want you in my bed, by my side, for as long as I can keep you, Ria.” His hand cupped her cheek. “But after what you saw tonight, can you stand to be there?”
Her lips parted.
“You were crying for him,” he growled down at her. “Tears were falling from your eyes and you knelt over him, naked, your hair stroking him.”
Jealousy throbbed in his voice. Complete primal male Breed jealousy. They were completely territorial over their women. Ria knew that, had seen it with Leo and Elizabeth several times over the years.
Ria felt herself tremble at the memory.
“I thought he was dead.” A frown snapped between her brows as she moved back from him. “He may not be my lover but he is my friend.”
“A friend that slipped into your bedroom while you lay naked in my arms. A friend that knew I lay there with you,” he pointed out. “The same friend who informed me that when this was over he would be waiting for you when you returned home.”
Surprise had her turning back to him, watching him closely. He was completely comfortable being aroused and nude.
“Dane is as adept at his little games as Jonas is.” She shrugged as she moved to straighten the bed. “But I’ll not defend myself over something that hasn’t happened or whether or not it will happen if you’re no longer a part of my life.”
“I will always be a part of your life.”
The sound of his voice, the large body suddenly behind her, the erection pressing between her thighs, rubbing against the slick, heated cleft there had the breath catching in his throat.
Just as he had over the desk in the office, he bent her over the bed now, his palms flat against the mattress, his larger, harder body holding her in place as her head snapped up in surprise.
“Will you, Mercury?” she asked him, uncertainty filling her voice. “Breeds mate. They mate their other half.”
He tensed against her, a violent tension; it poured out of him and whipped in the air, tightening around her chest with spiked bonds that she thought would break her heart.
“I could not want another woman the way I want you.” He nipped her neck. “Mating heat be damned. There are enough anomalies in it that it can get fucked as far as I’m concerned.”
Tears filled her eyes as he turned her, stretched her out beneath him and held her trapped to the bed despite her struggles.
“Let me go, Mercury.” She shook her head, pressing her hands against his chest as she fought to be free.
She wasn’t going to let him see her tears. She wasn’t going to cry about something she had no hope of fighting, no way of changing. She had learned better than that years ago.
“I can’t let you go.”
His voice, the guttural roughness of it, the spike of need and emotion that filled her, had her fighting hope. And she had never been good at fighting hope.
“Mercury.” Her breathing hitched, the emotion nearly strangling her now. “You’ll mate, someone, sometime.”
“That time is past,” he ground out.
“And she was your mate,” she flashed back at him, the anger at that tearing through her. “You loved her so desperately you nearly went insane when you lost her. I’ll always be second.”
“You’ll always be first,” he snarled in her face, silencing her, the blue highlights in his eyes increasing, glowing, as his voice thickened with his hunger. “Always, Ria. Always first.”
He pushed his hips between her thighs, spread her thighs, and before she could do more than gasp, he tore her gown down the center with strong, powerful hands.