Mercury's War (43 page)

    She was drawing on him, her mouth hungry, her tongue a lash of heated pleasure against the overly sensitive head. His nails dug into the couch cushions. He was certain fabric tore. His thighs bunched, and he felt consumed by her. He was consumed by her. His heart, his soul, the heat of his cock, and he wasn’t going to last long if she kept this up.

    “Ria,” he groaned. “Baby. I’m too fucking close.”

    He pressed his head back along the couch, fighting for control. But she didn’t ease up. She sucked and licked, her hands, sweet soft little hands, pumped the hard flesh of the shaft.

    “Ria. Dammit. I’m going to fucking come.” Yep, the cushions tore, the foam inside shredding beneath his nails. “Son of a bitch!”

    A ragged yell tore from him as her mouth enclosed the head, only the head, sucked and drew the pulsing, streaming jets of release from him.

    Agony pierced his balls, the underside of his cock heat. The barb throbbed beneath the flesh, the milking motion needed to draw it free absent as she consumed the wash of his semen. She sucked and licked and he was panting, a sweat sheen on his body as his cock seemed harder, more viciously aroused than ever before.

    He was seconds from insanity. Adrenaline raced through him, his vision blurred, hunger tearing through him with a force he couldn’t seem to control.

    And he could smell her need. It filled his head, drawing deep-throated growls from his chest as his head jerked up, watching as she rose over him, straddling him, the head of his cock tucking against the soft, curl-shrouded folds of saturated flesh.

    She began taking him. Her eyes locked with his as he felt her moving, liquid-tight heat surrounding the tortured flesh, working it inside her.

    And her eyes. So dark. They were filled with pleasure, pain, with possessiveness. He snarled back at her, seeing that, pleasure and pride tearing through him as he saw what she still yet refused to admit. That she was claiming him the same as he had already claimed her.

    “What do you do to me?” she whispered as she worked his flesh deeper inside her, her nails digging into his shoulders. “Mercury, what do you do to me?”

    He couldn’t move his hands from the cushions. If he touched her, if he dared allow himself to feel the heat of her skin, then he would take her.

    “I fill you, Ria.” In every way. In all ways. He would always fill her, fulfill her, hold her and warm her. With her permission or without it.

    He was a Breed male. The game he played now, to force her admittance that he
was
her mate, he played only because he was certain of the outcome. Otherwise, she would never get out of his bed. Never step foot from his sight until she realized it.

    “I’m filling me,” she panted. “You’re just sitting there, Mercury.” Her moan was hoarse as she took more of him, working herself on the thick intrusion as he strained against thrusting.

    God, he wasn’t going to last much longer. The feel of her snug grip, the slick, wet glide of her sex over his erection, was killing him.

    He could feel sweat trickling down his neck, and even that wasn’t left alone. Her head lowered, her tongue licked, and his hips jerked when her teeth raked against him.

    He buried himself an inch inside her before he could stop, but the whispery whimper of her pleasure at his neck was worth it.

    Her lips increased in speed, working over him, sucking more and more of him into her as the heat began to surround them like flames.

    The cushion shredded beneath his grip; control was lost as with one deep cry Ria impaled herself fully on the hard rise of his cock.

    Okay, she had him. She took him. That was it.

    The growl that tore from him was pure male animal. His hands clamped on her hips as he began thrusting, meeting her hard downward strokes and falling into a pit of such ecstasy that he never wanted to be free.

    Ria was entranced by the sight of Mercury. She stared at him-the way his lashes brushed his cheeks, the complete sensuality that washed through his expression. Not that she had enough mind left to do anything but ride the hard length of his cock.

    The pleasure was tearing through her. Need was like a vicious, ragged wound at her clit, in her womb. Her muscles clenched, and wildness shuddered through her.

    But she had to watch him. She had to hold on to something because everything inside her was rushing along the roller-coaster ride that this pleasure was turning into.

    Her hands moved desperately over his shoulders, her nails raked against it; the tough, heavy density of his skin didn’t break, but the welts would be clear for hours. A testament, a brand. But not enough.

    “Mercury!” She was crying out his name.

    Her teeth clenched. She wouldn’t bite. She wasn’t going to bite. She had bitten once, but she had managed to restrain herself. Managed not to break the skin, not to place her brand on him.

    She shook her head.

    “Do it, damn you!” His eyes opened, artic blue flaming with gold pinpoints. “Do it!”

    She cried out his name, impaling herself furiously on him, fighting the need, fighting the obsession, the compulsion.

    “You’re mine!” he snarled. “Another man touches what’s mine and I’ll kill him. I’ll shred him, Ria. Anyone dares try to harm you, and insanity will be the least of my strengths. I’ll destroy. You’re mine.”

    “No!” She couldn’t stop. She thrust harder against him, pleasure pouring into pain, pain pouring into pleasure, sensation building and compulsion growing.

    “My mate!” His hands tightened on her hips as he took her hard, pounding into her and she lost the will to fight. No, she
gained
the will to fight, she felt it pouring out of her, heard the female hiss of animalistic ecstasy and her head lowered, and she bit.

    She bit hard. Blunted canines latched onto him with a force that barely pierced the flesh. But it pierced. She tasted blood; she tasted her own saliva, wild, filled with the hormone he had fed into her, and she fed it back to him.

    His head lowered to her shoulder; his teeth clamped tight to her, pierced her; he sucked and licked, taught her to mark and she marked. Marked as her orgasm tore through her, raced over her, and her nails raked down his arms.

    With a roar Mercury surged inside her again, his release just as fierce the second time, pouring into her as the barb extended, caressed over her inner muscles, and the animal inside her responded in ways that had her screaming in shock and Mercury growling in rapture.

    Internal muscles clenched, tightened, and there, where the barb pressed into her, spilled its shimmery release, she felt pleasure erupt again. Her flesh surrounded it, tightened around it, latching onto his cock harder, massaging it with a force that had them both crying out in response.

    Another orgasm tore through her. She felt his release pulse inside her again, and their cries, his and hers, echoed through the cabin.

    As the last agonizing bolt of sensation eased in her body, Ria collapsed against him. He was still hard inside her, still thick. The barb slowly receded, but the heat remained.

    She had waited too long, much too long, and easing the overriding hunger for him would take hours. She had helped Elizabeth in the labs, she knew the signs, she knew the research, and she knew she wouldn’t die if she lost Mercury now. She would kill.

    Ely paced her quarters. They were small; she had preferred small. Until now. Now the walls seemed to be closing in on her, and fear was driving spikes through her brain.

    And she was crying. She wiped the tears away before wrapping her arms across her breasts and pacing the room again.

    Jonas had taken blood. He had come to her himself, by himself; at least he had done that. He had said something about codeine. Breeds couldn’t take codeine; she knew that. She would have never requisitioned codeine for any Breed. She didn’t even give it to humans.

    And something else. She shook her head, trying to remember the medical name for it. All she could remember was the lab tag name for it: They called it
Mental
. Simple. To the point. Because it messed with a Breed’s mind. She would never order that either.

    What had he said? She lifted her head, clenched her hands over it and snarled.

    This was Mercury’s fault. The feral displacement. Jonas’s loyalty to Mercury was going to get them killed.

    He had to be confined.

    There was a cell beneath the labs, padded, where the Council had kept the Breeds they had experimented on when they owned the estate.

    A cell and a special lab.

    She stopped, staring into the past, sightless. That lab-the memories of another lab identical to it were horrifying. And she couldn’t block them. Breeds strapped down on tables, their bodies paralyzed by the drugs pumped into them, their chests open, and she watched. The heart, the lungs, the internal organs protesting the agonizing pain each Breed was enduring.

    Blood coated her hands as she stared at the scalpel she was holding, then into the eyes of the Breed staring back at her. Rage. Inhuman rage reflected in his icy blue eyes. Pinpoints of gold flared in them, like stars, ricocheting with rage.

    A growl tore from her throat, then a throttled scream. No, she wouldn’t do that to him. Just the cell. That was all. They could treat displacement. She knew how. She would treat him.

    But first she had to get past the Breed stationed at her door.

    She moved to the small kitchen, jerked a bottle of water from the fridge and popped back a handful of aspirin. Her head was splitting. It felt as though someone were digging it out with a blunt instrument.

    She pressed her fingertips to her temple and fought the pain. She had to think. That was all. She was the smartest and the brightest of any Breed created in her lab. She was taught how to be covert, how to fight. How to kill.

    She stilled slowly. Mercury was doing this. She knew he was. Somehow, he had managed to convince Jonas and Callan that he wasn’t a danger to Sanctuary. And they were punishing her.

    Her breath hitched on a sob. They were punishing her. That’s what Jonas was doing. He was punishing her for trying to protect the others. He was manipulating everyone. Mercury’s displacement was suiting some plan of his, that was the only thing that made sense. And this time, he was going to destroy Sanctuary.

    Unless she did something to stop him.

CHAPTER 26

    The animalistic part of a Breed had attitude. It was almost a requirement. An animal trapped inside a human, influencing the human’s psyche, thought patterns, hormones, actions and reactions.

    Ria had managed to keep her animal contained to a point. It had been there. Unlike Mercury, she had known it was there. She had just managed to control it, to keep it from stretching free. Until mating heat.

    The mating heat phenomenon was still a mystery in many ways, even to her grandmother, Elizabeth Vanderale. Elizabeth had been studying it for over a century, in herself as well as in the few mated pairings that had resulted within Leo’s pride. And even she didn’t have all the answers.

    Ria wished she had some of the answers the next afternoon, after she redressed in the labs. Her flesh still felt seared by the examination she’d been forced to endure. Silently. She hadn’t even been able to bitch about it, because Mercury was pacing like an enraged lion on the other side of the curtain.

    “He’s intense,” her grandmother Elizabeth commented lightly as Ria stepped out from the changing room, clad once again in the black leather pants, high-heeled black boots and white, soft-as-silk and conforming-as-hell sweater she had worn with them.

    Elizabeth didn’t look like anyone’s mother. In over a century, she’d barely aged the ten years she should have.

    “Yes, he’s pretty intense.” Ria glanced at the screen, watching his shadow as he paced, and Elizabeth’s gaze swept over her clothes again.

    “You’ve changed,” Elizabeth said softly. “In the few short weeks you’ve been here, you’ve finally come out of your shell.”

    Ria shifted uncomfortably, trying to look everywhere but at Elizabeth.

    “I didn’t betray you,” Ria finally whispered. “Jonas guessed.”

    “Jonas could smell the familial scent.” Elizabeth nodded. “His sense of smell is exceptional, even for a Breed. Rather like Callan’s son, David. But, Ria, you’ve never betrayed us, and we’ve never suspected you would.”

    Ria pushed her hands into the back pockets of the snug pants. “I did once.” She lifted her eyes back to her grandmother.

    “Is that what you believe we thought?” Elizabeth asked her. “No, dear, Jason betrayed you. You were a child, and we were so worried about protecting you, about making certain the pride as a whole was protected, that we didn’t make allowances for your need for family. Which all Breeds have, you know.”

    Elizabeth was excusing her actions, and Ria had expected it of her. They had always excused them. She was young. She hadn’t understood. They had tried to make her guilt over the choice she made easier.

    “Dane would have killed him anyway, Ria,” Elizabeth said softly, guessing the turn of her thoughts. “He was offering not to do it where you could see; he wasn’t offering not to pull the trigger. When Jason attempted to gain money by betraying you to the Council, he signed his death warrant. There was no way Dane would have allowed him to live.”

    “Jason wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t told him.”

    “And he wouldn’t have died if he’d had an ounce of humanity in him,” Mercury snarled as he stepped around the curtain and glared at her. “It wasn’t your fault.”

    Elizabeth’s brow arched as Ria felt her teeth snap together.

    “I’ll let you know the test results when I have them,” Elizabeth promised. “I took Alaiya’s earlier, performed the examination.”

    Ria’s head jerked back to her grandmother.

    Elizabeth’s expression was compassionate. “She’s showing signs of mating heat, Ria. But that doesn’t mean anything. It merely means she’s been in contact with her mate.”