Authors: Lora Leigh
He grimaced and shot her a look that would have withered a weaker personality.
“Insulting me will get you nowhere,” he stated as he moved to his feet. “Do as you please. I’ve merely informed you of the situation, just as Mercury knows it stands.”
He stood up then, surprising her as he moved to the other side of the door a second before it opened.
And there was Mercury. His gaze was flat, his face expressionless as he stepped into the room. He wasn’t wearing his enforcer uniform; instead he wore jeans, a black T-shirt and boots. He looked dangerous, exotic and less than pleased to find Jonas there.
“Warning her?” Mercury questioned him with an edge of sarcasm as he stepped into the room.
“Merely apprising her of the reason why she’ll be receiving orders from the Ruling Cabinet to submit to the lab for testing later.” Jonas shrugged as though unconcerned.
“You’re not serious.” Her lips curled in disgust. “I do believe I made my opinion on that clear Saturday. There will be no testing done.” There it was, that damned hint of an accent.
She was infuriated that they would even consider making it an order. And offended on Mercury’s part that they would dare to make such a move.
“They can shove their orders,” she informed him before turning to Mercury. “And you took your damned good time showing up, didn’t you? Do you have any idea how chatty that insane Breed Shiloh is that they’ve assigned to me?”
She jerked several files from the pile and stomped back to her desk, casting both men an impatient glance.
“I believe that’s my cue to leave.” Jonas’s lips twitched as he glanced at Mercury. “You’re still on detail and your mission status hasn’t changed.” He nodded in her direction. “She’s your primary concern unless you wish to be relieved.”
Mercury’s arms crossed over his chest. “I’ve been ordered back to the labs as well. I refused.”
Evidently that meant something because Jonas grimaced at the knowledge. He finally nodded. “Continue refusing.”
Mercury grunted. “I don’t need your permission, Director.”
Jonas let a smile tip his lips then, his gaze flicking back to Ria. “I’ll leave you to your job then,” he told them both. “I’ll be here for a few more days yet. If there are any problems I expect to be informed.”
“I’m sure you’ll hear the bones breaking if it’s needed.” Mercury shrugged.
“And you’re out of uniform,” Jonas growled as though finally realizing that.
Mercury’s expression hardened further, his jaw twitching as tension seemed to thicken and fill the room dangerously. “I don’t need the uniform to do my job.”
No, he didn’t; he appeared more dangerous, more exciting, with all those weapons strapped over his body while denim hugged his legs.
But Jonas’s eyes narrowed. “Where’s the uniform, Merc?”
Mercury grinned. It wasn’t a friendly smile. “I was informed my rank has been revoked until I submit to those tests. Don’t worry, Jonas. I made my opinion of that clear.”
“By doing what?” Jonas’s voice was icy now.
“Ask Callan.” He shrugged, moving into the room and glancing at the camera, still covered by Ria’s sweater, before turning back to Jonas. “I’m sure he’s waiting on you.”
He took the easy chair in the corner, sat down and lifted one of the magazines lying on the table beside it. As though he wasn’t raging inside, as though fury wasn’t eating him alive.
Ria could see it, feel the danger in the air, and so could Jonas.
“Did you break any bones Mercury?” he finally sighed.
“Nope. All bones are intact and in working order,” he retorted.
The muscle at Jonas’s jaw flinched. “What about other enforcers’ bones?”
“All intact and in working order.” Mercury flipped open the magazine.
“Then what did you do?”
Mercury settled back in the chair comfortably, crossed one ankle over the opposite knee and focused his gaze on the magazine. “I think they’re still trying to figure out exactly how to repair my shoulder weapon.”
That was when Ria realized what was missing. The unique gun, rather like a mini-Uzi, that the Breed Enforcers carried. Vanderale had donated the weapons to the Breeds and limited the sale of them anywhere else. They were powerful, deadly, and Mercury wasn’t wearing his.
Breeds, you had to love them, Ria thought as Jonas’s expression turned as deadly as Mercury’s. His silver eyes flashed, his entire body tensed. They could look more savage in their anger than the animals they were created from.
“I’ll talk with you before you leave this evening,” he stated, his voice cold. “Contact me before doing so.”
“Sure.” Mercury flipped the page of the magazine, his gaze still focused inside it. “I’ll do that, Jonas.”
Ria stayed silent. She was certain a snarl was pulling at Jonas’s lips as he stalked from the room and slammed the door behind him.
Mercury moved then, reach over and flipped the lock on the door, before going back to the magazine, remaining silent, almost thoughtful, as he read.
Ria lowered her gaze to his well-worn reading material, an auto engineering magazine that was quite popular, even in Johannesburg, with some of the top designers who worked in the production departments at Vanderale.
Mercury might well have been reading it, but the tension rising in the room was so stifling that when the phone rang beside her, she jerked and barely held back a gasp before reaching for the receiver on the land-based line.
“Yes?”
“Ms. Rodriquez, this is Austin, from the Security Control Center. Could you please remove the covering from the camera?”
The arrogance in that nasal little voice antagonized her with the first words out of his mouth.
Her lips flattened as she glanced at Mercury. He was staring at her from beneath his lashes, the look from those exotically tilted eyes both wickedly sexual and dangerous.
“That might be a little difficult,” she stated with a heavy emphasis on the false sweetness in her voice. “I’ll tell you what, Austin, why don’t you come down here and see if you can remove it yourself?”
She hung up the phone and glared at Mercury. “Stop the damned growling or you can sit outside. My day has been messed with enough.” And she went back to work. Concentration shot, nerves raw, but she was determined to find what Dane needed so she could leave Sanctuary and the man she knew would break her heart if given the chance.
CHAPTER 9
They took his uniform. Mercury sat silently, his gaze focused on the magazine, though he had no idea what it said.
He felt odd in the civilian clothes he rarely wore. They were comfortable enough, but they weren’t the clothes specially designed to conform to his body.
And his weapon.
He almost growled again. They had confiscated his weapon. The enforcers sent after it had been polite enough, but the feral rage that had nearly consumed him had ensured that the weapon would never be used again. It lay in so many pieces in the barracks now that it was fit for nothing more than the garbage.
He should have left. Hell, he’d even considered it. Packing his stuff then and there, because he didn’t have much, and just riding out. He’d had enough job offers over the years; supporting himself outside Sanctuary wouldn’t be a problem. But Ria wasn’t anywhere else in the world. She was here, and she was his responsibility.
His hunger.
He shifted in his chair, still not as used to the jeans as he was to the uniform, and restrained the anger still burning inside him.
Damn Ely. What the hell was she trying to do to him? The betrayal stuck in his throat until he couldn’t figure out how to displace it. He had considered her a friend, and perhaps that had been his mistake. Making friends hadn’t been easy, even here in Sanctuary. He reminded the other Breeds too much of where they came from, and most non-Breeds stared at him in fascinated fear, frightened to come too close.
Too often he had felt as though he were on the outside looking in, searching for a warmth that didn’t exist and that he didn’t know how to name. A place to exist perhaps.
He stared at his hands where he gripped the magazine. At the claws his nails invariably grew into. They were thicker than most, with the slightest curve. Keeping them trimmed and honed to a nonlethal appearance was an exacting job. If left alone, they could become claws in the truest sense.
He almost flexed them, almost remembered the feel of how easily those nails and the denser, harder strength of his bones had allowed his hand to punch into a Coyote Breed’s chest and rip out his heart.
It hadn’t been a job. It had been so easy. The rage that had spurred him sometimes caused him to cringe when he thought of it. And now, sitting across from Ria, feeling the wildness that had once been so much a part of him stretching inside him, he felt a moment’s concern.
Once, too long ago, he had been a man comfortable with the creature he was. The animal and the human coexisted, if not in harmony, in a state of truce. Now the animal was gone, but the wildness was building. He could feel it building, stretching out, its attention focused on the woman sitting so silently across the room.
She wasn’t concentrating on those files any more than he was concentrating on the magazine. The tension building between them was thick, heated.
“Are you frightened of me now?” He flipped the page of the magazine as he spoke, pretending to read. Knowing he wasn’t and that he wouldn’t be.
“Do I have a reason to be frightened of you now?” She turned one of the papers she was likely not reading before checking it against something she had pulled up on the computer.
He looked at his hands again, wondering if they could actually harm something so fragile, so sweet as the woman sitting across from him.
“And if I told you I didn’t know?” He looked up from the magazine, meeting her gaze as her head lifted in surprise.
“Then I would say you’re allowing your good doctor to mess with your head a bit much, wouldn’t you?” That little hint of an accent intrigued him more than it should have and made him harder than he had ever been in his life.
Jeans confined his erection. The mission uniform had allowed it room for comfort, even if it didn’t hide it. Of course, he’d never had a problem controlling the surge of lust that engorged his cock and tightened his balls. Until Ria. From the moment he had first drawn her scent into him, he had known she would be a problem to his hard-won sense of control.
He shifted in his chair, hoping to relieve the pressure.
“Why did they take your uniform?” She lowered her head once again, asking the question as though it wasn’t a concern between of the two of them.
“I’m a risk to the community now.” He shrugged. “If I rip someone’s heart from their chest, then they don’t want me doing it while wearing an insignia of the Breed community.” His lips twisted mockingly.
“And this is something you do on a daily basis? Rip out hearts?” Her lips almost twitched, and he could have sworn he sensed amusement in the movement.
“I usually wait for permission to do that,” he told her laconically. “We were taught a few manners in those labs. My trainer always felt it polite to make certain I was ripping out the right heart.”
“Very interesting.” She nodded. “But you’re speaking to me, and distracting me.”
He was going to distract her. He looked at the camera, wondering how long it was going to take the techs in the control room to convince someone to remove that sweater.
He glanced at the watch on his wrist. He had a feeling it wouldn’t be much longer. There wasn’t enough time to give in to the arousal building inside him, and he didn’t know how much longer he could wait to taste her.
She was all buttoned up; the sleeveless top she wore wasn’t as bulky as the clothes she normally worked in, and the soft creamy color was incredibly flattering to the breasts beneath it.
She was wearing another of those damned skirts too. Black this time with a little flare at the knees. A tulip skirt Cassie had once called it when she was trying to convince her mother to buy one. Though that one had been much shorter. For some reason Cassie Sinclair thought Mercury made the perfect escort for their shopping trips.
He had to admit, the longer length on Ria was sexy as hell. The more skin she hid, the more he found himself wanting to see.
The last thing he needed right now was to have an enforcer, or Ely, come into the room while he had her bent over a table again.
He pulled at the shoulder of the T-shirt he wore. Damn, he missed his uniform. And maybe he even missed the sense of acceptance that uniform had given him. A place to belong, no matter how slight.
He didn’t frown, he didn’t allow his expression to shift, but the betrayal he could feel inside him fucking ached to the center of his bones. He’d never hurt anyone that didn’t deserve it. He always controlled his strength, he always controlled his actions, because he knew his appearance was less than comfortable to everyone around him.
He frightened his fellow Breeds, with the exception of a very few. He frightened the humans that came in contact with him, and he was very much aware his missions were most always those that involved a limited presence among the non-Breeds.
As the tabloids reported each time their journalists caught sight of him, he was the vision that followed children and adults alike into their nightmares.
“The bogeyman” one newspaper had titled him.
He stared at the magazine and felt a somber realization fill him. He had told himself he fit in here, at Sanctuary, but he’d been wrong. He’d only fit in as long as he followed the silent parameters he’d sensed had been placed around him.
He was as trapped here as he had been in the labs, and he hadn’t even realized it.
On the heels of that realization, the doorknob to the office clicked, and when the lock refused to allow entrance, a hard knock sounded on the panel.