by Lora Leigh
Mercury. Savage. Enraged.
“You ran from me, mate.” Buttons ripped from his jacket as he tore it from his body.
She watched in shock as he undressed. Boots thudded to the floor. His pants slid from his powerful hips. His erection was thicker, throbbing, his eyes pure blue as she stared back at the apparition prowling to her bed.
“Mercury ...”
“Mate,” he snarled, his canines flashing as he moved to the bed.
She watched, entranced as he paused at the foot of the bed. He looked bigger, his muscles more powerful, the strength in his body amplified.
She swallowed tightly. “You didn’t mate me, Mercury.” Her breath hitched on a sob. She was going to cry again, and she couldn’t bear crying in front of him. She wanted to be strong, wanted to give him the chance to choose without being burdened by promises made to her.
“There’s no heat for me.” The tears dripped from her eyes anyway, the pain scoured her soul.
His eyes flashed with rage. Blue eyes, pinpoints of gold flaring in them like fire. As they had been in the labs. As they had been for another woman.
She reached out to him, then drew her hand back, fighting her sobs.
“Why are you here?” she whispered. “Why? Oh God, Mercury. I can’t bear this. I can’t stand losing you twice. Don’t do this to me.”
The roar that filled the room had her flinching. It was animalistic, it wasn’t Breed. It was filled with all the power and the rage of genetics that had somehow been increased with him, that poured through him. That sound was pure animal.
When his head lowered again, the expression on his face terrified her. Because she knew he wasn’t letting her go. She knew he would ignore mating heat and it would destroy them both.
She moved to jump from the bed, to rush from the room. He caught her before she did more than tense. He was on her, pushing her down, snarling. His fingers tangled in her hair, held her in place, and the enraged lust that filled his face had her heart tripping in fear.
“My fucking mate.” The growl was savage.
“No . . .” Because he was going to kiss her. Give her something that belonged to another woman. Not to her.
And she couldn’t evade him.
His lips came down on her, slanted over hers, and his tongue passed into her mouth with determined hunger. Greed. With a desperation that surged through her senses and a taste that had her going still inside.
Wild. Primal. Heat and lightning, power and dark hunger. It filled her mouth. It covered her tongue, and it was so good. Like nectar.
She fought it. She bit at his tongue, but not hard. Because when she did, more of that taste filled her mouth.
“Suck my tongue,” he snarled against her lips. “Take it.”
“It’s not mine!” she screamed back at him, her own fury growing now. “Damn you.” Her fists struck his shoulders. “It’s not mine!”
His lips came to hers again; he pumped his tongue into her mouth, forced the taste into her senses, and oh God, it was so good. It was everything she’d dreamed it would be. It was impossible to resist.
She whimpered. She begged him with her tears as her lips closed over his hesitantly. She drew it from him. She tasted him. And within seconds, she was consumed by him.
CHAPTER 20
She was his mate. Nothing else mattered. No other thought filled Mercury’s head as he felt her lips surround his tongue, felt the hesitant, suckling movements, milking the hormone from him.
He felt her pleasure, sensed the desire rising eagerly inside her even if she was hesitant in this. He was giving to her, taking what belonged to him, giving what belonged to her. What he had dreamed of giving her.
Heat flashed through him, a burning wave of searing pleasure and ecstatic agony. The animal and the man merged here, with her. There was no battle, no fight for supremacy between the two. For Ria, they were one.
He growled into the kiss. His fingers kneaded her scalp and he drew the scent of her into his very being. His mate. He had needed this. Ached for it. From the moment he had first caught sight of her, he had prayed for it. And he had never realized that he was the reason he hadn’t mated her.
That the control he had forced on himself after coming off the feral displacement drugs had blocked his ability to mate her.
He hadn’t realized it until the animal inside him had sensed her panic and her fear, her premonition of danger.
She had drawn the animal free. From the first scent of her, the first time he had seen her, spoken to her, the animal had refused to sleep any longer. It had awakened, drawn as Mercury had been drawn, by her scent, her honor, by the fact that she was created to live inside his soul.
Now, as she drew the dark, potent hormone from his tongue, and he knew it was potent, the growls that came from his chest echoed inside his head.
At the moment, he was more animal than man. She had run from him. She had left, refusing to see who she belonged to, refusing to allow him, him, her mate, to protect her.
Protecting her was his pleasure. Protecting her, ensuring she survived at all costs, was what he had been born for. He had been born for this woman. Born to fill the cold places inside her, just as she filled them within him. She eased the cold, dark loneliness inside him. She vanquished it, brought warmth, laughter, brought the sweet knowledge that the animal and the man he was truly belonged.
She had run from him. She had allowed another woman to come between them, stepped aside, no matter the reason. She would never step aside again.
She would never dare consider it, even if she might suspect his happiness lay elsewhere, she would never think to turn from him. She would hold on to him with talons as deep, as sharp as any animal’s.
He would show her. Her pleasure was his. Her security was his. His Ria was going to learn to take what belonged to her.
“You dared to leave me.” He tore his lips from her, glaring down at her, watching the flush that suffused her tear-swollen face, watched the hunger that began to fill her chocolate eyes.
She shook her head slowly. “What have you done to me?”
“Taken you.” He fingered the cloth of that detestable dress. “And I will take you more. And more. Until you realize, Ria, nothing can tear you from me.”
He had to touch her. The lion inside him needed to spread its mark across her entire body. The fine hairs along his body tingled, the mating hormone that infused his kiss beginning to seep along those hairs. He wanted to stroke against her. Fill her pores with his scent, and his scent alone.
Never would another Breed, male or female, attempt to encroach upon what belonged solely to him.
“You’ll destroy me,” she sobbed.
That sound, the sight of her tears and the smell of her pain were destroying him. He stared down at her, seeing the conflict in her gaze, the emotions that had torn her apart, that still tore at her, and he wanted nothing more than to ease her. Everything inside him demanded he ease her, and he knew of only one way.
The only way. He would draw the animal inside Ria free, if it killed them both. It was the only way.
“You are my mate.” He touched her face, leaned forward and kissed her gently. To apologize now for what he knew her anger would be later.
Mercury rubbed his lips against hers, heard the catch of her breath from the hunger filling her, and the rumble of pleasure in him was like a deep-throated, growling purr.
Then he speared his tongue inside her mouth again, forced her to take more of the heat, even as a part of him ached. His proud mate. So proud, so frightened of the emotions clawing between them.
“Mercury.” Her broken sigh had him pulling back, his hands gripping the material of her dress before he ripped it.
He wanted that ugly fucking dress off her body. No later than next evening her closets would be filled with clothes that suited his Ria. That suited the feminine animal he knew paced and prowled within her.
She wasn’t Breed, yet. But the animal in him recognized the pr
imal core of her. And he would bring it out. He was created with the strength, the arrogance, to ensure it.
“What are you doing?” Her cry was one of shock, but not one of fear.
He tore the shreds from her, ripped the delicate material until there was no way it would ever cover her body again, and then he stilled.
Crouched over her, he could see what she wore beneath it now. The sexy, lacy, black garter and stockings. French-cut silk-and-lace matching panties. And a bra that was only barely there, pushing her breasts high, revealing her stiffened nipples. Rose-colored peaks surrounded by dusky temptation.
The sight of them made him hunger, make him growl. It made his erection throb in painful hunger and had him licking his lips at the thought of tasting them.
Once his lips covered those hard peaks, the hormone in his mouth would sink inside them, burn them, fill her with the need to have him suckle from her until they both expired with the ecstasy of it.
Then his lips would move lower. He let his eyes lower to her panties. He didn’t want to remove them. They were sexy as hell, drove him insane with hunger at the sight of them.
He pushed her legs apart with his own, inhaling, smelling her arousal and the heat beginning to infuse it.
Her back arched off the bed. His head lowered, his lips covering a nipple and drawing it into his mouth as she whimpered in pleasure.
For a moment, there was enough sanity left inside him to wonder how it felt for her.
Ria was sinking in a whirlpool of sensation. Mercury had always pleasured her. She had never known anything but pleasure from his touch. But this—she arched her back, ground her head against the pillows and fought to make sense of what she was feeling now.
Her mouth was filled with the taste of dark, primitive lust. Primal lust. There was no other description for it. A deep flavor of male pleasure, like a mountain storm. Crisp. Clean. Yet tinged with fire. And it enflamed her.
She could feel it pulsing through her veins as the taste of his kiss fueled a hunger she couldn’t have imagined feeling.
She couldn’t fight him. She wanted to claw and scratch and demand he take her now, but the pleasure, oh God, the pleasure held her bound, watching as he lifted his head and pushed himself between her thighs. A second later her panties were torn from her body.
And it was erotic. It was so sexual that she wasn’t prepared for what he did next.
Her back arched and a whimper tore from her as she felt his finger plunge inside her. It wasn’t a slow, easy thrust. It was a penetration. An impalement, as his head lowered and his lips covered the too-sensitive, distended peak of one nipple.
What was he doing to her? His tongue rasped over the hard tip, and it flamed. It tingled and burned, and as he drew on it, lashing it with his tongue, she began to writhe beneath him.
It was too much. His finger pumping into the tight, slick confines of her sex, his tongue destroying her with the pleasure that filled her nipple. The sensations tore through the tip, raced along nerve endings and sliced into her womb with the power to steal her breath with the ecstasy of it.
“Mercury.” She gasped his name, barely realizing her nails were piercing the tough skin of his shoulders rather than the blankets they had been latched onto. “What are you doing to me?”
Her head tossed. Fear and pleasure, agony and terror were streaking through her. She didn’t know if she should pray for release or beg for death it was so intense.
“Mating you. Mate.” His head lifted, his eyes crystal blue, the gold pinpoints flickering within the gemlike color.
His head lowered and his lips covered the other nipple. And it was the same. She was twisting, clawing at him. Needing him. Her pussy was pulsing around his finger as it moved inside her, stroking her, caressing her as she cried out his name again.
“Mercury. I can’t stand this,” she panted. She fought to hold on to him as the fear began to rise inside her.
She had read the reports on mating heat—the list of sensations felt, the intensity of it—and it hadn’t prepared her for this. Not this. The wildness rising inside her, crashing over her and obliterating any control she could have thought to possess.
All she could do was feel.
His lips drawing on her nipple, heating it, his tongue rasping it. Spreading that hormone over her. It was sinking into her pores. The rasp of his tongue was opening the tiny pores farther, allowing that hormone inside her.
“You can’t do this to me!” She tried to scream, but all she could manage was a sharp, smothered cry. “Damn you, Mercury. You can’t do this to me!”
He was filling her with that hormone. Licking her, spilling it into her very flesh as he growled against the mound of her breast and began to inch lower. A kiss, a lick. Pausing to suck at her flesh, to rake it with those wicked canines of his, rasp it with his tongue. He was destroying her, one lick at a time, and edging lower by the second.
She knew where he was going. Where the heat of her arousal was burning so deep, torturing her, twisting through her.
His finger plunged inside her, his wrist twisted, stroking her inside, and it still wasn’t enough.
“You’ll never run from me again.” His voice was tortured, thick, primal. “You tore my soul out, Ria. Running from me. Leaving with that bastard!”
He nipped at her flesh and she arched. The tiny bite was too much pleasure.
“I can’t do this.” Her head thrashed on the bed. “Oh God, Mercury. You’ll destroy me. This isn’t for me. You know it isn’t for me. It’s for her.”
His head jerked up. “Do you burn, Ria?”
She whimpered at the question. Burning didn’t describe the sensations tearing through her.
“It’s killing me.” She wanted to scream, but she could barely gasp.
“Do you need my taste again, baby?” He came over her, his lips lowering to hers, and her mouth watered for him. Her need for his taste consumed her. “Answer me, sweet Ria. Do you need my taste?”
“Please. Please.” She lifted, touched his lips with her own and took his kiss.
Her lips parted for his tongue, closed on it, and she drew the storm into her again. She knew better. A distant, sane part of her mind knew better than to allow this to happen. She knew her own life was over if he ever left her. Her soul would shatter knowing he had regretted this night, this moment, when his need for his true mate began to burn inside him.
Death would be easy compared to the hell she would endure.
And yet, paradise was here. The taste of his kiss seeping into her, filling her, making her hunger. She could feel every inch of his flesh that touched her. The tiny hairs, so silken, so soft brushing against her flesh.
His hand between her thighs, his finger pressing inside her, the calloused tip finding a place deep inside her that had her clit screaming for relief.
It was swollen and hard, and it needed. Needed as much as her lips needed his kiss, her nipples needed his mouth. She needed.
And he gave.
He suckled at the tender tips, sending flash points of agonizing pleasure streaking through her until she was writhing, twisting beneath him. Broken cries filled the room as he finally began to lower himself again.
Kisses, licks against her flesh. Tasting her, moving down her body until he was stretched between her thighs, his fingers parting the material he had ripped, baring the engorged bud of her clit.
Ria stared down her body, watching. Her mouth dried out, her senses became dazed, as she watched his tongue part his lips, distend, stiffen. Then his head lowered, his eyes still on hers, and she watched as he nudged at the glistening knot of flesh.
Ria jerked, flinched; her upper body came off the bed, only to have his hand flatten against her stomach, pressing her back as his lips covered her clit.
She screamed out as electricity seared the little knot of nerves. She felt herself coming, clenching around the finger invading her as her clit spasmed, convulsed and throbbed against his torturous tongue.
And still, it wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough. She was dying with the need and it wasn’t enough.
“Please!” she cried out, trying to draw him to her as his tongue went lower. “Please, Mercury. Now. Take me. Please take me.”
Her thighs spread farther for him and she whimpered as his finger slid free of her grip. Only to have his hands slide beneath her rear, lift her. His head lowered farther and his tongue plunged inside her. Licking, stroking, he didn’t let up. He thrust inside her, filling her with that hormone, burning her flesh alive as she began to twist beneath him.
Oh God, if he didn’t fuck her, she was going to die. She was going to combust into flames and be gone forever.
“Please,” she whimpered. She begged. She screamed his name until she came again, arching and jerking against him as she felt her juices flowing from her vagina to his tongue.
The growl that came from him was harsh, spiked with ravenous hunger as he straightened, jerking to his knees and dragging her thighs over his.
Mercury could smell the heat on her now. Inside her. It infused him with the taste of her sweet syrup and stroked his lust to a boiling point.
His cock throbbed like an open wound now. And the cure for it was but a breath away from the engorged, flushed crest beaded with the hormone-infused pre-cum.
“You know what will happen,” he growled down at her as she stared back at him, her eyes wide, her face dazed with pleasure.
“When I take you, Ria. When I come inside you, you know what will happen.”
She shook her head, but the knowledge was in her eyes. She knew. She knew what he would give her, that when he released inside her, the extension he could feel throbbing beneath the head of his cock would become engorged. It would lock him inside her. It would spill the hormone that would begin preparing her body, changing her, making her receptive to the altered semen that could—and how he prayed it would—give her his child.
“Please,” she whispered again, her voice ragged, filled with her need as he pressed his cock against her.
She was so tight, and he was larger than before. Thicker. Anticipation built inside him, satisfaction glowing in him. This was his woman. His mate. He clenched his teeth and began to fill her.
He watched as his cock began to sink inside the velvet heat of her body. Her panties, black lace and erotic, framed the penetration. Lightly tanned thighs strained, bunched as she arched and her pussy gripped him, milked him in until he was snarling with the pleasure, feeling the sweat pour from his body as he fought to hold back.
Ria was dying from the pleasure/pain of the penetration. Everything about Mercury seemed larger now. His shoulders, his muscular body, the engorged length and width of his erection.
She arched and writhed beneath him, moaning, begging as he took her. And she felt more than the penetration of his body into hers. More than the impalement of his cock. She felt a feral hunger driving inside her now. Her blood was fire. The perspiration covering her body was lava. Each nerve ending was pressing too close to her flesh, and she needed more.
“My Ria.” He rose over her with a groan as he lodged his heavy flesh into her to the hilt. She could feel the press of his balls below, the throb of his cock inside her and his body covering her.
She felt ecstasy and agony and could do nothing but hold on to him as he began to move. Slowly at first. So slowly. Easing into her, thrusting deep and slow, working inside her as her flesh clenched and convulsed around him.
“Put your legs around me, Ria.” The deep, rough rumble in his voice sent a shiver down her spine.
She shook her head. She couldn’t bear it. He was so large inside her, filling her so completely now.
His teeth nipped her shoulder warningly. “Do it. Wrap around me, Ria. All the way.”
She whimpered, but lifted her knees and wrapped her legs around his thighs.
“God! Mercury.” Her hands clawed at his shoulders, as the pleasure seemed to radiate inside her, brighter, hotter.
“You’re so tight. Like a hot, slick fist. Better. So much better than anything I could imagine.”
Mercury was hanging on to his control by the most fragile thread. The mating hormone had sensitized his flesh to a degree that he could barely breathe for the pleasure consuming him now.
He could feel the hot press of delicate muscles surrounding his cock, every ripple, every little milking spasm that worked through the too tight channel of her pussy.
Agonizing pleasure. The head of his cock throbbed. He could feel the barb pulsing just under the flesh. He felt it. It was for her. All of it for her. Rising inside him like a tide of insanity and possessing with a hunger that went far beyond lust.
His sweat coated them now. Making them slick as he slid against her. Hard, hot little nipples poked against his chest. Tight and hot, they drew his mouth as he began to thrust harder against her, working his erection in and out as violent need began to break through that last measure of control.
“You won’t leave me again.” He nipped the upper curve of her breast. “You will never run from me again.”
Where would she run? How could she run? She could never live without knowing this pleasure again, without feeling it rising inside her with such ecstasy.
Ria bit her lip, twisting against him as the need began growing, burning brighter, hotter. She rose to meet each thrust, whimpering, dying for more.
And he was giving her more. Hard, powerful lunges buried his cock inside her, stroked her internally as the need for his taste began to overwhelm everything else.
Her lips turned to his shoulder. Panting breaths, ragged cries left her throat, and as his thrusts increased, as they pounded inside, she licked the flesh of his shoulder, moaned, cried out, and before she could help herself, she bit him.
As he had bitten her so many times. She latched onto the hard flesh of his shoulder, held it tight, licked it, sucked at the taste of him.
Mercury froze against her. His entire body tightened, shuddered, then with a snarling growl of hunger his teeth pierced her shoulder like a brand and his hips surged against hers.
Ria would have screamed, but the pleasure, the need for his taste, the driving, furious stroke of his body inside hers, was tightening her womb, throbbing in her clit.
Tears spilled from her eyes at the incredible power and beauty of what he was doing to her. The pleasure—it wasn’t just pleasure. It was ravenous. Shameless. It was pure sensation, blinding-hot and reaching inside her to places where she’d never known could know pleasure.
Her womb tightened furiously. Her clit exploded in ecstasy, and rapture erupted through