But the beast could wait. The chains of drugs no longer bound it. It no longer slept that nightmare sleep where there was no waking. Soon, the man would hunger, and he would need, and the beast knew that then it would be free.
Mercury paced the living room after Ria had retired to her bedroom. He could see the light beneath the door and knew she was up working. Though what a glorified clerk could be doing that took so much damned computer time, he wasn’t certain.
Clerk, his ass. She was nobody’s clerk. Exactly what she was he wasn’t certain, but she was more than a paper pusher.
She was too smart. Too quick. And too damned sexy.
He flexed his shoulders, fighting to relax the tension tearing through him. It was an uncomfortable sensation, prickles of awareness that tightened his muscles and left his flesh with an odd sensitivity.
He wanted her touch.
He could remember the feel of her hands in his hair as he kissed her, tugging at the strands as those hot little moans came from her throat. He wanted to feel her palms on his naked flesh, her lips at his throat, his neck. He wanted her with a hunger that was beginning to make him crazy.
He was pacing the damned living room like a caged animal, feeling the walls closing in on him, and freedom lurked just behind Ria’s bedroom door. It wasn’t outside where he could run, where he could be free in the darkness of the night. No, freedom beckoned in the other room, in a bed too big for one small woman, his body taking hers until she was screaming for mercy.
It was those screams of pleasure he needed to hear. Ached to hear.
He paused in the middle of the room, realizing with a sense of shock that small growls were vibrating from his chest. Predatory, primal, guttural sounds. Sounds Mercury wasn’t completely comfortable hearing. He growled when he chose, and he had not chosen to let the sound free.
He shook his head, fighting back a sense of imbalance and a nearly overwhelming urge to force that locked bedroom door open and take her. To bend her over the bed, bare her pretty ass and just take her.
He shook the image clear of his head as he found himself taking a determined, forceful stride toward that door. He had never, at any time, done anything so irrational. He wasn’t going to start now.
She was just a woman. There were dozens of women, Breed and non-Breed, that he could have with no more than a snap of his fingers. Women who would smile, who would gasp and cry out for him as he moved into their luscious bodies. He didn’t need Ria. He just wanted her.
Wanting was not the same as needing.
Or so he tried to convince himself as he stalked to the front door and flung it open before stepping into the shadowed recess of the porch and the darkness of night.
He inhaled forcefully, pushing back whatever primal demand was making him so irrational. He checked his tongue against his teeth again. Nope, no swollen glands. No hormonal fluid tormenting his tongue and his lusts. Not that he had expected it.
He restrained his disappointment. With each passing year more Breeds mated, and found a sense of peace and balance in this freedom they had found. A balance Mercury knew wasn’t meant to be his.
His mate had died long ago. He was alone.
He leaned against a heavy post and stared into the black velvet night and the forest surrounding Ria’s rented cabin and remembered the bleak years before the Breed rescues. Not that his captivity had been as hard as some of the others’. The scientists at the South American labs he had been created within had ruled with cooler heads. There were strict guidelines, but the Breeds weren’t tortured just to see how much they could endure.
They had been trained from birth. They had been cuddled at odd times as babes by their caretakers, but each day of their lives, even as infants, contained lessons in being Breeds. For Mercury, it had been a life of almost complete isolation from other Breeds, though. His training had been more exacting, his body and his mind pushed harder. And he strove to succeed, because success meant time with the small pride he shared those labs with. It meant a chance to see one small Lioness who smiled back at him shyly and made his heart race.
As they grew older, they were trained harshly, but not horrifically. And yet Mercury couldn’t remember a day of his life when he didn’t dream of freedom. Of running with the wind, of testing himself against his own goals. Of a day when he wouldn’t be required to kill on demand, but only in self-defense.
And he remembered Alaiya. Strong, confident, the young Lioness had been filled with life, and he had loved her. With all a young man’s passion and a warrior’s soul, he had loved her.
He had rarely spoken to her. Had never touched her. Yet he remembered the day the scientists had found the strange hormone in his semen and saliva, and the confusion it had garnered. From him as well as from the scientists. And he remembered when Alaiya had died.
The animalistic core of his psyche had never been far beneath the surface, but when he learned of her death, he lost what little control he had managed to learn. The drugs they kept in his system to try to restrain the feral rage of his beast were powerless against the flood of animalistic adrenaline that washed through him that day.
He hadn’t even touched her. He hadn’t kissed her. But the thought of her death nearly drove him mad.
Mercury shook his head at the thought. It seemed impossible that he was destined to live his life alone because a woman he had never touched, never held, had died.
In ways, though, perhaps he was better off. The worst thing a Breed could have was a weakness. A mate, a child, were the epitome of weakness. Their loss could destroy a man’s soul, but it could rupture a Breed’s sanity. And Mercury vowed long ago to always maintain his sanity.
He wanted Ria. Wanted her like he had never wanted another woman in his life, even Alaiya. But there was no chance of her getting close to his soul. Ever.
CHAPTER 5
Ria came to a bleary-eyed stop the next morning as she opened her bedroom door and met with a sight she couldn’t have expected, no matter the circumstances. Rather than sleeping in the spare bedroom, Mercury was propped against the wall beside her bedroom door, his drowsy gaze holding hers as he came to his feet.