Mercury's War

by Lora Leigh

  His fingers retreated, and his tongue plunged deep. Her legs wrapped around his shoulders, her hips lifting as he fucked her with hard, penetrating strokes of his tongue and growled into her flesh.

  His fingers curled beneath her rear, lifting her closer, and she felt the blunted tips of those clawlike nails digging into her flesh and jerked with a pleasure so extreme it felt as though her heart was going to burst from her chest.

  She was coming apart from the pleasure, from the wild, desperate need building inside her. She had to come. He had to let her come.

  As he pushed his tongue inside her with fierce strokes, his thumb settled on her clit, rotated, stroked, and sent her flying into release. She was exploding into fragments and didn’t care. She held on to him with both hands, held him closer and wailed out her pleasure, not even bothering to be shocked with the fact that she had never wailed in pleasure in her entire life.

  “So sweet.” His tongue retreated, his head lifting to kiss the violently sensitive flesh of her clit gently. That light touch had her gasping with the bolt of sensation that raced through her.

  “Easy, sweetheart,” he murmured, still kissing, moving lower, giving her no time to come down from her orgasm before he began building the need for another.

  And he did it gently, tenderly. The softest strokes of his tongue, the gentlest kisses around her clit.

  “I want to touch you,” she moaned, her hands gripping his shoulders as those blunted nails, curved and powerful, raked down her thighs with primitive intensity.

  “Not yet.” He nipped at her thigh, causing her to whimper with the edge of pleasure/pain. “Let me taste you. Let me have you like this, Ria. Let me fill my senses with you. I want your taste, your scent with me. In my pores. The same as I’ll give you mine.”

  A part of him.

  She moaned his name as he spread her thighs farther and kissed the swollen, flushed lips of her pussy. Then he licked her again. Inside and out.

  He made her weak. He made her desperate. Her nails dug into his shoulders, scratched his flesh as the rising tide of lust began to build and churn inside her again.

  She needed him. And she needed more than his hungry kisses and diabolical tongue.

  Fighting for breath, she moved her hands to her breasts, cupped them, raked her nipples with her own fingers and felt him pause. She gripped her nipples between her thumbs and forefingers, opened her eyes and stared back at him.

  Dazed, nearly out of her mind with the need burning across every nerve ending, she watched him watch her. Watched his eyes dilate, his lips pull back from his teeth as a grumbling snarl rumbled in his throat.

  He kissed his way up her body then. His hands moving to his belt, his jeans. She had only a second to glimpse the furiously flushed head of his cock before his lips covered an aching, hard nipple and drew it into his mouth.

  A second later, his cock head pressed against her, hot, thick, silk over iron, and pressing farther.

  He paused, his breathing rough and hot as sweat beaded his shoulders and glistened over the tiny, fine invisible hairs that covered his body.

  “You promised me,” she reminded him, her voice rough. “You promised me, Mercury. The first time. Hard and fast. You would fill me with all of you in one stroke.”

  He rolled his forehead against her shoulder, then nipped the tender flesh as he growled.

  “I need it,” she whimpered, arching closer to him, gasping at the feel of his erection stretching her farther. “Please. You promised.”

  His hands clenched her hips and she arched closer. He growled again, his lips parting, his teeth gripping her shoulder as his hips bunched and he thrust. Hard. Spearing into her as his name became a scream of such excruciating pleasure that for a second, the smallest second, her mind went black.

  And still, she didn’t have all of him. He retreated, worked inside her slowly this time. He pressed into her then thrust again, hard and deep. He buried his cock full-length inside her and burned her with the desperate fullness. The heated impalement of iron-hard flesh threatened to steal her mind as she felt her own delicate muscles spasming, milking him as he throbbed inside her.

  And he was biting her. His teeth were locked on her shoulder, pinching into her flesh as she went wild beneath him. One arm curled around his head, trying to keep his bite. The other dug into his back as he began to move, her nails piercing his flesh as his teeth pierced hers and his cock penetrated her with heavy lunges.

  Each stroke carried her higher, threw her further into the maelstrom of sensation. She swore she forgot how to breathe. Breathing didn’t matter. When they were done, he would breathe for her. That or she would die from lack of oxygen because she needed all her strength for this. Meeting each thrust, holding tight to him, feeling his hips churning, his cock shafting her, his muscles tightening against her.

  And feeling herself fly in his arms. That was what coming with Mercury did. She flew in his arms and screamed, or tried to scream from the rapture tearing through her.

  It was wild and pulsating. It was filled with sensation burning, raking across her nerve endings and shattering into fragments. It was the feel of his final thrust, the heavy spurt of his heated semen, his snarl at her shoulder then his lips covering hers as his hips jerked between her thighs.

  It was the most exquisite pleasure she could have ever imagined finding in his arms, and it almost, almost overshadowed the pain. Because there was no barb. There was no extension swelling from his cock to hold him in place as he filled her with his seed. There was no hormone spilling into her to ensure he never walked out of her life. There was just this, agony and ecstasy, and the knowledge that she was bound to him. Whether she wanted to be or not.

  CHAPTER 11

  The animal prowled the man’s mind, careful to stay in the shadows, to hold back, though rage was a fire in its gut and the need for action was like a hunger for blood.

  But it couldn’t move yet.

  It had to ease into place. It was still so weak. The drugs had taken so long to wear away, and it had taken still longer to awaken. And it might have never awoken if not for her. If not for the soft scent of what the animal knew belonged irrevocably to it.

  The man had staked his claim. The animal could retreat just enough to strengthen a little more. If it moved too quickly, the man could fight it. If they fought, it would be a battle they would both lose, because once the animal stepped free of its bonds, it knew it would never return. There would be no going back, not even to save the man’s life.

  Freedom awaited. Its mate awaited him, and it could smell her scent, her pain, her need to be marked, to be claimed by one such as the animal. She was wild and she was bound to it. But she ached; her spirit reached out to the animal, and it longed to shelter that spirit in the shadow of its strength.

  So sweet. It inhaled her scent as the man’s defenses relaxed, as the man rested against her, lost in the pleasure of his release. The animal inhaled her essence and it was pleased. It stepped closer, just a little bit closer to the man’s flesh, felt her warmth, felt her like a gentle rain and it rumbled its pleasure.

  Ria’s lashes lifted, a frown on her face as she felt something. She didn’t hear it. She felt it. Mercury held her tight to his chest as he rested against her, catching his breath, and she could have sworn . . . She waited, holding her breath. A grumbly little purr?

  She heard it again and let a smile touch her lips.

  “You’re purring,” she murmured.

  He stilled against her. Tensed and it stopped.

  “I don’t purr.” He moved, lifting himself off her, his expression set now, his eyes their normal amber brown as he adjusted his clothes then helped her from the couch.

  Ria frowned, standing before him as she unzipped the skirt that was bunched at her hips, stepped out of it and collected the shreds of the rest of her clothing.

  “I know a purr when I feel one,” she told him, irritated by his denial.

  “You misfelt then.” He shrugg
ed, his gaze hooded as she stared back at him.

  She wasn’t going to let herself get angry, she promised. This was the best sex she had ever had in her life, why argue over a damned purr?

  “What, are you ashamed of it?” she asked him, defying her own promise.

  He picked up his shirt from the floor and pulled it back on. He was fully dressed now and she was as naked as the day she was born. That small detail had the power to irritate her. He should be as naked as she was at the moment.

  “Breeds don’t just purr,” he informed her. “And you need to shower. I’m betting we can expect company within the hour. I don’t think I can handle anyone seeing you naked like this.”

  “What the hell do you mean Breeds don’t just purr?” Her nakedness didn’t bother her, and it wouldn’t until company actually did arrive. “Come on, Mercury, it wasn’t that big a deal. Just a tiny little purr . . .”

  “Breeds only purr during mating,” he told her stiffly, his expression somber, almost regretful. “There hasn’t been a mating.”

  That told her. She tried to still that sharp little pain that drove a spike through her chest, but damn, it wasn’t easy. And it made her question her own mind. Because she could have sworn she heard that faint little rumble. And now she wondered if she had just needed to hear it.

  “Well.” She stiffened her shoulders and her upper lip. Because if she wasn’t careful it was going to start trembling. “That puts me in my place, doesn’t it?”

  “Dammit it, Ria.” He reached for her, scowling.

  “I have to shower, as you said. You expect company soon, and parading around naked isn’t my favorite pastime anyway.”

  She turned away from him and moved quickly for her bedroom.

  “Straighten the couch up if you don’t mind.” She paused at the doorway and looked back.

  He hadn’t moved. He still stood there, watching her, his expression arrogantly impassive. The couch cushions were in disarray, and God only knew what his company would catch scent of when they walked into the room. Probably her complete humiliation.

  “And there’s room freshener in the kitchen cabinet,” she told him. “Make use of it please. I’d prefer your company not know exactly what happened in here.”

  His lips parted to speak, and she couldn’t bear to hear anything he had to say. She didn’t care what it was. She slipped into her bedroom, closed the door behind her then leaned against it with a hitching, silent sob.

  Only mated Breeds purred. They only purred for their mates, not for women who were too stupid to steel their hearts against the need to hear it. And she was one of those stupid women.

  Mercury watched the bedroom door close, his fists curling, the need to punch something riding so hard inside him it was nearly impossible to deny.

  She didn’t know what he would have given to purr for her. To know that all that wild courage and passion was his alone.

  Before he could help it, he ran his tongue over his teeth again and snarled in fury. Nothing. Not an itch, not the slightest swelling of the glands, not even a vague sensitivity to give him hope.

  He pushed his fingers through his hair and did as she’d asked. He straightened the couch, he sprayed her detestable air freshener. But unknown to her, that wasn’t going to do anything to cover the scent of their sex. And he refused to wash her scent from his body.

  He needed her scent on him, soft, delicate, merging with his to create something that, when he breathed it in, seemed to comfort the rage building inside him.

  Belonging. It was something it seemed would be forever denied him. Callan had revoked his rank within the enforcer hierarchy when his weapon and uniform had been confiscated. He had backed the safe path rather than an individual Breed, and logically, Mercury couldn’t even blame him for it. The Breed community as a whole was of more importance than a single Breed. Even one whose need to belong was like a hunger in his soul.

  He sat down on the couch, close to Ria’s scent, and breathed her in, knowing she was in that shower, washing his scent from her body. It infuriated him, knowing that it took no more than soap and water to wash the smell of him from her flesh.

  Mating changed the scent of each mate. Their scents combined, created something unique that couldn’t be washed away. It wasn’t like the scents that mingled on his flesh now, both of the them together, because he could still distinguish between her scent and his.

  He paused, staring down at his hands in confusion. His sense of smell was sharper than it had been. That knowledge sent a pulse of wariness tearing through him as he inhaled, and frowned again. Perhaps it was. He shook his head. What he thought he had smelled moments ago was gone. There was no combined scent, just the smell of sex, of the pleasure they had shared.

  He had lost the ability to distinguish smells as other Breeds could in the labs. When the drugs killed the feral rage inside him, they had killed the animal that lurked beneath his senses as well.

  Once, he had known himself as two halves. The man and the animal. They existed together, complete, until the animal had fought for supremacy. A form of madness that normally meant instant death when it showed itself in an adult Breed.

  The scientists in the labs he had been created within had developed a drug instead. One that killed the animal instinct to dominate the human. But he had also lost those extraordinary powers to see in the darkness, to smell the slightest scent, to touch, to taste. He had become more merciless, more cunning, but he had lost the animal instincts inside him to the point that he was only slightly better than a non-Breed.

  The Breed with the face of a lion, and the instincts of a normal man. It was laughable.

  He pushed himself from the couch and paced to the kitchen. Opening her cabinets, her refrigerator, he found nothing more than coffee and beer and a few old Danishes. Good God, how did that woman survive eating as she did?

  He shook his head and moved to the phone. Five minutes later he had an order in to the local grocery store, whose owner he often went hunting with.

  He couldn’t fix coffee worth shit, but he was a mean cook. He was tired of starving to death in this dark little cabin where she existed after work. And he grew tired of pizza fast.

  Ria wasn’t his mate, but his mate was dead. She was taken from him before he had even had a chance to realize what being mated meant. It didn’t mean he was dead. It sure as hell didn’t mean there were no emotions lurking beneath his odd appearance.

  He had emotions, and those emotions were tightening, building within him and centering on one contrary little woman. A woman with an intelligence that often amazed him as she stood back and watched people. She watched and she listened. And what she saw, he sensed, was often much more than others did.

  Such as her determination that there was a power play being orchestrated in Sanctuary. The more Mercury thought about it, the more it concerned him, and the more he realized how incredibly difficult it would be for him to investigate it.

  He wasn’t an enforcer any longer. He couldn’t just walk into the secured areas of Sanctuary and begin investigating the oddities he was beginning to put together for himself.

  Something wasn’t as it should be. He could feel it, he could sense it, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

  He moved to the front door and stepped outside, ignoring the Jaguar female that hissed at him as he stepped out the door.

  “It’s damned cold out here,” Shiloh grumbled. “And listening to you have fun in there is not fun out here. Do you realize I had to spend the better part of the damned hour in the woods, to escape the sound of her caterwauling?”

  He turned and arched his brow. Most Jaguars possessed darker skin tones and black, silky hair. This Jaguar Breed was an anomaly. The rich auburn highlights in her black hair and her creamy complexion gave her a unique look that never failed to draw stares.

  She was a bit shorter than most Breed females, barely five-five, and for some odd reason the scientists that created her had allowed her to have a tem
per.

  “Shi, you’re going to piss me off,” he warned her, hiding his smile, knowing she wouldn’t, unless she really wanted to.

  “Do you hear my knees shaking?” she growled as she pulled her jacket tighter around her.

  He grunted at that. “The grocery from town will be delivering supplies soon. I need to talk to Rule and Lawe. Make certain when the owner arrives that he doesn’t enter the house. Take the bill and I’ll collect it when I come back.”

  “You’re going to cook!” She accused him with a hint of disbelief. “While I’m stuck outside? Mercury, that’s not fair.”

  “Take it up with Jonas.” He shrugged as he left the small porch and headed toward the tree line. “Maybe he’ll send you back to Sanctuary.”

  Mercury doubted it. Once he had a chance to talk to Jonas and lay out his suspicions, he knew the director would begin shifting his own people, keeping those in place that he trusted and shifting back those he didn’t.

  Most would have suspected Jonas of heading a revolt against Callan and the Ruling Cabinet, but Mercury couldn’t see it happening. Jonas was a sneaky, manipulative son of a bitch, but Sanctuary and the Breed community were his primary concerns. And Mercury had spent enough time as the man’s personal bodyguard to know Jonas didn’t have revolt in mind. Driving everyone insane with his games, yeah, Mercury could see that one coming where Jonas was concerned. But a strike against the security of the community? That wasn’t going to come from Jonas.

  Jonas had no desire to rule. He liked playing puppet master, and he loved poking his nose in where it wasn’t involved, but he didn’t have the temperament to play the games it took to weave such a play for power.

  Jonas would challenge outright. He would never allow a breakdown in authority. And that was what was happening. Someone had waited, watched, and while Callan was occupied with staying alive and then healing from his wounds, they were moving in to disable the power structure the Ruling Cabinet had in place.

  He could sense it. He could feel it, but with his rank stripped now, he had no idea how to identify who or what.

  As he entered the thick forest growth, Lawe and Rule fell in place beside him. They turned to face the cabin, all three silent for long moments.

  “She’s not my mate.” He answered the question he had seen in their eyes.

  Lawe grunted at that.

  “Whatever,” Rule snorted. “I don’t know about this mating bullshit, Mercury. Seems to me there aren’t any rules to it. You act mated.”

  And there had been a few odd moments that he had felt a bond, an unbreakable something that he couldn’t put his finger on.

  “Jonas contacted me ten minutes ago,” Lawe murmured. “He’s pulling Shiloh back to Sanctuary before he arrives here. It seems there’s a problem at home base.”

  “What kind of problem?” Mercury swung his gaze to his friend, watching as Lawe leaned against a tree, his expression implacable, his eyes burning with a hard, savage light.

  “He’s going to explain things when he gets here, but notice had gone out that Callan has reinstated your rank. He’ll be bringing your uniform and weapon when he arrives.”

  Mercury shook his head. He didn’t want the rank, he realized. Jonas would have found a way to force Callan to reinstate it. It meant nothing to him that way.

  “There’s something going on,” he said quietly. “There are too many anomalies.”

  “Meaning?” Rule gripped his weapon, his gaze sharper now.

  Mercury shook his head. “I can see the threads of it, sense them, but I can’t put my finger on where they’re going. Ely has targeted me, though, and she’s never done that with another Breed. She needs me out of the way. Or someone does.” It just didn’t work for him that Ely would be in on any kind of deception, but he knew it was possible. It was even probable.

  “Ely?” Lawe straightened and started back at him in disbelief before he shook his head and suspicion began to fill his eyes as well.

  “We need to be careful.” Mercury stared back at the cabin, and thought of the woman inside. “Ria’s not here just to decide whether or not to stop Vanderale funding. The files she’s going through have nothing to do with funding, and everything to do with outgoing transmissions. Ely’s managed to separate me from Sanctuary, but not as far as she could have without Jonas standing in her way. When Jonas arrives, I want you at the meeting.”

  “And Ria?” Lawe asked. “Will she be in on it?”

  He turned back to Lawe. “She’ll be there, or there will be no meeting.”

  She wasn’t his mate. But he didn’t have to mate her to know she belonged to him.

  Ely stared at the test results as she sipped at a bottle of water and felt the anger burning in her mind. She was sitting here, putting together the proof for what she was trying to convince the Ruling Cabinet of, and a part of her already knew they weren’t going to listen to her.

  Mercury was a strong enforcer, and not just in physical strength. His animal qualities were more a part of him than anyone suspected. The Council drugs may have recessed the more violent qualities of his animal, and the senses he had once possessed, but he was still intelligent, and cunning. That animalistic intelligence was by far his most dangerous trait, because it was stronger than other Breeds’ she had run across since the rescues.

  If it hadn’t been for the feral fever, he would have been trained to lead and to command. He could have possibly been a stronger alpha than even Callan. As hard it was to believe that there could be a stronger alpha.

  She pushed her fingers through her hair and fought the rage burning behind her eyelids, fought the screaming warning her own animal was sending through her head. She had never felt like this, and she knew the pressure was beginning to get to her.

  Reaching around, she rubbed at the back of her neck, fighting the headache that seemed to spread there.

  Shaking her head, she opened a bottle of over-the-counter pain medication and washed two down with the water before turning back to her computer.

  She put a tight hold on the anger, forced it back and forced her mind to work on the analysis of the fluids she had taken from Mercury.

  There was something in the semen that she knew was off, something odd. The saliva as well. His blood was corroded with the feral adrenaline, and that terrified her. The images of the videos taken in the labs where he had killed so horrifically continued to run through her mind.

  His hands, the nails thick and curved like claws, had punched right through a man’s chest. The bloody mess of the man’s heart had still been in Mercury’s clenched fist when he drew back. That heart had been ground into the trainer’s face before Mercury ripped his head from his shoulders.

  That shouldn’t have been possible. To just rip flesh and muscle, cartilage and spine away in such a brief span of time and toss the head away.

  She shuddered, imagining Callan or, God forbid, Jonas taken apart in such a way.

  Jonas was her nemesis, but there had always been a sense of fondness between the two of them, until now. He had respected her opinion even if he didn’t always want to believe what she had to say. He pushed her to find other answers, and because of that she had run these tests until her head was about to explode.

  “You bastard!” The snarl surprised her as she jumped from her stool and began to pace the room. “Damn you, Jonas, I can’t find any other answer.”