"And it would help you to read that magazine if you turned it right side up," she said carefully. "If you're just going to pretend to read it, then pretend with at least a show of decorum."
He grinned behind the magazine. But he didn't turn it right side up. And here he'd thought she hadn't noticed.
CHAPTER 23
Ria hadn't imagined the agony of need Elizabeth Vanderale had once described to her as she explained mating heat. She couldn't have understood, she told herself later, feeling her womb spasming violently as a fire burned just under her flesh.
Sitting at her desk, her thighs clenched, her clit throbbing in heavy demand, Ria knew she was on the verge of screaming for relief.
She glanced through the screen of her lashes to where Mercury sat across from her. The comfortable easy chair that had been in the corner of the room for him held his large body easily. He was sprawled out in it, his long legs stretched out before him, the bulge between his legs thick and pressing against the black leather pants. His T-shirt conformed to the rippling muscles of his abs, and as she watched, those muscles bunched, his thighs shifted and she could have sworn his c**k throbbed beneath the leather.
Moving up, her eyes finally met his. His eyes were brilliant with hunger. The sharp, crisp blue almost flamed within his dark face as he watched her. Yet he hadn't tried to touch her. Each time she walked by him to get more files, she prayed to find him against her, to have him reach out for her. She wanted him with a violence that was beginning to eat away at her nerves, but other than the bulge straining at his pants, he showed no signs of the same hunger eating him alive.
The need was like a steadily growing flame working over her nerve endings, building in her sex. The need, not just to f**k, but to rub against him, to have his arms around her, to stroke him and pet him, had her entire body heating like an inferno.
She forced herself to lower her gaze back to the transmission Jonas had loaded onto the computer. It was definitely coded, though the code was much shorter, more hurried. Ria rubbed at her forehead as she pulled up other transmissions from the night before and worked those alongside it.
There had been a pattern, until this one. The culprit leaking information had found a system that had managed to keep itself from detection by snagging outgoing transmissions already in the works, attaching the code and then freeing them to their destinations.
Each transmission had gone to a subsidiary of either Engalls Pharmaceuticals or Brandenmore Research. The majority of them went to a subsidiary company on the research arm, and one fairly popular within Sanctuary for ordering innocuous supplies such as aspirin. Breeds were prone to mild headaches as the seasons changed, and they used aspirin in vast quantities.
There was also an order for another headache medicine, though. One a bit stronger. Ria frowned, tracking the orders and the transmissions attached to them as she moved them through the ghost drive.
In the past year the orders for the drug had grown, and were all being delivered to the same Breed. Dr. Ely Morrey.
As she shifted in more files, frowning over the findings, a heavy knock landed on the door.
"It's Jonas," Mercury told her quietly as he unlocked the door and allowed the other Breed to enter the room.
Mercury moved to the side of her desk as she glanced at him suspiciously. Did he think Jonas was going to turn rabid and attack or something?
Nearly shaking her head, she lifted her gaze to Jonas as the door closed and locked behind them. At the faint click, Ria's eyes shot to the lock.
"Ely's called the Ruling Cabinet together," Jonas announced. "An emergency session. They're convening day after tomorrow."
"She's going to demand Mercury's confinement?" Ria knew that was the reason behind the emergency session.
Jonas nodded, his hard, arrogant expression tightening further.
"She's already begun calling the cabinet members, who in turn are calling Callan. She's not going to get the support she needs, but she could manage to force the tests for feral displacement and mating heat."
"What about the blood you took yesterday?" Mercury asked, drawing Ria's surprised gaze.
"What blood?" she asked.
Jonas's gaze met hers. "After you left yesterday, Mercury submitted a sample of his blood for feral displacement and mating heat. Which means we're going to need a sample of yours."
"For Dr. Morrey to screw with?" She stared back at him in disbelief. "I really don't think so, Jonas."
Jonas glanced at Mercury again, his expression questioning. At Mercury's slightest nod, Jonas turned back to her.
"We do have another scientist."
Ria smiled knowingly as she leaned back in her chair and stared at him mockingly. "You have Jeffery Amburg, don't you, Jonas?"
Jonas crossed his arms over his chest and turned his gaze to Mercury.
"Do you trust him to do the tests?" he asked.