"Excuse me?" She stood from her desk slowly.
"Was I raping you?" The camera flew from his hand to strike the wall across from her, and then she heard it. It wasn't just anger, it was betrayal. Something in his voice, in his expression, echoed with it.
"You weren't raping me." She shook her head slowly.
He paced closer to the desk, staring at her, eating her with his eyes. She could feel his gaze almost as she would a caress stroking over her face.
"Are you scared of me?" he growled. "Is that why you're saying that? Do I frighten you, Ria?" He suddenly sneered. "Is that why you're reluctant to take my touch, to feel pleasure from me? Is it too much like f**king a goddamned animal?"
"Let me hear that word out of your lips again and I'll give you an animal," she retorted, her hands propping on her hips as she glared back at him. "You might be pissed, Mercury Warrant, but that's no reason to take His name in vain. Settle down or leave."
Ria moved to sit back down, though her stomach was jumping with nerves. He was nearly enraged, furious over something. That rage, that hard, lonely look in his eyes did something to her that it shouldn't. It made her ache, and the worst thing she could do was feel enough for this man to ache for him.
"Answer me." His hands flattened on the table in a short, sharp burst of flesh meeting wood. "Is that why you're reluctant to take me to your bed? Do you fear me?"
She lifted her eyes, let her gaze lock with his. "The only thing I'm scared of where you're concerned," she stated clearly, "is allowing you to ever make coffee again. Other than that, no, you don't scare me. But at the moment, you are making me angry."
And he made her want to touch him. She had to restrain herself to keep from lifting her hand, from touching his hard jaw. Who could have dared to suggest he could force her into anything?
He stayed in position, leaning over the desk, his long hair framing features so savage she should have been terrified. Not dying to reach out to him.
Then her office door was pushed open, banging against the wall as she watched Mercury's jaw clench, watched his eyes flare brighter. He stayed still, silent, staring back at her as she looked around him to see Callan Lyons and Kane Tyler at her doorway.
"Can I help you gentlemen with something?" she asked politely.
Callan's gaze went to the camera that had bounced to the floor across the room.
"What happened to the camera?" he asked. His expression was hard, his gaze flat and dangerous, and he looked entirely too powerful for a man who had nearly died two months before.
Ria stood to her feet. "I don't appreciate being tattled on," she stated as she gathered the files from her desk and moved around it, aware of Mercury shifting, sliding around her protectively, keeping himself between her and the other two men. "I'm aware what happened earlier may not have been particularly politically correct in such a setting, but I was assured Sanctuary was quite informal." She turned and leaned against the table set up for the files she was using at any given time. "I asked Mercury to turn it off." She looked at the camera and grinned. "I believe he may have taken me a little too literally."
"I jerked the son of a bitch out of the f**king wall before she could say a word," Mercury growled as she rolled her eyes at him. "I don't hide behind a woman's skirts."
Well, he was the first man in her life who had made that claim. Most of the men she knew, with the exception of Dane, begged to borrow her skirts if the Leo was anywhere near.
"Is he always so arrogant?" she asked Callan then.
Callan lifted his hand to his shoulder and the enforcers behind him moved back, the door closing behind them as they left, leaving the four of them alone.
"Mercury is usually fairly calm," Kane stated, his pale blue eyes watching the scene curiously now.
Mercury was silent, his gaze steady on her, those blue tints to his eyes almost mesmerizing her.
"I didn't say he wasn't calm, I said he was arrogant," she stated. "I apologize for our earlier actions . . ."
Mercury growled. This could get on her nerves fast. She sliced him a silencing look and continued to stare. He was obviously struggling to maintain some sort of control, to keep from doing something. He stood ramrod stiff between her and the other two men, his expression carved from granite and forbidding in its fierceness.
"Or perhaps I don't." She crossed her arms over her br**sts and leaned against the desk. "Would someone like to explain to me what's going on?" she asked them then. "Ely drags off a perfectly reasonable man and he returns pissed off to the point that he rips the camera out of the wall and asks me if he was raping me? I'm a little confused here."
Kane cursed. Callan grimaced but no one spoke. And something wild and merciless flashed in Mercury's eyes. That look should have made her wary, it shouldn't have made her heart jump with excitement instead. And it shouldn't have made her remember what it felt like to have him covering her back, growling out his demand that she touch her own br**sts.
But she could see where things were going here, and the why of it was beginning to piss her off. She had expected someone to attempt to distract her for weeks now. She hadn't expected this. But perhaps others had seen what she was only beginning to suspect herself. Mercury could be a very habit-forming weakness of hers.
"Kane?" Mercury's voice was tense, deep and so dark she almost shivered.
"Yeah, Merc?" Kane asked warily.
"Could you ensure that Ms. Rodriquez is adequately protected when she returns to her cabin please? Shiloh Gage would perhaps be best to place within the house with her tonight."