"Do I have a reason to be frightened of you now?" She turned one of the papers she was likely not reading before checking it against something she had pulled up on the computer.
He looked at his hands again, wondering if they could actually harm something so fragile, so sweet as the woman sitting across from him.
"And if I told you I didn't know?" He looked up from the magazine, meeting her gaze as her head lifted in surprise.
"Then I would say you're allowing your good doctor to mess with your head a bit much, wouldn't you?" That little hint of an accent intrigued him more than it should have and made him harder than he had ever been in his life.
Jeans confined his erection. The mission uniform had allowed it room for comfort, even if it didn't hide it. Of course, he'd never had a problem controlling the surge of lust that engorged his c**k and tightened his balls. Until Ria. From the moment he had first drawn her scent into him, he had known she would be a problem to his hard-won sense of control.
He shifted in his chair, hoping to relieve the pressure.
"Why did they take your uniform?" She lowered her head once again, asking the question as though it wasn't a concern between of the two of them.
"I'm a risk to the community now." He shrugged. "If I rip someone's heart from their chest, then they don't want me doing it while wearing an insignia of the Breed community." His lips twisted mockingly.
"And this is something you do on a daily basis? Rip out hearts?" Her lips almost twitched, and he could have sworn he sensed amusement in the movement.
"I usually wait for permission to do that," he told her laconically. "We were taught a few manners in those labs. My trainer always felt it polite to make certain I was ripping out the right heart."
"Very interesting." She nodded. "But you're speaking to me, and distracting me."
He was going to distract her. He looked at the camera, wondering how long it was going to take the techs in the control room to convince someone to remove that sweater.
He glanced at the watch on his wrist. He had a feeling it wouldn't be much longer. There wasn't enough time to give in to the arousal building inside him, and he didn't know how much longer he could wait to taste her.
She was all buttoned up; the sleeveless top she wore wasn't as bulky as the clothes she normally worked in, and the soft creamy color was incredibly flattering to the br**sts beneath it.
She was wearing another of those damned skirts too. Black this time with a little flare at the knees. A tulip skirt Cassie had once called it when she was trying to convince her mother to buy one. Though that one had been much shorter. For some reason Cassie Sinclair thought Mercury made the perfect escort for their shopping trips.
He had to admit, the longer length on Ria was sexy as hell. The more skin she hid, the more he found himself wanting to see.
The last thing he needed right now was to have an enforcer, or Ely, come into the room while he had her bent over a table again.
He pulled at the shoulder of the T-shirt he wore. Damn, he missed his uniform. And maybe he even missed the sense of acceptance that uniform had given him. A place to belong, no matter how slight.
He didn't frown, he didn't allow his expression to shift, but the betrayal he could feel inside him f**king ached to the center of his bones. He'd never hurt anyone that didn't deserve it. He always controlled his strength, he always controlled his actions, because he knew his appearance was less than comfortable to everyone around him.
He frightened his fellow Breeds, with the exception of a very few. He frightened the humans that came in contact with him, and he was very much aware his missions were most always those that involved a limited presence among the non-Breeds.
As the tabloids reported each time their journalists caught sight of him, he was the vision that followed children and adults alike into their nightmares.
"The bogeyman" one newspaper had titled him.
He stared at the magazine and felt a somber realization fill him. He had told himself he fit in here, at Sanctuary, but he'd been wrong. He'd only fit in as long as he followed the silent parameters he'd sensed had been placed around him.
He was as trapped here as he had been in the labs, and he hadn't even realized it.
On the heels of that realization, the doorknob to the office clicked, and when the lock refused to allow entrance, a hard knock sounded on the panel.
Ria lifted her head and stared at him.
"I would be very disappointed were I to see blood," she informed him. "Even the slightest amount has the power to make me ill."
A grin tugged at his lips as he laid the magazine aside, stood to his feet and unlocked the door, before stepping back to cover Ria.
Everything inside him rose to full alert; nothing mattered but shielding her.
The door pushed open forcefully, bouncing against the wall to the side before settling in place, fully opened.