She curled her fingers against the counter and bit back the smart-assed comment hovering on her lips. Yeah, she was a bitch. She knew she was a bitch, but it was an attitude that worked for her. Usually. She had a feeling the consequence of that attitude might be more than she could handle at the moment. And besides, she knew how to be a cautious bitch. It was the intelligent path to take when Dane was in one of his crappy moods as well; she hoped it worked with Mercury.
"This isn't the time to treat me as though I were one of your underlings," she informed him coolly, though she felt anything but cool. "Sanctuary has some serious problems at the moment, Mercury."
"And canceling their funding is going to help that?" He snorted as he faced her from the other side of the bar. "If there's a power play within the ranks, then we need to figure out who's doing it and what the hell is going on."
"Why should I bother? Why should you?" She glared back at him, pushed to a limit she hadn't known she had. "Do you think I haven't read your Sanctuary file?" She hadn't been given the lab files. "Are you aware, Mercury, that your pride leader has all but disavowed you?" Her accent slipped free. Dammit. "Ah, why the hell do I care? Obviously you don't."
She reached behind her to release the bun at the back of her head, her headache intensifying with each moment it weighed on her head.
The long strands of hair rippled through her fingers as she turned away and pushed her fingers through it in frustration.
"Do you know . . ." She went silent as she turned back to him. "Mercury?"
He was moving around that counter, slowly. His eyes were hammered gold rather than amber, those blue sparks intensifying the color once more.
Berserker. Once, long ago, his ancestors had terrified English conquerors with their savagery and strength.
It wasn't rage she saw in his eyes though, it was hunger. Arousal. The same arousal that had tormented her since that kiss days before. The one that had left her burning each night, enflamed, tossing and turning in her bed as she struggled against the need for his body and her need to protect her heart.
"I like this blouse." He stopped in front of her, the backs of his fingers caressing along the shoulder of the silk blouse she wore. "Why don't you take it off?"
"Take it off?" she whispered. "How insane would that be?"
Did his expression appear more savage than normal? His eyes more sensual?
"That way I won't have to rip it off you," he stated, his voice rough, watching as his fingers rubbed against the material before he lifted his gaze to hers. "I wouldn't want to destroy such pretty clothes."
She wanted him to rip the shirt from her. She wanted something she didn't understand, something she had never faced about herself before. She wanted her lover to be wild. But as much as she wanted him to rip her clothes from her, she wanted to rip his as well.
And that terrified her. She wasn't a wild lover. Hell, one of her lovers had even told her she was much too polite in bed for his tastes. But Mercury, he made her want wild. He made her want to be wild.
She backed away from him, watching his gaze flicker, his expression turn mocking.
"Afraid?" he asked her.
"Of you, or myself?" she asked him nervously, trying to skirt around him, only to come up short as his arm snaked out, wrapped around her waist and drew her to a stop.
She stared up at him, way up. Six-four was a hell of a stretch for her five-six. Her head barely topped his chest, and his height and breadth made her feel entirely too feminine.
"Why would you be frightened of yourself?" he asked her, using his other hand to stroke down her hair as though soothing her. His fingers threaded into the strands, caressed them, eased her head back until he was staring into her eyes.
Ria swallowed tightly. "We have enough problems here; mixing it with a sexual relationship between us isn't a good idea."
She could barely breathe. And focusing on all the reasons why a relationship was a really bad idea was getting harder by the second. By the stroke. The stroke of his hand over her long hair. She had never considered her hair particularly sexy until this moment, until she felt him caressing it, enjoying it.
"A sexual relationship between us is a given," he told her, that growly thing he did with his voice sending shivers down her spine. "I think you know that, sweetheart."
He called her sweetheart, and he said it in a way it had never been said to her before, as his hand tightened at her hip and pulled her closer to him.
She felt his erection beneath his jeans, thick and hard, pressing into her lower stomach.
"Mercury."
His head lowered. His hand slid beneath her hair, cupped the side of her neck and held her in the most erotic grip she had ever known, as his lips settled against hers.
"Kiss me, Ria," he whispered. "Don't leave me alone in the cold. Warm me, as only you can warm me."
And she was supposed to deny him? No man had ever asked her to warm him. Not to leave him out in the cold where she always felt she existed herself. Always on the outside looking in. Always left out in the cold.