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.