"You were crying for him," he growled down at her. "Tears were falling from your eyes and you knelt over him, naked, your hair stroking him."
Jealousy throbbed in his voice. Complete primal male Breed jealousy. They were completely territorial over their women. Ria knew that, had seen it with Leo and Elizabeth several times over the years.
Ria felt herself tremble at the memory.
"I thought he was dead." A frown snapped between her brows as she moved back from him. "He may not be my lover but he is my friend."
"A friend that slipped into your bedroom while you lay naked in my arms. A friend that knew I lay there with you," he pointed out. "The same friend who informed me that when this was over he would be waiting for you when you returned home."
Surprise had her turning back to him, watching him closely. He was completely comfortable being aroused and nude.
"Dane is as adept at his little games as Jonas is." She shrugged as she moved to straighten the bed. "But I'll not defend myself over something that hasn't happened or whether or not it will happen if you're no longer a part of my life."
"I will always be a part of your life."
The sound of his voice, the large body suddenly behind her, the erection pressing between her thighs, rubbing against the slick, heated cleft there had the breath catching in his throat.
Just as he had over the desk in the office, he bent her over the bed now, his palms flat against the mattress, his larger, harder body holding her in place as her head snapped up in surprise.
"Will you, Mercury?" she asked him, uncertainty filling her voice. "Breeds mate. They mate their other half."
He tensed against her, a violent tension; it poured out of him and whipped in the air, tightening around her chest with spiked bonds that she thought would break her heart.
"I could not want another woman the way I want you." He nipped her neck. "Mating heat be damned. There are enough anomalies in it that it can get f**ked as far as I'm concerned."
Tears filled her eyes as he turned her, stretched her out beneath him and held her trapped to the bed despite her struggles.
"Let me go, Mercury." She shook her head, pressing her hands against his chest as she fought to be free.
She wasn't going to let him see her tears. She wasn't going to cry about something she had no hope of fighting, no way of changing. She had learned better than that years ago.
"I can't let you go."
His voice, the guttural roughness of it, the spike of need and emotion that filled her, had her fighting hope. And she had never been good at fighting hope.
"Mercury." Her breathing hitched, the emotion nearly strangling her now. "You'll mate, someone, sometime."
"That time is past," he ground out.
"And she was your mate," she flashed back at him, the anger at that tearing through her. "You loved her so desperately you nearly went insane when you lost her. I'll always be second."
"You'll always be first," he snarled in her face, silencing her, the blue highlights in his eyes increasing, glowing, as his voice thickened with his hunger. "Always, Ria. Always first."
He pushed his hips between her thighs, spread her thighs, and before she could do more than gasp, he tore her gown down the center with strong, powerful hands.
"Tell me you don't want me," he demanded, the thick head of his c**k pressing against dampened folds between her thighs. "Tell me now, Ria, that you could want another man as desperately as you need me right now."
She couldn't possibly desire anything in life as much as she desired Mercury. She couldn't ache, need or dream of anything as much as she did a life in his arms.
As she stared into his eyes earlier, while the feral rage consumed him and he fought to shield her nakedness from the others, she had known that nothing mattered but Mercury.
"I wasn't crying for Dane," she admitted. "I was crying because I was afraid."
He paused. "Of me?"
The first tear slipped free. "That they would try to steal you again. That they would see your protectiveness as the feral displacement. That I would lose you, Mercury. And I couldn't bear losing you."
Silence stretched between them, his hard body covering hers, his c**k throbbing at the entrance to her body.