He shook his head to that. "What I see is the shell of the woman who opens up and screams beneath me every night. I want all of you, Ria. Everything."
"What you see is what you get!" she repeated as she straightened from where she leaned against the table. She jerked the files that she needed from the table and stalked back to the desk.
He was waiting on her.
As she moved past him, Mercury reached out, catching her around her hips and dragging her to his lap. He caught the files before she could drop them and placed them safely on the table beside him as he stilled her struggles by the simple means of kissing her.
He kissed her wild and hard, the sudden need to fill her with all the lust riding him causing a growl to tear from his throat.
Damn her. She made him crazy to kiss her. It was like sinking into pure fire, being enveloped by it and loving every second of it.
He wanted her naked; he wanted to be naked with her. He wanted to feel her rubbing against him, stroking his flesh and pleading with those desperate little moans for him to make her come.
"Mercury." She sighed his name as his lips parted from hers and he opened his eyes, staring into her face, seeing the beauty she tried to hide from the world.
Delicate cheekbones, such beautiful hair. Long and thick and sensual. He could bury his hands in it and never have to worry about not having enough of the thick, silken strands to caress.
That stubborn chin. Perfectly arched brows. And beneath those clothes, created to drive men mad with their own fantasies of what she might be attempting to hide, was a gorgeous body.
"Be wild with me, Ria," he crooned softly as he let his lips trail over that stubborn little chin. "Stop hiding on me. Don't hide from me."
He wanted the woman he had sensed in her from the moment he met her. The woman straining beneath her flesh to emerge.
"Who could hide from you?" she whispered nervously. "You don't even give a girl a chance to think before you start pulling her out of her safety zone."
"You don't need a safety zone, Ria," he promised her, lifting his head to stare down at her, feeling the hard, intense drive rising inside him, to take her as he felt her bu**ocks clench against the rise of his erection beneath his mission uniform. "You never needed one. All you need is all that wild passion inside you." He grinned at the thought of it. "And you'll make me crazy with it, even while I'll love watching the woman you are."
Ria forced herself to struggle from his grip, to come to her feet and push her hair back over her shoulders as she stared at Mercury in confusion.
He wanted something from her that no one ever had. Hell, he was seeing things in her she thought she had kept hidden, even from herself.
She thought of the clothing she had at home, outfits she only wore for herself, that she rarely allowed those who knew her to see. The shorter skirts, the ultrafeminine clothes. The shoes that made her legs look longer, made her feel sexier.
She shook her head at the thought of it and moved away from him, ignoring the wicked, knowing glint in his eyes.
"You're scared." His voice was a deep rumble of certainty. "What are you so frightened of, Ria?"
The things she had always been frightened of. Watching someone else leave her without the safety nets she had built for herself.
"You're asking for too much too soon."
"I'm only asking for the woman I know you're hiding from me. I told you, I won't accept that. I want it all."
He wanted it all. He wanted all of her, but she couldn't have all of him? Somehow, despite his inability to control that, she couldn't see the fairness in what he wanted.
Shaking her head, she turned away from him, only to still a second later as she felt him behind her, pressing against her back. Lifting her skirt.
She couldn't move. As though his hands had the power to shackle her in place with no more than the lightest touch, she stood still.
"What do you want from me?" he asked, his voice moving through her as his lips stroked the shell of her ear.
She shook her head. She couldn't have what she needed from him. Or at least, she found herself fearing what she wanted the most.
His hands shaped and cupped the bare curves of her butt then. The thongs she wore left her bare, left the tender globes naked beneath his hands.
Ria could feel her body responding to him, felt his touch in places she knew she should have never felt it. She felt that core of long forgotten defiance welling inside her. The one that demanded action, that demanded she claim what she knew was hers.
"I just want you," she finally whispered.