For a second he could have sworn her eyes glazed with something akin to approaching ecstasy.
"I'm going to revise my opinion of you." She pouted with charming irritation. "You're a cruel, evil man. Teasing me with cheesecake. I'll get you back. You watch."
He smiled back at her, his brows arching as he pushed his fingers through her hair and restrained the need to kiss her. If he kissed her, he would never get out of that cabin with her.
He let his gaze go over her again, noticing as he did so that the cut of her dress hid the bite he had placed on her shoulder. For some reason, that bothered him.
"Leave the hair down," he told her. "We'll discuss the dress later."
"Yeah, with a whip and a chair in my hand," she informed him archly. "Don't start giving orders, Mercury. I don't obey so well."
Ria allowed him to get away with the hair, simply because she was learning how much he enjoyed it down. But her clothes, as much as she sometimes disliked them herself, were imperative.
Clothing style, makeup and presence were a hazard in her job, and at parties such as the one Sanctuary was hosting tonight she met many of the people she was sent to investigate.
"You should be able to dress as you like," he growled. "I swear, Ria, I can feel your dissatisfaction with that dress."
She looked at him sharply. She hated this dress. It was simple, the cut and design elegant enough. And it was unassuming. She had never hated unassuming as much as she did tonight.
"The dress is like your dress uniform, less threatening and more civilized in ways than the uniform you work in. My line of work requires that I appear unthreatening at all times. No matter the job or the event."
She moved to the closet and pulled a pair of low heels from the shelf inside. She had to keep herself from staring at them in regret. As with the dress. Simple. Unassuming.
She put them on anyway and turned back to Mercury.
He was staring at her, his expression somber, his eyes that odd color once more, as though something lived inside him that he wasn't always aware of.
"I won't tolerate it," he suddenly bit out.
"Tolerate what?" she retorted. "My refusal to do as you order?"
If he turned arrogant Breed on her now, she was going to get violent herself.
"Your refusal to do as you wish," he snapped. "That dress. Those shoes. I didn't even have to see your face to feel how much you hated those damned things. Where are the pretty clothes, Ria?" He stalked to the closet and looked in, growling at the sight of more of the same. Simple clothes. Dowdy skirts. "Where are the clothes you want to wear?"
"In the stores." Her voice was clipped, her own anger rising now. "Where they belong. If they're here, I'll wear them. That simple. I told you, Mercury, I can't risk the people I investigate suspecting that there's more to me than they've always believed. The Vanderales' poor orphan employee could never afford those clothes. A paper pusher? Really! How long do you think they would believe that if they saw me dressed in the clothes you're talking about?"
"Who put that in your head?" He raged, stalking from the closet, stomping from it actually. "Dane? The Leo? I'll be damned if it will continue. You're a beautiful woman and you love pretty things. Why shouldn't you have them?"
"Because it's detrimental to my job," she pointed out, her voice rising. "My job, Mercury. Remember? Would you have believed I was no more than a paper pusher researching your damned accounts if I had arrived dressed in silk and heels?"
He stared back at her, the blue lights in his eyes firing deeper, darker. "I wouldn't have had the brainpower to think," he finally muttered. "I'd have been too busy f**king you before you ever arrived at Sanctuary."
She wanted to roll her eyes at him. "Neither you nor Jonas would have ever taken me seriously."
He pushed his fingers through his hair, his gaze raking over her. "That's a cop-out," he informed her. "One look at you, Ria, and anyone knows better than that. Do you think the reason the companies you investigate aren't suspicious of you is your clothes? That's not true, Ria. They're not suspicious of you because they're arrogant and too certain of their own intelligence to believe anyone could be smarter than they are."
She shook her head. She didn't want to hear this. It wasn't true. It was the job, and it was that simple. She owed the Vanderales. They had kept her safe until she was grown, they had given her a job, they had given her a life when she was alone, deserted.
"You hide, Ria," he stated. "Those clothes aren't because of your job. Those clothes, your demeanor, the way you dress it's so you can hide."
She shot him a scathing glare before pulling away from him and jerking her wrap from the end of the bed.
"Are you ready to go?" She pulled the heavy cape over the dress and latched the closure at her throat.
"It didn't keep me away, did it, Ria?" he asked her as he continued to watch her.
"I don't know what you're talking about."