He was awake, so why didn't he just take her? He could smell her need, she knew he could. She had watched him inhaling her scent last night, pulling it into his nostrils and growling with pleasure.
So why was he waiting? Her fingers curled against him as she fought to restrain herself. To keep from attacking him. Devouring him.
"If you want it, then you'll have to take it yourself, mate." The hard growl in his voice assured her he wasn't asleep. Assured her he was still as volatile, still as wild as he had been the night before.
She struggled to open her eyes, feeling her heart pounding in her chest as he stared down at her with those arctic blue eyes. Eyes that sank inside her and reminded her of the lab photos she had studied before coming to Sanctuary.
"Your eyes changed colors," she whispered, remembering that from the night before. The color was even more vivid now.
"My eyes were blue until they tried to destroy what I was," he informed her, a flash of anger sending sparks of gold through the blue. "It's not my eye color you need to worry about, though."
The tone of his voice was just on the edge of pissing her off. The storm, the emotional upheaval from the night before, had passed. Thinking was still a delicate process, but she was getting there. Her emotions were volatile, though. She could feel them rising inside her, pushing her, straining to break free of her control. She would have to deal with them later, though. As soon as he put out the fire blazing in her body.
"What do I need to worry about then?" She pulled the sheet over her swollen br**sts as his gaze flicked to the covering.
"Do you want me, Ria?" he crooned, his voice heating with his own arousal.
Nervousness rose inside her as she tried to fight it back.
"That's a stupid question, Mercury."
He grinned as she pointed that out.
"Then come to me," he told her. "It's my pleasure to relieve your heat. All you have to do is take what's yours."
She flinched. He had to say it like that. And he knew what he was doing; she saw it in the narrowing of his eyes, the tightening of his features.
She lifted her chin, staring back at him furiously. It hurt. He couldn't realize how much it hurt, fearing that she would eventually lose him to a woman who didn't deserve him, who hadn't come to him when he needed her. Instead, she had waited until someone else loved him, needed him.
"You were supposed to be the nice Breed," she stated, trying for cold, but her voice trembled with need.
"Oh, I was very nice," he assured her. "I still am. Notice if you will, I haven't yet paddled your ass for running out on me last night. Though, the option still remains."
She needed to protest that. She really did. But as he spoke, he shifted the sheet from his hard body and she lost her breath, her will to fight.
His c**k was thick, reaching nearly to his navel, the thick, engorged head throbbing dark and powerful.
She licked her lips. She felt dazed, so hungry, suddenly so desperate for that hard, heated flesh inside her body that she whimpered.
She reached out, touched the hard plane of his chest, stroked her hand to the middle of his stomach and stopped. She wanted to go lower, wanted to touch and taste and take everything she longed to claim as her own.
"Mercury." She lifted her gaze to him. Imploring.
"It's so easy, Ria," he whispered. "To take what you need. It's always my pleasure to give it to you, you know that."
"Take what isn't mine," she bit out, anger rising inside her at the thought, the affront that the mating heat hadn't shown up for her. She hadn't drawn its force. Another woman had.
The dark, warning growl that rumbled from his throat had her flinching.
He kept his arms behind his head, but they bunched, the veins beneath the flesh bulging as the muscles did.
"Don't push me this morning, Ria," he warned her. "This is no place for it, and my patience is raw enough as it is. If you need me, I'm here. If you don't, then I'll suffer through the hell of it, shower and get on with the day's business."
"Damn you!" she cried, aching, bleeding inside from the emotional storm rising inside her.
"Damn you for your stubbornness!" he bit back. "You're my mate. You will accept that fact or we'll both suffer for it. Now make up your mind. Are you going to f**k me or fight with me?"
She had every intention of doing both, but she had her priorities. He wanted to torment her? Torture her? Then she would play his game as well, for as long as she could stand it.