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“Anything more that I should tell Mr. Dane?” Burke asked her as she released his arm and he turned to help the copilot with her luggage and laptop case.
“Yes, inform him I won my end of that bet we made. Director Wyatt didn’t show up after all.”
She caught Mercury’s grimace from the periphery of her vision.
“I’ll make a note of that.” Burke nodded his dark, shaggy head as the trunk opened on the limo and her luggage was stored inside.
As he and the copilot loped back to the plane, Ria turned and stared back at Mercury, trying not to feel too female in his presence.
He was tall, broad and absolutely delicious looking. Savage and male—the combination did something to her feminine core that surprised her.
Her lips twitched as he turned his gaze from the Vanderale pilots back to her.
“They were at the hospital with the first Leo,” he commented. “They’re Breeds.”
She nodded as he r
eached out and opened the door for her.
“They are.” She slid into the sumptuous leather, sliding to the other side as Mercury bent and moved in with her, sitting in the seat across from her.
She glanced to the driver’s section to see Lawe Justice. She almost chuckled at his name. She loved some of the names the Breeds had chosen for themselves when given the chance. Lawe Justice, Rule Breaker, two of Jonas Wyatt’s main security force, and Mercury Warrant.
Mercury, the messenger of the gods. It should have been Ares. How apt that name might have been if the scientists that created him hadn’t completely annihilated the primal instincts he had possessed. According to his file, he may have been one of the greatest Breeds to have ever been created.
“Breeds the Leo worked to rescue over the years,” Mercury pointed out coolly. “Rather than working to ensure we were all free.”
She had known there was an edge of anger in the Breeds who had been at the hospital and sworn to silence concerning the first Leo, who had arrived to oversee his son’s well-being.
Callan Lyons, pride leader and the bane of the first Leo’s existence. Leo didn’t share his son’s belief that the Breeds should carve out their place in the world. The only protection they could be certain of, he believed, was in hiding among the non-Breeds until their numbers were greater. And Ria wasn’t certain which side of the argument she felt was right. But for now, both sides still existed.
“I refuse to debate Leo’s choices; they’re his own,” she pointed out, staring back at him.
“But you’re part of his family,” Mercury argued, calmly. He always argued calmly, she had read. “You’ve known what he was all along.”
She smiled at that. “Surprisingly, Mr. Warrant, I’m not a Breed. I’m simply a lowly little clerk that does the Vanderale bidding. Nothing more. I’m very human and I’m a reasonably healthy twenty-eight years old, rather than however old Dane or Leo are. I try really hard not to do the math there.”
They were older than they appeared. Far older. And the secrecy of their existence as Breeds was paramount. And it was at risk if the information Dane had received was right.
“A clerk?” Mercury’s gaze raked over her, and she was glad she had donned her jacket before leaving the plane, because she swore her nipples were hardening beneath the thin blouse she wore. “Why do I have trouble believing that?”
He was suspicious. His gaze was direct, and she almost thought she detected the faintest hint of blue in his eyes.
She almost shook her head when she looked closer and saw only the dark amber shades of the pupil.
“My charming personality?” She arched her brow.
His lips twitched. “I’ve seen your communiqués with Jonas, Ms. Rodriquez. Trust me, charming isn’t an adjective I would apply to them.”
“Firmly enchanting then?” she suggested.
He cleared his throat. “I thought the reaction they produced from our director was interesting. And amusing.”
Ria let her own amusement tug at her lips and wished he would release all that thick, multihued hair from the strip of leather confining it behind his neck.
She wanted to see it flowing around his shoulders, the dark russets, browns and blacks merging together to create a heavy, lionlike mane that made her fingers itch to touch.
Strange, Leo had similar hair and she had never wanted to touch his. Of course, his wife Elizabeth might have cut her hand off if she’d attempted it.
