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“It’s not mine!” she screamed back at him, her own fury growing now. “Damn you.” Her fists struck his shoulders. “It’s not mine!”
His lips came to hers again; he pumped his tongue into her mouth, forced the taste into her senses, and oh God, it was so good. It was everything she’d dreamed it would be. It was impossible to resist.
She whimpered. She begged him with her tears as her lips closed over his hesitantly. She drew it from him. She tasted him. And within seconds, she was consumed by him.
CHAPTER 20
She was his mate. Nothing else mattered. No other thought filled Mercury’s head as he felt her lips surround his tongue, felt the hesitant, suckling movements, milking the hormone from him.
He felt her pleasure, sensed the desire rising eagerly inside her even if she was hesitant in this. He was giving to her, taking what belonged to him, giving what belonged to her. What he had dreamed of giving her.
Heat flashed through him, a burning wave of searing pleasure and ecstatic agony. The animal and the man merged here, with her. There was no battle, no fight for supremacy between the two. For Ria, they were one.
He growled into the kiss. His fingers kneaded her scalp and he drew the scent of her into his very being. His mate. He had needed this. Ached for it. From the moment he had first caught sight of her, he had prayed for it. And he had never realized that he was the reason he hadn’t mated her.
That the control he had forced on himself after coming off the feral displacement drugs had blocked his ability to mate her.
He hadn’t realized it until the animal inside him had sensed her panic and her fear, her premonition of danger.
She had drawn the animal free. From the first scent of her, the first time he had seen her, spoken to her, the animal had refused to sleep any longer. It had awakened, drawn as Mercury had been drawn, by her scent, her honor, by the fact that she was created to live inside his soul.
Now, as she drew the dark, potent hormone from his tongue, and he knew it was potent, the growls that came from his chest echoed inside his head.
At the moment, he was more animal than man. She had run from him. She had left, refusing to see who she belonged to, refusing to allow him, him, her mate, to protect her.
Protecting her was his pleasure. Protecting her, ensuring she survived at all costs, was what he had been born for. He had been born for this woman. Born to fill the cold places inside her, just as she filled them within him. She eased the cold, dark loneliness inside him. She vanquished it, brought warmth, laughter, brought the sweet knowledge that the animal and the man he was truly belonged.
She had run from him. She had allowed another woman to come between them, stepped aside, no matter the reason. She would never step aside again.
She would never dare consider it, even if she might suspect his happiness lay elsewhere, she would never think to turn from him. She would hold on to him with talons as deep, as sharp as any animal’s.
He would show her. Her pleasure was his. Her security was his. His Ria was going to learn to take what belonged to her.
“You dared to leave me.” He tore his lips from her, glaring down at her, watching the flush that suffused her tear-swollen face, watched the hunger that began to fill her chocolate eyes.
She shook her head slowly. “What have you done to me?”
“Taken you.” He fingered the cloth of that detestable dress. “And I will take you more. And more. Until you realize, Ria, nothing can tear you from me.”
He had to touch her. The lion inside him needed to spread its mark across her entire body. The fine hairs along his body tingled, the mating hormone that infused his kiss beginning to seep along those hairs. He wanted to stroke against her. Fill her pores with his scent, and his scent alone.
Never would another Breed, male or female, attempt to encroach upon what belonged solely to him.
“You’ll destroy me,” she sobbed.
That sound, the sight of her tears and the smell of her pain were destroying him. He stared down at her, seeing the conflict in her gaze, the emotions that had torn her apart, that still tore at her, and he wanted nothing more than to ease her. Everything inside him demanded he ease her, and he knew of only one way.
The only way. He would draw the animal inside Ria free, if it killed them both. It was the only way.
“You are my mate.” He touched her face, leaned forward and kissed her gently. To apologize now for what he knew her anger would be later.
Mercury rubbed his lips against hers, heard the catch of her breath from the hunger filling her, and the rumble of pleasure in him was like a deep-throated, growling purr.
Then he speared his tongue inside her mouth again, forced her to take more of the heat, even as a part of him ached. His proud mate. So proud, so frightened of the emotions clawing between them.
“Mercury.” Her broken sigh had him pulling back, his hands gripping the material of her dress before he ripped it.
He wanted that ugly fucking dress off her body. No later than next evening her closets would be filled with clothes that suited his Ria. That suited the feminine animal he knew paced and prowled within her.
