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His arm was in a sling, obviously still healing from the confrontation with Brandenmore and Navarro the day before. His eye was still bruised, but healing quickly.
Breeds tended to heal quickly, and Josiah seemed to be proving the theory.
“Be nice, Josiah, Navarro’s having a bad day.” She threw Navarro another calm, confident little smile.
If he thought she was going to kiss his ass and beg him to touch her, then he could think again. She was more likely to attempt to kick his ass today.
“You’re treading on thin ice, little girl,” he warned her, his voice low enough that the words carried no further than her own ears.
“What are you going to do, Navarro? Spank me?” She winked at him as she let her gaze slide over his body then back to his eyes. “I might enjoy it.”
Josiah snorted behind her, while Cougar shifted beside her as though uncomfortable. Only one thing could make a Breed of Cougar’s ilk uncomfortable. The threat of danger from a Breed he was unwilling to fight.
Navarro stood watching her, black eyes focused completely on her, his face more still than normal and completely devoid of expression.
The danger was coming from Navarro?
Oh, he might be feeling dangerous, but it wasn’t violence he had need of. And she wasn’t in the mood to pamper him, whatever seemed to be his problem.
“So, are the two of you escorting us to Ely’s lab?” she asked as she shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and turned to the other Breeds. “I’d like to hurry and get this over with if you don’t mind.”
She did have better things to do at the moment. Things such as washing her hair, cleaning floors, masturbating maybe? The masturbating part was rumored not to help, but she was getting desperate enough to try it.
Cougar spoke up then. “Josiah will escort you to Ely. She doesn’t need Navarro today.” He turned to Navarro. “Callan and Jonas would like to see you in the vid-comm room ASAP.”
And Navarro didn’t like the idea of that much at all. Mica could actually feel the denial emanating from him.
Poor Navarro. Wasn’t that just too damned bad?
“Well, Josiah, looks like you’re it. You get to babysit me.” Sliding her hand to the bend of his elbow, she urged him up the hallway. “You know, I think the black eye I gave you when you were eighteen looked much nicer than this one. Are you getting old, or did I just have a hell of a stroke of luck then?”
She swore she could feel Navarro’s gaze boring into her back as they moved up the hall; intent, dangerous, he didn’t like her familiarity with another Breed. He sure as hell didn’t like the fact that she had some connection to Josiah, no matter how innocent.
And she didn’t like his determination to see her suffering in her room alone all night either. And oh, he knew. He had to have known. He was in mating heat just as she was, she wasn’t suffering alone when he stayed away from her, which meant he knew very damned well exactly how the mating heat was affecting her.
He knew she was hurting, and he’d done nothing to fix it, even though he was hurting as well.
What the hell did he expect her to do? Beg? Fight?
She was a grown woman; she knew what she wanted, and she knew what she was willing to fight for. And despite her anger at Navarro’s arrogant attempt to move into her room the day before, a mate that willingly stayed away from her wasn’t something she wanted to fight for.
“Are you trying to get me killed now, sugar?” Josiah asked as they turned the corner and headed toward Ely’s examination room. “You don’t mess with a mate like that. He could have taken my head off if he were any other Breed.”
Mica rolled her eyes. “Man up, Josiah. The most he’s going to do is growl at you a little bit, if he can work up the interest to do that much. So chill already.”
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, his expression disbelieving.
“What did he do? Refuse you coffee or chocolate? I’ve watched enough of this mating shit, I know it had to be one or the other.”
Oh, it was far more important than chocolate or coffee. And if he was a Breed, why couldn’t he smell the hell her body was going through right now? She was so aroused she felt as though she were burning up from the inside out.
“Josiah, no one refuses me anything,” she informed him, more out of pride than simply because she rarely asked anyone for anything. “I’m a grown woman; I know how to go out and buy it, how to buy it online and call in orders. It’s all really simple, honey, I promise. Besides, I haven’t needed permission to do anything since I lived with my parents.”
And she wasn’t going to allow anyone to treat her like a child again, especially not the Breed who had decided she was his mate.
“Then what’s the problem?” Sincere concern filled Josiah’s gaze as she glanced up at him. “I can tell the mating heat is bad, but I can sense more than that.”
So much for whether or not he could smell her arousal.
