Read Online Mercury's War by Lora Leigh - Free Book Online Page B

hear.
        He paused in the middle of the room, realizing with a sense of shock that small growls were vibrating from his chest. Predatory, primal, guttural sounds. Sounds Mercury wasn’t completely comfortable hearing. He growled when he chose, and he had not chosen to let the sound free.
        He shook his head, fighting back a sense of imbalance and a nearly overwhelming urge to force that locked bedroom door open and take her. To bend her over the bed, bare her pretty ass and just take her.
        He shook the image clear of his head as he found himself taking a determined, forceful stride toward that door. He had never, at any time, done anything so irrational. He wasn’t going to start now.
        She was just a woman. There were dozens of women, Breed and non-Breed, that he could have with no more than a snap of his fingers. Women who would smile, who would gasp and cry out for him as he moved into their luscious bodies. He didn’t need Ria. He just wanted her.
        Wanting was not the same as needing.
        Or so he tried to convince himself as he stalked to the front door and flung it open before stepping into the shadowed recess of the porch and the darkness of night.
        He inhaled forcefully, pushing back whatever primal demand was making him so irrational. He checked his tongue against his teeth again. Nope, no swollen glands. No hormonal fluid tormenting his tongue and his lusts. Not that he had expected it.
        He restrained his disappointment. With each passing year more Breeds mated, and found a sense of peace and balance in this freedom they had found. A balance Mercury knew wasn’t meant to be his.
        His mate had died long ago. He was alone.
        He leaned against a heavy post and stared into the black velvet night and the forest surrounding Ria’s rented cabin and remembered the bleak years before the Breed rescues. Not that his captivity had been as hard as some of the others’. The scientists at the South American labs he had been created within had ruled with cooler heads. There were strict guidelines, but the Breeds weren’t tortured just to see how much they could endure.
        They had been trained from birth. They had been cuddled at odd times as babes by their caretakers, but each day of their lives, even as infants, contained lessons in being Breeds. For Mercury, it had been a life of almost complete isolation from other Breeds, though. His training had been more exacting, his body and his mind pushed harder. And he strove to succeed, because success meant time with the small pride he shared those labs with. It meant a chance to see one small Lioness who smiled back at him shyly and made his heart race.
        As they grew older, they were trained harshly, but not horrifically. And yet Mercury couldn’t remember a day of his life when he didn’t dream of freedom. Of running with the wind, of testing himself against his own goals. Of a day when he wouldn’t be required to kill on demand, but only in self-defense.
        And he remembered Alaiya. Strong, confident, the young Lioness had been filled with life, and he had loved her. With all a young man’s passion and a warrior’s soul, he had loved her.
        He had rarely spoken to her. Had never touched her. Yet he remembered the day the scientists had found the strange hormone in his semen and saliva, and the confusion it had garnered. From him as well as from the scientists. And he remembered when Alaiya had died.
        The animalistic core of his psyche had never been far beneath the surface, but when he learned of her death, he lost what little control he had managed to learn. The drugs they kept in his system to try to restrain the feral rage of his beast were powerless against the flood of animalistic adrenaline that washed through him that day.
        He hadn’t even touched her. He hadn’t kissed her. But the thought of her death nearly drove him mad.
        Mercury shook