“And was she showing signs of mating heat?”
Jonas didn’t speak. Ria felt her heart tighten, felt it burn like a live coal in her chest.
“I see.” She leaned forward, straightened the papers on her desk and stared sightlessly at the screen. “Let me know when you need me to give you the blood and saliva. I’ll be working until then.”
Silence filled the room for long moments.
“I’ll send Amburg’s tech up when I leave. She’s a young Breed; she worked in another of the labs, assisting the scientists there, before the rescues. She’ll take care of you.”
Ria nodded and moved another transmission into place.
She focused on work. She had always focused on work. It didn’t betray, it didn’t consume, it didn’t eat away at her emotions. “By the way, your transmission last night came from the Breed barracks, rather than the estate house as you assumed. Low-level, it piggybacked on an outgoing transmission and ended at the hotel in Buffalo Gap.”
She pushed her chair back from the computer as Jonas edged from the desk. Rising from it, she gave him the seat and moved around the desk as he sat down. He stared at the transmission display she’d had running within a tracking program she’d downloaded from the Breed satellite once the computer in the office had been linked directly to it.
“How did you find it?” Jonas’s fingers were moving across the keyboard. “We don’t have this program.”
“Sanctuary’s security level hasn’t been raised sufficiently to allow use of the program,” she told him. “I had clearance to use it personally, granted by Leo himself when I awoke this morning and checked my messages.”
Which meant Dane had come clean with him. For some reason, that had made her feel less like an outsider. Dane had called Leo when the situation had grown out of her control. He had been ready to face Leo’s rage to bring her back to South Africa.
She crossed her arms over her breasts, pushing that knowledge aside as she frowned at the other information she had found.
“Why is Ely ordering codeine from one of Brandenmore’s subsidiaries?” she asked. “I would have thought all medications and research supplies ordered outside Vanderale or Lawrence Industries would go through Engalls.”
Jonas paused and lifted his gaze, his eyes sharp, deadly.
“Breeds don’t take codeine,” he told her. “It doesn’t work as well with our systems as it does with non-Breeds.”
Ria shrugged. “Check her order transmissions, the ones with the attached coding on them. She’s made several orders over the past six to eight months, with increasing frequency. She’s also ordering pain medications of increasing strength. Morphine was added to the list last month.”
“There haven’t been any requisitions or payments for those drugs,” he told her. “I’d know if there were.”
“Then maybe she’s paying for them another way.”
The silence, the heavy, dangerous tension, that filled the room had the hairs along her arms and her neck lifting in response.
Jonas pulled a communicator from the side of his belt, attached it to his head and pulled the mic to his cheek.
“Jackal? Secure Dr. Morrey’s office and place enforcers Blade, Noble and Mordecai within the labs until all computers can be confiscated. I want Ely confined to her quarters, and inform Callan and Dane I’m on my way to Callan’s office for an emergency meeting.”
He disconnected the link, pulled the headset off and stared at Ria, fury swirling in his eyes.
“When did you find this?”
“Just before you came in.” She shrugged. “But I’d be careful, Jonas. It was too easy to find and I don’t like that.”
“Ely is no electronics wizard.” He sighed heavily. “She hates computers just to begin with. If it’s not scientific equipment, then she has no use for it. They would have to keep it simple.”
His voice was heavy, filled with regret, as he rose to his feet. “Get this information printed out, pull the program here, and I want it installed on the personal network we’re putting together for in-house use.”
Ria smiled tightly. “Not without clearance, Jonas.”
“We need this program, damn you!” His hands flattened on the desk as he growled back at her.
“Jonas.” Mercury stepped between them, his large body tense, his voice warning. “Pull back.”
Jonas jerked back from the desk and glared at Mercury.
“Fuck this shit! When this is over, I’m joining Lawe in the damned monastery. I’ve had enough of overly territorial Breeds and the mating heat bullshit that makes my job hell. Watch it, Mercury. I’ll give you my job.”
He pushed his hands over his short, dark hair and breathed out heavily before turning back to Ria. “Can you at least print out the information and bring it to Callan’s office? I need proof, Ria. Not supposition or information on a program we’re not allowed to have,” he sneered.
“I can install the program on Callan’s computer. It can ghost for up to seventy-two hours before it deletes itself and becomes inoperable and undetectable to the main network. Or any other private network.”
He nodded sharply as he moved from the desk and allowed her back in her chair.
Sitting was agony. It clenched her thighs around her clit, reminding her of the emptiness inside her core, and tightened her womb spasmodically as the need for sex began to eat her alive.
She restrained the need to place her hand against her lower stomach in protest of the pain, and she feared that the next few hours were going to be impossible to get through.
She typed in the key to release the program from the computer, inserted another ghost program to clean it from the drive and the network, then pulled the small external drive that held the information they needed.
When she looked up, it was to see Mercury’s gaze on her, that hard blue color of his eyes burning within his face. He needed too, and yet he did nothing to ease either one of them.
If she wanted him, she would have to take him.
She stared at him, almost feeling the sweet relief, the burning need as if she had forced his heavy erection inside her, taking him to the hilt and feeling all that heat and power at her control. That could become more addictive than the mating heat itself.
Her breasts became more swollen, her nipples painfully hard beneath the lace of the bra she wore. She felt like panting. Like going to her knees and taking what she wanted.
“Today, children,” Jonas cleared his throat, breaking the spell weaving around them. “Sometime today, if you don’t mind.”
Ria rose to her feet and forced her gaze back to the files she had laid aside to back up the information on the external drive.
She wanted to shake her head, to attempt to clear it and the emotions striking through her-anger and need, heartache and the certainty that living without him wasn’t an option now.
He had done this to her, she argued inside. He had made the choice to take her rather than the woman that nature had meant for him.
And if that woman was suffering as a result?
She shook her head. It didn’t work like that. Elizabeth’s research proved that mating heat required an exchange of the hormone; a kiss, a sex act-more than just a desire. The hormone could only show up with mating heat in full force. The Breed tongue might itch, but the glands would swell only minutely at first unless further contact was initiated.
It took more than just the knowledge that mating heat could be an option. And obviously, it was possible for a Breed male to take another mate, if that exchange wasn’t made. Because he had mated her. And mated her. And she needed him to mate her again before she melted into a puddle of need on the floor.