The moment she had the chance, she was going to wrap her hands right around her friend’s throat and just start squeezing.
Cassie deserved it.
She was hiding the truth of whatever she had sensed that day from Mica, and Mica knew she was.
“You’re not going to explain the contentment reference?” There was an edge of laughter in Merinus’s tone.
“I might explain it if I understood it myself.” Forking another piece of cake, Mica shot Merinus an irate look. “Do you always understand what Cassie’s talking about?”
“Sometimes.” Merinus didn’t sound as confident as Mica was certain she wanted to. “Does that idea of contentment have anything to do with the repeat mating tests Navarro insisted Ely run this morning?”
Yeah, that was Merinus, right to the point there.
Mica sighed wearily. “According to Cassie, she has no idea what it has to do with. As for the mating tests, Navarro simply wanted to be certain.”
“I see.” Merinus nodded somberly. “And that would have nothing to do with him nearly losing his sanity when Brandenmore escaped confinement and managed to pin you against the wall either? Or how he threatened to kill Brandenmore after he managed to free you from him?”
Merinus was more perceptive than many wanted to admit.
“What do you want to know, Merinus?” Mica asked quietly as she pushed the cake and coffee back.
She could tell when someone was fishing, and at the moment, Merinus was throwing dynamite in the water.
“Are you his mate, Mica?” she asked.
She wasn’t going to lie to Merinus. Mica had lived her life amid lies, deceptions and double-talk, and she hated it. She could mark her life divided by one event. The years of contentment and safety before the night Cassie Sinclair and her family arrived at her father’s ranch. The years filled with double-talk, lies and danger had been every day thereafter.
She understood, she truly did. There was only so much you could tell most children. But Mica hadn’t been most children, and the resentment had only grown over the years.
“So it would appear.” She shrugged, the attempt to appear casual, unconcerned, took nearly every ounce of control she possessed.
There were times she forgot Merinus wasn’t a Breed herself. She’d been a mate for so long, the mating hormone now so firmly entrenched in her body, that her senses were so much more sharply advanced that she could detect emotions herself, if not scent them.
Although Merinus was by no means a Breed. Yet.
She continued to watch Mica, making her extremely uncomfortable as her dark gaze remained intent. She wasn’t a Breed, but she was developing the senses of one, which meant she was no longer a person Mica could pretend to be calm around.
“How long have you known?” the Prima asked.
This was no longer the friend who had sheltered Mica along with Cassie when they were kids. She wasn’t the woman that cut Mica’s hair the first time, or the one that taught her to use makeup when she was a teenager, when her own mother refused to so do.
She was now the Prima, the dominant feminine force within Sanctuary, and there wasn’t a Breed male or female within the compound that didn’t inherently recognize her quiet, intuitive strength and power.
Mica glanced at the clock on the microwave. “Oh, two hours maybe?” she answered blithely. “Could be a minute more, could be a minute less. So let’s not get into the whole psychological mishmash that goes with it quite yet, if you don’t mind? I’d like another minute or two to adjust.”
There was the odd situation or two when her need for truth was almost outweighed by her need for privacy.
Breeds and their mates were just too damned nosy. And she couldn’t tell Merinus to mind her own damned business as she would most other Breeds.
“You’ll likely need more than a minute or two to adjust,” Merinus said ruefully. “It’s been fourteen years since I met Callan and I still can’t say I’ve adjusted.”
But she was happy. Mica could see the happiness as well as the contentment in the Prima’s gaze. She might appear now no more than twenty-four or -five, but she was fourteen years older and wise well beyond her years, Mica often thought.
That didn’t mean she wanted to discuss with Merinus something as private and as confusing as what had happened in her bed earlier with Navarro though.
“I wondered what was going on when Navarro stomped downstairs and out the front entrance.” Picking up the plates and cups, Merinus deposited them on the sink counter before turning back to Mica, leaning against the counter and bracing her hands on the edge behind her. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Navarro stomp before.”
Mica was quite certain no one had ever seen Navarro stomp before, simply because he so rarely stomped.
Just as he so rarely kept the same lover for longer than a week or two.
She imagined he was stomping because it wasn’t as easy to walk away from a mate as it was a one-night stand.
Poor Navarro, she thought mockingly.
Her shoulders almost slumped in dejection, “poor Mica” was more like it. She was the one sitting here alone with Merinus rather than trying to figure out exactly how she was going to keep her father from killing Navarro.
It would be hard, especially considering the fact that at the moment, she wouldn’t mind killing him herself.
After he fucked her again.
She wondered what it would take to convince him to fuck her again just before she killed him?
She glanced at Merinus as the other woman watched her compassionately. And that compassion grated. As though someone should feel sorry for her. They should feel sorry for Navarro, because her father really wasn’t going to be happy.
“Did you and Navarro argue before he left?” Merinus finally broke the silence between them.
“No.” She brushed her hair back from her face as she gave Merinus a tight smile. “There was nothing to argue over.” Moving from the bar stool, Mica tucked her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.
The sudden memory of Navarro’s hands cupping her rear, lifting her to him, flashed through her mind as a shiver chased up her spine.
Just as quickly, her womb clenched, a second before a rush of heat flashed through her pussy.
Mating heat.
Swallowing tightly, she jerked her hands from her pockets and stared around wildly for a moment, thrown so off balance that she knew Merinus couldn’t help but realize.
She could feel herself flushing, knowing that if Merinus’s sense of smell was anywhere close to a Breed’s, then she would know what had just happened.
Mica hated this. There was nothing worse than allowing anyone at all to realize something as intimate as her arousal.
“There’s always something to argue over if mating heat affects you. And I can imagine Navarro, as quiet as he is, could be a force to be reckoned with if he became angry.” Merinus sighed as though she had no idea of the sudden flames of aroused heat that were beginning to burn inside Mica.
“Navarro wouldn’t hurt me.” Mica shook her head dismissively.
She just wanted to escape. She wanted to run to her room, or outside, get away from Merinus’s too perceptive gaze or her possibly too sensitive ability to smell.
“No, Navarro wouldn’t hurt you,” Merinus agreed. “But, in mating heat, even the most self-controlled Breed can become unpredictable.”
“Merinus, I really hate to be disrespectful, because I have the highest regard for you,” Mica stated as she struggled to hold on to her patience now. “But I don’t understand what you’re getting at, and I don’t understand why we’re having this little chat. So if you would be kind enough to either explain it to me, or excuse me, I would really appreciate it.”
Because she didn’t think she had the patience to be social much longer.