Crave the Night: A Midnight Breed Novel (26 page)

“No,” he snapped, giving a taut shake of his head. “Jordana, we must talk this through. When this event is over tonight, I want you to come home with me to the Darkhaven. I’ll tell Elliott to stop by—”

“I can’t,” she said. “Father, I won’t. I don’t want Elliott.”

Her father’s mouth flattened, but his tone was tender with concern. “He’s a good man. Can’t you understand, I only want what’s best for you. Someone worthy. Someone decent.”

“Someone of your choosing?” she asked gently.

His gaze sharpened a bit, intense with purpose. “Someone I trust implicitly to have your best interests in mind, yes.”

“What about my happiness? What about love?” She stared up at him. “What about the things I need?”

Clearly taken aback, he went silent for a long moment, regret creeping into his features. “Have you ever felt unloved or unhappy as my daughter?”

“No,” she assured him. “I’ve never wanted for anything, Father. You’ve given me more than I ever could’ve hoped for.” She smiled sadly. “Except the freedom to become an adult woman with my own mind, my own dreams … my own plans for my future.”

He said nothing, not for several endless seconds. “Please come home, Jordana. Let me fix this … before it’s too late.”

She shook her head. “I don’t love Elliott. I never did, no matter how much you seemed to wish it were so. And now there’s someone else—”

The words seized up in her throat as her senses prickled to attention. A shiver of awareness traveled through her bloodstream, making her veins sizzle and her palms tingle with the dancing of a thousand needles.

He was here
.

Nathan
.

Jordana felt him even before she turned around to confirm it with her eyes. The entire room seemed aware of his powerful presence too. She watched as a clearing began to form down the center of the exhibit hall.

Bit by bit, a path opened between Jordana’s place in the room and Nathan, standing just inside the doors.

He came after all
.

And, God, he looked good
.

Tall and dark and dangerously handsome in a basic black suit that looked anything but basic on him. He wore an ebony silk shirt, unbuttoned below his throat, exposing just the sexiest hint of the Gen One
dermaglyphs
beneath his clothing.

Glyphs
Jordana was now intimately familiar with and couldn’t wait to see in their full, naked glory once again. Along with the gorgeous Breed male they belonged to.

Her mouth watered just thinking about it, and her heart rate kicked into a faster, heavier tempo.

Without a word of excuse to her father or anyone else who had stopped to gape, Jordana waded into the parting crowd and headed straight toward Nathan. She could hardly keep from running to him, and there was no curbing the smile that spread across her face as she came to a halt in front of him.

“I didn’t think you’d be here.”

His stormy eyes took a long, slow trip from her face to her toes. When he met her gaze again, amber sparks glowed in his irises. “How could I refuse such an enticing invitation?”

She felt warmth flood her cheeks. It had nothing to do with shyness, but an eager reaction to the hunger she saw written so plainly on Nathan’s face. It was written on his skin too. The tawny-hued
glyphs
at his throat surged with deeper saturation, and she knew the rest of his Breed markings would be livid with wild, waking colors underneath the urbane dark suit.

She smiled, barely resisting the urge to touch him. To kiss him and press herself against him, even in front of hundreds of observing eyes.

“I’m glad you came,” she murmured. “I realize you probably can’t stay long. Your patrols—”

“My patrols will wait. For tonight, anyway.”

Hope flared in her belly. “You have the night off?”

“More or less,” he replied, his sensual lips flattening slightly. “I was instructed to take the night off.”

“Because of me?” She frowned, reading the meaning in what he didn’t say. “Because you stayed with me last night. Oh, God … not because of the messages I sent you today? I never should’ve done that. I overstepped—”

“You did nothing wrong.”

His hand lighted gently along the side of her face, an unexpected touch Jordana savored. She tilted her head into his palm, greedy for the brief contact.

“I chose to be with you,” he said, bringing his hand back down to his side. “I knew what I risked last night.” Nathan’s voice was a rumble in the back of his throat, low and deep, as his heated gaze drank her in once more. “As for the messages you sent, I haven’t been able to focus on anything else since I saw the photo of you in this dress. You look even more incredible in the flesh.” His mouth curved wickedly. “But then, I already knew that.”

Her veins thrummed in response to his innuendo. All it took was his dangerous smile and her core bloomed with liquid heat at the remembrance of their night together.

She wanted him now, again … always, she was certain.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she murmured, wishing he’d touch her again. “But I don’t want to cause problems for you with the Order.”

“Any problems there are mine to deal with.” That devastating smile faded as he sent a dark glance around the gathering. When his eyes came back to her, they glittered as bright as embers. “And there was no way in hell I was going to let you wear this dress for anyone but me. Even if I had to put on a monkey suit and try to play nice with the natives.”

“It’s a very nice monkey suit,” she said, melting under his possessive stare. “Oddly enough, seeing you in it only makes me want to sneak away somewhere and tear it off you.”

Nathan’s answering growl vibrated all the way to her bones. “Don’t tempt me, female.”

Oh, but she wanted to tempt him. She wanted to be the one in control,
the one making him crazy with pleasure and need, until she was certain she owned his body the same way he had mastered hers.

She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to be naked with him again, feel him crashing into her, filling her.

The urge swamped her, feral and fierce.

“Keep looking at me like that and watch this civilized facade turn to ash right where we stand.”

Jordana grinned. “Is that a promise?”

Another growl, this one darker, accompanied by a flash of his fangs. “What do you think?”

She gazed up at him for a long moment, surprised by the current of interest that lit up her veins. She felt daring with him, fearless. Too aroused by him to let inhibition put any limits on what they could share together.

“I think we should definitely explore the idea,” she said, but it was a knowing tease when she was already late for the podium. She gestured vaguely behind her. “I have a little speech to give right now. It shouldn’t take very long.” Jordana stepped in closer to him, putting her lips almost against his ear. “So, whatever wicked thoughts you have, hold them until I get back.”

At his rumble of interest, she drew back, out of his reach. Then she slowly pivoted to give him time to watch her stroll away from him.

She didn’t have to glance back to check if he was watching her, but she did anyway.

Oh, yes, he was watching
.

His smoldering eyes threw off a palpable heat, desire so intense it nearly burned everything in its path. And all of it trained on her.

Jordana tossed him a flirty smile, then headed for the dais at the front of the crowded exhibit hall.

EVERY BLOOD VESSEL IN HIS BODY SEEMED TO HAVE MIGRATED south as Nathan watched Jordana walk away from him to take her place at the raised podium. His ear was still warm from her whispered suggestion—a suggestion he had every intention of holding her to as soon as she finished greeting her event’s guests.

Damn, he wanted her naked beneath him now. How he was going to survive the rest of the night without burying himself inside her, he had no idea.

Nathan shifted his stance and tugged at the jacket he’d borrowed from Rafe. For all the good it did. Nothing was going to ease his ache except the sheath of Jordana’s hot, wet body.

And her hands.

Or her pretty, pink mouth.

Had he actually believed at one point that a taste of this woman would be enough to satisfy his need for her?

Christ, what an idiot he’d been.

Now he craved her more than ever. She captivated him completely, held the power to render him hard as steel with just a few simple words.

He tried to tell himself he didn’t like the feeling. He’d kept such a merciless grip on his needs and desires for so long, it should chafe more to realize he was losing his hold so easily where she was concerned.

Jordana was magnetic, her blond hair and flame-colored dress a beacon across the sea of darkly attired men and women. Watching her smooth command of the room and everyone in it filled Nathan with a possessive, selfish pride.

How had such an extraordinary woman become part of his life? Why choose him, when she had her pick of a hundred other more worthy males in this room alone?

But she had chosen.

The private glance she sent him through the thick crowd as she delivered her welcome would have erased any doubt. The instant their eyes connected, Nathan’s blood simmered with added fire. His veins throbbed, and the erection he’d been sporting when she left him a minute ago now worsened to near agony.

He felt his
glyphs
surge with heat and knew his desire would be plain in the deepening colors that were blooming at his collar and up the sides of his neck. His fangs pricked his tongue, sent saliva surging into his mouth.

Jordana belonged to him.

And whether he wanted to admit it or not, he belonged to her too.

A throat cleared pointedly from beside him. “Remarkable, isn’t she?”

Nathan swung a hard look over his shoulder at the Breed male who’d moved in from the surrounding crowd without his notice.

Son of a bitch
.

“Yes, she is,” he replied stiffly, then extended his hand to the Darkhaven leader. “Mr. Gates. I’m Nathan—”

“I know who you are.” Gates kept his arms folded over his tuxedoed chest, his gaze trained on the podium across the wide hall. “What I don’t know is what interest you have in my daughter.” Now he turned his head in pointed observation of Nathan’s ember-flecked eyes and churning
dermaglyphs
. “Aside from the obvious, that is.”

Nathan bristled but could hardly take offense at her father’s disapproval. “My interests are no different than yours, sir.”

Gates scoffed. “I’m sure they couldn’t be any more different.” His cutting stare narrowed. “I suppose you’re the reason she cast Elliott aside?”

Nathan glanced toward the dais, where Jordana had just finished her speech to a round of enthusiastic applause, and was now being swamped by adoring party guests. “Maybe you should ask her that question instead.”

“There’s no need,” Gates replied. “I saw the way she looks at you, the way she’s acting … the way she’s dressed tonight. It’s all because of you, isn’t it?”

Nathan met the elder vampire’s accusing gaze. There was something more than suspicion or disapproval in the male’s eyes. A protectiveness that verged on desperation.

“Jordana has her own mind,” Nathan said. “She has her own will. How she acts or thinks or behaves is up to her.”

Gates grunted. “Well, I don’t like it. I want this to stop. Immediately, do you understand?”

“I’m not sure I do,” Nathan challenged. He had no wish to make an enemy out of her father, but if Gates thought he had anything to say about Nathan’s relationship with Jordana, he was sorely mistaken.

“Jordana means the world to me,” Gates said. “She’s a very special young woman. I don’t expect someone like you to comprehend that, or to care—”

“Someone like me.” Nathan all but growled the words.

“Stay away from her,” Gates ordered tightly. “As a man—as a fellow Breed male—I am asking you to leave my daughter alone.”

Nathan thought back to a mere week ago, to who he was before the night Jordana crashed into his life with one impulsive, unforgettable kiss.

That man—the street warrior whose nights were filled with ugliness and violence—would have never imagined himself standing in the middle of a glittering society event in a borrowed suit, waiting to be reunited with the most exquisite, extraordinary woman in the room.

He would have never imagined a time or place where he would want to belong to that kind of world, or wish that he had all along, if only to be part of it with her.

To be worthy of her.

To have some kind of future to offer her that didn’t consist of darkness and war and bloodshed.

As the Hunter bred and trained for destruction, he never would have dared permit himself to care for someone as he did for Jordana.

There was no turning back.

Now that he had let her in, no one was going to tell him to let her go.

“No,” he said finally. He gave a solemn shake of his head. “I don’t think I can do that.”

Martin Gates studied him in a searching, scrutinizing glare. Resignation bled into his face and he huffed out a brittle sigh. “Very well. How much will it take for you to comply?”