Crave the Night: A Midnight Breed Novel (38 page)

She shook her head where it rested against his bare chest. “No. This was his place, their place. It belongs to them, not me.” Her face tilted up to meet his gaze. “The only home I need is in Boston. With you.”

They’d already discussed living arrangements, and although Nathan’s quarters at the command center were nothing close to Jordana’s lavish penthouse, she conceded to living with him as part of the Order.

Nathan was prepared to go anywhere she wanted. There was a part of him that wanted nothing more than to take her as far away as possible from Boston and this villa—all the places Selene’s legion might begin to look for her again—but she refused to run. She refused to cower or hide.

She was stronger than either of her parents; Nathan recognized that easily enough.

Jordana was gentle and sweet, innocent in many ways, but she was also fierce and courageous. If the Atlantean queen was a force to be reckoned with, she would find her granddaughter every bit her equal in terms of tenacity and the refusal to let anyone intimidate her.

It would likely surprise few to learn that royal blood, immortal blood, ran through Jordana’s veins.

And now Nathan’s blood ran through her too.

He couldn’t be more humbled by that fact. He had an entire future to make sure she never regretted giving herself to him as his mate.

A future he was eager to begin.

“We should go soon,” he murmured against her brow. “Lazaro Archer can have the Order’s private jet ready for us at any time. If I don’t call him soon and make the arrangements, there’s a very good chance I’ll tie you to the bed and have my wicked way with you again.”

She smiled, looking anything but worried. “I like your wicked ways. And I also liked being on top. So maybe I’ll be the one to tie you to the bed sometime.”

His cock responded instantly, evidence she could see plainly enough, not to mention feel. As if to let him know she had him precisely where she wanted him, Jordana reached down and stroked his erect shaft.

On a groan, he caught her hand and linked his fingers through hers. “Come on, let’s go inside before I spread you beneath me on the tiles out here.”

He led her back into the villa, past the blood from the battle they’d survived together and into the living area. Nathan hadn’t realized until now how rich Cass’s villa was with original art and other treasures.

And there was something else he hadn’t noticed until now either.

A small, framed snapshot occupying a private place of honor on the far wall of the living area. It was a black-and-white photo of a young woman. A woman with long dark hair, dressed in a pale linen, ankle-length sheath. She stood on the same terrace Nathan and Jordana had just come in from, overlooking the same cliffside and coast, except she stood there under the full light of day, the sun glinting off the sheen of her hair.

Nathan frowned. “Is that a picture of—”

“My mother,” Jordana murmured at nearly the same moment, shock and wonder in her quiet reply. “Oh, my God. That has to be her.”

She broke away from Nathan and crossed the room for a closer look. He followed, taking in the details of the candid shot, which had been captured from inside the villa by someone who clearly adored the subject.

The woman stood half turned near the railing, her delicate face dipped down toward her shoulder, wistful, smiling with a private joy. Nathan knew the elegant profile well enough: One glance in Jordana’s direction would have confirmed the same high cheekbones, the small, straight nose and regal, if stubborn, chin.

“That’s Soraya,” Jordana whispered. She pointed to the photo, where it was just possible to see from the woman’s angle the hint of a rounded belly. “Oh, Nathan. That’s my mother and me.”

Jordana carefully reached out to take the frame off its fixture on the wall. It stuck a bit, then sprang free on a soft click, followed by a mechanical whir from somewhere within the wall on which the photo had hung.

The tall millwork panel began to slide open, revealing an alcove hidden behind the false wall.

Nathan stepped back, taking Jordana with him by the arm. “What the hell …”

He tried to sweep her behind him, but she stepped forward, unafraid. “Nothing in my father’s house will hurt me,” she reassured him.

Even so, as the panel slid all the way open, Nathan’s muscles tensed for battle, his senses instantly on high alert. He realized right away his concerns were unfounded.

The panel hid another piece of Cass’s art.

A sculpture, roughly a foot tall, depicting a handsome shepherd youth asleep beneath a crescent moon.

Nathan had seen this piece before.

It was on display in the exhibit Jordana had lovingly curated and unveiled to the public just the other night.

“Sleeping Endymion,”
Jordana whispered, astonished to find the sculpture here, in her father’s Amalfi villa. “How can this be?”

Nathan stood beside her as she gaped at the terra cotta work of art she knew so well.

Or, rather, thought she had.

Now she realized she’d made a mistake.

There were things she hadn’t seen before. Not until this very moment.

“When Cass came to the museum that afternoon, we talked about art. He knew so much. Seeing this place, I understand why now,” she said, trying to put the puzzle together in her mind. “He asked me what my favorite piece was in the exhibit. He seemed so pleased when I told him it was this one.” She shook her head as understanding dawned. “Not this one precisely, but the one Cass donated to the museum anonymously twenty-some-odd years ago. It was
him
.”

“What are you saying? That this sculpture meant enough to Cass that he had a second one made for himself?”

“No.” She shook her head, incredulous as she inspected the piece more carefully. “Oh, no, Nathan. I think this may be the original. In fact, I’m practically certain it is.”

“This is the real one?” He glanced at her, scowling in question. “Then the one in your exhibit at the museum …”

She nodded, completely confident that Cass had fooled them all. “It’s a fake. The one in Boston is a very good, flawless reproduction. So good, it got past everyone. Even the curators and art historians who handled it before me.”

Nathan peered at the sculpture more closely and blew out a sigh. “Maybe he didn’t know. Why give the museum anything at all, if he was knowingly giving them a fake?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not that important of a piece for any deliberate attempt to bait and switch. Unless—” She considered for a moment, then turned a look on Nathan. “Unless Cass had something he wanted to hide. Maybe something else he took from the Atlantean realm.”

“Something he felt would be safest hidden in plain sight,” Nathan said, finishing her thought. He ran a hand over his head. “Holy hell. You don’t really think …”

Zael’s recounting of the destruction of Atlantis came back to her in a rush.

She recalled his mention of the crystals that had once belonged to their people. The ones stolen by the enemy Ancients and used against the Atlanteans …

And the one rumored to have vanished around the same time Cassianus whisked his infant daughter away to live as something she wasn’t.

To masquerade unknowingly among the general public, protected by the simple fact that no one had any cause to suspect a thing.

“We have to go,” Jordana murmured. “I need to get back to Boston now. We need to know if my father has been hiding any other secrets all these years.”

Nathan nodded. “I’ll call Lazaro now.”

Boston. Two days later
.

Jordana’s pleasured cry tore from her throat as she came, a sound that never failed to make Nathan grin with unrepentant male pride.

Hard as granite inside her tight, wet sheath, he was ready for the third climax certain to follow swiftly on the heels of this explosive second. He groaned as the tremors of her release rippled all along his cock, tempting him to spill. But he held steady for her. He knew what she liked, knew just how to please his insatiable, immortal mate.

His hands fisted where she’d tied them to the headboard, muscles straining but making no effort to break loose of his bonds. He was learning to enjoy letting Jordana be in control.

Enjoy it, because eventually it would be his turn, and he loved dealing pleasure to her as mercilessly as she did to him.

She’d already sucked him off once, so he was content to watch her ride him for now. Jordana rocked atop him, her breasts bouncing prettily, rosebud nipples still peaked and glistening from his kisses. She pinched them as she slid up and down his length with deliberate slowness, ruthlessly teasing him with all the fruits just outside his reach.

“You feel so good, Nathan. I think I may never let you out of this bed.” She leaned down over him then, bracing her forearms on either side of his head while she kissed him.

Her tongue slid past his teeth and fangs, deep into his mouth. Her naked body pressed all along his length made him mad with need. She
squirmed and flexed the tiny muscles of her sex, milking his already engorged shaft in the best kind of agony.

Finally, he couldn’t take another second more.

Ripping free of his silken restraints, he caught her in his arms and tumbled her around beneath him on the bed. He gave her a deep, hard pump of his hips, burying himself to the hilt. He picked up the tempo while increasing the depth of his thrusts, loving the way her body responded so readily to him.

He could feel her orgasm building along with his own. He felt her mounting pleasure in the heavy drum of her heartbeat and in the echoing throb of their bond. The first shudder overtook her, and she gripped his shoulders as a trembling sigh escaped her parted lips.

She moaned and bit her bottom lip. “Oh, you don’t play fair. You’re going to make me come too fast.”

Normally, he’d be in no rush to finish making love with Jordana. But it was past sundown, and while the Order’s patrols were called off for the night, the Boston command center was anticipating the arrival of important visitors any minute now.

“Tomorrow we’ll start earlier,” he promised. “That way, I can make you scream all day.”

She looped her arms around his neck as he pumped into her. “Why? Because it’s my birthday tomorrow?”

“No,” he said. “Because I love you. Your birthday only comes once a year. We both know that’s not nearly enough.”

She laughed, but it was swallowed up quickly by the gasp and rising cry that heralded her release. Nathan kept up his relentless rhythm, pushing her toward the brink, then toppling her over the edge with him as his own climax gripped him in a tight, pulsing fist.

They were still flushed with passion twenty minutes later, after they’d shared a quick shower and gotten dressed and ready to join everyone who had gathered in the war room that evening.

All of the North American–based Order and their mates were there.

Sterling Chase and Tavia. Nathan’s teammates, Rafe, Elijah, and Jax. Carys and Aric.

Nathan’s mother, raven-haired, delicately beautiful Corinne, was there with her big, golden-eyed Gen One mate, Hunter, who headed up the New Orleans command. They had arrived from the D.C. headquarters with the Order’s leader, Lucan Thorne, and his mate, Gabrielle, as
well as Gideon and Savannah, and the New York chief, Tegan, who was there with his beloved Elise.

Nathan’s recently mated friends Kellan and Mira had arrived with her adoptive parents, Nikolai and Renata, the longtime couple only weeks away from welcoming a new son, their first child together.

The rest of the stateside warriors and their mates—Dante and Tess, Rio and Dylan, Kade and Alexandra, and Brock and Jenna—had all assembled with the others for the express purpose of meeting Jordana.

And to see firsthand if her suspicions about her father’s secrets were correct.

The object at the center of that question now sat on the war room conference table.

As soon as Nathan and Jordana had returned to Boston, she’d gone back to the museum to switch the pieces and bring Cass’s remarkable fake to the Order.

More than one pair of eyes drifted to the innocuous-looking sculpted terra cotta as Nathan made the introductions among his family and extended kin of the Order and the extraordinary female who had become his mate.

His mother was visibly moved, tears glistening in her eyes, which were the same bluish green as Nathan’s. She came toward him tentatively, conditioned by her son’s damaged past to be careful when it came to affection and motherly warmth.

To see her caution now shamed Nathan. Truth to tell, it broke his heart a little.

So, when Corinne approached him, he moved first, bringing her petite frame into his arms.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, then instantly wrapped him in a sweet, loving hug. “Nathan, I’m so happy for you.”

She was laughing through her tears as he released her and made her introduction to Jordana. The two women greeted each other warmly, and seeing them embrace was a balm Nathan hadn’t realized he needed.

Nathan reached out to Hunter, clasping the former assassin’s hand in a firm shake. “I understand now,” Nathan said. “I didn’t know it would be possible to feel—”