Nathan didn’t have to demand she bare her soul to him; his turbulent blue-green eyes and unexpectedly gentle touch compelled her with equal measure. “My father’s had a very strict path laid out for me to follow from the time I was a child. He wants things for me. Expects me to act a certain way, to achieve certain goals he’s set for me. He does it out of love, I know that. He only wants what’s best for me.”
“I’m sure he does.” Nathan closed the scant distance between them, a towering wall of muscle and dark, simmering intent. “What do you want?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted quietly. “But sometimes I’m afraid I’ll never be the daughter he wants me to be. I’m terrified I’m going to wake up one day and realize I no longer want the things he thinks are best for me.” She let out a soft sigh, still holding Nathan’s stormy gaze. “I’m afraid I already have.”
He growled a curse, something low and dark, under his breath. His features sharpened, making his face more fierce, as profane as it was handsome. Jordana lifted her hand, wanting to brave a touch of his angled cheekbone and rigid jaw.
Nathan caught her in midmotion, wrapping his fingers around her wrist before she could make contact. His grip was warm but firm. Wordlessly, he raised her hand up and away from him, pinning it over her head against the back wall of the elevator car.
Jordana didn’t know what to say—she didn’t know what to think—as he then brought her other hand up as well and held it there. She tested his hold and found it unyielding. As unbreakable as iron.
Staring up at him, she swallowed, all too aware of how her current position left her totally at Nathan’s mercy. With her hands held above her head, her spine pressed against the solid wall of the elevator car, the only place she could possibly move was toward the crowding heat of his body. Her breasts strained against the buttons of her conservative silk blouse. Her legs were spread slightly to keep her balance, and cool air tickled up the bare lengths of her calves and thighs, making her even more aware of the moist heat pulsing at her core.
Every feminine particle of her being thrummed in response to Nathan’s presence, anticipation pounding in her blood.
He switched his grasp so that one hand shackled her wrists, leaving his other free to roam. He stroked the backs of his knuckles along the slope of her cheek, then down along the swells of her breasts, hardly touching her yet making her burn with sensation. “Are you afraid of me now, Jordana?”
“No.” Her reply was little more than a gasp, breathless not from worry but from the startling sense of her own vulnerability.
Nathan held her completely under his control. She couldn’t have broken loose of his hold if her life depended on it. Nor did she want to.
He owned her in that moment, and damn him if he didn’t know it too.
He reveled in it; she could see the dark pleasure in his eyes as he drank her in from head to foot in the tight confines of the lift. Amber sparks pierced the thundercloud color of his irises. His broad mouth was grim yet sensual, barely concealing the growing length of his fangs.
He bent toward her and took her mouth in a scorching, commanding kiss.
Jordana had no experience with such hard passion, such hungered demand. She could only surrender to it, moaning as his lips covered hers, claimed her. His tongue pushed at the seam of her mouth, and she opened to him, submitting to this further claiming with a shudder of raw pleasure that rippled through her, then pooled molten hot between her thighs.
She’d never been kissed like this. She was lost to it, her limbs languid and boneless, her veins lit up and electric.
Where Elliott’s kisses were earnest, even passionately inflamed at times, Nathan’s mouth was wild and untamed on hers. Possessive and fevered. His kiss branded her in a way that left all other comparisons in ashes.
When he abruptly broke contact and reared back from her, Jordana couldn’t contain her cry of dismay. Nathan stared at her, his dark eyes glittering with bright amber light that swamped the thin vertical slits of his transformed pupils.
She wanted more. Jordana tried to reach for him, only to remember that he still held her hands in the manacle of his iron grasp. She frowned, struggling a bit more determinedly against his hold.
The corner of his mouth quirked with dark amusement, but his eyes were serious, unflinching, as he gave her an admonishing shake of his head. “Tonight we play on my terms.”
Jordana stood there, panting and confused. So alive with desire, she thought she might explode if he didn’t give her more.
“Everything all right, Miss Gates?” Seamus’s voice came over the emergency speaker inside the elevator car, the intrusion unwelcome but no surprise. “Looks like the lift’s not moving for some reason …”
She knew she should answer him. If she had any hope of saving her dignity—of lessening the man’s suspicions of what might be going on inside the elevator—she needed to assure Seamus that they had halted the lift by accident.
But to do so meant she’d have to push the intercom button on the panel on the other side of the car. And that meant she’d have to insist that Nathan let her go.
He stared at her in waiting silence, seeming to understand her inner struggle, even if his smoldering gaze said he had no intention of offering her any mercy.
“Miss Gates?”
Jordana couldn’t speak. She couldn’t break the hot connection of Nathan’s eyes as he leaned into her in a full-body press that ignited her every nerve ending and made her acutely aware of just how masculine and powerful this Breed warrior truly was.
He cupped her nape with his free hand, stroking the pulse point of her carotid with the pad of his thumb. So tender, even as he restrained her, even as he tempted her to shred her reputation and her virtue in the same reckless moment.
And yet Jordana swayed into his touch, as helpless to resist him as a sapling bending for the wind.
He splayed his fingers into her unbound hair, then gathered the mass of platinum waves into his hand, winding her tresses into a coil around his fist. He slowly pulled her head back, baring her throat to his hot gaze. Jordana gasped, shivering with a heady combination of fear and arousal.