She couldn’t belong to him, not if she wanted to keep her heart intact. Their worlds were too different. She saw that last night.
And no matter how much she wanted to believe him now, to trust what he was telling her with his words and hands and eyes, Jordana clung to the tiny shred of sanity that warned her she was looking at the very thing that could hurt her more than any other potential threat of danger.
She dropped her head and let a sigh slip out of her, chagrined to hear it manifest as a pained moan. “You don’t have the right to do this to me, Nathan. You can’t come into my home uninvited and say things to me like that. You don’t have the right to appoint yourself my protector. You’re not my anything.”
“That’s true,” he answered, but instead of drawing back from her, he leaned closer.
To her combined agony and delight, he removed one hand from its loose grasp on her shoulder only to bring the backs of his fingers toward her face in a caress so light it robbed her of both breath and good sense.
His touch drifted lower, along the side of her neck, then down the length of her silk-covered arm. “It’s all true, Jordana. I don’t have any right when it comes to you.”
And yet her veins were throbbing as she stared at him, warmth rising up her throat and into her cheeks, igniting in her core. The heavy beat in her veins was nothing compared to the deep pulse centered between her thighs. Her sex ached with a longing that spread through her limbs, making her legs feel unsteady and boneless.
He leaned closer, his mouth very near to her ear. “Tell me how I tormented you.”
She shook her head, all the response she could muster as his free hand moved around to the silk sash that loosely tied the front of her robe.
“Tell me, Jordana.” A command, not a request, even though his deep voice was pure velvet. “I tormented you. That’s what you said. Now tell me what you meant.”
“No.” The refusal rushed out of her, airless and desperate.
She didn’t want to explain how he’d hurt her last night after giving her so much pleasure. It was too humiliating to admit how easily she’d been wounded. Or that she was too inexperienced to participate in the kind of wicked pursuits he seemed to enjoy.
She didn’t want to be that sheltered, untried girl. Not with him.
And she supposed that made her an even bigger fool.
With one deft hand, he worked the knot of her robe’s sash loose, then coiled the twin lengths of silk around his fist, forcing her to step toward him now, until there was no space left between them at all. Her breasts pressed against the hard muscles of his chest, and lower still, his thick thigh parted her legs to nestle firmly against the molten core of her body.
“How have I tormented you, beautiful Jordana?” When she tried to glance away, he caught her chin in his other hand and guided her gaze back up to him. “You won’t say it?”
When she gave him a wordless, weak shake of her head, his gaze flashed with amber fire and a dangerous smile curved his grim mouth. “Then I’ll have to guess. Was it torment when I kissed you like this?” He bent toward her and took her mouth, swallowing her breathless gasp in a kiss so deep and fevered, she nearly collapsed in a quivery puddle on the floor. His tongue invaded, pushing past her teeth in a profane rhythm that made her hips respond in time with his movements, answering some primal call she had no will to resist.
It wasn’t torment. Not until he drew back, denying her any more than a heart-stopping taste of what she craved.
“Was it torment when I touched you?” he asked, pulling her to his body by the hand wrapped tight in her sash, while his other hand slipped inside her robe and beneath the loose pajama tank to cup her bare breast in the heat of his palm.
He caressed her breast, tweaking the hard nipple with his thumb, pinching it with a pleasure-pain that made her sink her teeth into her lower lip as her body shuddered with excitement.
God, she could hardly take it, the dark need he stoked in her. She was already half mad with desire and mounting pleasure when he abandoned her breast to begin a descending trail along her ribs and abdomen.
He met with little resistance from the drawstring waistband of her silk shorts. His fingers delved between her thighs, into the slick juices of her sex.
“Was the feel of my hands on you last night—inside you—a torment, sweet, wet Jordana?” He stroked the swollen pearl of her clitoris, making her moan in pure abandon. “Tell me you didn’t enjoy what we shared last night. Tell me it was torment. Torment enough to send you running into the arms of another male, is that right?”
“No,” she gasped, too lost in sensation to deny him now. “No, that’s not right. You were the one … you ran to someone else. Not me.”
He reared back as abruptly as if she’d slapped him. His sharp amber-drenched eyes narrowed on her, suspicious and questioning. “I ran?”
“Back to La Notte,” she replied, still panting, her body still throbbing with need.
She didn’t want the pleasure to end, but it was too late to call it back. Nathan was staring at her in a dark, dangerous silence, his jaw clenched.
He released her, let the silk ties of her robe fall away from his grasp. In the sudden quiet, Jordana felt a coldness sweep over her, replacing the heat she’d been enjoying so thoroughly a moment ago.
“I know you go to the BDSM dens at the club,” she said lamely. “I know what you do there.”
He didn’t try to deny it, which was a relief in some small way. “Rune told you?”