Jordana moaned at the torment, growing mad with want. Desire kindled and burned, stronger than ever, and with it seemed to form another awakening within her, this one more elusive but no less powerful.
Something more than physical need, deeper than simple craving.
Something queer and unfamiliar to her, an unfolding awareness, reaching out from the furthest corners of her consciousness for what seemed the first time.
And all of that heat, all of that power, all of that strange, rousing energy arced toward Nathan as surely as a divining rod trained on a font of clear, quenching water.
She felt it in her blood and bones, in her senses … in her very soul.
“Nathan, please …” She lifted her shoulders up off the bed, her palms hot and itching to feel him. To touch his skin and trace the tantalizing lines of his extraordinary glyphs.
But not until after she felt him inside her, filling her with more than just his wicked fingers.
“Make this ache stop,” she demanded, her voice husky and rough with desire. She reached for him, prepared to take hold and drag him down atop her if he didn’t ease her yearning soon.
But Nathan moved faster than she could even dream to. For the second time tonight, he dodged her touch and captured her hands in his strong grasp.
This time, however, he didn’t seem content to merely hold her away from him.
Straddling her now, he rose up onto his knees above her, his fingers wrapped around her wrists like iron clamps. His eyes flared with amber sparks, something hotter than desire or even anger. Something darker, menacing in its intensity.
His face was so serious, his pupils nearly swallowed up by the light radiating from his Breed irises. His sensual mouth was unsmiling, merciless, his fangs gleaming and deadly sharp behind his parted lips.
And yet despite his ferocity and unforgiving hold, he carefully brought her hands toward him, pressing a tender kiss into the center of one tingling, hot palm, then the other.
His thumb stroked the underside of her left wrist where her Breedmate mark resided, a growl curling up from the back of his throat.
Jordana didn’t notice he held the tie from her robe until he began to loop the lavender silk sash around both of her wrists, binding her hands together.
He said nothing.
No excuse or explanation.
No request for permission.
She’d come to accept his dominating nature in most everything he did, but now it took on new meaning. Nathan wanted total control when it came to sex.
He needed it, assumed it.
Demanded it.
Jordana could have broken out of her bonds if she tried. But she didn’t wish to try. There was something wildly erotic about the satiny abrasion of the tie against her skin.
Even more arousing than that was the idea of surrendering herself so completely to Nathan.
A shiver raced through her, part in trepidation, part in breathless anticipation. She was a strong woman with a strong head. She’d always chafed against even the lightest reins someone attempted to place on her. But with Nathan it was different. She was different. After tonight, she knew she would never be the same again.
If she was being honest with herself, she hadn’t been the same since the moment she took that first impulsive kiss from him. Nor did she want to go back to the life she had before.
And for now, she was right where she wanted to be—safe with the most dangerous man she would ever know.
Jordana let him ease her back down onto the mattress. Allowed him to push her arms up, so that her bound hands rested above her head as he moved off her.
She submitted to him willingly, unabashedly, when he parted her trembling thighs and gazed upon her, naked, open to him, for the longest moment of her life.
His eyes roamed unhurried over every bare inch of her, a slow lick of flame that left her quivering and overheated, restless for him to quench the burn. He tangled his hand in her loose hair, lifting the pale strands, watching it sift through his fingers and settle back down around her shoulders and naked breasts.
Eyes blazing, fangs glinting as sharp and white as diamonds, he lowered his face to the front of her throat, sending her pulse into a wild hammer.