She needed nothing more than this.
This moment.
This man.
Jordana closed her eyes as Nathan’s cleansing touch eventually turned sensual and his mouth found hers through the steam of their surroundings.
Heaven help her, she was on unsteady ground here.
She was stepping off that ledge tonight, falling too fast.
Falling too hard for a lethal, untouchable Breed male who’d promised her nothing.
She knew this, the same way she understood that if reality waited for her at the bottom of this mad leap, it was certain to break her.
17
AS THE NIGHT CREPT PERILOUSLY CLOSE TO DAWN, NATHAN REALIZED he had never been further outside of his element.
When he’d shown up at Jordana’s apartment, he hadn’t intended a full-scale seduction.
Nor had he intended to use their time in the shower together as a prelude to still another round of mind-blowing, incredible sex.
He sure as hell had not intended to find himself seated in a chair in her bedroom sometime afterward, watching over her as she slept curled up like a kitten in a nest of fluffy sheets and coverlets.
When he’d crawled out of her bed to get dressed so he could head back to the command center, he told himself it was only reasonable for him to stay awhile to ensure she was safe for the night. Once she was comfortable and resting, he would go back where he belonged.
That was hours ago now.
Night was ending soon, and if his own free will wouldn’t drag him away from her, the coming daybreak would.
Damn, how had he allowed himself to get so entangled with this woman?
When had she slipped through his defenses to become something more than a sexual itch he needed to scratch?
How did he imagine this whole thing would continue—worse, how would it ultimately end—when he had nothing to offer a woman like Jordana?
It hadn’t been empty flattery when he told her she deserved something more, someone better, than him. It had been a warning. One of many he’d issued that didn’t seem to sway her. His dark look or growled threat had always been enough to cower man and Breed alike, but not her.
Jordana Gates was nowhere near as delicate or conservative as she looked. Nothing like the pampered, fawned-upon Darkhaven female he’d often guessed her to be. Right now, he wished like hell she was.
Instead, he’d found her to be strong, unshakable. There was a roaring warrior inside her, buried deep but clawing to get out. She was unlike any woman he’d ever encountered, with her sharp, curious mind and sensitive artist’s soul. It didn’t help that she also had the face of an angel and the all-too-tempting body of a goddess.
He’d never known a need as consuming as the one he felt for this woman. And if it had been confined to purely physical hunger, that would be bad enough.
No, what Jordana stirred in him was something deeper.
She intrigued him. She confronted him, challenged him.
She gentled him, when his entire existence had been built on violence and cold detachment.
Jordana was, in a word, extraordinary.
Nathan’s veins thrummed in agreement, his blood still running hot for her.
He had no right to be the one she gave herself to for the first time. But looking at her sleep so trustingly under his watch, recalling the fevered way she’d responded to him—the open, accepting way she’d submitted to his every desire and demand—made something possessive and primal churn deep inside him.
For a moment, he let himself imagine what it might be like to be one of the golden, privileged males of her world, not the rough enforcer he was now. Not the assassin whose hands had been stained with death from the time he was a seven-year-old child.