He had never looked back in shame on where he’d come from or on what his past had done to him. But as he considered Jordana and the way he still craved more of her, a cold hollow opened in his chest. Regret for the choices that had been taken from him.
Anger and, dammit, a sudden, fierce longing for the future that had been denied him even before he’d been conceived in Dragos’s lab.
Useless feelings.
Weakness he’d been disciplined never to let manifest.
He’d allowed Jordana more than most tonight. Intimacy he’d never granted anyone. Insight into his bleak beginnings and how they shaped him.
He’d let her past a threshold all her own tonight, but she hadn’t seen everything.
He could never permit that.
There were things no one knew, not even the few of his closest friends and squad members in the Order. Not his tenderhearted Breedmate mother, Corinne, or her devoted warrior mate, a formidable Gen One Breed male who’d been a product of the Hunter program decades before Nathan had been born into it.
Nathan had endured things, done things, that were better left inside him.
Locked away.
Memories best held to the dark, which he managed with the same iron control he employed in every other aspect of his life.
Just thinking on the days and nights—the decade and more—of his enslavement under Dragos’s command and his torture at the hands of the Minion assigned as his keeper made Nathan’s skin go taut.
He could still hear the crack of the lash, the jangle of chains … the sharp, olfactory punch of his own spilled blood and viscera.
Even worse was the recollection of the suffering inflicted on others.
Because of him and, ultimately, by him.
Absently, his fingers grazed his throat in search of the ultraviolet collar that had been every Hunter’s shackle from the time he was old enough to crawl. It wasn’t there, of course. It had been gone since the night his mother and her mate tracked him down and rescued him at the age of thirteen.
Christ.
Twenty years away from his past, yet it still surprised him to reach up and find his neck bare.
And this was what he’d brought into Jordana’s bed, into her life.
If he were a better man, he’d wake her with an apology and hope she could eventually forgive him for taking the gift of her innocence and her trust. No, if he were a better man, he’d have never let her kiss him those few nights ago. A better man would have never let himself crave her the way he did.
Too late.
True to his born-and-bred nature, he’d lived up to the warning he gave Jordana tonight: He pursued. He conquered. And if he were a better man, he’d carry out the rest of his warning and walk out now, never looking back.
Nathan stood up on a low curse, bewildered that his discipline had failed him so badly when it came to Jordana.
The sight of her drew him toward the bed when he tried to command his feet to leave the room. The scent of her pulled a ragged moan out of him, the intoxicating combination of warm skin and soft, sensual woman proving almost too much for him to bear.
Jordana’s bloodscent lingered faintly on the air as well. Nathan’s Breed senses seized upon the elusive fragrance, which called to both the man in him and the beast.>How adept he was at erasing all traces of emotion from his face, even from his eyes. What had he endured that he could mask his feelings with such little effort?
He held her inquisitive stare, almost as if he challenged her to see through him. “I told you what to expect before we began any of this.” Mouth flat, grim, he poured the crushed length of silk out of his fist and onto her nude torso. “This is the way it is with me. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Cold words. No doubt meant to freeze her into silence as he pivoted away from her on the bed. His defensive walls had gone up, blocking her out. That is, if he’d ever been inclined to let her inside in the first place.
His bare feet hit the floor and when he went to stand up, Jordana tossed the sash aside and drew up onto her knees behind him. “That’s not what I meant. The bondage … it doesn’t matter to me. Your need to be the one in control doesn’t matter.”
She took a fortifying breath and crept closer to him, very much aware that of the two of them, only he seemed frozen and silent now. Jordana edged up behind his broad back, with its masterpiece of dermaglyphs adorning the flawless canvas of his skin.
She lifted her hand, but drew it back, unwilling to dare that much.