“Still want to make good on that promise?” She reached up and touched his face, just the briefest contact.
Old, battered instincts clenched inside him, but newer ones—the ones she’d awakened in him—responded to her fleeting caress with heat and hunger for more.
Mischief danced in Jordana’s ice blue eyes. Her smile broke slowly, seductively. “Come with me.”
She breezed past him, the sight of her bare back in that red dress, her hips swaying with each fluid stride of her long legs, leaving him no choice but to obey. Nathan stalked after her, out of the exhibit hall and into a gallery outside. She kept going, leading him farther away from the buzz and activity of the party.
He was enjoying the view so much he hardly realized what she was doing until she disappeared into the gloom of a nearby office. When he reached the open doorway, she yanked him inside by the lapel of his suit coat and shut the door behind him.
Her mouth came down hard on his as she pushed him backward against a desk.
No warning.
No waiting for him to make the first move.
Not the slightest trace of uncertainty as she pressed her body against his and pushed his lips apart with her demanding little tongue.
And fuck if that didn’t shoot molten fire into his veins.
Outside the closed door of the office, the drone of conversation and soft music carried from the exhibit hall several yards away. Low light from the gallery filtered through the shuttered blinds of the window behind the desk. A bark of laughter sounded from just outside as a small group of party guests walked the promenade that led to the museum lobby.
He and Jordana were secluded enough in the private office, but there was no escaping the knowledge that the risk of discovery lurked just beyond its four walls.
She didn’t seem to mind.
Hell, she seemed to revel in the risk. As she kissed him, he felt her hands at the collar of his shirt. His mind was slipping, getting pulled under the more powerful force of his need.
He only vaguely registered that his shirt was open, his chest bared to her gaze, to her touch. When she dragged her mouth down along his throat to the glyphs that rode his pectorals, he wrenched up off the desk on a lust-filled groan.
“Shh,” she admonished him with a playful smile and a daring glimmer in her eyes. Her pretty pink tongue followed the arc and flourish of his dermaglyphs, making them flush with darkening colors. “I’ve been wanting to do this all night.”
Ah, Christ. Nathan watched, entranced, hard as granite, as she licked and suckled him, each wet kiss igniting a dangerous fire in his veins. She drew his nipple into her mouth, grazing the tight peak with her teeth.
Her touch shouldn’t have been so welcome, so easily accepted. It didn’t fit into the way he lived his life. It went against everything he’d been taught. Defied the years of training and hard lessons that still haunted his dreams, all too often left him soaked in cold sweat, stomach pitching with nausea for what he’d witnessed. What he’d been made to do.
But those nightmares and horrors had no hold on him when Jordana’s lips were warm and questing on his skin. All he knew was the ecstasy of her mouth and his yearning for everything she would give him.
Nathan growled with pleasure, his cock straining with unbearable demand. He brought his arms around her and urged her up to his mouth once more, leaning back onto the desk as he took her in a scorchingly deep kiss.
Her skin was hot beneath his palms, her bare back like velvet under his fingertips. She moved against him as their tongues tangled together, their bodies creating a friction that drove him swiftly to the edge of his need.
He moaned as his cock surged against the warmth of her abdomen. Greedy for more, he smoothed his hands down over her dress and onto her ass. Gripping her firmly, he ground deeper into her heat, angling his pelvis to meet every sinuous movement of her body.
It was torture, plain and simple. All it did was ratchet him tighter, harder.
Made the tether of his self-control stretch taut, near to breaking.
If they didn’t stop soon, nothing was going to keep him from taking her right there on the desk. Shit, he was already past that point of no return. And if anyone from the party had the bad judgment to come looking for Jordana—if anyone walked in on them now or in the next few minutes—he wasn’t sure he’d be able to reel in his urge to kill.
“Christ, you feel good, Jordana,” he muttered through gritted teeth and fangs. “Just the sight of you makes me wild to fuck you. To feel you on me like this, knowing how sweet your body is going to be when I get you naked and drive into you—” He sucked in a sharp breath and moved against her in a more fervent rhythm, astonished that their combined heat didn’t incinerate their clothing. He stared into her eyes, the dim light from of his transformed irises gilding her in an ember glow. “If you think you can tease me like this then walk away, you’ve got a hard lesson coming.”
A snarl rumbled out of him as she drew out of his embrace to stand between his legs. “Who says I’m teasing?”
Her mouth was kiss-bruised and glossy, her eyelids heavy over the now dusky blue of her eyes. Without further words, she reached for his hand and urged him to his feet. He stood, breath caught in his lungs as she began to unfasten his belt. It jangled softly as it fell loose, the only other sound besides her soft, shallow panting as she undid the button on his pants, then let down the zipper.
Her hand slipped inside, cupped his rigid shaft. Nathan hissed, steeling himself to the bliss of her gentle touch.
He’d been raised not to require touch or comfort, feeling or emotion … least of all pleasure. He had been brutally conditioned to reject all these things, and so he had.