“This is the real one?” He glanced at her, scowling in question. “Then the one in your exhibit at the museum …”
She nodded, completely confident that Cass had fooled them all. “It’s a fake. The one in Boston is a very good, flawless reproduction. So good, it got past everyone. Even the curators and art historians who handled it before me.”
Nathan peered at the sculpture more closely and blew out a sigh. “Maybe he didn’t know. Why give the museum anything at all, if he was knowingly giving them a fake?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not that important of a piece for any deliberate attempt to bait and switch. Unless—” She considered for a moment, then turned a look on Nathan. “Unless Cass had something he wanted to hide. Maybe something else he took from the Atlantean realm.”
“Something he felt would be safest hidden in plain sight,” Nathan said, finishing her thought. He ran a hand over his head. “Holy hell. You don’t really think …”
Zael’s recounting of the destruction of Atlantis came back to her in a rush.
She recalled his mention of the crystals that had once belonged to their people. The ones stolen by the enemy Ancients and used against the Atlanteans …
And the one rumored to have vanished around the same time Cassianus whisked his infant daughter away to live as something she wasn’t.
To masquerade unknowingly among the general public, protected by the simple fact that no one had any cause to suspect a thing.
“We have to go,” Jordana murmured. “I need to get back to Boston now. We need to know if my father has been hiding any other secrets all these years.”
Nathan nodded. “I’ll call Lazaro now.”
Epilogue
Boston. Two days later.
Jordana’s pleasured cry tore from her throat as she came, a sound that never failed to make Nathan grin with unrepentant male pride.
Hard as granite inside her tight, wet sheath, he was ready for the third climax certain to follow swiftly on the heels of this explosive second. He groaned as the tremors of her release rippled all along his cock, tempting him to spill. But he held steady for her. He knew what she liked, knew just how to please his insatiable, immortal mate.>Jordana touched his face, his harsh, handsome face. She stroked his cheek and hard jaw, then gently traced her fingertips down his neck, where she’d tried to kiss away the memory of his punishing Hunter’s collar.
He didn’t stop her from touching him now. He didn’t take his eyes off her, didn’t flinch as she skimmed a tender caress over his strong shoulders and the bulky muscles of his arms.
Only when she reached lower, to where his thick cock jutted between them, velvety, warm, as firm as steel, did he close his eyes and emit a low hiss between his teeth and fangs. He groaned as she stroked his rigid shaft.
He growled as she squeezed him, then uttered her name like a curse and a prayer as she opened her legs wider to him and guided him through the slick cleft of her body.
Then he devoured her mouth in a consuming kiss, nothing gentle in him now. Only raw desire, fueled by the intensity of their bond.
Wet heat boiled in her core. She was ready, so ready.
“Yes,” she hissed against his mouth. “Take me.”
He sank in on a ragged snarl, plunging deep and hard and full. His hips bucked, thrusted, then kicked into a ravenous urgency that made her dizzy. He buried his head against her shoulder, driving into her with the sweetest frenzy, the hottest passion she would ever know. “Ah, Christ. Jordana, you feel too good. I can’t be gentle. Jesus, fuck … I can’t stop.”
“I don’t want gentle. Not right now.” She wrapped her legs around him and dug her heels into his pumping ass as he rode her toward the crest of a shattering climax. “Oh, God, Nathan. Yes. Give me everything.”
And so he did.
He gave her the storm and the cliff and the leap into a wild tempest. He gave her all of that and more, taking her senses to a height she never dreamed existed.
All she could do was hold on tight as he crashed into her, their gazes locked as passionately as their bodies.
It felt so right, the need they shared, the bond that joined them now, forever.
He shouted as he came, and Jordana followed him there at the same time, hurtling into a brilliant wave of release. She felt his pleasure, and knew he felt hers too. She shattered beneath the pleasing weight of him, all her nerve endings crackling with sensation, with pure pleasure, as her body slowly spiraled back down to earth.
Panting, shivering with a thousand little aftershocks, she exhaled a shaky laugh. “That was, ah … wow.” She sifted her fingers through his short dark hair, his forehead resting on her shoulder. “Do you think it’s always going to be like this for us?”
He grunted, his breath hot against the side of her neck. “No, I don’t.”