“Haven’t you tormented me enough already?” She paced away from him, suddenly needing some distance in order to keep from leaning into his warmth. “You didn’t have to come here like this and scare me nearly to death.”
“It wasn’t my intent to scare you, Jordana.” A pause behind her, then his voice, soft but demanding. “What do you mean, I’ve tormented you enough?”
Forget it. No way was she about to explain that reckless slip of her tongue. If he didn’t know how he’d affected her since the moment their paths first crossed, then she would gladly take that knowledge to her grave.
“I want you to go,” she said, not looking back at him as she marched barefoot across the living room toward the vestibule where the penthouse’s private elevator was located.
The elevator where less than twenty-four hours ago, Nathan had given her the most intense cl**ax of her life.
God, she should not be thinking about that right now.
“I told you tonight that you had to stay away from me, Nathan.”
“Yes, you did.”
He was right behind her now, so close she could feel his big body throwing off heat and coiled male power. The thin silk of her robe and pajamas was no barrier at all. From head to toe, her skin felt too exposed, seared, every nerve ending tingling and alive with awareness.
Everything female within her was tuned on him implicitly.
“I know what you told me, Jordana. I know it’s a bad idea for me to be here.” He swore under his breath. Firm hands came to rest on her shoulders and he slowly turned her around to face him. “Unfortunately for both of us, when Cassian Gray decided to spend some of the last hours of his life with you, he put you in the middle of my investigation for the Order.”
Jordana stiffened in his grasp but couldn’t quite find the will to pull herself away from the contact. “So you’re just here in an official capacity, is that it?”
“I think we both know better than that,” he answered, deliberate and calm. So maddeningly arrogant. But he drew nearer then, and the heat of him, the leather and dark spice scent of him, nearly made her moan with pleasure.
His eyes smoldered, locked on hers as he closed the distance, leaving scant inches between their bodies. Amber light sparked in the murky blue-green depths of his gaze. His normally hard-to-read face was harsh with grim purpose, his angular cheekbones seeming more pronounced under the subtle blaze of his mesmerizing irises.
As she looked up at him, his pupils began to narrow, the tips of his fangs just visible behind the fullness of his lips. Along his neck, the intricate pattern of dermaglyphs that tracked over his smooth skin and into the ebony hairline at his nape began to churn and surge with rising hues of indigo and gold.
Nathan may have been born and raised a Hunter, but he was Breed as well, and not even his cold origins or discipline seemed enough to mask the desire Jordana saw in his transformation.
His hands still holding her, he moved in closer, crowding her with the delicious heat and scent of him. “Nothing about my being here right now is official in nature. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re currently my best potential source of intel on Cass’s final hours. Why was he at the museum? What did he do there, how long did he stay? What did he say to you? These are all things the Order will need to know. I’m going to need you to tell me everything, Jordana.”
“You already interrogated me once tonight,” she reminded him. “I don’t have anything more to tell you, so you might as well leave.”
His nostrils flared. Eyes flashed with brighter flames. “I didn’t come here to interrogate you.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I came to make sure you were okay.” His expression tightened as his gaze swept over her, fierce yet gentle. He blew out a low curse. “I needed to know that you were safe, and I trust no one else to make sure of that but me. Fuck, Jordana … I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
He didn’t want to see her get hurt?
As tender as his words were—as deeply as she wanted to believe the concern in his voice—Jordana stared up at him, unable to bite back her quiet scoff. “I’m not your responsibility, Nathan. It’s not your job to look after me.”
“No, it isn’t. But by Christ, I’m going to protect you, no matter whose job you think it is to keep you safe. Whether you like it or not.”
She didn’t like it. At least that’s what she tried to tell herself as he held her in his strong hands, in his possessive amber-flecked gaze.
She didn’t want to like that flare of raw hunger she saw in his expression. Didn’t want to ache with want to feel his mouth crush down on hers while he kept her captive in his grasp.
Her shallow breaths mingled with the hot gusts that rolled out of him, her heartbeat pounding furiously, frantically, while his thrummed as hard and steady as a drum.
He was saying all the right things, acting as though she mattered to him. Drinking her in just now as though she belonged to him.
But she didn’t belong to him.
She couldn’t belong to him, not if she wanted to keep her heart intact. Their worlds were too different. She saw that last night.
And no matter how much she wanted to believe him now, to trust what he was telling her with his words and hands and eyes, Jordana clung to the tiny shred of sanity that warned her she was looking at the very thing that could hurt her more than any other potential threat of danger.
She dropped her head and let a sigh slip out of her, chagrined to hear it manifest as a pained moan. “You don’t have the right to do this to me, Nathan. You can’t come into my home uninvited and say things to me like that. You don’t have the right to appoint yourself my protector. You’re not my anything.”