Aside from the cat-in-the-cream grin she couldn’t seem to suppress, she supposed she looked presentable enough. Although no one in the exhibit hall would detect what she’d been up to, Jordana wasn’t sure how she was going to manage to look anyone in the eye without blushing from head to toe over the knowledge of where she’d been and with whom—or the fact that her shredded thong now lay in the bottom of the ladies’ room waste bin.
She didn’t know how she’d be able to pretend as if she hadn’t just been thoroughly, magnificently f**ked just a few scant yards and one closed door away from hundreds of Boston’s most affluent, important citizens.
Not to mention her father.
She’d intended to seek him out after her welcome speech and introduce him to Nathan. So much for that plan. Her libido had other ideas.
Very good ideas, as it turned out.
She would just have to introduce the two men later in the evening—
Someone let out a scream in the exhibit hall outside. There was a crash of glassware and china, then a loud, discordant note from the orchestra before the music cut off abruptly.
Jordana’s stomach dropped like a stone. “What on earth?”
The restroom door swung open and there was Carys. “Jordana,” she said gently. Her friend’s face was drawn and sober, her tawny brows pinched over anxious eyes. “Nathan wanted me to come find you—”
“What’s wrong?” Now Jordana’s stomach plummeted even further. A cold pit opened up in her gut. “Where is he? What the hell just happened out there?”
Jordana lunged for the exit, but Carys held her back. “He told me to keep you out of the exhibit hall.”
“What? Why would he do that?” Confusion, incredulity, a barrage of disorienting emotions collided inside her as she tried to process what was going on.
She shook it all off and tried to step around her friend.
Tried, and failed.
Carys’s halting grasp was Breed strong, and so was the female’s determination. “I don’t think you should go out there—”
Outrage spiked through Jordana’s haze of confusion. “Let go of me.”
Wrenching out of her friend’s hold, she pushed out to the hallway. People were pouring out of the exhibit hall and adjacent gallery, faces awash in alarm.
A growing crowd gathered at the railing of the promenade that overlooked the museum’s lobby, where the sounds of a struggle—the shouts of a furious man, the rapid drum of boots traveling over polished marble tiles—carried up from below.
Someone was being physically dragged out of the party, fighting and cursing every inch of the way.
Jordana raced to the balcony edge and her heart stopped.
“Father?”
He was fighting madly, fangs bared, head thrashing.
Bucking and twisting, Martin Gates tried desperately to get loose of the larger Breed male who held his arms behind his back like a criminal, ushering him swiftly across the lobby toward the main exit.
“Father!” Jordana cried. She ran to the wide staircase leading to the lobby, panic beating in her breast like a caged bird.
Cool night air gusted in as the glass doors opened to admit a team of warriors from the Order. They swarmed in to assist, garbed in black combat gear, bristling with deadly weapons.
“Unhand me!” her father shouted. “You have no right to treat me this way!”
Distantly, as though caught up in the slow-motion horror of a terrible dream, Jordana could hear herself screaming.
She could feel the hard marble floor beneath her tall heels as she ran down the stairs, yet each step seemed mired in quicksand, agonizingly slow.
She saw the grim faces of the Boston warriors positioned at the door as her father was pushed toward them in unyielding, merciless purpose.
And, with terrible dawning, she finally caught a glimpse of the immense Breed male whose hands were gripped so punishingly on her father. Hands that had only minutes ago been hot and pleasurable on every inch of her na**d body.
“Nathan. Why are you doing this?” she gasped brokenly, stricken with shock. It took him a long moment before he turned his head at her approach into the lobby. “What’s going on here? Where are you taking my father?”
She couldn’t read the flat expression that Nathan held on her. His storm-cloud eyes were emotionless, chillingly so.
Gone was the passionate lover she’d left behind in her office. In his place stood the cold Breed warrior.
The merciless Hunter.
“Carys.” Nathan’s impenetrable gaze was looking past Jordana now. His voice was airless, a low command. “For f**k’s sake, I told you to keep her out of here.”
Gentle hands came down on Jordana’s shoulders. She jerked out of the comforting hold on a strangled cry. Jordana shook her head mutely, blindsided and lost for words under the weight of her confusion.
Nathan gave her one last glance—this time, a note of regret shadowing his gaze. Then he shoved her father forward and the rest of the Order closed in to surround them.
In moments, they were all gone, swallowed up into a waiting black SUV at the curb, then vanished into the night in a squeal of tires on pavement as they sped away.
Most of Gates’s fury and venom had left him by the time Nathan and the Order brought the Darkhaven leader into the command center for questioning. He’d roared and protested for most of the quick drive across town, but once seated in the interrogation room, the Breed male’s broad shoulders sagged in his rumpled tuxedo.
His gaze was no longer simmering with anger but cautious. Cagey and wary, as he eyed Nathan and the other warriors from beneath the dark brown slashes of his brows. “I demand to know what this is about,” he grumbled. “This is an outrage! I am a private citizen. The Order has no right—”