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 cl**ax 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.
His hands fisted where she’d tied them to the headboard, muscles straining but making no effort to break loose of his bonds. He was learning to enjoy letting Jordana be in control.
Enjoy it, because eventually it would be his turn, and he loved dealing pleasure to her as mercilessly as she did to him.
She’d already sucked him off once, so he was content to watch her ride him for now. Jordana rocked atop him, her br**sts bouncing prettily, rosebud ni**les still peaked and glistening from his kisses. She pinched them as she slid up and down his length with deliberate slowness, ruthlessly teasing him with all the fruits just outside his reach.
“You feel so good, Nathan. I think I may never let you out of this bed.” She leaned down over him then, bracing her forearms on either side of his head while she kissed him.
Her tongue slid past his teeth and fangs, deep into his mouth. Her na**d body pressed all along his length made him mad with need. She squirmed and flexed the tiny muscles of her sex, milking his already engorged shaft in the best kind of agony.
Finally, he couldn’t take another second more.
Ripping free of his silken restraints, he caught her in his arms and tumbled her around beneath him on the bed. He gave her a deep, hard pump of his hips, burying himself to the hilt. He picked up the tempo while increasing the depth of his thrusts, loving the way her body responded so readily to him.
He could feel her orgasm building along with his own. He felt her mounting pleasure in the heavy drum of her heartbeat and in the echoing throb of their bond. The first shudder overtook her, and she gripped his shoulders as a trembling sigh escaped her parted lips.
She moaned and bit her bottom lip. “Oh, you don’t play fair. You’re going to make me come too fast.”
Normally, he’d be in no rush to finish making love with Jordana. But it was past sundown, and while the Order’s patrols were called off for the night, the Boston command center was anticipating the arrival of important visitors any minute now.
“Tomorrow we’ll start earlier,” he promised. “That way, I can make you scream all day.”
She looped her arms around his neck as he pumped into her. “Why? Because it’s my birthday tomorrow?”
“No,” he said. “Because I love you. Your birthday only comes once a year. We both know that’s not nearly enough.”
She laughed, but it was swallowed up quickly by the gasp and rising cry that heralded her release. Nathan kept up his relentless rhythm, pushing her toward the brink, then toppling her over the edge with him as his own cl**ax gripped him in a tight, pulsing fist.
They were still flushed with passion twenty minutes later, after they’d shared a quick shower and gotten dressed and ready to join everyone who had gathered in the war room that evening.
All of the North American–based Order and their mates were there.
Sterling Chase and Tavia. Nathan’s teammates, Rafe, Elijah, and Jax. Carys and Aric.
Nathan’s mother, raven-haired, delicately beautiful Corinne, was there with her big, golden-eyed Gen One mate, Hunter, who headed up the New Orleans command. They had arrived from the D.C. headquarters with the Order’s leader, Lucan Thorne, and his mate, Gabrielle, as well as Gideon and Savannah, and the New York chief, Tegan, who was there with his beloved Elise.
Nathan’s recently mated friends Kellan and Mira had arrived with her adoptive parents, Nikolai and Renata, the longtime couple only weeks away from welcoming a new son, their first child together.
The rest of the stateside warriors and their mates—Dante and Tess, Rio and Dylan, Kade and Alexandra, and Brock and Jenna—had all assembled with the others for the express purpose of meeting Jordana.
And to see firsthand if her suspicions about her father’s secrets were correct.
The object at the center of that question now sat on the war room conference table.
As soon as Nathan and Jordana had returned to Boston, she’d gone back to the museum to switch the pieces and bring Cass’s remarkable fake to the Order.
More than one pair of eyes drifted to the innocuous-looking sculpted terra cotta as Nathan made the introductions among his family and extended kin of the Order and the extraordinary female who had become his mate.
His mother was visibly moved, tears glistening in her eyes, which were the same bluish green as Nathan’s. She came toward him tentatively, conditioned by her son’s damaged past to be careful when it came to affection and motherly warmth.