Crave The Night (Midnight Breed 12)

“That’s a lot of anonymity and subterfuge for a nightclub,” Rafe remarked. “Cage fighting is illegal, but it sure as hell doesn’t warrant that kind of paranoia.”

Nathan nodded. “That’s what Gideon said when I told him what I’d found. He’s running some hacks now, said he’ll report back as soon as he turns up any leads.”

As the Order’s longtime chief intelligence officer and resident genius, Gideon in D.C. hadn’t run field missions in many years, but the vampire was an absolute killer behind the keyboard.

“Gonna take a hell of a lot more than lawyers and corporate shields to keep Gideon from exposing Cass and whoever he’s hiding behind,” Rafe said. “There’s never been a database in existence that he couldn’t crack.”

Nathan agreed, but time spent waiting was time wasted. While Headquarters was hacking into Cass’s life from D.C., Nathan and his team needed to keep up the pressure locally.

“Tell Eli and Jax we’ll meet in fifteen for a review of tonight’s patrol. We may not know everything about Cassian Gray yet, but there’s one obvious constant in his life and that’s La Notte.” Nathan headed for the exit. “We need to start disrupting his business, rattle the hive, and see what it stirs up. And we start tonight.”

Jordana walked the exhibit floor at the museum, taking a slow measure of the entire collection and jotting notes on her tablet. Last night’s patron preview had been a means of thanking the various donors and community supporters, but it had also been a dry run for the exhibit in preparation for its public opening in just a few nights.

She perused the pieces and their placement, making minute adjustments to temperature and humidity settings, double-checking text cards and lighting levels for each of the displays.

Anything to keep her mind from straying to her unsettling encounter with Nathan earlier that morning.

He’d been crude and confrontational. Impolite and far too bold. He was terrifying, not because of his profession or his past but because of the way he seemed to see straight into her soul and lay her bare.

He was dangerous for so many reasons.

And yet she couldn’t stop thinking about the things he said to her. She couldn’t stop thinking about the way he made her feel. Her pulse quickened at the memory of being alone with Nathan in close quarters.

He hadn’t even touched her, yet her body had thrummed with the need to feel his hands on her.

Have you ever kissed Elliott Bentley-Squire the way you kissed me?

Nathan’s words came back to her in a heated rush, making the ache return again now. She tried to will it away, but it was already taking root deep inside her. In truth, it had never fully ebbed in all the hours since she’d seen Nathan at the mansion.

Has he ever made your cheeks flame just by looking at you, or made your pulse beat like a hammer in your veins because of the things you wish he’d do to you?

Jordana idly brought her free hand up to her lips, finding it all too easy to imagine it was Nathan’s mouth brushing against hers, not the tips of her suddenly trembling fingers. He had been right about that too—she didn’t regret kissing him. Not even after the things he said to her today.

Not even after the mortifying things she’d admitted to him about her relationship with Elliott and her lack of experience in general.

God, why had she told him that? What had possessed her to admit so much to him with so little provocation? Nathan knew more about her now than anyone besides her best friend. What more might she be willing to tell him—or willing to do—if she ever saw him again?

I’m the last kind of man you should want in your life … or in your bed.>Instead, he’d spent the bulk of the day in the command center’s technology lab, digging into public records—and some not so public—in his search for intel on Cassian Gray.

All he’d discovered was that the man was proving to be as elusive on paper as he was in person. For all the lack of information, it was as if Cass had been taking careful steps to cover his tracks from the moment he first surfaced in Boston twenty-some years ago.

As if he’d been planning all along for the day he’d need to vanish.

Nathan downloaded what little he had on Cass to a mission intel file, then shut down the computer and left the lab. With sundown just a few hours away, he had time to get in some solo training and prep his weapons for the night’s patrol with his team.

His body was still tense, aggression still riding him, and he knew damn well it had less to do with frustration over a stymied mission than it did a certain platinum-haired, Darkhaven beauty he had no right to desire.

An unschooled virgin besides.

Fuck.

Never mind the fact that she was Carys Chase’s best friend—as of today, her roommate besides—and the darling of Boston’s high society, Breed and human alike. Never mind that she had all but promised herself to another male, out of obligation or naivete, it didn’t matter.

No, Jordana Gates was off limits for many reasons, but most of all this: Because she was pure. She was innocent.

He wouldn’t be the one to take that from her.

He couldn’t take that from anyone, not the way his hungers ran.