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.
She didn’t doubt that for a minute, yet her blood still throbbed in her veins, kindling the knot of heat that pulsed in her core. Her nape tingled beneath the loose chignon of her upswept hair, the pulse points in her neck echoing in her ears with each heavy beat of her heart. Warmth spread down her throat and across the tops of her breasts, making her light silk blouse feel as hot and confining as a winter sweater.
“Hello? Earth to Jordana.” Carys’s voice broke into Jordana’s thoughts like a splash of cold water. “Did you hear a word I said?”
“Sorry,” Jordana blurted. “I was just finishing a note on this display.”
Carys cocked her head and narrowed her eyes slightly, as if she didn’t quite buy the excuse. “I’ve got the temps and humidity readings you asked for on the French tapestry displays.” She tapped her tablet screen and sent the data to Jordana’s device.
Jordana scanned the report and nodded her approval. “This looks good, Carys, thank you. I would like to see the lighting muted a bit on the Beauvais pastoral piece. I noticed last night that we were losing some of the more subtle colors of the weaving.”
“Okay,” Carys replied. “Are you still rethinking the placement of the Roman mosaics?”
Jordana glanced over to the display of ancient tiles encased in a multi-tiered tower of Plexiglas in the center of the exhibit. She considered for a moment, then gave a nod. “Yes, let’s have that switched with something else. Sleeping Endymion would be a better focal point for that section of the exhibit, don’t you think?”
Carys smiled. “Your favorite piece. Sure, I think it’s a great idea.”
They walked over to the clear case that housed the Italian sculpture that was more than three hundred years old. The terra cotta depiction of the mortal shepherd Endymion reposed in eternal slumber where he waited for his lover, the lunar goddess Selene, had enchanted Jordana from the moment she first saw it. Donated anonymously, the sculpture had been part of the museum’s permanent collection for at least two decades.
It wasn’t the most valuable, or even among the most historically important pieces Jordana had known. But the simple beauty of the work, and the myth it represented, never failed to move something deep inside her.
Jordana stared into the display at the handsome mortal who slept forever under the delicate sliver of a crescent moon. Just looking at the piece made a sadness swell in her chest. She glanced down at the inside of her left wrist, where she bore a small scarlet birthmark in the shape of a crescent moon with a teardrop falling into its cradle.
Her Breedmate mark.
Unlike Endymion, she wasn’t fully mortal. She, like the other half-human females born with the teardrop-and-crescent-moon symbol somewhere on their bodies, could live agelessly once blood-bonded with one of the Breed.
Such an incredible gift, to entwine two lives forever. And yet it could also be an inescapable shackle.
“Can you imagine sleeping through your entire existence?” Jordana murmured as Carys came to stand beside her, looking at Cornacchini’s sculpture. “Have you ever felt as though your life were taking place around you, outside of you? That everything was moving faster than you could catch it—as if you were asleep and anchored to the ground like Endymion?”
“No,” Carys replied, zero hesitation. “If I want something, I reach for it. I don’t let anything stop me.”
Her careful tone drew Jordana’s gaze to her. “Never?”
“Never.”
Jordana gave a mild nod. “It’s different for you, Carys. You’re Breed. You didn’t grow up in the Darkhavens, or with a father who’s been drumming into your head since you were a child that he expected you to be blood-bonded to a suitable mate by the time you were twenty-five.”
“True,” Carys said around a laugh. “If my father had his way, he’d have chained me to the mansion banister until I was twice that age. Life is meant to be lived, Jordana. And we only get one shot at it, whether we’re Breedmate, Breed, or basic Homo sapiens.”
Jordana smiled at her friend, loving how sure Carys always seemed about what she wanted and where she was heading. “I wish I had your bravery. You’ve never been afraid to leap, no matter how deep or dark the crevasse beneath you.”
Carys shrugged, grinning. “It’s only deep and dark if you pause first to look down. Besides, you’ve got your own kind of bravery, Jordana. I mean, look what you’re doing here with the exhibit.”