While she hadn’t broken it off with Elliott because she expected anything from Nathan, she’d be a liar if she tried to deny her attraction to him.
Attraction? Good lord, the way her heart raced at the thought of him—the way her body still hummed with electricity from the wicked things he did to her, things he warned that he intended to continue before they’d come face-to-face with Elliott at her apartment—Jordana had to admit that what she felt toward Nathan was a pull as fierce as the tide to the moon.
He was darkness, as cool and untouchable as night itself, and she craved to know him, to be close to him, like nothing she had known before.
Tonight he’d taken her to the edge of that cliff she feared, but she’d been too terrified to step off.
Jordana blew a sigh past the receiver of her phone. “It’s a long story, Car. One I don’t particularly feel like reliving at the moment.”
“Are you okay?” Jordana heard her friend whisper the gist of the situation to Rune. “So, if you left Elliott at the apartment, where are you?”
“On Commonwealth, just outside my building,” Jordana said, her low heels clicking on the sidewalk. “And I’m fine. I just needed to get out of there.”
Part of the problem with making a dramatic exit, she had realized pretty quickly, was the need to have someplace else to go.
The thought of going home to her father’s Darkhaven didn’t hold much appeal. It was late, and although she would have been welcomed with open arms, Jordana didn’t want to show up on her father’s doorstep to disappoint him with the news that she’d failed at the relationship he wanted so badly to work for her.
Ordinarily, she might have gone to the museum to escape. It had been her secret refuge on numerous occasions in the past, but she hadn’t quite been able to shake her sense of unease about being watched as she’d gone to her car in the parking lot earlier that night. And although her cocktail buzz was long past, Jordana wasn’t about to climb behind the wheel and drive aimlessly through the city so late at night.
“Come back to the club,” Carys told her. “From the sounds of it, the Order has the place pretty well shut down, but I’m still here with Rune. We can both crash in his quarters overnight and sort everything out tomorrow.”
“Oh, Carys. I don’t know—”
“You’re not far from the train. It’ll get you here in less than ten minutes. I’ll be waiting for you. Come around back and I’ll let you in through the staff entrance.”
“Carys—”
“Let me take care of you for once, okay? Be here in ten, or I’m sending Rune out to drag you here.”
Which is how Jordana found herself getting off the train in the old North End some seven minutes later and walking the short block to La Notte’s rear door.
Carys was there before she even had a chance to knock, opening the door and pulling Jordana into a warm embrace. “You’re shivering,” Carys pointed out. “Come in, and tell me what’s going on.”
Jordana walked with her friend into the back corridor, feeling relieved to have come, now that she was there.
But the feeling was short-lived.
No sooner had she stepped inside when a door opened farther ahead of them in the gloomy passageway. A man walked out and strode in the opposite direction of Jordana and Carys.
No, not just a man—a Breed warrior. Six and a half feet of sinew and dark, stormy menace. Jordana knew that massive build and prowling swagger anywhere.
She could still feel his hands on her. She could still hear the sinful rumble of his deep voice against her ear.
Nathan.
God help her, she almost called his name out loud.
But then, in that next awful instant, a woman came out of the room behind him.
More naked than not, she strutted out on spiked boots, her breasts strapped into a complicated web of black leather and metal rings, another skimpy, punishing-looking set of straps emphasizing the round globes of her bare behind.
There could be no mistaking the brunette’s line of work. Nor the fact that she and Nathan had been in the room together behind the closed door.
The woman glanced over her shoulder and spotted Jordana and Carys gaping at her in the corridor. In the sex worker’s hand was a wad of cash, which she ceremoniously slipped beneath one of the tight black strips of leather on her bosom before sauntering off.
Jordana felt sick. If she’d been afraid of how she’d left things with Nathan tonight, apparently she shouldn’t have worried. He certainly hadn’t wasted any time finding a replacement for her.
Disappointment and hurt roared up on her. She was pissed too—at him, but even more so at herself, for caring enough to be upset.