Crave The Night (Midnight Breed 12)

Questions he’d all but neglected to ask, because he was too busy getting naked with her.

Carys’s narrowed look said she suspected as much.

She stepped off the elevator to jab a finger in his chest, her voice a sharp whisper. “You asshole. I can’t believe you would come back here like this. I can’t believe she even let you in, after what you did to her the other night.”

“After what I—” Fuck. Of course. Carys had almost certainly been with Jordana at La Notte when he’d come out of the private room with the human female.

Jordana had probably confided the evening’s entire chain of events to her best friend, starting with his near seduction of her in the elevator. A seduction that would have been a certainty if running into Bentley-Squire hadn’t put a damper on Nathan’s plans.

And Jordana hadn’t exactly let Nathan in tonight, but somehow he didn’t think Carys needed to hear that. The Breed female was furious enough with him already. She glared, her blue eyes crackling with sparks of amber outrage.

“We’ve worked things out,” he said, all the explanation he intended to give. What happened between Jordana and him tonight was their business. Not that Carys didn’t have a pretty good idea anyway. “It’s not what you think. I don’t want to see her get hurt. Not by anyone.” He paused, trying to find the words to summarize all the things he felt where Jordana was concerned. “She’s become … important to me. I care about her.”

Carys stared at him for a long moment. “My God. I believe you actually mean that.”

He stepped around the daywalker without further comment. “It’ll be morning soon. I have to go. Look out for her today,” he added. “I’m not convinced she’s safe so long as whoever killed Cass is out there.”

“You think his death could be linked to Reginald Crowe and Opus Nostrum?”

“Could be,” Nathan replied, unable to keep the gravity from his tone.

In his gut, he dreaded that the truth might prove to be something even worse. Until further word came in from the Order in D.C. about Crowe’s apparent mistress and any useful intel she might provide, Nathan wasn’t ruling out anything.

“I will protect Jordana with my life, Carys. No one will do her harm so long as I’m able to keep her safe. But during the daylight hours—”

“Of course.” Her gaze softened with understanding now. “She’s important to me too, Nathan. I’ll make sure she’s all right.”

He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Tell her I’ll be back tonight at sundown to look in on her again. We’ll talk more about Cassian Gray then.”

Carys shook her head. “She won’t be home. The exhibit opens this evening,” she reminded him. “We’ll both be at the museum reception tonight, along with a couple hundred invited guests and visitors.”

Shit. He didn’t want Jordana out of his sight tonight, let alone out of reach entirely and surrounded by a museum packed to the gills with the general public.

“You could always come as her date,” Carys suggested, a teasing glimmer in her eyes. “Might do you some good to take a night off for once. You might even have fun.”

Fun? He scoffed at the idea. Even if he did decide to attend the event, fun would be the last thing on his mind. He’d be there for the sole purpose of ensuring Jordana’s safety, making certain every person in the vicinity understood that if they intended harm toward her, they would have to come through him first.

Not that Jordana needed him showing up to disrupt everyone else’s good time. He’d already done that once this week with his team and Carys’s brother. None of the Darkhaven and human elite of Jordana’s social circle would appreciate having the Order present in the room—no doubt that sentiment would be doubled for the soulless killer Nathan’s past had branded him in the public’s eye.

Not gonna happen.

Jordana didn’t need him barging into every aspect of her life, least of all an event she’d obviously poured her heart into for weeks or months. It was her moment to shine; he owed it to her to let her have it without him distracting from her accomplishment.

“Keep your eye on her, Carys. Let me know if you have any cause for concern. Anything seems off, you call me at once. Agreed?”

She gave him a nod. “Yes, of course. But I still say you should come to the museum tonight and look after her yourself.”

Nathan dismissed the idea with a curse as he strode for the waiting elevator car.

At the Order’s global headquarters in Washington, D.C., Lucan Thorne leaned back in his chair in the war room, listening in displeased silence as Sterling Chase briefed him via video feed early that morning on the night’s patrol report out of Boston.

It wasn’t good news.

Then again, good news was something the Order had been coming up short on for too many months to count now. Years, in fact. Hell, more than a couple of decades, if he really wanted to do the math.

Lucan felt a dark rage building in him as he received the details of Cassian Gray’s slaying. A crucial lead lost. Possibly their only viable lead on the race of immortals reputed to be plotting war against the Order and the rest of the planet.

And now that lead had been severed on the edge of a hidden enemy’s blade. An enemy with unknown motives, and still at large.