Nathan’s dark gaze settled on Jordana. He’d never seemed uncertain, not in all of the time she knew him. But now there was a hesitance in his eyes. A quiet dread in his voice. “If I hadn’t come here to find you tonight, what would you choose?”
“She already had chosen,” Zael interjected gently. “Jordana decided even before you arrived. We were preparing to leave around the same time you came in.”
Nathan’s head drew back slightly, doubt flickering across his typically cool, controlled features. “I came that close to losing you?”
She shook her head, emotion nearly choking her. “Zael was going to bring me back home to Boston. Everything that matters to me is there … and right here in front of me.”
His exhalation sounded heavy with relief. “I came to find you because you’re everything that matters to me.”
On her tear-thickened, happy laugh, Nathan pulled her into his arms.
When he spoke next, his voice was reverent and solemn, his hands on her the tenderest they’d ever been. “I will protect you with my life, Jordana. Always. And I’ll protect you with my blood bond, here and now, if it means men like the ones who came for you tonight will never find you again.”
That he would make such a promise moved her deeply. She loved him for that alone.
God help her, she loved Nathan for that and a thousand other reasons.
Jordana could hardly summon her breath as he gently stroked her cheek, his stormy gaze flecked with a galaxy of amber stars.
“Don’t think I’m offering this out of duty or anything half as noble. You know I’m a selfish bastard who demands things go his way. I don’t settle for anything less than what I want. And what I want right now, forever, is you.” His eyes glowed bright with tender emotion. He held her face in his hands, searching her gaze with an intensity that made her blood heat beneath her skin. “I’m offering my bond because I love you. Because I need you, Jordana, and I don’t want to know what life without you will feel like ever again.”
He kissed her hard and deep, so passionately she lost herself to the overwhelming power of the moment, unaware that Zael was even still in the room until the Atlantean awkwardly cleared his throat.
Nathan released her, only to utter a growl and take her mouth again in another hungered, but brief, kiss. She was laughing as they separated and both turned to face Zael.
While they’d been caught up in passion, he’d collected the soldiers’ remains and now belted their sheathed blades around his waist. “I must go,” he said. The crystal at his wrist was starting to glow. “I’ll take the dead with me and scatter them far enough away from here or Boston to throw anyone else off their trail. Whoever Selene sends next will have to start all over again. And if you’re blood-bonded by then—”
“She will be.” The dark confidence in Nathan’s voice sent a jolt of fire through Jordana’s veins.
Zael smiled. He held out his hand to Jordana. In his palm was a leather thong like the one he wore. One of the dead guards was missing his. “For you, should you ever need it. If you’re ever in trouble, it will take you anywhere you can picture in your mind.”
“But only me,” she said, recalling that he’d explained the crystal would only transport those of Atlantean blood. She glanced up at Nathan, before looking back to Zael and giving a shake of her head. “There’s nowhere I’ll ever need to go if not with Nathan.”
She reached for Zael’s strong golden fingers and curled them around the gift she wouldn’t accept. “Thank you for being a friend to my father Cassianus. And to me.”
Zael bowed his head low, reverently. “Godspeed and a very happy, long life to you, Princess Jordana.”
Zael held out his hand to Nathan. The two immense males—one golden and godlike, one dark and dangerous as night itself—clasped each other’s hands in a solid, if unspoken, gesture of friendship.
With that, Zael strode over to the fallen Atlanteans and knelt down beside the bodies. He took the wrist of each one in his hands as the crystal on his bracelet glowed brighter and brighter still.
Light exploded from it in all directions—a lightning-quick blast of pure energy.
When it went out an instant later, Zael and Selene’s dead guards were gone.
28
NATHAN HELD ON TO JORDANA AS THE VILLA WENT QUIET IN THE wake of Zael’s departure, leaving the two of them alone with the weight of all they’d just seen and done and heard.
The battle with the two immortal guards had been harrowing, hard won. Zael’s many revelations before and after the fight had been astonishing, even mind-blowing.
But nothing had leveled Nathan so much as Jordana’s declaration that she loved him.
That she would have given up a guaranteed asylum to return to Boston—return to him—even before he’d come to find her was a sacrifice he could hardly fathom.
Then again, yes, he could.
Because as he held her under the circle of his arm in that moment, he knew with a certainty deep down into his marrow that there was nothing he wouldn’t give up if it meant forever with Jordana.