Crave The Night (Midnight Breed 12)

She laughed, but it was swallowed up quickly by the gasp and rising cry that heralded her release. Nathan kept up his relentless rhythm, pushing her toward the brink, then toppling her over the edge with him as his own climax gripped him in a tight, pulsing fist.

They were still flushed with passion twenty minutes later, after they’d shared a quick shower and gotten dressed and ready to join everyone who had gathered in the war room that evening.

All of the North American–based Order and their mates were there.

Sterling Chase and Tavia. Nathan’s teammates, Rafe, Elijah, and Jax. Carys and Aric.

Nathan’s mother, raven-haired, delicately beautiful Corinne, was there with her big, golden-eyed Gen One mate, Hunter, who headed up the New Orleans command. They had arrived from the D.C. headquarters with the Order’s leader, Lucan Thorne, and his mate, Gabrielle, as well as Gideon and Savannah, and the New York chief, Tegan, who was there with his beloved Elise.

Nathan’s recently mated friends Kellan and Mira had arrived with her adoptive parents, Nikolai and Renata, the longtime couple only weeks away from welcoming a new son, their first child together.

The rest of the stateside warriors and their mates—Dante and Tess, Rio and Dylan, Kade and Alexandra, and Brock and Jenna—had all assembled with the others for the express purpose of meeting Jordana.

And to see firsthand if her suspicions about her father’s secrets were correct.

The object at the center of that question now sat on the war room conference table.

As soon as Nathan and Jordana had returned to Boston, she’d gone back to the museum to switch the pieces and bring Cass’s remarkable fake to the Order.

More than one pair of eyes drifted to the innocuous-looking sculpted terra cotta as Nathan made the introductions among his family and extended kin of the Order and the extraordinary female who had become his mate.

His mother was visibly moved, tears glistening in her eyes, which were the same bluish green as Nathan’s. She came toward him tentatively, conditioned by her son’s damaged past to be careful when it came to affection and motherly warmth.

To see her caution now shamed Nathan. Truth to tell, it broke his heart a little.

So, when Corinne approached him, he moved first, bringing her petite frame into his arms.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, then instantly wrapped him in a sweet, loving hug. “Nathan, I’m so happy for you.”

She was laughing through her tears as he released her and made her introduction to Jordana. The two women greeted each other warmly, and seeing them embrace was a balm Nathan hadn’t realized he needed.

Nathan reached out to Hunter, clasping the former assassin’s hand in a firm shake. “I understand now,” Nathan said. “I didn’t know it would be possible to feel—”

The massive warrior only nodded. No need for more words.

They’d both come through the fire of a terrible upbringing in Dragos’s labs.

Both men now stood in the light of a redeeming bond.

As Nathan and Hunter watched their mates get acquainted, Dante, one of the Order’s former Boston members, who was now commander of the Seattle operation, strode over hand in hand with his Breedmate, Tess.

The pair had been talking with their son, Rafe, but now walked toward the sculpture sitting in the center of the conference table. Jordana and Corinne, Nathan and Hunter, all joined them near the piece.

Tess’s smile was wistful as she looked at Sleeping Endymion, then back to her dark-haired warrior mate. “Twenty years ago, we met in the art museum, in front of this very sculpture. Do you remember?”

Dante grunted, his mouth quirking with private humor. “I remember it was the second time we met. The first time, I greeted you with my fangs in your throat and you, in turn, stuck a syringe full of animal tranquilizer in me. Well deserved, I might add.”

Tess laughed. “Not exactly a Hallmark moment, was it?”

Dante shook his head. “Hearts and flowers were never my style. Fortunately, I have other gifts.”

“Oh, yes. You definitely do,” she said, wrapping her arms around him in obvious devotion.

As they all conversed and reminisced and more of the group gathered close, Gideon and his Breedmate, Savannah, came over to greet Jordana and Nathan.

The Order’s resident genius had had the good sense to make gentle but strong Savannah his mate some fifty years ago. The mocha-skinned beauty’s kindness and intellect were her abiding traits, but she also had an insatiable curiosity. One that was aided by the Breedmate’s extrasensory talent of psychometry.

She studied the sculpture for a moment, then glanced at Jordana, a fervent, impatient eagerness in her soft brown eyes. “Would it be all right … may I touch it?”