He switched his grasp so that one hand shackled her wrists, leaving his other free to roam. He stroked the backs of his knuckles along the slope of her cheek, then down along the swells of her br**sts, hardly touching her yet making her burn with sensation. “Are you afraid of me now, Jordana?”
“No.” Her reply was little more than a gasp, breathless not from worry but from the startling sense of her own vulnerability.
Nathan held her completely under his control. She couldn’t have broken loose of his hold if her life depended on it. Nor did she want to.
He owned her in that moment, and damn him if he didn’t know it too.
He reveled in it; she could see the dark pleasure in his eyes as he drank her in from head to foot in the tight confines of the lift. Amber sparks pierced the thundercloud color of his irises. His broad mouth was grim yet sensual, barely concealing the growing length of his fangs.
He bent toward her and took her mouth in a scorching, commanding kiss.
Jordana had no experience with such hard passion, such hungered demand. She could only surrender to it, moaning as his lips covered hers, claimed her. His tongue pushed at the seam of her mouth, and she opened to him, submitting to this further claiming with a shudder of raw pleasure that rippled through her, then pooled molten hot between her thighs.
She’d never been kissed like this. She was lost to it, her limbs languid and boneless, her veins lit up and electric.
Where Elliott’s kisses were earnest, even passionately inflamed at times, Nathan’s mouth was wild and untamed on hers. Possessive and fevered. His kiss branded her in a way that left all other comparisons in ashes.
When he abruptly broke contact and reared back from her, Jordana couldn’t contain her cry of dismay. Nathan stared at her, his dark eyes glittering with bright amber light that swamped the thin vertical slits of his transformed pupils.
She wanted more. Jordana tried to reach for him, only to remember that he still held her hands in the manacle of his iron grasp. She frowned, struggling a bit more determinedly against his hold.
The corner of his mouth quirked with dark amusement, but his eyes were serious, unflinching, as he gave her an admonishing shake of his head. “Tonight we play on my terms.”
Jordana stood there, panting and confused. So alive with desire, she thought she might explode if he didn’t give her more.
“Everything all right, Miss Gates?” Seamus’s voice came over the emergency speaker inside the elevator car, the intrusion unwelcome but no surprise. “Looks like the lift’s not moving for some reason …”
She knew she should answer him. If she had any hope of saving her dignity—of lessening the man’s suspicions of what might be going on inside the elevator—she needed to assure Seamus that they had halted the lift by accident.
But to do so meant she’d have to push the intercom button on the panel on the other side of the car. And that meant she’d have to insist that Nathan let her go.
He stared at her in waiting silence, seeming to understand her inner struggle, even if his smoldering gaze said he had no intention of offering her any mercy.
“Miss Gates?”
Jordana couldn’t speak. She couldn’t break the hot connection of Nathan’s eyes as he leaned into her in a full-body press that ignited her every nerve ending and made her acutely aware of just how masculine and powerful this Breed warrior truly was.
He cupped her nape with his free hand, stroking the pulse point of her carotid with the pad of his thumb. So tender, even as he restrained her, even as he tempted her to shred her reputation and her virtue in the same reckless moment.
And yet Jordana swayed into his touch, as helpless to resist him as a sapling bending for the wind.
He splayed his fingers into her unbound hair, then gathered the mass of platinum waves into his hand, winding her tresses into a coil around his fist. He slowly pulled her head back, baring her throat to his hot gaze. Jordana gasped, shivering with a heady combination of fear and arousal.
Danger gleamed in Nathan’s otherworldly amber eyes. His fangs were enormous, as sharp as daggers. He bent forward in aching deliberation, then kissed a searing trail from the underside of her chin to the sensitive hollow at the base of her throat.
“Miss Gates, can you hear me?”
“Oh, God,” she whispered, letting the doorman’s concerned voice fade into oblivion as Nathan delved deeper and began to lick and nip his way down toward her br**sts.
10
NATHAN HAD LONG CONSIDERED DISCIPLINE TO BE HIS GREATEST strength—even more so than any of his Breed-born abilities or his myriad lethal skills that made him one of the most dangerous of his entire race.
But as he dragged his mouth along the silky arch of Jordana’s throat, then down, toward the delectable valley between her pert br**sts, he clung to his self-control by a thin tether.
She was sweet against his tongue. Responsive to his every touch. Open and compliant, her trust a gift he hadn’t expected and was certain he didn’t deserve.
She was so damned hot and sexy, it took all he had not to rip away her boardroom blouse and sensible skirt and bury himself to the hilt inside her beautiful body.
Nathan released the thick rope of her hair only because his palm itched to feel the pebbled buds of her ni**les. His other hand stayed locked around her wrists where he still held them pinned above her head. She moaned as he fondled her br**sts over the fabric of her blouse.
She gasped a moment later, when he put his hand inside and cupped one rounded, perfect globe.
“Nathan, please,” she whispered, testing his grip on her hands. “I want to touch you too.”