“I thought you wanted to know what else he said,” Carys teased. “So put it on.”
Given little choice, Jordana accepted the red cocktail dress from Carys’s outstretched hand. The silken fabric was sleek and soft in her fingers, if somewhat shapeless on its hanger.
Jordana recalled the impulse buy with alarming clarity now. She’d bought this dress the day after she’d so recklessly—insanely—forced a kiss on Nathan in the other room of this very apartment.
It wasn’t the kind of dress she’d ever have chosen for herself normally, and she had no idea why she hadn’t immediately returned it.
She gathered the light bundle of fiery fabric over her head and let it settle down over her body. It felt like liquid skating along her skin, decadent, luxurious. Deliciously sinful.
“Tell me what else Nathan said,” she ordered her friend as the red dress smoothed into place.
“He told me that you’re important to him,” Carys replied from behind her. “He said he cares about you.”
Jordana pivoted around. Cool air caressed her spine where the swooping, low-cut back of the knee-length cocktail dress plunged daringly low. “He really said that? He said I’m important. That he cares about me?”
“Yeah.” Carys looked her up and down, then a broad, slow smile broke across her face. “Damn, Jordana. You just found your dress.”
Dubious, she turned to face the long mirrors again.
She hardly recognized the woman staring back at her. The sleeveless red dress clung in all the right places and showed just enough leg, yet still managed to look tasteful and sophisticated. In front, its draped neckline only hinted at her curves and cle**age, while the real show was in the back.
“My father will choke on his tongue if I walk into the exhibit opening in this dress,” Jordana mused. She shook her head and could hardly bite back her giggle when she pictured all of the stunned reactions she would stir. “Elliott will be completely scandalized—possibly apoplectic.”
Carys shrugged. “That’ll be their problem. You look amazing.”
Jordana studied her reflection, wondering if it was merely the powerful hue of the fabric that intensified the ice-blue color of her eyes and made her features seem somehow bolder, indomitable. Not the good girl held back by propriety and expectation but a fearless woman ready to take on the world.
Or maybe that fierce look came from the way thoughts of Nathan had her blood running hot and quick through her veins.
She felt different. Not simply because of her lost virginity and the incredible passion she experienced last night.
She was different.
Changed in a way she couldn’t quite define. It was as if she were evolving into a new skin, into a new sense of herself, and doing it at an accelerating pace that should have frightened her.
Yet it didn’t. She felt strong and alive. And all she knew was, regardless of where she was headed with Nathan, her life now could never go back to what it was before.
“Carys,” she murmured, “do you remember when I told you how Nathan makes me feel?”
“Of course I do.” Carys stared at her with clear-eyed understanding. “Like you’re on the edge of a cliff and he’s a storm about to sweep you over.”
“Yeah, like that. Well, last night … I did it. I stepped off.” Jordana sighed. “I stepped off with my eyes wide open and now I’m falling. What if no one’s there to catch me? What if what I’m feeling for Nathan is sheer, heedless stupidity and I end up crashing and burning on the ground?”
Carys smiled at her in the mirror. “Sweetheart, if Nathan sees you in this dress, the only one in danger of crashing and burning will be him.”
Nathan’s comm device vibrated just as he was about to drop his knuckles on Commander Chase’s study door at the Boston compound. Paused there, he frowned and glanced at the incoming message. Probably Rafe or another member of his team, wondering why he wasn’t down in the weapons room with them, putting the crew through their daily paces.
He stared at the number on the display.
It wasn’t any of the warriors.
Jordana.
How the hell did she know his private call code?
Curious now, and more intrigued than he cared to admit, Nathan tapped the message open.
Hi. Carys gave me your number. Hope you don’t mind.
Fuck.
Yes, he did mind, but that didn’t keep him from scanning to the next short message, his veins going suddenly electric.
Can’t stop thinking about last night. About us.
Neither could he, and the distraction was driving him out of his damned mind.
I can’t stop thinking about you, inside me.
Holy f**k.
Now that hot current racing through him arced sharply south, rendering him instantly hard. He shifted his stance, for all the good that did.
He had a crystal-clear mental image of Jordana lying na**d and open beneath him, and there was no way to relieve the pressure of his huge erection, which strained full and heavy in his fatigues.
Scowling furiously, he glanced to the next line.
I’ll be thinking of you at the exhibit party tonight too. Join me, maybe?
He didn’t miss the real invitation she was extending. Neither did his cock. Every blood vessel in his body lit up with eager agreement. As tempting as it was to pick up again where he and Jordana left off, Nathan growled and tried to push the idea out of his head.
He’d already let his hunger for her trump his good judgment. He may have jeopardized his team’s entire mission by taking Jordana’s virginity last night instead of bringing her in to take her statement as he would any other witness.