Crave the Night: A Midnight Breed Novel (13 page)

And she worked hard to get his attention. Grabbing a bottle of whiskey from the bar, she poured herself a shot and checked to make sure he was watching. As she tilted her head back and downed the amber liquor in one long, open-throated gulp, Nathan saw another delicate neck in his mind.

In a hard, heated instant, he relived the sight of Jordana’s pale, pretty throat, bared to him as he’d tugged her head back, the silky platinum rope of her hair wound around his fist.

Hunger drew his fangs out, and he wondered how long it had been since he fed. About as long as it had been since he satisfied the other craving that was gnawing at him, both made worse after the way his encounter with Jordana had left him feeling.

The sharp, nagging edge of his twin needs aggravated him, but even more disturbing was the fact that everything male and primal in him demanded he head right back to her place and slake the need she stirred in him—even if he had to tear through Elliott Bentley-Squire to have her.

Dangerous thoughts.

And a craving he could not permit himself to act on, no matter how tempting.

The leather-clad female plopped her shot glass back on the bar and sauntered past him, an inviting look in her eyes as she slinked back to the corridor leading to the BDSM dens.

Rafe stared after her too and let out a low, approving whistle. “Maybe I should do a more in-depth interrogation of some of the backroom staff. Wouldn’t want to leave any stone unturned.”

Nathan slanted him a dark look. “There’s nothing more for us to do here tonight. Go tell Jax and Eli to wrap things up. I’ll be right behind you.”

Rafe shrugged, then took off to carry out his captain’s order.

Once he was gone back up to the club at street level, Nathan crossed the arena floor on a direct course for the VIP rooms in back.

The brunette was waiting for him, already arranged for his pleasure on a red leather settee with her legs spread wide and her hair gathered off to the side to give him open access to her carotid. “How can I serve you tonight, sir?”

Nathan stepped inside the room. A pair of buckled restraints hung from a hook on the wall near the door. He took them down, then kicked the door closed behind him with the heel of his combat boot.

“What do you mean, you walked out on Elliott?” Carys’s voice sounded incredulous on the other end of the line. “What happened? Does this have something to do with you and Nathan? I saw you leave the club with him. Did something happen between you? Is Nathan with you right now?”

“No. He’s gone.” After the way she’d acted, probably gone for good.

Jordana hated the way things had ended tonight. She’d been a coward and a fool, and she owed him an apology at the very least. She hoped he would accept it, if she ever saw him again.

If she was being honest with herself, she hoped for far more than that.

While she hadn’t broken it off with Elliott because she expected anything from Nathan, she’d be a liar if she tried to deny her attraction to him.

Attraction?
Good lord, the way her heart raced at the thought of him—the way her body still hummed with electricity from the wicked things he did to her, things he warned that he intended to continue before they’d come face-to-face with Elliott at her apartment—Jordana had to admit that what she felt toward Nathan was a pull as fierce as the tide to the moon.

He was darkness, as cool and untouchable as night itself, and she craved to know him, to be close to him, like nothing she had known before.

Tonight he’d taken her to the edge of that cliff she feared, but she’d been too terrified to step off.

Jordana blew a sigh past the receiver of her phone. “It’s a long story, Car. One I don’t particularly feel like reliving at the moment.”

“Are you okay?” Jordana heard her friend whisper the gist of the
situation to Rune. “So, if you left Elliott at the apartment, where are you?”

“On Commonwealth, just outside my building,” Jordana said, her low heels clicking on the sidewalk. “And I’m fine. I just needed to get out of there.”

Part of the problem with making a dramatic exit, she had realized pretty quickly, was the need to have someplace else to go.

The thought of going home to her father’s Darkhaven didn’t hold much appeal. It was late, and although she would have been welcomed with open arms, Jordana didn’t want to show up on her father’s doorstep to disappoint him with the news that she’d failed at the relationship he wanted so badly to work for her.

Ordinarily, she might have gone to the museum to escape. It had been her secret refuge on numerous occasions in the past, but she hadn’t quite been able to shake her sense of unease about being watched as she’d gone to her car in the parking lot earlier that night. And although her cocktail buzz was long past, Jordana wasn’t about to climb behind the wheel and drive aimlessly through the city so late at night.

“Come back to the club,” Carys told her. “From the sounds of it, the Order has the place pretty well shut down, but I’m still here with Rune. We can both crash in his quarters overnight and sort everything out tomorrow.”

“Oh, Carys. I don’t know—”

“You’re not far from the train. It’ll get you here in less than ten minutes. I’ll be waiting for you. Come around back and I’ll let you in through the staff entrance.”

“Carys—”

“Let me take care of you for once, okay? Be here in ten, or I’m sending Rune out to drag you here.”

Which is how Jordana found herself getting off the train in the old North End some seven minutes later and walking the short block to La Notte’s rear door.

Carys was there before she even had a chance to knock, opening the door and pulling Jordana into a warm embrace. “You’re shivering,” Carys pointed out. “Come in, and tell me what’s going on.”

Jordana walked with her friend into the back corridor, feeling relieved to have come, now that she was there.

But the feeling was short-lived.

No sooner had she stepped inside when a door opened farther ahead
of them in the gloomy passageway. A man walked out and strode in the opposite direction of Jordana and Carys.

No, not just a man—a Breed warrior. Six and a half feet of sinew and dark, stormy menace. Jordana knew that massive build and prowling swagger anywhere.

She could still feel his hands on her. She could still hear the sinful rumble of his deep voice against her ear.

Nathan
.

God help her, she almost called his name out loud.

But then, in that next awful instant, a woman came out of the room behind him.

More naked than not, she strutted out on spiked boots, her breasts strapped into a complicated web of black leather and metal rings, another skimpy, punishing-looking set of straps emphasizing the round globes of her bare behind.

There could be no mistaking the brunette’s line of work. Nor the fact that she and Nathan had been in the room together behind the closed door.

The woman glanced over her shoulder and spotted Jordana and Carys gaping at her in the corridor. In the sex worker’s hand was a wad of cash, which she ceremoniously slipped beneath one of the tight black strips of leather on her bosom before sauntering off.

Jordana felt sick. If she’d been afraid of how she’d left things with Nathan tonight, apparently she shouldn’t have worried. He certainly hadn’t wasted any time finding a replacement for her.

Disappointment and hurt roared up on her. She was pissed too—at him, but even more so at herself, for caring enough to be upset.

“Get me out of here,” she whispered to Carys.

Her friend looked equally miserable. “Oh, God, honey. I had no idea. I never would’ve told you to come—”

“He can’t know I was here,” Jordana hissed urgently. “Don’t let him see me, please. He can’t know that I saw him here tonight.”

“Of course not.” Carys took her hand. “Come on. Rune’s quarters are this way.”

Jordana followed her friend down another length of dark hallway, feeling as if that cliff she’d been so afraid of had suddenly broken away under her feet and left her falling.

“YOU TRYING TO CLEAN THAT FIREARM OR RUB OFF THE SERIAL number?”

Jolted, Nathan swung his head around from the table and chair where he was seated and found Sterling Chase leaning against the jamb of the open weapons room door.

Jesus Christ
. He’d been so engrossed in his work, his head full of steam and troubling realizations, he hadn’t even heard the commander arrive.

It was early morning at the Order’s Boston headquarters. Most everyone in the compound and the connected estate would be in bed. Nathan, however, had been awake and twitchy ever since he and his team returned to base last night. A couple hours ago, he’d finally given up the idea of sleep and decided to make some productive use of his restlessness.

He met Chase’s stare. Years of old training schooled his expression to a bland, unreadable mask before he went back to cleaning and lubricating the field-stripped black Beretta 9 mm. “Didn’t expect to see you down here at this hour. How long you been standing there?”

“Couple of minutes,” Chase said. “Long enough. You wanna talk about it?”

With nimble fingers, Nathan reassembled the pistol and set it aside. “Nope.”

Chase strode into the room now and took up a position next to Nathan’s worktable, his thick arms crossed over his chest. He wore a white short-sleeve T-shirt and loose gray sweats, his trim golden hair rumpled.

At the moment, Sterling Chase looked less like the impeccable, tight-ship captain he was and more like a man with troubles of his own. Troubles that dragged him from the comfort of the warm bed he shared with his mate at an unholy, early hour.

“Looks like you’ve been up for a while yourself.” Nathan glanced at him sidelong. “Maybe you wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.” Chase smirked and blew out a short sigh. “I guess I’m still trying to get used to the fact that Carys moved out. Tavia doesn’t like it either, but she says we have to give her time. Give her space.” A growl rumbled in the vampire’s chest. “If anything happens to her … if anyone hurts her now that she’s living outside my direct protection—”

“She’s doing all right,” Nathan said. “She has people looking out for her.”

Chase scoffed. “Jordana Gates may be well connected in the Darkhavens, but no one she knows is going to keep my little girl safe the way her mother and I can.”

“Your little girl is a full-grown woman,” Nathan pointed out. “She’s making her own choices. You have to trust her. Hold her too close and you’ll only make her pull away harder.”

“Philosophy at this hour—and from you, besides?” Chase chuckled, then gave a nod. “It’s good advice, Nathan. Gonna be damned hard to follow it, though. And if Carys ends up getting harmed by anyone in any way—”

“Then she’ll have you and all the rest of the Order making sure someone pays,” Nathan said.

“Damn straight she will,” Chase agreed, his blue eyes glittering with menace. He went quiet for a moment, then cleared his throat. “My daughter’s actually not the only reason I’m pacing the halls this morning.”

Nathan glanced up. “What’s going on?”

“Gideon called a few minutes ago from D.C. One of Crowe’s exes surrendered some interesting news under tranced interrogation today. Seems Reginald Crowe had a mistress.”

That was the most promising intel they’d uncovered so far. “Who? Where can we find her?”

“Ireland. Dublin, according to the former Mrs. Crowe,” Chase said. “As for the who of it, we’re still trying to figure that out. We don’t even have a name yet. All we know is that Crowe’s ex claims he saw this
woman frequently during their marriage and that it had been going on for quite some time.”

Nathan’s veins lit up with the instinctive, predatory spark of his assassin past. “We’ve got to find her. We’ve got to find her now. I can be ready to roll out anytime, if you need me to go in solo and see this done.”

“You’re best utilized right here in Boston, going after Cassian Gray. Besides, we have boots on the ground over there already. Mathias Rowan’s team in London will be mobilizing at sundown tonight. Lucan’s put this in their court for now.” Chase narrowed a look on him. “You’ve never walked away from a mission. You’re not looking to do that now, are you?”

“Absolutely not,” Nathan replied, a brisk denial, even though his conscience pricked him.

Had he been hoping for a reassignment? One that would put a whole continent between him and Jordana Gates?

Fuck, he didn’t know what to think about that.

Chase studied him now. “You seem … unfocused, my man. Like you’re walking a dangerous edge. What’s going on with you? When’s the last time you fed?”

“I was with a blood Host last night,” he replied, the unwanted reminder of the brunette from La Notte’s BDSM club making his voice darken to a growl.

Chase seemed to consider for a long moment, his shrewd gaze lingering for longer than Nathan liked. But his commander didn’t challenge the lie, even if he suspected it.

“I’ll leave you to your work,” he said, and headed for the door. “Good job last night. If nothing bubbles up to the surface on Cassian Gray today, let’s hit him even harder again tonight.”