She’d taken care of him once or twice at the club, one of the many nameless partners who had long been his preference. The sex worker spotted him now and her h*ps took on a more languid, inviting sway as she headed to the bar a few feet away from him.
“We cleared the sim lounge and dance club upstairs,” Rafe said. “Eli and Jax are giving Cass’s office and private apartment another once-over. I came down here to see if I could squeeze anything useful out of the service staff, since Syn and Rune and the other fighters are less than cooperative.”
Although he was listening to the report, Nathan couldn’t help but notice how the woman leaned over the bar to reach for a bottle of liquor, giving him a good long look at her ass and the leather thong wedged between her cheeks. His body was still fevered from want of Jordana, and it responded to the obvious invitation from this other woman the same way his fingers would reach to scratch an itch.
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.