In spite of how it hurt her to see him at La Notte with another woman so soon after he’d left her, Jordana couldn’t keep her pulse from beating a little harder around him. She couldn’t keep her foolish heart from wishing things had gone differently last night, that they could start over again, beginning with that reckless first kiss.
She hurried her pace, hoping she could round the corner and make it to her vehicle before the weight of everything she was feeling overwhelmed her.
While Carys and Rune stayed back, she heard Nathan’s long strides coming up fast on her heels. “What the hell is that supposed to mean—you don’t even know me?” His already deep voice dropped to a lower, arrestingly intimate tone. “Seems to me we got pretty familiar last night.”
She stopped abruptly and wheeled around on him, struggling to keep her voice controlled enough so that only he would hear. “Please, don’t remind me about last night.”
He halted where he stood, his square-cut jaw rising a notch. “You’re upset with me. Because of what happened between us in the elevator, or the fact that Bentley-Squire interrupted us and we didn’t get the chance to finish what we started?”
Jordana exhaled a sharp, outraged laugh. “I wish last night had never happened.”
“That makes two of us,” he said quietly, his face hard and unapologetic.
So he regretted it too? God help her, but she didn’t want to feel wounded by that admission. She wanted to feel only anger that he could bring her to the crest of something so incredible—something she’d shared with no other man before him—then turn around and slake his need on one of the trained professionals at the club.
Jordana spotted the leather-clad brunette sex worker near the back door of the building, one of several La Notte employees who’d since come out to gawk at the crime scene. She couldn’t help picturing Nathan’s hands on the female.
Equally painful to imagine was the thought of what the brunette might have done for him to earn the fistful of money Jordana had seen the woman tuck away after Nathan left one of the club’s private BDSM dens.
“I never should’ve kissed you,” Jordana murmured. How much simpler would her life be if she’d just stayed on the safe, secure little path that had been laid out for her?
How much happier would she be if she’d never let herself reach for something reckless, something as dangerously seductive as the Breed male standing before her now?
“I never should’ve let you touch me, Nathan. I wish I could take it all back.”
A low growl escaped his throat as he reached for her. She pulled back, avoiding the contact. “No, don’t. Stay away from me.”
He studied her for a moment, his eyes locked on her. “Tell me you really mean that, and I will.”
“I mean it.” She forced herself to hold steady, in spite of the widening ache in her breast. She had to do this. For her own sanity, she had to put him out of her mind and out of her life. “I don’t want to see you again, Nathan. I wish I’d never met you.”
He said nothing. Just stood before her in agonizing silence, his inscrutable gaze seeming to cut straight through her, as cold and unfeeling as a blade. His face was unmoving, impossible to decipher if he was relieved or insulted by her rejection.
The walls she’d so naively thought she might pull down were in full force as she looked at him now, perhaps rising even taller than they had been before. Nathan wasn’t someone who let others in easily; she’d sensed that about him early on.
Now that she was pushing him away, he would shut her out completely. And she knew once he did, there would be no getting back inside.
One of his teammates—Aric Chase’s best friend, Rafe—called to Nathan from back at the crime scene. “Captain, heads up. Squad from Joint Urban Security is en route from downtown. This place’ll be crawling with JUSTIS officers in less than ten minutes.”
Nathan acknowledged the report with a vague lift of his hand. In flat, maddening silence, he stared at Jordana for what seemed an eternity.
Then he simply turned away from her, walking back to his waiting crew of warriors and the grisly reality of his dark world.
14
NATHAN LEANED BACK AGAINST THE ORDER’S PATROL VEHICLE next to Rafe, trying to pretend he wasn’t brooding from his confrontation with Jordana as he idly watched a team of six officers from the Joint Urban Security Taskforce Initiative Squad process the crime scene outside La Notte.
Shit, he was worse than brooding. He was pissed off and bewildered.
She wished she’d never met him? She had no idea. The best thing she could do for him was take her haughty indignation and all-too-tempting body and stay far the hell out of his way.
Out of his head.
Out of his life.
And the fact that he was stewing over the female an hour after she’d gone only jacked his frustration higher. He wasn’t used to letting anything, or anyone, get under his skin. His Hunter training had conditioned him to ignore distractions, to dismiss anything that might sway him from his course. Any obstacle in his path was either shoved aside or trampled beneath him, left behind and instantly forgotten.
It was how he survived. It was how he came through the fire of his childhood, his mind and body equally honed, his heart as ruthless as a blade.
He was a master of control, and yet Jordana Gates had somehow begun to chip away at that impenetrable foundation. Like a small trickle of water through a mountain of stone, she’d managed to find a breach and slip inside.
Try as he might to put her out of his thoughts, to close himself off to the desire he felt for her—to deny his maddening need to possess her, now that he’d had the first taste—he couldn’t get her out of his head.