Dermaglyphs tracked all over his light olive-hued chest and shoulders, then lower, along the ridged planes of his abdomen and down below the waistband of his black fatigues. There could be no mistaking he was Gen One Breed. Jordana had seen precious few glyphs on other males, but nothing compared to the complicated pattern of interlocking swirls and elegant flourishes of Nathan’s otherworldly skin markings.
Nothing so erotic as the way his glyphs followed the contours of his body as she yearned to do with her fingers … and her tongue.
Her mouth went dry on the thought and she swallowed the urge, her full attention now caught on his hands as he unfastened his dark fatigues. The black fabric slumped loosely on his tight hips. And not so loosely on the massive bulge straining at the front.
She licked her parched lips, her lungs gone still as he let his pants drop and stepped out of them.
The glyphs that had her so fascinated with his chest and arms now dragged her gaze farther south, where their pattern continued into the dark thatch at his groin and onto the thick, jutting length of his penis. His muscular thighs were wrapped in glyphs too, and all of the swirling, arcing patterns that covered him were alive with deep shades of indigo, wine, and gold—the Breed colors of fierce desire.
Jordana stared at him, at the sculpture of his body and the masterwork of his dermaglyphs, helpless to keep her hungered little moan from escaping her throat.
In his warrior’s garb and weapons, Nathan was forbidding and lethal. Awe-inspiring by the darkest of definitions.
Naked and fully aroused, he was all those things and more.
Immense.
Terrifying.
Heart-stoppingly, dangerously beautiful.
And he was looking at her as if nothing else existed but the two of them in this moment. As if the sight of her nakedness affected him every bit as intensely.
He stepped closer to the bed now, skimming his warm palms along the insides of her thighs as he took up residence between them. She exhaled a tremulous sigh at his touch, at the heated, hard presence of his body positioned so intimately against hers.
“Please,” she whispered, the word shaky, more breath than sound.
Nathan grunted, low and contemplative, his smoldering eyes locked on her face. “Please, what, Jordana? Tell me.” Demand in his deep, coaxing voice, nothing close to request.
As he spoke, his hands caressed her, moving upward until he reached her damp curls and hypersensitive flesh. He teased her with long strokes and deft fingers, stoking her so easily back to a state of writhing need.
Jordana closed her eyes as pleasure swamped her, pulling her under on another dizzying tide. She let it take her, gave herself up to the bliss of his hands on her, his fingers inside her.
And when she didn’t think she could hold on for another second, Nathan’s touch slid away, leaving her gasping his name, her body vibrating and fevered with an ache she could hardly bear.
“Oh, God,” she murmured, lifting heavy lids to find Nathan poised above her on the bed now, braced on his fists with elbows locked straight on either side of her.
His erection pulsed from its upright position against her cleft, the feel of him like warm steel sheathed in velvet. As if he knew how badly her body craved him, he flexed his hips, sliding his hard length through her wetness, cleaving her folds with his heavy shaft.
Jordana moaned at the torment, growing mad with want. Desire kindled and burned, stronger than ever, and with it seemed to form another awakening within her, this one more elusive but no less powerful.
Something more than physical need, deeper than simple craving.
Something queer and unfamiliar to her, an unfolding awareness, reaching out from the furthest corners of her consciousness for what seemed the first time.
And all of that heat, all of that power, all of that strange, rousing energy arced toward Nathan as surely as a divining rod trained on a font of clear, quenching water.
She felt it in her blood and bones, in her senses … in her very soul.
“Nathan, please …” She lifted her shoulders up off the bed, her palms hot and itching to feel him. To touch his skin and trace the tantalizing lines of his extraordinary glyphs.
But not until after she felt him inside her, filling her with more than just his wicked fingers.
“Make this ache stop,” she demanded, her voice husky and rough with desire. She reached for him, prepared to take hold and drag him down atop her if he didn’t ease her yearning soon.
But Nathan moved faster than she could even dream to. For the second time tonight, he dodged her touch and captured her hands in his strong grasp.
This time, however, he didn’t seem content to merely hold her away from him.
Straddling her now, he rose up onto his knees above her, his fingers wrapped around her wrists like iron clamps. His eyes flared with amber sparks, something hotter than desire or even anger. Something darker, menacing in its intensity.
His face was so serious, his pupils nearly swallowed up by the light radiating from his Breed irises. His sensual mouth was unsmiling, merciless, his fangs gleaming and deadly sharp behind his parted lips.
And yet despite his ferocity and unforgiving hold, he carefully brought her hands toward him, pressing a tender kiss into the center of one tingling, hot palm, then the other.
His thumb stroked the underside of her left wrist where her Breedmate mark resided, a growl curling up from the back of his throat.
Jordana didn’t notice he held the tie from her robe until he began to loop the lavender silk sash around both of her wrists, binding her hands together.
He said nothing.
No excuse or explanation.
No request for permission.
She’d come to accept his dominating nature in most everything he did, but now it took on new meaning. Nathan wanted total control when it came to sex.