Crave the Night: A Midnight Breed Novel

by Lara Adrian

  Her lips and tongue skimmed down his abdomen, over every hard ridge and muscle, along one path of churning dermaglyphs to another. Sensation electrified him, left him shuddering with fevered anticipation. All centered on her.

  He speared his fingers into her pale blond hair, needing something to hold on to as she slowly sank to her knees before him.

  She tilted her head and gazed up at him, her dusky blue eyes holding his searing amber gaze as she moved forward and took him into her mouth.

  “Jordana … holy fuck,” he rasped out savagely as her lips and tongue closed around his cock.

  JORDANA HAD NEVER FELT MORE AROUSED, OR MORE ALIVE, THAN in that moment as she watched Nathan’s pleasure mount while she suckled him deep into her mouth.

  He dropped his head back on his shoulders and moaned, his muscled thighs braced apart and trembling as she worked her lips and tongue along the entire delicious length of him. His fingers lightly caressed her skull where they’d sunk deep into her hair, his broad palm curved along the back of her head as she took him deeper with each stroke of her mouth.

  With the slightest change of tempo or flick of her tongue, she quickly learned how to make him growl in sensual agony or shudder in passion.

  Nathan, the lethal warrior. The remote, unreadable Hunter. The Breed male who so easily assumed the lead in any situation, who dominated in everything he did.

  The solitary man who’d stormed into her world and changed everything.

  Changed her.

  Here and now, Jordana had absolute control over him, and something about that knowledge made her feel both humbled and drunk with power.

  She held him in her hands, stroking his velvety shaft as she drew him deeper into her mouth. He gasped as she leaned in and took all of him, hissed when she slowly withdrew all the way to the smooth, plum-shaped crown.

  “You taste good,” she murmured, running the tip of her tongue through the hot, silky fluid that coated the engorged head of his cock. His hips bucked when she enveloped him in her mouth again. His curse was raw, ragged, as she abraded him lightly with her teeth. She smiled, pleased with this newfound power. “You taste good enough to eat.”

  “Damn, Jordana,” he bit off harshly, his already visible fangs elongating like bone-white daggers behind his parted lips as she sucked him even harder. “Gonna make me fucking lose it …”

  His voice was gravel, little more than a coarse rumble in his throat. Just hearing him so close to the edge made wet heat boil in her core.

  He grunted, his pelvis knocking forward in a spasm she knew he couldn’t control. “Christ, that sweet mouth of yours …”

  She moaned around his girth, thrilling in his response and taking far too much satisfaction in the torment she was delivering.

  As she rode his length with her mouth, he clutched at her, tremors raking his immense body. His gorgeous face became something darker, otherworldly. His stormy eyes went volcanic, nothing but pools of amber swallowing up the catlike slits of his pupils.

  His full lips peeled back on a feral snarl, his angular cheekbones sharpening to bladelike slashes as he stared down at her. His pulse drummed against her tongue and the roof of her mouth as he slid in and out of her lips, making her own heartbeat spike into the same hard tempo. Between her legs, she was drenched, aching to be filled.

  Fueled by her own rising need, she dragged his cock deep, suckled him mercilessly, until at last he tore her away from him on a strangled growl.

  No words, no gentle touches. He grabbed her under the arms and lifted her to her feet. Spun her around in front of him, then put one strong hand around the back of her neck and pressed her facedown onto the desk.

  It was a primal move, his fingers like heated iron against her nape. With a low growl, he put his bare thigh between her legs, nudged them wider apart.

  Jordana couldn’t move, even if she wanted to.

  She’d pushed him to the brink, but now he was back in control. And she could hardly breathe for how totally that turned her on.

  Nathan held her down with one hand, while his other lifted the skirt of her dress up over her backside. She knew the precise moment when he saw her skimpy black thong. He stilled, sucked in a short gust of air.

  “So pretty,” he rasped thickly. His fingers skimmed up the inside of her legs, to where her soaked crotch throbbed.

  He brushed her sensitive flesh, then she felt the thin excuse for underwear pull tight in his grasp. It snapped and fell away.

  “Mm,” Nathan grunted. “That’s even better.”

  She trembled, every nerve ending lit up with anticipation. Outside her office window, shadows passed by the closed blinds as people strolled through the museum, conversations muffled, but not entirely muted, by the walls and glass.

  Nathan’s hand slid between her drenched folds. He penetrated her slowly, his fingers caressing the inside of her walls and wringing a strangled cry from the back of her throat. She wanted more. Needed more. Had to have all of him now.

  “Should I make you scream when you come for me, Jordana?” Nathan’s voice was a low murmur behind her, his breath fanning hotly across her naked spine as he leaned over her prone body.

  His mouth came down between her shoulder blades. She shivered, then panted softly as his open lips and tongue followed the shallow valley of her spine.

  “Yeah, maybe I should make you scream for me,” he uttered against her skin. “I want every male in this building to know that you belong to me. Only me.”

  She moaned, ready to give him anything he demanded if only to ease the fierce ache roiling within her. He stroked her until she was squirming helplessly, her lip caught tightly in her teeth to bite back the sounds of her pleasure and her need.

  Each wicked thrust of his fingers made her arch to receive more, her body totally exposed to him, her sex inflamed, juices trickling along her cleft.

  “So greedy,” he admonished, dark amusement in his voice.

  “Nathan,” she gasped as he teased her swollen petals, making her legs quake beneath her. “Please …”

  “Stay there,” he commanded. “Stay just like that.”

  He moved off her, leaving chill air in his wake. But then she felt his bulky shoulders between her parted thighs. Felt his breath rush against her wet core in the instant before he buried his face in her sex. Heat blasted her as he licked a slow, fiery trail from her clit to her ass.

  “Oh, God.” Jordana’s voice was threadbare, choked with pleasure as he cleaved her slit with his tongue. She had no voice at all when he returned to the pulsing little nub and suckled it ruthlessly, the quivering seam of her body pressed tight to his face with nowhere to escape.

  Not that she wanted to. There wasn’t anywhere else she’d rather be. The world could go on without her on the other side of her office walls. Everything could float away and she’d be happy, so long as Nathan didn’t stop touching her, tasting her, making her mad with pleasure.

  She started to come, orgasm roaring up on her in a powerful wave of sensation.

  “Not yet,” Nathan ordered her, nipping her just enough to bring her back to earth.

  He kissed her shamelessly, relentlessly, until her bones felt liquefied and her blood seemed made of lava. Only then did he release her, rising to his feet behind her. The head of his cock was a blunt, demanding presence in the slickness at her core.

  “You’re mine,” Nathan growled savagely. “I can’t stay away from you. Fuck, Jordana … I will never have enough of you.”

  And with that, he thrust deep, impaling her to the hilt.

  Nathan couldn’t slow down and sure as hell couldn’t stop. He couldn’t curb the ferocious need that wracked him as he pumped hard and deep into Jordana’s slick, tight sheath.

  He couldn’t hold back the primal drum of his pulse, his blood running hot and molten through his veins.

  She was his.

  No one could tell him otherwise. No plea or command or lethal threat would change how he felt about her.

/>   Jordana belonged to him.

  Her body, her pleasure, her heart. Maybe one day, her blood bond.

  Just the thought of taking her vein as he claimed her body made his fangs erupt farther from his gums. The recollection of her bloodscent, that ethereal, delicately elusive mix of citrus and spice, made his mouth water with the thirst to make her his in the one way no worldly force could ever break.

  But not here.

  Not like this.

  He’d already taken more than he deserved from her.

  She had driven him to the razor’s edge of his control tonight, but he still had some sanity left.

  Admittedly, too damned little, when she looked so sexy for him tonight and tasted so sweet. When she felt so incredibly perfect as he held her pinned beneath him and crashed into her welcoming heat with an abandon he’d never known.

  All he knew in that moment was her. She consumed his senses, obliterating everything but the pleasure of their joining, the erotic sounds of their bodies moving together in slick and frenzied rhythm.

  He wasn’t going to last long.

  Each thrust of his hips sent him deeper, jolted him further away from reason and control and discipline. His veins were lit up, sizzling. Tension coiled deep inside him, pressure that turned every tendon and sinew to the breaking point. His cock had never been harder, ready to explode.

  “Come for me now, Jordana,” he muttered fiercely beside her head as he leaned forward and angled himself even tighter into the milking tightness of her womb. “I want to feel it. I need to feel it right now.”

  Her response was immediate, her release a sudden, violent shudder that vibrated all along his shaft and down into his marrow. She cried his name on a broken gasp, arching into his thrusts as his own release roared up to overtake him.

  He was gone in that same instant. He came hard and fast, blinded by pure, white-hot ecstasy as his seed shot loose into the contracting glove of her sex.

  He didn’t know how long they remained there, Jordana panting softly beneath him, splayed over the desk; he braced above her on locked elbows and fists, unmoving, unwilling to break the sexual connection of their bodies.

  He was hard again. More accurately, still hard.

  Jordana’s pulse was a heavy, seductive thrum against his shaft. Her delicate muscles gripped him snugly, even now. When she shifted her hips in tempting invitation, Nathan groaned.

  “Keep that up, and I’ll never let you out of this room.”

  She turned her head and regarded him over her shoulder, her lips curved in a satisfied smile. “I think I might like that.”

  So would he, but they couldn’t stay there much longer and expect her not to be missed. Exercising more self-control than he’d been able to claim since he met her, Nathan slowly eased out of her. Her disappointed moan nearly undid him.

  “Give me your hand,” he said, and reached down to help her rise up off the desk.

  She turned around to face him, her light blue eyes dusky below the thick fringe of her lashes. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips cherry red and glistening.

  He drew her close, brushed his fingers over her moist, tantalizing mouth. “You make me hard as stone, just thinking about how good your lips felt on me tonight.” His cock twitched in agreement, ready to start all over again. “I can’t wait to get you out of here and into bed with me. I’ve got some very creative ideas for how I’m gonna pay you back.”

  She grinned up at him. “Mm, I can’t wait to hold you to that.”

  Tilting her face, she caught the tip of his finger between her teeth. Her tongue played him the same way she’d tormented his cock, maddening little flicks combined with ruthlessly intense suction.

  Nathan grunted, a spasm shooting up his spine and straight into his rigid shaft. “Holy hell … on second thought, who needs a bed?”

  She laughed softly as she released him. Nathan grabbed for her, but she ducked away, playful. The sexiest damned woman he’d ever seen. He wanted her badly, and he wanted her now.

  She smoothed the hem of her red dress down over her fine bare ass and long legs, shimmying to adjust the silky fabric back into place. “I should get back out there, don’t you think?”

  He shook his head, eyes hot on her. “I think you belong right here, with me.”

  “Now who’s the greedy one?” she tossed back at him, arching one delicate brow. Bending down, she retrieved the tattered remains of her thong from near his discarded pants. “I’m going to go freshen up, and, ah, destroy the evidence.”

  The scrap of black silk dangled from her fingers, and the understanding that she would be naked under the dress for the remainder of the night sent another shock wave of lust into his bloodstream. How he was going to survive the next few minutes, let alone potentially another couple of hours, in public without pouncing on her again, he didn’t know.

  As he contemplated all the things he wanted to do to her, a low buzz sounded from somewhere near his feet. Despite his preternatural senses, he could hardly hear the faint hum over the roar of his pulse in his ears.

  Shit. His comm unit.

  Jordana gestured toward the floor where the device lay forgotten in his pants pocket. “You take care of your business,” she said lightly. “I’ll go take care of mine.”

  Nathan stooped to pick up the comm, bringing his pants up at the same time. He fastened them hastily, unable to tear his eyes away from her as she strode for the door.

  “See you back inside the exhibit hall in a few minutes,” she said, beaming as she opened the door and slipped out.

  Nathan glanced down at the comm unit buzzing again in his palm.

  “Yeah,” he said into the receiver, struggling to wrench his attention away from thoughts of Jordana as he took the call from the Boston headquarters.

  “Nathan.” Chase’s deep voice held a grim edge. “We just got intel from Gideon in D.C.”

  Nathan’s combat instincts went on immediate full alert. “What is it?”

  “Are you with Jordana?”

  Fuck. This couldn’t be good. “She was just here with me a minute ago.” Nathan gripped the comm device harder in his fist, started stalking toward the office door. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “It’s Gates,” Chase said. “He’s been allied with Cassian Gray this whole time, partnered with him in the club. Gates isn’t who he’s pretending to be. The son of a bitch is dirty.”

  Ah, Christ. No.

  “Do you think he’s part of Opus Nostrum?”

  “We don’t know that yet,” Chase said. “We’re digging deeper. If it turns out Gates is involved with Opus …”

  The commander let the statement trail off, but Nathan knew well enough what it meant. If Gates’s partnership with Cassian Gray tied back to Opus Nostrum in any way, the Order would have no choice but to deal with him as an enemy and terminate him.

  Nathan didn’t even want to consider what all of this would do to Jordana.

  He exited to the gallery outside, swiveling his head to ascertain which direction she might have gone.

  “In light of this new intelligence,” Chase said, a carefulness to his tone, “it makes Cass’s visit to Jordana at the museum the day he was killed more than a bit troubling. Is it possible she’s aware of the link between her father and Cassian Gray?”

  “She doesn’t know any of this,” Nathan blurted. He would stake his life on it.

  Jordana couldn’t have been keeping a secret like that. She was too open, too innocent. She couldn’t have been playing Nathan for a fool this whole time.

  “The team and I are en route to the museum now,” the commander said. “We know Gates is there tonight. We have to take him in for questioning. No delays. No warnings.”

  Goddammit.

  “I understand,” Nathan replied, his cold warrior’s logic instantly at war with the man who dreaded the heartbreak about to visit the woman he loved.

  “Don’t let him leave,” Chase ordered. “We’re two minutes out at most. I need you to
do whatever you must to hold him until we arrive.”

  “I understand,” Nathan confirmed woodenly, ending the communication on a harsh curse.

  Outside the open entryway of the exhibit hall, he spotted Carys chatting pleasantly with a small group of ladies. He motioned her toward him as he marched at a soldier’s clip across the marble floor. “Find Jordana. Now. Keep her out of the exhibit hall.”

  The Breed female’s face blanched. “What’s happened?”

  “Find her,” he barked sharply. “Take her home. Don’t leave her side, do you understand? And tell her … ah, fuck. Tell her I’m sorry.”

  “Nathan?” Carys called from behind him, but he didn’t answer.

  His heart as heavy as his feet, he strode into the glittering society event like a wraith, his ruthless Hunter’s gaze searching out his quarry through the crowds.

  STANDING IN FRONT OF THE RESTROOM MIRROR, JORDANA finger-combed her hair back into some semblance of order and checked her appearance one last time after freshening up.

  Aside from the cat-in-the-cream grin she couldn’t seem to suppress, she supposed she looked presentable enough. Although no one in the exhibit hall would detect what she’d been up to, Jordana wasn’t sure how she was going to manage to look anyone in the eye without blushing from head to toe over the knowledge of where she’d been and with whom—or the fact that her shredded thong now lay in the bottom of the ladies’ room waste bin.

  She didn’t know how she’d be able to pretend as if she hadn’t just been thoroughly, magnificently fucked just a few scant yards and one closed door away from hundreds of Boston’s most affluent, important citizens.

  Not to mention her father.

  She’d intended to seek him out after her welcome speech and introduce him to Nathan. So much for that plan. Her libido had other ideas.

  Very good ideas, as it turned out.

  She would just have to introduce the two men later in the evening—

  Someone let out a scream in the exhibit hall outside. There was a crash of glassware and china, then a loud, discordant note from the orchestra before the music cut off abruptly.