could endanger the plan to make it appear you’ve been killed.”
Jordan’s gaze met Noah’s in the mirror for a second before his nephew turned his eyes back to the road.
The thought of not going to Tehya had his guts clenching in refusal. He’d be damned if he would let her sit there alone, allow her to sleep alone after experiencing the heat and pleasure of having her against him throughout the night.
“I didn’t ask if you thought it was a good idea. I said do it.” His gaze met Noah’s again for a brief second, their wills clashing as Jordan set the tone of command at its firmest strength.
Noah grimaced and his gaze jerked back to the road, the muscles at the side of his jaw flexing angrily.
“She’s getting to you, isn’t she, Jordan?” Noah finally asked as he made the turn onto a bypass and entered the heavy late afternoon traffic as his tone sharpened with a flare of anger. “Are you giving in to the illusion?” he mocked.
“Like you and Sabella, Noah, the illusion is real for Tehya. Just because I don’t believe in it doesn’t mean she doesn’t believe she feels it.”
Or was there more to it? Jordan fought the denial raging inside him at the thought that love didn’t exist. He had always believed it was an illusion. Since he was a teenager, since that first flush of love and the resulting betrayal, he’d refused to let himself believe.
And now he was beginning to wonder if perhaps he had been wrong. Tehya gave every part of herself to him when they came together, and he’d learned that each time he touched her, thought about her, ached for her, that the need became stronger, deeper, more intense.
“Doesn’t mean you can’t reap the benefits of it either, huh?” The disappointment in Noah’s voice wasn’t hard to miss, and it struck at one of the few vulnerable areas Jordan possessed. His affection for family, his need for that family’s affection.
Jordan raked his fingers through his hair impatiently as he met his nephew’s mockingly angry gaze. “Just because I believe it’s an illusion doesn’t mean I can’t claim the results of it,” Jordan amended, his voice darker as a part of him cringed, or seemed to, at the illogical feeling of having betrayed Tehya somehow with that statement.
Noah didn’t say anything further. His lips thinned, his expression became set in lines of disapproval, but he kept his argument to himself.
If only the others were so kind.
“Hey, Noah, did you notice he said just because he believed it was an illusion rather than just because it is an illusion?” Nik piped up from beside Noah, his voice heavy with amusement. “Maybe he’s relenting just a little bit.”
Neither Jordan nor Noah responded. Jordan could feel the heavy threat of condemnation rising from each of his men as they rode toward the senator’s estate.
Noah had to fight to rein in the impatient anger brewing inside him.
Hell, he’d been around Tehya and his uncle enough to know that Jordan was determined to fight whatever he was feeling for Tehya. He’d been feeling it for six damned years now or more, and still, Jordan didn’t dare mention the L word. If he acknowledged it, then he might have to admit it actually existed.
But if any man had ever been born to love a woman, then Jordan had been born for Tehya, just as Noah knew he had been born for Sabella.
It was the Malone curse, his grandfather had always said. Malone men were warned to love wisely, because once they loved, they loved forever, they loved deep, and they loved with a blazing heat that burned clear to the soul.
Jordan just didn’t want to admit he was in love with Tehya. If he admitted it, then he had to face the fact that he couldn’t exist without her.
And it wasn’t a bad thing, Noah acknowledged to himself. He’d made mistakes with Sabella. He’d left her when he should have had her brought to him. He’d turned his back on his marriage, his life, his identity because of his own stupid pride and fear. But as Noah Blake rather than Nathan Malone, he’d returned, claimed everything that had ever belonged to him, and at the same time, Sabella managed to mark his soul a second time with a lash of delicate, feminine claws, female stubbornness, and raging hunger.
Hell, if he could knock some sense into his uncle, then that was exactly what he would do. Unfortunately,