that moment, Jordan realized he would do whatever it took to give her a chance at that happiness. Even if it meant destroying the illusion of emotion she thought she felt for him.
Her lips parted against the pressure of his thumb as those incredible green eyes flashed with exactly what he wanted to see. Mixed with the vulnerability, the emotion she believed was love, he saw that moment when her heart, her brain, her senses locked into the emotion and her trust in him cemented.
For a moment, he let himself bask in that emotional heat, a response he was certain, absolutely positive, she was even fully unaware of.
And it had been achieved with an ease that indicated the depth of emotion she had felt for him before ever leaving the base in Texas.
That knowledge tightened his guts. In a split second he was hard, and filled with such remorse that it shocked him.
Just because he knew the love she thought she felt was no more than an illusion, a cruel, vicious, emotional prank, didn’t mean she would ever accept that fact. It didn’t mean she believed in it any less.
From the moment she had arrived at her home and found him there, he had pushed her toward one end. Toward the complete and total trust he needed her to feel. And now that she was there, he felt nothing but disgust for himself.
“Protect my family, too, Jordan.” A hint of steel flashed in her gaze then. The trust was there. That belief he had needed so desperately to ensure she would work with him rather than against him. But with it was also a warning. Tehya could make a formidable enemy, and if her family was harmed, that was exactly where this course would lead.
He let his lips quirk into a small smile as he forced the lie of amusement into his gaze. A lie because amusement was the last thing he felt.
Unlike his precious Tehya, he knew exactly how to lie with every cell of his body.
“Your family is completely protected,” he assured her. “I promise, I even have plans B, C, and D where their safety and protection is concerned.”
He was all about his plans. For a moment, just a moment, he wished he could be more about believing in love than about believing in reality.
To keep that regret harnessed, his head lowered and his lips brushed against hers, gently, but with a restraint that made his body tighten and ache with renewed hunger.
As her lips parted, as the fiery heat and infusion of emotion filled her kiss, Jordan wished, for the first time in too many years to count, that he too believed in love.
Tehya’s lashes drifted open as the kiss slowly eased away, her senses immersed in the pleasure of a contact that shouldn’t have had such an effect on her.
She loved him, though. The emotion she had never been able to restrain welled inside her as she stared up at him, wishing she could hold the heart of the man that held hers so easily. A man who refused to believe love could be more than an illusion.
As her lips parted to speak, a heavy knock at the bedroom door echoed through the room.
“Hey lovebirds, we have a delivery out here.” Nik chuckled in amusement.
Tehya almost swore Jordan was ready to roll his eyes.
Staring down at her, Jordan backed away slowly. “I’ll go out and talk to him.” His lips quirked in amusement. “For some reason, it bothers me that Nik would see you half-dressed, in our bedroom.”
Shocking. And Jordan didn’t often shock her.
There was the faintest hint of male possession in his tone, as though he had already laid his claim to her. As though he intended to keep her.
Tehya gave her head a hard shake as he left the room to talk to Nik, the sound of the possessiveness in his voice still rocking through her senses. How she had needed to hear that, because Jordan never felt possessive. She had never known or heard of him to be jealous of any woman.
She was checking her appearance at the mirror when Jordan stepped back inside minutes later. “Mikayla delivered the dress.” Entering the room fully he laid the ball gown over the bottom of the bed before turning back to her
His gaze was darker, less a sapphire blue, perhaps closer to a navy. As though in the moments they had been apart, some dark memory had filled his senses.