“You’re not really going to beat me.” She’d reverted to that bored tone of voice again, but he could see the hectic sparkle in her eyes.
“It’s not a beating if you end up begging me for it, I don’t think. Certainly not if you enjoy it. Though you can call it that if you like.”
“I won’t submit to something like that, obviously,” she said coolly, though her gaze was anything but. “It’s barbaric.”
Nicodemus smiled, and he realized it was with actual fondness, which should have terrified him. It should have brought back his history with Arista and all the red flags he’d ignored that first time. But instead, he filed it away and concentrated on the woman before him, whose outrage had thawed the frozen shell she’d been wrapped in since their wedding ceremony. Another victory, he thought.
“Is it?” he asked then. “If I reach between your legs, will I find you as desperate for me as you were on that plane? Wet and needy and mine already?”
She did nothing for a long moment but breathe, trembling where she sat, all fists and fury and that sizzling lightning just beneath it, blinding him. Tying him in knots. Making him nothing at all but greedy.
Soon, he promised himself. It will be soon enough.
“I’ll clean up the glass,” Mattie said in a low voice. “But there will be no spanking.”
“Not today, then,” he said, relaxing back into the sofa. “I understand. Trust takes time.”
She looked at him with loathing—or what would have been loathing, had he not been able to see that spark of need in her dark eyes. Not only for sex, he thought—which was one of the reasons she got beneath his skin. All the more that lurked in her, that called to him. She got to her feet stiffly and started toward the mess she’d made, and he let her walk a few steps. He doubted she knew how she looked in that dress. Not at all like a widow or a wraith as she’d obviously intended. The gray suited her, made her flashing eyes and glorious hair something like glimpses of clear sky through lovely clouds, and he wondered why any bride wore white, instead. But then, not every bride could possibly look like his.
God help him, the ways he wanted this woman. Only the fact he’d held on to his composure for so long already allowed him to keep doing it.
“Stop,” he said when she’d moved far enough into the center of the room, and though she scowled at him when she turned to look back at him, she obeyed. And he liked that as much as if he truly was the barbarian he knew she thought he was. “Stand right there.”
He simply studied her, watching as her scowl deepened. And then, moments later, as she shifted from one foot to the other, in some mixture of impatience and anxiety, and he wanted to taste both.
“What now?” she asked tightly. “Aren’t menial chores and threats of physical abuse enough for one day?”
“Don’t move,” he ordered her. “I told you there were two options. And if you are as adamantly opposed to my spanking you as you’ve claimed, that means you’ve chosen the other by default.”
“Is it really necessary to play these dictatorial games, Nicodemus?” she asked, and there was something more than her usual provocation in her voice then. Something real. Raw.
“I don’t know. I asked myself a similar question many times over the past ten years. Do you have an answer?”
“I wasn’t playing games. I didn’t want you. I don’t.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say.” He smiled. “You seem very fidgety, Mattie. Almost nervous.”
“You obviously want me to be nervous,” she snapped.
“Perhaps you should be. Perhaps it’s past time you took this seriously.”
And he could see that she was as nervous as he could hope. Finally. But it wasn’t as simple as nerves. There was that longing beneath, that need. And that other, electric current that looked a great deal like anticipation.
He’d spent a long time learning how to read this woman. It was finally paying off.
“You used to tell me how much you liked to dance,” he said when he could see it had built in her to a fever pitch, and he wasn’t sure what she’d do next. “Do you remember? Every time you explained to me why it was necessary for you to spend quite so much time falling in and out of clubs.”
She clenched her hands tight, then opened them.
“Yes.” He hardly recognized her voice when she finally spoke. “I like dancing. Is that another manufactured crime you can claim you need to punish me for?”
“Then dance.” It was a dare. A command. He waved a hand, taking in the vast, empty room, nothing in it or the whole villa but the two of them and this bright, greedy thing that grew tighter between them with every breath. “For me.”
“I...what?”
But she swayed where she stood, in unconscious obedience, and it sent a spike of pure need straight through him, deep and hard. She might not know how much and how deeply she wanted him. She might not be able to admit it. But Nicodemus knew. He’d known since that very first dance they’d shared all those years ago now.
How much different would all of this be—would they be, he wondered, if she’d allowed him to claim her then? If she hadn’t led him on this merry chase across the years?
“Pretend,” he invited her, and it was as if the space between them shrank. Disappeared. “Pretend you want me so much it’s like a fist in your gut, making it hard to breathe. Pretend you desire me almost as much as you fear me, like a terrible flu you worry might carry you off. Pretend you can claim a little bit of your power this way, by beguiling me and seducing me.” His gaze was hard on hers, the way he wished his hands were. “Do it well enough, my sweet little wife, and perhaps you won’t be pretending. Do it better than that, and perhaps we won’t need to call any of this punishment, after all.”
CHAPTER FIVE
INSTEAD, MATTIE FLED.
She ran through the sun-bathed halls of the villa, past the awe-inspiring paintings she refused to look at too closely for fear they would tell her things about their owner she didn’t wish to know. She ran all the way to the master bedroom and that huge bed she didn’t want to share with him, and then she locked herself in the bathroom.
Like a child. Again.
And then she waited there, her heart pounding so hard she could feel its staccato rhythm when she swallowed, for Nicodemus to storm in on her. For him to pound on the door, rage and shout on the other side, even break it down before him—
But he did none of those things. She couldn’t even tell if he’d followed her wild dash through the house or if he was still sitting where she’d left him, that harshly seductive mouth of his crooked to one side and his low voice urging her on.
Pretend you desire me almost as much as you fear me.
Mattie didn’t have to pretend when it came to Nicodemus, and she was terribly afraid he knew that, the way he seemed to know everything else.
She still didn’t understand how he knew. How he’d always known.
The shadows lengthened. The bathtub was a grand affair, set high on its own dais with a wide window facing the slumberous expanse of the sea, and Mattie curled up there, taking an austere sort of comfort from the rigid porcelain beneath her. She watched the sun sink toward the horizon, then disappear in a blaze of brilliant reds and oranges. She watched the stars come out, only a few as twilight stole the bright colors of the sunset away, then too many to count as nighttime fell in earnest.
She fell asleep eventually, then woke in her usual state of tumult and desperation, the nightmare clinging to her as she tried to fight her way free of its sinewy grip. The crash. The horror. The hours trapped in that backseat with her face pressed into the leather and Chase holding her there, both of them shaking—
Mattie wiped her eyes, waited for the same shaking to pass in the present, then fell back asleep.
And when she woke in the morning, the light was pouring in, dazzling her, so it took her a few critical moments to realize that she was no longer in the bathtub. She was in the big bed in the master bedroom and Ni
codemus—her husband—was stretched out beside her.
Just like every morning since they’d arrived here, only this time, Mattie had no memory of him carrying her from the bathtub to the bed. She could remember nothing but the nightmare. How had he moved her without her knowledge? Had she told him the truth while she slept? And what else had happened that she couldn’t recall?
Mattie jackknifed to sitting position, tearing back the covers to make sure she was still wearing her sour version of a wedding dress. She made no attempt to hide her sigh of relief when she discovered it was still on, as were the bra and panties she’d worn beneath.
“Let me assure you,” Nicodemus said in that low, amused voice of his that seemed to wind through her, setting her alight, especially when it sounded as sleepy and as close as it did just then. “If anything of that nature had happened, after all these years, you would not have to check.”
She swallowed, feeling much more fragile than she should have. She cast around for her outrage, her fury—but there was only that same old panic he always kicked up in her. Simmering there inside her, more mellow, somehow. Or more resigned.
Almost as if it wasn’t panic at all, but something else entirely.
“So I am to have no privacy whatsoever,” she said, her gaze trained on her lap. The yards and yards of gray that had failed to protect her.
“I apologize,” he said in that arid way of his that was no apology at all. That mocked the very notion of an apology. “Were you comfortable in the bathtub? My mistake. You looked cold and underfed. And I think you were having a nightmare.”
Mattie went cold. Her mind cleared. No one had ever been near her during one of her nightmares, and she certainly couldn’t let it happen again. What if she told him what had happened? What if he knew what she’d done?
She felt ill at the very idea and didn’t want to think about the contradiction there.
“No privacy,” she said crisply, as if reading off a list. “Spankings presented as reasonable resolutions to conflicts. Threats issued. Told to dance for your pleasure and to perform chores at your command.” She stared at him. “You’ll understand if somehow, I found the bathtub more inviting.”
“You made a mess, princess.” His dark eyes probed hers, and for once she couldn’t find any laughter lurking there, only that implacable iron that made her shake down deep inside, and she couldn’t lie to herself and pretend it was fear. It wasn’t. “I had every intention of making sure you cleaned it up.”
“Oh, right,” she replied. “You mean that in the broader sense, I gather. I’m supposed to spend this sick joke of a marriage paying penance for not racing into it sooner? That’s the mess I made?”
He was quiet, and that wasn’t any good. It allowed Mattie time—and she didn’t want time. The morning sun spilled over him like a radiant, clinging lover, bathing his perfect form in too much light to bear. The trouble was—had always been—he was flawless. He wore nothing but a low-slung pair of boxer briefs this morning, and in truth, he had nothing to hide. Every inch of him was stunning. The taut, lean muscles in his arms, his flat pectorals and ridged abdomen, those tough, strong thighs. He was dusted with dark hair that thickened and then disappeared beneath his boxer briefs, and she told herself she didn’t notice the rest of him.
Certainly not the part of him that stood ready, huge and impatient and barely contained, right where she absolutely refused to look.
“You’ve been crying,” he said gruffly, and for a dazed moment she didn’t understand what he meant. He reached over and ran a thumb beneath one of her eyes and she jerked her head away. “Why?”
She blinked, oddly off balance. “I can think of a thousand reasons.”
“Pick the one that’s true,” he suggested, still in that rough way that, perversely, made her imagine he cared. She hated that she wished he did.
And Mattie couldn’t tell him the truth. Her nightmares were her business—and anyway, she told herself, he didn’t really care, no matter that note in his voice. He only wanted to make certain she had nowhere to hide.
“It doesn’t matter what I say.” She shifted away from him. “You’ve already decided that I’m a liar. You decided it a hundred years ago, so why should I bother saying a word?”
“Or you could try not lying.”
He rolled toward her, closing the distance she’d put between them and propping himself up on one elbow, and she could have done without that play of all his beautiful muscles beneath his sleek skin, right there in front of her. She could have done without the unearned, unwanted, terrible intimacy of this. It felt like a great and awful weight, pressing down hard on her chest, like he was holding her down with all his obvious strength when what was far, far worse was that he didn’t have to.
“I’ve been bartered off to save a company, as if I were nothing more than a collection of shares in human form,” she said instead of any of the other things she could have said. “A spreadsheet with legs. Anyone would shed a few tears.”
But his dark eyes only lit up with all that golden amusement, sending a shiver straight through her.
“This could all have been very different,” he said lazily. “If you had married me the first time I asked, I would have treated you like you were made of spun glass, not shares. I would have worshipped the ground you walked upon. Bent the whole world before you, to service your every whim.”
Worried that if she tried to get out of the bed he’d reach over and stop her, which would involve touching her—and she had no idea what she’d do then—Mattie pushed herself back until she was leaning against the headboard, curled her knees beneath her and tried to stare him down.
“I was eighteen,” she said, not sure where that urgency in her voice came from when she’d wanted to match his nonchalance. “I was a kid. I had no business thinking about getting married and you shouldn’t have asked. The only reason you did ask was because you wanted an in with my father. Let’s not pretend your heart was involved, Nicodemus. It was your wallet first and then, when I refused you repeatedly, your pride. It still is.”
He reached over and pulled the hem of her dress between his fingers, and she bit back the rebuke that hovered on her tongue. What did it matter if he touched her clothes? There were far worse places he could put those clever fingers of his, and she knew that all too well now.
“Perhaps I simply wanted a Whitaker as my wife, and all the shares and spreadsheets that go along with that. Sadly, you are the only one available.”
“I’m told I have distant cousins in Aberystwyth. I’m sure one of them would have suited you fine.” She scowled at him when he laughed. “And I don’t think you should try to get too much mileage from the term wife.”
He shook his head at her as if he knew exactly where she was going with that. “Did you knock yourself on the head in the bath? That was an actual wedding yesterday. All very legal, I assure you.”
“That might have been a wedding, but this isn’t a real marriage,” she insisted, surprised to hear how loud her voice sounded in all that dizzy Greek sunshine that filled the room. “In the real world, marriages don’t involve threats and promises of high-ranking positions in corporations as some kind of twisted dowry. You’re going to be COO and President of Whitaker Industries, Nicodemus. Those are the titles you care about. Husband and wife are just words.”
He moved then. He reached over and hauled her to him, rolling with her until she was beneath him, he was pressed between her thighs and braced above her, and she could do nothing at all but gape up at him.
She thought she was having a heart attack, but it kept pounding like that, jarring and huge and whole-bodied, and it took her long, shuddering moments to realize that this was living through it. That it only felt like it was killing her.
That if it killed her, that might be better, because everything that was happening to her right now—everything he was doing to her—she was all too aware he could see.
“Does this feel real, Mattie?” he asked roughly, h
is gaze on her mouth. “Marital enough for you? Real? Because neither your father nor your brother are in this room. It’s only me and you and your heart has gone mad inside your chest. I can feel it.”
“That’s panic,” she threw at him. “And a little bit of revulsion.”
But she made no attempt to fight him off. No attempt to roll out from under him, or to dislodge the sleek, solid weight of him from on top of her, from that place where he rested against her as if they were already joined. And she knew, somehow, that if she’d tried any of that, he’d have let her go at once. She didn’t try.
You can’t let this happen! cried that voice inside of her, the way it always did—but this time, she knew on some deep, feminine level she’d never accessed before, was for completely different reasons.
This wasn’t some overeager boyfriend she had to placate and put off. This was Nicodemus.
This was Nicodemus and she couldn’t even manage to pull her gaze away from his. And that profound failure to act told her things she didn’t want to know about herself—that and what felt like a slow-motion detonation from that molten-hot place between her legs outward, making her burn from her navel to her fingernails. Making her nothing but heat and wonder and that thing she liked to tell herself was fear. Pounding, driving, consuming fear that wasn’t fear at all.
Nicodemus did nothing but gaze down at her, fierce and demanding and still. And Mattie wasn’t afraid of him the way she knew she should have been, because she was the one who closed the distance between them. She lifted her lips toward his. She found she was begging with every part of her except her voice—
“First you must ask,” he told her, his gaze a dark fire and his voice like gravel. “Out loud, so there can be no mistake.”
“Ask?” She hardly understood what he’d said, much less what she’d repeated. As if she’d never heard the word in her life. And all she could see was that beautiful, harsh mouth of his, bold and hard and so deliciously close to hers—
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