“I’d prefer it if you begged,” he said, low and rough and needy, but absolute. Implacable. “But if you ask nicely, I’ll let it slide. Just this once.”
And then there was a very long moment where Mattie couldn’t think of a single reason why she didn’t do exactly that. Not one single reason.
She opened her mouth—but then reality asserted itself inside her, blinding and brilliant, bringing with it a kind of desperate reason, and she didn’t care if he saw all of it in her eyes. Intimacy with this man meant losing herself first, and then losing him. She’d known that for years. She knew it the way she knew he’d wanted her, always. Deep in her bones. Immutable and irreversible. A simple, searing truth.
“I’m not going to ask you nicely,” she promised him, though her voice shook. “And I’m certainly not going to beg. That might be your conception of marriage, but it certainly isn’t mine.”
“I thought this wasn’t a real marriage,” he murmured, all silk and fire. “No need to fight for equality in a sham like this, is there? Just surrender, Mattie. I promise you, you’ll like it.”
She believed him. That was why she scowled at him again. Harder.
“No begging,” she snapped. “Unless you plan to get down on your knees and try it yourself?”
His hard mouth crooked. “I hope you’re prepared to suffer.” He was so big, hard and gorgeous and almost entirely naked as he pressed her to the bed yet kept the bulk of his weight on his arms on either side of her, as if he was the only thing protecting her from what they both wanted. “Because that’s the only way I’ll touch you again.”
“You’re touching me now, I can’t help but notice.”
“Splitting hairs won’t take the ache away, Mattie,” he all but crooned at her, as if he knew how badly she already did. As if he could see all the ways she longed for him. “It will only draw this out.”
He laughed, and it was that same dark victor’s laugh, but this time it rolled through her differently. Because his mouth was so close to hers, maybe. It swept inside her like an inexorable wave, and she didn’t know if she wanted to weep or scream or betray herself entirely and beg the way he wanted her to do.
Anything to get him to touch her again without her having to ask—without her having to thereby prove that he was right about her.
She hated herself for that twisted little thought.
“Let me go,” she whispered then, furious at both of them, but he only laughed again, in exactly the same way.
“I don’t know why, when you obviously want me as badly as I want you, you go to these lengths to deny it. But none of that matters.”
“Because you’ve seen the error of your ways and are setting me free from this absurd pseudo-marriage?” she asked with all the bravado she wished she felt.
He leaned in and nipped at the soft place beneath her chin, punishment and seduction at once, and Mattie could do nothing but jolt and then shudder. Showing him too much, she understood. Proving herself the liar he already thought she was.
The liar she’d proved herself to be again and again and again. Every time he touched her, she lied.
“Pick a new strategy, Mattie,” he told her, and then moved up and off her in a breathtakingly smooth shift of athletic grace, giving her an unwanted object lesson in all of that divine, stunning strength of his. “The problem with this one is that I’m bored with it.”
“Heaven forbid I bore you,” she snapped out. “You’ve blackmailed me, threatened me and manhandled me into this sham of a marriage—but all of that pales in comparison to boring you. A fate worse than death!”
“You dance too close to the edge again and again,” he said as if she hadn’t spoken. “You treat me to your sharp tongue whenever you feel like it, you run and hide when I return the favor, then you repeat the pattern ad nauseam. All without any consequences, until now.”
Nicodemus was standing then, by the side of the bed with the morning sun casting his face in shadow, but she had no trouble seeing that gleam of honey in his gaze. That dark knowing thing behind it. She felt it everywhere.
Worse than his mouth on her. Deeper. Infinitely more destructive.
“Without consequences?” she asked, her voice shakier than she liked. She raised up her hand with its heavy rings. “What do you call this?”
His mouth curved. “I can do this for another decade if I have to, and I’ll still win. It’s entirely up to you.”
* * *
He was right. She was going about this all wrong.
Mattie came to that conclusion in a near-violent rush while she stood in the spacious shower, her hands braced against the lovingly crafted stone wall and her head tipped back, letting the water fall down on her like rain. She’d spent all this time treating Nicodemus like he was an unfightable force of nature, some impossibly powerful creature made of myth and magic, when the truth was he was a man.
Just a man, like all the rest.
And when she put her wildly beating heart aside, when she shoved off the things he made her feel against her will and the very real fear that she was already coming undone because of him, she knew that she’d been playing this the wrong way from the start. Because he’d taken her breath away when she was still eighteen without even trying, and she’d forgotten the simple truth she’d known even then: men were easy.
Men were creatures of simple needs and impulses that could be directed and finessed and yes, used. Fathers, brothers, boyfriends—it was the same thing, really, if different tools. Mattie had learned that a long time ago in the glare of cameras usually wielded by men, none of whom were immune to the judicious application of a little bit of feminine charm. It was easy to flirt or flatter her way out of trouble, to misdirect, to indulge in a little sleight of hand. It was easy to change the conversation from the things she didn’t wish to give up to other things she didn’t much mind surrendering.
Mattie hadn’t been able to do much about her guilt. But a little bit of charm had gone a long way with Big Bart, especially because she’d been willing to move back to the States and under his thumb. And if she could charm her father, who she’d hurt so terribly twenty years ago, she knew she could charm anyone.
If she wanted to gain back any of the ground she’d lost in these explosive few days, Mattie needed to treat Nicodemus like any other man she’d ever known. Mortal. Manageable.
She started by dressing for him.
Mattie tried to remember every single thing he’d ever said to her about her appearance—all of it negative, generally, and delivered in that withering tone of his—and dress around it. She ended up in a soft, cocoa-colored cashmere sweater that was airy enough for the Greek sun and warm enough for the hint of autumn chill beneath it. She layered it over a pair of white trousers and left her feet bare in a touch of feminine vulnerability. She twisted her hair back into a casual chignon with a few strands left loose, and when she was done she looked a good deal more like the kind of woman Nicodemus had always seemed to think she should have been than she usually did. The kind of woman she might have been naturally had she not felt compelled to dress in dark, moody colors and clothes he found inelegant to convey her defiance every time she saw him.
And then she squared her shoulders, reminded herself how many times she’d done something like this before when she’d needed to appease one of her boyfriends who’d grown too demanding and went to find him.
He was only a man, she reminded herself again as she moved through the villa. No matter how he made her feel. No matter that he’d somehow managed to make her forget herself completely almost every time he touched her. No matter that he’d taken a piece of her no one else ever had.
None of that mattered. She had to even this playing field, or she’d disappear.
He sat with his laptop at the gleaming counter in the expansive, light-filled kitchen on the lower level of the villa, a Greek coffee steaming at his elbow. She hesitated in the doorway, assuming he’d heard her approach the way he always had before, though he
didn’t glance her way.
And for a moment, she forgot about her strategies and her plans. She forgot what he was or wasn’t. What she could or couldn’t do. Because he was staring off into space with an unguarded, wholly un-Nicodemus-like expression on his face. Not fierce, not hard. Not myth or magic.
She couldn’t categorize it. She didn’t recognize it.
Mattie only knew it made her throat feel too tight.
But then it was gone as if it had never been, and all the dark steel she recognized as pure Nicodemus returned. He shifted slightly in the high stool, frowning at the screen before him.
“Has the funeral ended so soon?” he asked mildly enough, making her wonder exactly when he’d seen her there in the arched doorway when he still didn’t bother to look her way. “I expected to see you draped in shrouds and mantillas for at least the next week.”
“I suppose I had that coming,” she agreed in a soft voice, and that made him look up and focus on her, those dark eyes narrowing immediately.
He’s just a man, she reminded herself as that look seared into her. He can’t read a single thing in you unless you let him. He doesn’t have the slightest idea what you dream about.
And if she redirected his attention, he never would.
She walked into the kitchen as if she was unaware of that faint frown between his eyes and settled herself gingerly at the counter with him. Not across from him as she would have done before, but on the stool next to his, the way she would have done if he was someone else. Right next to his, and it was hard—almost too hard—to keep her head in this game instead of losing her cool.
He was so big, so solid. Sleek and fierce and this close to him, she felt him—all that dark, restless power, all his stark ruthlessness—like an electric hum beneath her own skin.
“Still,” she continued in the same soft voice once she was seated, ignoring all the rest, “I thought you’d appreciate that I’ve attempted to dress more to your taste.”
He trained his simmering dark gaze on her, and she felt simultaneously very small and very exposed. Instead of striking out, she let it show. Men liked softness and small, helpless things. They liked to feel large and mighty. She’d watched this same scene play out a hundred times.
He is the same as all the rest, she chanted to herself, like that could make it so.
“By that I assume you mean that I should applaud the fact you’re actually wearing something attractive?” Nicodemus asked silkily. “Rather than displaying your wares to any and all who venture near or wrapping yourself in the sartorial equivalent of a cocoon? What a gift, indeed.”
It actually hurt to gulp back the sharp retort that appeared on her tongue, but Mattie did it. Men were all about pride and fury. And they were all brought low by lust. Nicodemus was no different, despite the fact his barbs struck harder. Deeper than anyone else’s ever had.
“Nicodemus,” she said, as calmly as she could. “Maybe we can stop all of this. Maybe we can just...talk.”
“Talk.” He shook his head as if amazed. Then he shut his laptop with a quiet slap that made her think of ferocity restrained. “You want to talk. All these years later.”
She shrugged and let her sweater slide down one shoulder as she did. “I want to start over.”
His gaze moved over the exposed curve of her shoulder, then he aimed it at the ceiling and made a sound that was somewhere between exasperation and laughter. He crossed his arms over his broad chest—happily covered in a soft shirt now, though with too many buttons left undone for her peace of mind—and regarded her with that darkly honeyed gleam in his eyes that promised nothing but trouble.
“Let me guess what this is. You think that you can charm me into dropping my guard with you, because your usual games and stunts aren’t working.” He sighed. “And I’ve never seen your charm except from a distance, and always aimed toward others, so who knows? This might be an excellent plan.”
Mattie ordered herself to breathe. To think before she spoke. To stay calm—because God knew she’d spent ten years completely out of control around this man, and what had that ever gotten her? Married against her will and trapped on an island in the middle of nowhere, that was what.
Adapt or die, she snapped at herself. Right now.
“I want to get to know you,” she said, and she even smiled. It was easy if she simply pretended, as he’d suggested. Though Mattie doubted he’d intended that she should pretend he was someone else. Someone far less...him.
His gaze was far too shrewd. “Whatever for, I wonder?”
She turned toward him and extended her hands out in front of her, making sure she almost touched him—but didn’t. It was a gesture of supplication. Of something like surrender.
“Because there’s no one here but you and me, Nicodemus, and as you’ve pointed out several times, you know me already. I think it’s time I stop fighting this and return the favor, don’t you?”
He shifted in his stool so that he was more standing than sitting, and facing her completely. He was so tall. Dark and beautiful, and she had to do this. She had to wield the only weapon she had or he’d tear her wide open, sift through her hidden places and see everything. She had to put them back on common ground—any common ground at all—or she’d lose herself. For good.
And she couldn’t risk him finding out the truth.
“What do you want, Mattie?” he asked softly.
You on a platter, she thought, but did not say. She would get there. She could wreck him, too. She was sure of it. Chemistry went both ways, surely.
She took a deep, ragged breath that she didn’t have to fake, and then she reached over and put her hands on his rock-hard thighs. He didn’t appear to move at all, but she felt him tense beneath her. And he was so hard. So absurdly perfect in every way it made her feel something like drunk.
“I’ll ask you again,” he said, in a voice gone fierce and hot and lethal. “What do you want?”
She slipped from her stool and stood too close to him. Not quite leaning into him, but not losing contact with him, either. Then she slid her hands to the waistband of his trousers and felt him turn to stone beneath her palms.
“If you truly did fall and hit your head, you should tell me now,” he said in that dry way of his that she was afraid would be the death of her, because he might make her laugh and that would make this all much more difficult. Much more real. “Before I assume the worst and have you treated for a concussion.”
And Mattie understood, then, in a sudden flash that made her wonder how she’d missed it before, that she had far more power here than she’d imagined. That he was as off balance as she was. That perhaps he always had been, and she’d never noticed. She’d never allowed herself to notice. She told herself she could use that—and ignored the sudden hollow place in the vicinity of her chest.
She didn’t speak. She shifted closer and let her hands drift down, until she could cup the bold length of him through the fabric of his trousers. He didn’t groan. He didn’t push her away. But he was hot—so hot—and he let out a very long breath as if it hurt him.
As if she did.
“Mattie.” His voice was brutal. Clipped and hard. His hands came up to wrap around her upper arms, but he didn’t move her off him. And his touch was gentle, belying the tension she could feel in every part of him. “What the hell are you doing?”
She tilted her head back and looked up at him through her lashes, testing the length of him against one palm while he shook slightly, very slightly, and scowled back at her.
“I don’t know,” she told him.
But she did know. She’d never felt anything quite like this before, like every time she stroked him and felt him tense, the same shudder he fought to conceal worked its way through her. She felt molten, wild. And she’d hardly done anything yet.
She thought he was at the edge of his control and she didn’t know what might happen if he tipped over, so she moved quickly. She unzipped his trousers and reached inside, freeing him
, holding him in her hands at last. At last. He was velvet and steel. Hot and silken to the touch, and so powerfully male it was difficult to breathe.
And she didn’t know who was shaking more at that point, her or him.
That was as terrifying as it was thrilling, and she didn’t want to examine it. His eyes were so dark now they looked like the small hours of a long night, and he was muttering in Greek, almost beneath his breath, oaths and invocations. Curses and prayers, if the look on his face was any guide.
“Mattie.” Like her name was another curse, a heftier one.
She sank down to her knees, never breaking eye contact with him, never letting go. He was big and heavy everywhere, hotter than should have been possible, and she forgot that this was supposed to be a weapon. Her weapon. She forgot what game she was playing, or why. She wanted to taste him so badly she thought she’d do anything, say anything—
“What is this?” he asked, his accent heavier than she’d ever heard it, his voice thick, but he didn’t push her away. He didn’t stop her. His chest was rising and falling too fast to mistake, and the sight made her feel almost as needy, almost as molten bright and greedy, as he’d made her feel with his mouth.
“An apology,” she whispered, which wasn’t what she’d meant to say and had more truth in it than she liked, and so before she could think about it or betray herself further she leaned forward and took him deep into her mouth.
CHAPTER SIX
HE WAS DYING.
Or dreaming—but Nicodemus had had this dream a hundred times before or more, and it had never, ever been this good. Never.
Mattie’s mouth was so hot, her tongue so delicate and wicked at once as she licked him and tasted him. Tracing patterns, then taking the whole of him deep inside. She moved as she knelt there before him, the culmination of a thousand fantasies and far better than any of them, rocking slightly as if she really was dancing for him, at last, and he died.
Again and again, he died, and she kept going.
Nicodemus was no fool. This kind of sudden reversal made no sense, especially not from Mattie. But he couldn’t seem to care about that.
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