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He was as smoothly muscled as he’d been when he was in his twenties and honed to steel-like perfection by the construction work he’d somehow catapulted into a multi-million-dollar corporation by the time he was twenty-six. The fine, hard lines of his face were nearly elegant while his corded strength was as apparent in the line of his pugilistic jaw as in that impossibly chiseled chest of his that he’d concealed very poorly today behind a tight, black, obviously wildly expensive T-shirt that made no concession whatsoever to the weather. He was too elemental. He’d always made the hair at the back of her neck stand on end, her nipples pull painfully taut and her stomach draw tight, and today was no different.
Today was worse. And on top of that, Nicodemus was smiling.
I am lost already, she thought.
Nicodemus was a sheer, high, dizzying cliff and she’d spent ten years fighting hard to keep from toppling off. Because she still had no idea what might become of her if she fell.
“You really are gloating,” she said, folding her arms over her chest and frowning at him. It was more of a smirk than a smile, she thought as she eyed him warily, and that too-bright gleam of a warmth like honey in his dark coffee gaze. “I don’t know why that surprises me, coming from you.”
“I’m not sure that gloating is the word I’d choose.”
He was lethal, pure and simple, and his dark gaze was too intent. It took everything she had to keep from turning and bolting for the door. This day was always coming, she told herself harshly. Accept it, because you can’t escape it.
Though she’d tried. God, but she’d tried.
“The first time I asked you to marry me you were how old?” he asked, his voice almost warm, as if he was sharing a fond reminiscence instead of their long, tortured history. “Twenty?”
“I was eighteen,” Mattie said crisply. She didn’t move as he roamed toward her. But she wanted to. She wanted to bolt for her childhood bedroom on the second floor and lock herself inside. She made herself lock her gaze to his, instead. “It was my debutante ball and you were ruining it.”
Nicodemus’s mocking little smile deepened, and Mattie fought not to flush with the helpless reaction he’d always caused in her. But she could still remember that single waltz her father had insisted she dance with him that night. Pressed up against his big body, much too close to his fierce, demanding gaze, and that mouth of his that had made her nothing but...nervous. And needy.
It still did. Damn him.
“Marry me,” he’d said instead of a greeting, almost as if he’d meant to let out some kind of curse, instead.
“I’m sorry,” she’d said, holding Nicodemus’s dark, dark eyes as if they hadn’t bitten deep into her, making her chest feel tight. She’d been a brash girl when she’d wanted to be, back then, forever attempting to get her father’s attention, but her voice had been small. He had terrified her. Or maybe that wasn’t terror, that overwhelming thing that had swamped her, fierce and instantaneous, but she hadn’t known what else to call it. “I don’t want to marry you. Or anyone.”
He’d laughed as if she’d delighted him. “You will.”
“I will never want to marry you,” she’d told him stoutly, some kick of temper—or self-preservation—in her gut making her bold. She’d been eighteen. And it hadn’t been lost on her that Nicodemus was not one of the silly boys she’d known then. He’d been very much a man.
He’d smiled at her as if he knew her and it had connected hard to her throat, her chest, her belly. Below. It had made her toes cramp up inside her ferociously high shoes.
“You’ll marry me, princess.” He’d seemed certain. Amused, even. “You can count on it.”
He seemed even more amused now.
Nicodemus closed the distance between them almost lazily, but Mattie knew better. There was nothing lazy about him, ever. It was all misdirection and only the very foolish believed it.
“Have we ever determined what was wrong with you that you wanted to marry a teenager in the first place?” she asked him now, trying to divert whatever was coming. But he only stopped a scant few inches in front of her. “Couldn’t find a woman your own age?”
Nicodemus didn’t reply. He reached over and raked his fingers through the long, dark hair she decided instantly she needed to cut off, then wrapped it all around his hand, like he was putting her on a leash.
Then he gave it a tug. Not a gentle one. And she felt it deep between her legs, like a flare of dark pleasure.
Mattie wanted to smack his hand away, but that glinting thing in his dark gaze dared her to try, and she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction when she was already tilting her head back at an angle that made a dangerous heat kindle to bright life inside her. Then build.
“That hurts,” she told him, horrified that there was a hint of thickness in her throat when she spoke. That gave him ammunition. It couldn’t be allowed.
“No, it doesn’t.” He sounded as certain as he had when she’d been eighteen, and it was infuriating. No matter if it made everything inside her tilt again and then tighten.
“I realize I’ve been bartered off like chattel,” she bit out. “But it’s still my hair. I know how it feels when someone pulls it.”
His smile deepened. “You lie about everything, Mattie,” he murmured, the slap of the words at jarring odds with the way he crooned them, leaning in close. “You break your word the way other women break their nails.”
“I break those, too.” It was like she couldn’t stop herself. “If this has all been a bid for the perfect, polished trophy wife, Nicodemus, you’re going to find me a grave disappointment.”
He laughed softly, which wasn’t remotely soothing, and tugged again, and it wasn’t the first time Mattie regretted the fact that she was both tall and entirely too vain. Five feet ten inches in her bare feet, and the gorgeous black boots she was wearing today put her at a good six feet and then some. Which meant that when Nicodemus loomed over her and got too close to her, that mouth of his was right there. Not miles above her, which was safer. Within easy reach—and she imagined he was deliberately standing this close to her because he wanted to remind her of that.
Like she—or her shuddering, jolting pulse she could feel in a variety of worrying places—would be likely to forget.
“I told you a long time ago that this day would come,” Nicodemus said now.
“And I told you that I wasn’t going to change my mind,” she replied, though it cost her a little more than it should have to keep her chin up and her gaze steady on his. “I haven’t. You can’t really believe that this grotesque, medieval form of blackmail is the same as me surrendering to you, can you?”
“What do I care how you come to me?” he replied in that low, amused voice of his that kicked up brushfires inside her as it worked its way through her and made her feel a delicious sort of weak. “You mistake me for a good man, Mattie. I’m merely a determined one.”
And despite herself, Mattie remembered a long, formal dinner in Manhattan’s Museum of Natural History for some charity or another and her father’s insistence that she sit with Nicodemus, who, he’d informed her when she’d balked, was like another son to him. A far-better-behaved one, he’d added. Mattie had been all of twenty-two—and infuriated.
“I’m not trying to change your mind, princess,” Nicodemus had told her in a voice pitched for her ears alone, at odds with the way he’d spoken to others that night—mighty and sure, bold and harsh. He’d shifted in his seat and pinned her to hers with that knowing dark glare of his she’d come to know far too well. “We both know how this will end. Your father will indulge you to a certain point, but then reality will assert itself. And the longer you make me wait, the more I’ll have to take it out of your rebellious little hide when you’re where you belong. In my bed. Under my...” He’d paused, his dark eyes had glittered, and she’d felt it as if he’d licked the soft skin of her belly. Like a kind of glorious, transformative pain. His lips had crooked. “Roof.”
&nb
sp; “What an inviting fantasy,” Mattie had retorted, aware he hadn’t meant to say roof at all. “I can’t imagine what’s keeping me from leaping at the opportunity to experience that great joy.”
“Suit yourself,” he’d replied. He’d shrugged, but she’d been far too aware that every inch of him was hewn of steel, that he was himself a deadly weapon. She’d felt the power he wore so easily like a thick, hot hand at her throat. Worse, she’d been aware of that part of her that craved it. Him. More. “I have a very long memory, Mattie, and a very creative approach to retribution. Consider yourself forewarned.”
“Be still my beating heart,” she’d snipped at him, and then had tried her best to ignore him.
It hadn’t worked then. It didn’t work now.
“Will we reminisce all day?” she asked, injecting a note of boredom into her voice that she dearly wished she felt while he continued to hold her immobile. “Or do you have a plan? I’m unfamiliar with the ins and outs of blackmail, you see. You’ll have to show me how it’s done.”
“You’re free to refuse me yet again.”
