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“I doubt there will be a repeat of that unfortunate demonstration,” she said, but her voice lacked its usual force even to her own ears. “Once was enough.”
“Once,” he said, and his voice, by contrast, was alive with fire and that sharp edge that sliced deep into her, “is by no means enough. That was only the beginning, Mattie.”
“I said I’d marry you,” she heard herself say, as if from some far-off distance. She didn’t recognize that voice that came out of her mouth. Soft. Pleading. As if he’d licked her into a different person—and she was deeply afraid he really had. “That doesn’t mean you can claim marital rights like some eighteenth century relic. I’m not sure you can even really call me your wife, since you’re essentially purchasing the title.”
“Look at me.”
She didn’t want to do that, and she couldn’t understand, then, why she did it, anyway. She felt much too raw, like her heart was a throbbing thing that might rip her wide open in a moment, and yet she looked at him. Because he’d told her to. And she bit back something she was terribly afraid was a sob when he reached over and brushed her hair from her face.
With devastating gentleness.
“Are you afraid of me?” His voice was softer than it had been a moment ago, but Mattie couldn’t allow herself to melt into that the way her body wanted to do. The way her body did. She couldn’t let herself topple over into the way he was looking at her. She couldn’t let this happen. She couldn’t risk this kind of thing—this kind of softness.
Mattie knew what came next. First the softness, the intimacy, the love. Then loss. And all that darkness ever after.
“Why would I be afraid of you?” she asked, her voice a bitter little scrape against the taut thing that hung between them, against that softness making his eyes gleam like gold. Against the darkness she hid away inside her and yet held before her like a shield. “I love it when men I don’t want spirit me away on private planes and then put their mouths wherever they like on my body. It’s my favorite thing.”
“Ah, Mattie,” he said quietly, and if he’d been someone else, if she’d been someone else, she might have thought he truly cared about her then. That she was something different, something more, than a long-sought trophy he aimed to put high on the shelf of his choosing. “I don’t know if it’s your favorite thing or not. But it just became mine.”
Something swelled in her then, making a new, hectic kind of heat prickle all over her exposed skin and, worse, lodge behind her eyes with too much dampness. Mattie didn’t know what she’d do if she actually cried in front of this man. She didn’t know how she’d survive any of this—how she’d possibly remain intact when he had all of this shocking power over her—but particularly not if he saw her cry.
“I don’t want this,” she gritted out at him, so desperate to keep the tears from spilling over that her hands clenched into fists, and her fingernails dug deep into her own palms. “I don’t want any part of this. I never have, and you know it.”
She didn’t know what she expected. Not that long, oddly shattering look Nicodemus gave her then, that she might have called hurt on a less-dangerous, less-inscrutable man. Not another brush of his hard fingers against her cheek, making a different sort of heat warm to a glow inside her.
“You know it,” she said again, more insistent, and his mouth moved, pulling to one side.
Like he knew her better than she did. “So you have said.”
Mattie moved, jerky and strange, as if she was a marionette someone else was operating on very stiff strings. She found her panties and pulled them on, feeling immediately better. Her bra. Her jeans. Her T-shirt. As if it was all armor-plated instead of merely from Barney’s, and could keep her safe from this man. As if anything could.
Nicodemus only leaned back against the leather sofa and watched as she pulled on her V-neck sweater and then stamped her feet into her boots.
“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” she said when she was clothed and felt somewhat more like herself than she had before.
“I know what you meant to do.” Still that too-dark, too-painful look. “Perhaps in future you’ll listen to me. When I told you it was impossible for you to shame me, I meant it.”
“Then you are a far worse creature than I imagined,” she said. “Wholly irredeemable.”
“If you say so,” he said. He rubbed his hands over his face. “Your problem is that you expect these pronouncements to wound me.” And when that dark gaze of his met hers again, it seemed to slam into her. Another gut punch, hard and deep. “You’re a decade too late. I’ve watched you for too long. I know that you’ll say and do anything to try, even now, to escape the inevitable.”
