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“Maybe you should ask yourself why you’re so dead set on marrying someone who wants to escape you,” she pointed out. “Why a man who could have any woman chooses to buy one, instead. All to become president and COO of a company that isn’t even his. Don’t you think that’s a bit sad?”
It was as if the longer she wore her clothes, the more she reclaimed herself. Or the more she could pretend she couldn’t still feel him in that betraying softness at her center, so hot and wet even now, pulsing with that destructive need that could destroy her. That would, if she let it.
That already has, something whispered.
“Is this where you appeal to my reason?” His mouth was harder then. Lethal. And she could still taste it. “My good side?”
“Or the part of you that doesn’t live in the Stone Age.”
“But where you are concerned, I do.” His voice even sounded like stone, as if to underscore the harsh way he said that and the way his dark honey eyes gleamed, all menace and certainty. “I don’t mind the dance, Mattie. Twist yourself into as many convoluted shapes as you like. Try out all your last-ditch attempts to save yourself. Keep going. See what happens.”
“I refuse to believe you’re really going to force me to marry you,” she threw at him. Accusation and desperation, rolled into one.
“I’m not.” That tug in the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile. Not anything that pleasant. “I didn’t drag you from your apartment in handcuffs. I didn’t kidnap you. No one made you come with me. Just as no one will make you recite your vows.”
Mattie was shaking again. Why couldn’t she make it stop? How had she managed to completely lose all her self-control? She crossed her arms over her chest, but that only served to make her far too aware of her breasts, which still ached. For him, she knew. Always for him.
“You’re splitting hairs,” she said. “And you know it.”
“No.” And his voice was no less stern for that gentle look he aimed at her. “I am a very simple man. I keep the promises I make. I don’t have to force you to do anything. I don’t want to force you. I told you before—you’re free to do as you like. You always have been.”
“Free to have you hunt me down all these years? Free to have you make nasty little bargains with my brother that you know I’d have to be a selfish monster to refuse?”
Nicodemus didn’t quite shrug. “Freedom is never without cost.”
“And what was—this?”
She jerked her chin in a hard little gesture that she hoped encompassed what had happened right here on this plane. She certainly didn’t want to think about it, much less let those images chase through her head, or move like wine in her veins. She didn’t want to feel the aftereffects, all those leftover flames still dancing just beneath her skin.
She didn’t want to admit that he’d knocked down a lifetime of her defenses that swiftly, that easily. With her participation and help, no less.
“I thought you wanted me to take you for a test drive, Mattie,” he said, horribly, and even laughed when she scowled at him. “Was that not enough of a test? Should we try a higher gear?”
“I,” she said very distinctly, very deliberately, “would rather throw myself out of this plane right now.”
“That would be unfortunate,” he said, without sounding in the least concerned she’d try. “And undoubtedly painful, before your inevitable death.”
“I don’t want to have sex with you.” Her voice was much too strident.
As usual, Nicodemus didn’t do what she’d expected he might. He only shook his head at her as if she was a child.
“That is a lie,” he said quietly. “As I think you must know I am well aware, having tasted what you want right here.”
“Are you going to manipulate me into that, too?” she demanded, uneven and too loud. “Are there more hideous consequences if I don’t lie down and take it the first time you order me to do it?”
Nicodemus blinked. “I can promise you that there will never come a day when I will order you to lie down and take it, as intriguing as that image might be.”
“Don’t avoid the question.”
Nicodemus studied her, and, not for the first time, Mattie had the prickly sense that he saw all the things she’d spent her life working so hard to conceal. All the things she’d shoved aside, hidden, buried deep.
“No,” he said, and he didn’t break that uncompromising gaze. “I’m not going to force you. I’m not going to manipulate you.”
