Page 21 of His for a Price

Because there was always another game where Mattie Whitaker was concerned. Always another lie.

It was good he remembered that now, he told himself sternly, before he forgot himself entirely and did something foolish. Like pick her up in his arms and swing her around, as if she’d come happily and willingly to this marriage. As if this was some kind of love story.

His own sentimentality should not have surprised him. It was nothing new. This was the culmination of his last remaining dream. He’d already achieved all the rest, one after the next. Mattie was the last thing he’d wanted that he hadn’t yet had. The very last. It was his own burden that he also wanted her to be real.

“I would ask you if you like this place,” he said, aware of the chill in his voice and doing nothing to modify it, because better she should hear that than what lurked beneath, betraying him completely, “but it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“Apparently not.” Her dark eyes met his, then moved away again—too quickly, as if she feared what he’d see if he looked too closely. Or perhaps he only hoped that was why. “If you say so.” Her mouth shifted into something far more recognizably bitter. “Is this how you prefer I address you, Nicodemus? As submissively as possible? Should I curtsey?”

“There is very little submissive about you, Mattie,” Nicodemus said with a great patience only slightly marred by his clenched teeth and the rigid way he held himself too still. “Especially when I can hear you choking back your temper as you speak.”

“A natural reaction to my circumstances, I’d imagine,” she retorted, her arms crossed tight over those beautiful breasts of hers, and it didn’t help that he now knew what they looked like when they were taut with need. He knew how she tasted, and it might very well be the ruin of him. “I’d see about forming a support group, but I suspect the taking of war brides went out with the last century. If not well before.”

“This is the history of the world,” he said, with what he thought was admirable patience. He thrust his hands deep in his pockets so he’d keep them off her, and roamed across the marble floor in her direction, the room in blues and whites with hints of darker woods as accents, and Mattie’s glossy black hair a startling midnight in the middle of it. Perfect. “We aren’t doing anything particularly new, you and I. People have always done things like this, for the same reasons, all throughout the ages.”

“You mean women have always been forced to do things like this,” she corrected him, but he was closer now, and her voice wasn’t as strident as before. He saw the remains of all that exuberant heat still there in her lovely eyes, and he wanted to taste her again more than he wanted his next breath. But he only waited, and watched her pull in a long, ragged breath. “Women are forced to bend, or kingdoms break. Women are made to surrender, or nations and corporations and men fall apart.”

“Consider this a history lesson, if you must. If that makes it easier for you. More palatable.”

She glared at him. “And what about what I want, Nicodemus?”

“What about it?” He shook his head when her glare deepened into a scowl. “We both know that you aren’t as opposed to this as you pretend. Did we not prove that in scorching detail at thirty-thousand feet?”

“You’re wrong. Again. Why am I not surprised?”

“Have I beaten you?” he asked, his voice a lash in the vast room, and she jolted slightly, as if she felt its edge in long, red stripes against her skin. “Abused you in some way?” She looked as if she was about to speak but he kept going. “There are a lot of men who might have taken that impromptu strip show on the plane as an invitation to indulge whatever appetites they liked.”

“Didn’t you?” she accused him, and he laughed.

“Remind me, in future, never to restrain myself where you are concerned.” He shook his head. “Particularly when you take it upon yourself to get naked in inappropriate places.”

“I didn’t want that!” she hissed at him, with as much force as if she’d have preferred to scream it. Her hands were clenched tight. She was rigid and obviously angry and Nicodemus’s curse was that he found her beautiful. Distractingly so. Even—especially—when she was attempting to defy him. “I didn’t want any part of what you did.”

“This I could tell by the way you screamed my name as you climaxed in my mouth,” he said with arid impatience, and she flinched as if he’d slapped her.

“I thought you would stop.” It was a harsh whisper.

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