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“Because I always have before?” The laugh he let out then was devoid of humor. “Then you’ve learned a valuable lesson. Don’t test me again.” The look on her face was mutinous and miserable at once, and so unnecessary when they’d come this far already—but he bit back the more earthy reaction he had to it. “Your body doesn’t tell the lies you do, Mattie. It’s significantly more honest.”
“Just because my body has some insane chemical reaction to you doesn’t mean I want to indulge it,” she threw at him. “The world doesn’t work that way.”
“Yours does,” he said flatly. “The sooner you accept that, the happier you’ll be.” She made a sound that was as close to a growl as he’d ever heard her make, and he really did laugh then. “This is like your very own, personal fairy tale,” he told her. He swept an arm through the air, inviting her to truly take in her surroundings. “Blue sky, perfect Greek sea, a little castle on a hilltop, and all of it yours. All you have to do is marry a man with whom you have all of this inconvenient chemistry. No glass slipper required. You should look a bit happier.”
She turned slightly to look out at the view, through all the sweeping glass that let in the glory of the Greek islands on three sides and all that sunshine from above, but her mouth pressed into a flat line.
“You’re thinking of Disney fairy tales, I think,” she said, those dark eyes fixed on Kimolos, the nearest island, as if she was calculating how far it would be to swim to it. “This feels a bit more Grimm Brothers, where everything ends in pecked-out eyes and a river of tears.”
He waited until she turned toward him, which took a few tense moments, and when she did, he only shook his head, slowly. A dark scowl like a thundercloud rolled across her lovely face, ferocious and fierce. It only made him want her more.
“I’m pleased to see that you’ve accepted the reality of the situation with such grace,” he said smoothly. “And while we’re on that topic, I’ll show you to our room so you can get settled.”
She blinked. Went entirely too still, the way he’d known she would. “Our room?” she asked.
And Nicodemus smiled.
CHAPTER FOUR
THREE DAYS LATER, Mattie dutifully mouthed a set of vows that might as well have been gibberish for all they resonated in her, high on a rocky cliff with a view of nothing but the deep blue Aegean Sea and the next island over, which Nicodemus had informed her boasted a population of less than a thousand souls and the only nearby ferry to Athens.
“Should you wish to swim for it,” he’d drawled that first night when he’d installed her in the bedroom he’d claimed they were to share, with its stunning view of the shifting sea and the green hills of the other island, “you should know that it’s several miles and there’s a vicious current. You could wind up in Tripoli by morning.”
“And wouldn’t that be a shame,” she’d sniped back at him, because she was incapable of biting her tongue at the best of times—and especially when facing him over the wide, vast expanse of the giant bed his amused expression had told her he had every intention of sharing with her. “This close to the wedding of the century.”
Nicodemus had only laughed and left her there, to seethe and plot and try her best not to fall apart.
Mattie still didn’t believe this was real. That this was really happening.
Not when Nicodemus had looked her up and down in that dizzying, glassed-in great room of his obnoxiously perfect villa earlier today, his mouth crooking slightly as he took stock of the dour gray dress she’d opted to wear for the occasion.
“Are you in mourning already?” he’d asked, that rich amusement making his voice deeper, darker. It had washed through her like another devastating lick of his talented tongue, and with the same explosive effect. She’d tried valiantly to fight it off, though his expression indicated she hadn’t been particularly successful.
“It seemed appropriate,” she’d replied coolly. “It was the only one I could find on such short notice that screamed forced to the altar. Don’t you agree?”
Nicodemus had only laughed. At her, she’d been well aware, the way he’d done a great many times since that day in her father’s library. Since her eighteenth birthday, for that matter. Then he’d taken her by the arm and led her over the smooth stones toward the priest and the two members of his household staff who were standing in as witnesses to this quiet little tragedy out on his covered marble terrace.
Mattie had told herself that none of this was happening. That none of this was real. That none of it mattered.
