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But his dark eyes only lit up with all that golden amusement, sending a shiver straight through her.
“This could all have been very different,” he said lazily. “If you had married me the first time I asked, I would have treated you like you were made of spun glass, not shares. I would have worshipped the ground you walked upon. Bent the whole world before you, to service your every whim.”
Worried that if she tried to get out of the bed he’d reach over and stop her, which would involve touching her—and she had no idea what she’d do then—Mattie pushed herself back until she was leaning against the headboard, curled her knees beneath her and tried to stare him down.
“I was eighteen,” she said, not sure where that urgency in her voice came from when she’d wanted to match his nonchalance. “I was a kid. I had no business thinking about getting married and you shouldn’t have asked. The only reason you did ask was because you wanted an in with my father. Let’s not pretend your heart was involved, Nicodemus. It was your wallet first and then, when I refused you repeatedly, your pride. It still is.”
He reached over and pulled the hem of her dress between his fingers, and she bit back the rebuke that hovered on her tongue. What did it matter if he touched her clothes? There were far worse places he could put those clever fingers of his, and she knew that all too well now.
“Perhaps I simply wanted a Whitaker as my wife, and all the shares and spreadsheets that go along with that. Sadly, you are the only one available.”
“I’m told I have distant cousins in Aberystwyth. I’m sure one of them would have suited you fine.” She scowled at him when he laughed. “And I don’t think you should try to get too much mileage from the term wife.”
He shook his head at her as if he knew exactly where she was going with that. “Did you knock yourself on the head in the bath? That was an actual wedding yesterday. All very legal, I assure you.”
“That might have been a wedding, but this isn’t a real marriage,” she insisted, surprised to hear how loud her voice sounded in all that dizzy Greek sunshine that filled the room. “In the real world, marriages don’t involve threats and promises of high-ranking positions in corporations as some kind of twisted dowry. You’re going to be COO and President of Whitaker Industries, Nicodemus. Those are the titles you care about. Husband and wife are just words.”
He moved then. He reached over and hauled her to him, rolling with her until she was beneath him, he was pressed between her thighs and braced above her, and she could do nothing at all but gape up at him.
She thought she was having a heart attack, but it kept pounding like that, jarring and huge and whole-bodied, and it took her long, shuddering moments to realize that this was living through it. That it only felt like it was killing her.
That if it killed her, that might be better, because everything that was happening to her right now—everything he was doing to her—she was all too aware he could see.
“Does this feel real, Mattie?” he asked roughly, his gaze on her mouth. “Marital enough for you? Real? Because neither your father nor your brother are in this room. It’s only me and you and your heart has gone mad inside your chest. I can feel it.”
“That’s panic,” she threw at him. “And a little bit of revulsion.”
But she made no attempt to fight him off. No attempt to roll out from under him, or to dislodge the sleek, solid weight of him from on top of her, from that place where he rested against her as if they were already joined. And she knew, somehow, that if she’d tried any of that, he’d have let her go at once. She didn’t try.
You can’t let this happen! cried that voice inside of her, the way it always did—but this time, she knew on some deep, feminine level she’d never accessed before, was for completely different reasons.
This wasn’t some overeager boyfriend she had to placate and put off. This was Nicodemus.
This was Nicodemus and she couldn’t even manage to pull her gaze away from his. And that profound failure to act told her things she didn’t want to know about herself—that and what felt like a slow-motion detonation from that molten-hot place between her legs outward, making her burn from her navel to her fingernails. Making her nothing but heat and wonder and that thing she liked to tell herself was fear. Pounding, driving, consuming fear that wasn’t fear at all.
Nicodemus did nothing but gaze down at her, fierce and demanding and still. And Mattie wasn’t afraid of him the way she knew she should have been, because she was the one who closed the distance between them. She lifted her lips toward his. She found she was begging with every part of her except her voice—
