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There was a fire in his dark gaze. And it lit her up with what she chose to call fear, though that molten thing down deep in her core knew better.
“Was I unclear?” he asked in a mild tone at complete odds with the fierce look in his face. “Because I remember telling you that smoking was unacceptable. Did I dream this conversation?”
“I never agreed to obey you, Nicodemus,” she said, amazed she had the power of speech when he was so close and so obviously furious with her. “You simply decided I should, the way you’ve decided any number of things since the day we met.” She didn’t know where she got the courage—or foolishness—to shrug like that, like he bored her. “And you’re welcome to decide whatever you like, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with your decisions. Much less follow them like gospel.”
He looked at her for what felt like a very long time. And then he smiled.
“Thank you,” he said, almost formally.
She was almost afraid to ask. “For what?”
“For making this easy.”
She didn’t see him move. He only shifted, and then she was in the air, unable to make sense of what was happening to her until the soft curve of her belly hit the rock hardness of his shoulder. He was already inside the villa and moving swiftly through the guest wing by the time she registered that he’d simply picked her up and thrown her over his shoulder.
Mattie fought. She kicked at him and beat at his back with her fists, and he only laughed and smacked his hand down on her bottom. Hard.
Then he tipped her upright again and dropped her. She cried out in the instant before she bounced in the center of their bed. His bed, she corrected herself furiously, desperately scrabbling to catch herself and sit up—
To see Nicodemus standing there at the foot of the bed, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes like stone as he glared down at her.
“We’ve had a week of lies and strained civility,” he said, and there was nothing cool about his voice. Nothing measured or polite. “Now we do this my way.”
“This has all been your way already!”
“Mattie,” he said, harsh and certain and more like steel than she’d ever heard him. “Be quiet.”
She told herself she wasn’t obeying him. That she was simply trying to calm her racing heart, stop her ragged-edged gasping for breath. She told herself that if she’d wanted to, she would have screamed at him. But whatever the reason, she fell silent.
Nicodemus could have been carved from marble.
“What do you suggest I do with a woman who acts like a disobedient child?” he asked, his voice a low rasp.
“I take it that’s a rhetorical question?”
He ignored her. “It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out that you have Daddy issues, Mattie. The question is, do I play that role? Is that what it will take?”
Her jaw ached. That was how she realized she was clenching her teeth.
“I,” she bit out, so angry it was like a living thing clawing its way out from within her, “do not have Daddy issues. The only issue I have is you.”
“This is what you need to understand,” Nicodemus said in that ruthless way that made something shiver through her, settling low in her belly and becoming a pulse of heat, mixing with that anger and changing it into something she couldn’t recognize. Or she didn’t want to recognize. “I will win. No matter how long it takes, no matter what I have to do, no matter what games you play. I will win because winning is what I do.”
“You don’t get to order me—”
“It is time for you to stop running at windmills,” he told her in that same ruthless way. “We are not living in your world, where you can order everyone around and have them dance to your tune. We are in mine. And I find my interest in indulging these tantrums is over.”
She couldn’t speak for a long moment. There was that terrible yearning deep inside her, too deep and too dark. It would eat her whole, she knew, and what would be left of her on the other side? What would happen when he got what he thought he wanted and really, truly knew her?
Why did she want to find out when she knew she’d regret it?
“The fact that you think you have the right to expect obedience is a problem, Nicodemus,” she said, scowling at him, hoping she could bluster her way through this the way she always had before. “The fact that you think you can manhandle me? Also a problem.”
He was dressed all in black today, she couldn’t help but notice. A black T-shirt that strained over his muscled arms and black trousers that clung to his narrow hips and showed the faintest hint of his olive-toned skin at the waistband. He looked like he could singlehandedly take down a terrorist cell if he felt like it—which meant cowing her should be the work of a few moments. The idea made her limbs feel like liquid. Hot and slippery when she wanted to be strong.
