Nicodemus’s gaze was so hot it hurt. But he still didn’t move.
“I can’t tell if this is modesty or a dramatic pause,” he said after a moment, his voice insultingly bland. “But it bores me.”
For the first time, a little trickle of fear dripped down the length of her spine, and it occurred to Mattie to wonder who was pushing who.... But she only lifted her chin up then reached behind her to unclip her bra. She pulled it from her body slowly, exposing one breast and then the other, and then she dropped it. He watched, a kind of fierce concentration stamped over his strong face. So she hooked her fingers in the sides of her panties and tugged them down to her knees, then let them fall the rest of the way to the floor so she could move them aside with her foot.
Then she was standing naked in front of Nicodemus Stathis, the bane of her existence, who was now her fiancé. Who would soon be her husband, if he had his way. Her mind shied away from all of that. The terms themselves. The reality.
And she was still completely and utterly naked.
Which was really not the best time to question the decision-making that had led her to this point—so Mattie held her head at a belligerent angle and waited, as if she was perfectly comfortable hanging around planes in the nude with infuriating men.
Nicodemus let out a low sound that wasn’t quite a laugh, and then he stood up. Mattie’s mouth went dry and for a stark, spinning second her mind blanked out.
He was too big for the plane—for the world, she thought wildly when she could think again, and certainly much bigger than he’d seemed when she’d had her clothes on—and he only took a single step closer then braced himself on the ceiling above them and left the rest of his lean, powerful body angled away from her. Looming and not looming at the same time.
It didn’t make him any less dangerous. Mattie didn’t feel remotely safe. But she didn’t dare examine what she felt too closely.
He frowned down at her, and it occurred to her that she should have paid more attention to the things he’d said before. About how little she knew him when they both knew he’d studied her very closely indeed over the past decade. It put her at a distinct disadvantage.
That and the fact she was naked.
“Why are you standing there?” She only blinked at him in confusion, and he made a spinning motion with one long finger. “Turn, please.”
She told herself he only wanted to humiliate her. To break her. And she was still holding out hope that he wouldn’t take this as far as he could. That this was all some kind of extended practical joke. Or, if not a joke, precisely, that he wanted to teach her some kind of lesson for rebuffing him all these years. He’d back down. He had to back down.
But that meant she couldn’t.
Mattie turned, and she took her time doing it. She even put her hips into it, so it was a little bit of a show—
Then she felt his hands on her. And froze.
It took her a moment to understand that it wasn’t a random touch, or even a particularly sexual one. He was tracing the delicate tattoo that flowed over one hip and up her side to cradle the lower edge of her ribs.
“It’s a phoenix,” she blurted out, and hated that her voice was so quiet and so rough. Like this was getting to her—his too-warm hands on her skin, his terrifying and intoxicating closeness, her ill-conceived nudity.
“I know what it is,” he said, his tone curt, and she couldn’t see anything she recognized in his face when she turned the rest of the way around to face him. “What I don’t know is how it applies to the charmed life you’ve always led.”
Mattie had no intention of ever telling him. Or anyone.
“Nicodemus—” she started, but he shook his head.
And she had no idea why she fell silent. Why she obeyed him when everything inside her was a blistering, shattering scream.
“And that cursed belly ring,” he muttered, still in that short, dark way, and she steeled herself when he reached over and tugged on the little silver ring, gently enough. So gently it shouldn’t have seared through her the way it did, burning a path from her navel to the molten core of her. Making her melt.
She managed to keep herself from making any sound, but his lips twitched again and she was sure that somehow he knew, anyway.
He shifted closer, and her heart exploded, pounding at the wall of her chest like it might break free, and that was the least of her worries. She was too hot, too cold. Her breasts ached then hurt when he brought his hands up beneath them, spanning her waist, holding her. Caging her—
“Nicodemus,” she started again, and she couldn’t contain her panic or her need, or keep either from her voice. She hardly recognized herself.
“Is this what you wanted?” His voice was gruff and dark, shocking her with the force of it. “Next time, the little dance isn’t necessary. You can simply ask.”
And then he leaned in, as if she’d begged him to do it and he had all the time in the world, and took her mouth with his.
* * *
It was better than he remembered.
Much better.
Mattie tasted like smoke and heat, some kind of perfect whiskey that was all woman and only her, and Nicodemus felt knocked sideways. Drunk for the first time in more years than he could count.
He let go of the sweet indentation of her waist and sank his fingers deep into that glossy hair of hers, widening his stance so he could pull her off balance to sprawl across his chest. And they weren’t in London this time. There were no bouncers nearby, no fear of exposure.
Nicodemus could finally take his time.
He could test this angle and then that one. He could taste her again and again, kissing her with a fury and a longing that took him over, making him wild and desperate and intoxicated with every drugging slide of his tongue against hers.
Mine, declared that primitive voice inside him, the way it had done so many years ago at that fateful ball. And ever since.
And she was perfect.
That spill of thick, beautiful, dark hair that fell around her shoulders and felt like raw silk against his palms. That rangy body of hers, so tall and taut, with her proud, rose-tipped breasts to the inviting swell of her hips. She made his mouth water. Even that damned tattoo he’d ordered her not to get stamped into her pretty skin suited her, as delicate and mysterious as she was, in a swirl of bright colors he longed to taste.
And that belly ring that made him think of long, hot nights and the sweet undulation of feminine hips.
He’d never wanted another woman like this. Not even Arista. He’d never wanted like this.
That sent a chill spiraling through him, and it was the only thing that penetrated the delirious, pounding need that threatened to take him over there and then. He pulled his mouth from hers then ran his hands down the silken length of the arms she’d wrapped around his neck, continuing down the perfect line of her spine to cup that sweet, delectable bottom in his palms. Her eyes were closed, those sooty lashes a distraction. Her lush mouth tempted him, full and slick from his. Her breasts pressed against him and he marveled, once again, at how right she felt in his arms. Not so short he had to stoop, not so slight he was afraid he might break her. Perfect.
Nicodemus thought he might die, then and there, if he didn’t get inside her. If he didn’t taste her. If he didn’t do something about the thing that howled in him, fanged and clawed and desperate for more.
He ordered himself to set her aside, to hold off, to wait until he had every last bit of the power he was after, but Mattie shifted against him and made a small, needy sound in the back of her throat—
And he was only a man. He could only take so much.
He lifted her arms from around his neck and guided her toward the leather couch along one wall of the jet. He sat her down then knelt between her legs, shouldering her knees apart so he could see every part of her.
“Wait,” she said, her eyes fluttering open then, sounding as breathless as she was flushed. “Are you—?”
�
�Hold on,” he ordered her, bending down to her, inhaling the rich scent of her arousal, the sweetness of her skin.
“Nicodemus.” But her voice was so insubstantial, a token protest at best when she was still open and arched before him, and he was so close. Too close. “I don’t—”
“I do,” he muttered, the way a religious man might utter a fervent prayer.
And then he simply worshipped her. He pulled her long and lovely legs over his shoulders, wrapped his hands around her hips and buried his face in her heat.
The way he’d longed to do for a thousand years. More.
She made the most beautiful noise he’d ever heard, something like a gasp and a scream at once, and Nicodemus growled against the slick, hot core of her. She tasted sweet and wild. Like honey. Like his. He could feel her quiver beneath his hands, and he licked his way into her, teasing her and tasting her, until he felt her hips begin that lush dance against his tongue.
“Oh, no,” she moaned, but even as she said it, she raised her hips to meet his mouth. She threw her arms over her face, hiding right there in plain sight, and he was too lost in the exquisite pleasure of tasting her at last to do anything but let her.
And then she was crying out his name, tense and even more beautiful as she bucked against him. She sobbed out words he didn’t understand, almost as if he was bringing her to this delectable edge against her will when he could taste her need—
Until she shattered. Into a million pieces the way he’d always dreamed she would, long and loud and calling out his name.
All mine, Nicodemus thought with a deep satisfaction that felt like something else. Like a truth he didn’t know how to name—so he didn’t try.
Not here. Not yet.
* * *
Mattie hated herself.
It took her a long time to open up her eyes. When she did, she found she was curled up on the leather couch, her sweater jacket draped over her like a blanket and Nicodemus sitting beside her with his long legs taking up the whole of the aisle and an air of smug confidence she didn’t have to look at his face to see. And he was turned, she found when she dared sneak a look, anyway, so that he could watch her with those stark, too-incisive, dark eyes of his that seemed to burn straight through her to all the places she most wanted to hide.
She pulled in one breath. Then another, just as shaky as the first. And she still didn’t understand how she’d allowed this to happen. How had he done that? It was as if he’d used her own body against her—and in that moment, Mattie couldn’t think of a single thing that frightened her more.
She shoved her hair back from her face with one hand, using the other to keep the sweater in place, which she didn’t need that small gleam in his gaze to tell her was absurd, at this point.
Ruined, she thought then. She felt utterly ruined. Wrecked from within, like a stranger inside her own skin.
The silence stretched out, filling the jet, drowning out the sound of the engines, not comfortable in the least.
And beside her, Nicodemus radiated that heat and menace that made him who he was: the most dangerous man she’d ever met. She’d always known he was exactly that—and now he’d proved it. His dark eyes tracked her, and she was afraid to look too closely—afraid of what she’d see.
“Is this what it takes?” he asked in a quiet voice that seemed to crack her foundations deep inside her. “This is what I must do to see behind all the masks you wear?”
She was terrified that he really could. She was terrified of what had happened here, full stop, especially because she could still feel his mouth against that most private part of her. She could still feel the aftershocks. The lush, impossible wave of joy and pleasure that had rent her in two. She shook her head—once, hard, as much to snap herself out of this fugue she was in as anything else—and found she was scowling at her lap.
“I doubt there will be a repeat of that unfortunate demonstration,” she said, but her voice lacked its usual force even to her own ears. “Once was enough.”
“Once,” he said, and his voice, by contrast, was alive with fire and that sharp edge that sliced deep into her, “is by no means enough. That was only the beginning, Mattie.”
“I said I’d marry you,” she heard herself say, as if from some far-off distance. She didn’t recognize that voice that came out of her mouth. Soft. Pleading. As if he’d licked her into a different person—and she was deeply afraid he really had. “That doesn’t mean you can claim marital rights like some eighteenth century relic. I’m not sure you can even really call me your wife, since you’re essentially purchasing the title.”
“Look at me.”
She didn’t want to do that, and she couldn’t understand, then, why she did it, anyway. She felt much too raw, like her heart was a throbbing thing that might rip her wide open in a moment, and yet she looked at him. Because he’d told her to. And she bit back something she was terribly afraid was a sob when he reached over and brushed her hair from her face.
With devastating gentleness.
“Are you afraid of me?” His voice was softer than it had been a moment ago, but Mattie couldn’t allow herself to melt into that the way her body wanted to do. The way her body did. She couldn’t let herself topple over into the way he was looking at her. She couldn’t let this happen. She couldn’t risk this kind of thing—this kind of softness.
Mattie knew what came next. First the softness, the intimacy, the love. Then loss. And all that darkness ever after.
“Why would I be afraid of you?” she asked, her voice a bitter little scrape against the taut thing that hung between them, against that softness making his eyes gleam like gold. Against the darkness she hid away inside her and yet held before her like a shield. “I love it when men I don’t want spirit me away on private planes and then put their mouths wherever they like on my body. It’s my favorite thing.”
“Ah, Mattie,” he said quietly, and if he’d been someone else, if she’d been someone else, she might have thought he truly cared about her then. That she was something different, something more, than a long-sought trophy he aimed to put high on the shelf of his choosing. “I don’t know if it’s your favorite thing or not. But it just became mine.”
Something swelled in her then, making a new, hectic kind of heat prickle all over her exposed skin and, worse, lodge behind her eyes with too much dampness. Mattie didn’t know what she’d do if she actually cried in front of this man. She didn’t know how she’d survive any of this—how she’d possibly remain intact when he had all of this shocking power over her—but particularly not if he saw her cry.
“I don’t want this,” she gritted out at him, so desperate to keep the tears from spilling over that her hands clenched into fists, and her fingernails dug deep into her own palms. “I don’t want any part of this. I never have, and you know it.”
She didn’t know what she expected. Not that long, oddly shattering look Nicodemus gave her then, that she might have called hurt on a less-dangerous, less-inscrutable man. Not another brush of his hard fingers against her cheek, making a different sort of heat warm to a glow inside her.
“You know it,” she said again, more insistent, and his mouth moved, pulling to one side.
Like he knew her better than she did. “So you have said.”
Mattie moved, jerky and strange, as if she was a marionette someone else was operating on very stiff strings. She found her panties and pulled them on, feeling immediately better. Her bra. Her jeans. Her T-shirt. As if it was all armor-plated instead of merely from Barney’s, and could keep her safe from this man. As if anything could.
Nicodemus only leaned back against the leather sofa and watched as she pulled on her V-neck sweater and then stamped her feet into her boots.
“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” she said when she was clothed and felt somewhat more like herself than she had before.
“I know what you meant to do.” Still that too-dark, too-painful look. “Perhaps in future you’ll listen to me. When
I told you it was impossible for you to shame me, I meant it.”
“Then you are a far worse creature than I imagined,” she said. “Wholly irredeemable.”
“If you say so,” he said. He rubbed his hands over his face. “Your problem is that you expect these pronouncements to wound me.” And when that dark gaze of his met hers again, it seemed to slam into her. Another gut punch, hard and deep. “You’re a decade too late. I’ve watched you for too long. I know that you’ll say and do anything to try, even now, to escape the inevitable.”
“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.
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