His for a Price

“Enjoy that cigarette, Mattie,” he told her mildly. “It will be your last.”

She let out another stream of smoke. “Will it?”

“I have very specific ideas about how my wife will behave,” he said, and smiled when that coolly unbothered front of hers slipped slightly. “That she will live in my house and that she will not work, if that’s what you call it, at that laughable excuse for a public relations firm in all those see-through clothes.”

“I see. This will be a medieval marriage, to go along with the Stone Age courtship rituals we’ve been enjoying thus far. What a thrill.”

He ignored her. “I have certain expectations regarding her behavior. Her style of dress, her comportment. The lack of cigarettes sticking from her mouth, making her smell and taste like an ashtray.” He shrugged. “The usual.”

She held the cigarette in one hand, not looking the least bit worried, though that faint tremor in the hand that held that cigarette told a different story, and stared at him. “I understand that this is all a big chess game to you, Nicodemus, with me playing the role of the most convenient pawn—”

“More the queen than a pawn. Unpredictable and hard to pin down, but once that’s sorted, the game is over.” He smiled when she frowned.

“I hate chess.”

“Then perhaps you should choose a better metaphor.”

“I’m a person,” she told him, and he thought that was temper that made each word like a blade. Her dark eyes blazed with heat. And fear. And yet her voice was cool, and he wanted her with that desperate edge that made him loathe himself. The wanting was fine. The desperation was not. He’d thought he’d outgrown that kind of thing when he’d shaken Arista off. “And this is not, despite all appearances to the contrary, the twelfth century—”

“Then why are you marrying me?” he asked, making no attempt to keep that lash from his voice. “You don’t have to do it, as you’ve pointed out. There’s no gun to your head.”

“A merger between our two companies will strengthen both, and bolster Chase’s position as CEO,” she replied after a moment, something shrewd and sad in her gaze. “It changes the conversation he’s been having with the board and the shareholders, anyway. And of course, you’d become the COO, and you’ve proved you’re very good at operating companies and making piles of money. But you don’t have to marry me to make that happen.”

“I don’t.” He shrugged. “I’m not the one crafting objections to this marriage and looking for explanations. You are.”

“But you won’t hold up your end of your business arrangement with Chase if I don’t agree to do this.” Her eyes darkened. “I want to be a hundred percent certain we’re both clear about who’s pressuring who in this.”

“I’m perfectly clear about it.” And practically cheerful, as he smiled at her obvious flash of temper. “But this is all more of these games you like to play, Mattie. We both know you’re going to marry me. You’ve known it since we met.”

She didn’t like that. He could see it on her face, stamped across those lovely cheeks of hers. But it didn’t change that simple truth. Nothing ever had.

“I haven’t done it yet,” she pointed out quietly. “I’m not sure I’d get carried away counting my chickens if I were you.”

He laughed then. “I’m going to enjoy teaching you the appropriate way to respond to your husband, Mattie. I really am.” He leaned forward, took that nasty cigarette from her and tossed it into the fire without looking away from her. “I’m marrying you because I want you. I always have. More than that, I want to merge my company with your father’s, and I want the link between us to be strong. I want to be part of the family, so there can never be any question about who deserves a seat at the table. That means marriage. Babies. A very long life together, because I don’t believe in separations or divorce. Or secrets.”

Especially the secrets, he thought, shoving those terrible old memories aside. The lies and the devastation they’d wrought.

Mattie held his gaze for a long moment, something slick and glazed in hers. The only sound was the storm outside, harsh against the windows, and the crackle of the fire. He fancied he could hear her breath below that, too fast and uneven, betraying her—but he doubted she’d let that show and assumed it was only in his head. More wishful thinking, and he should know better.

“What you mean is, I’m a pawn,” she said evenly. “You can say it, Nicodemus. It’s not as if I don’t know it already.”

“And you’re marrying me because...?” His lips curved when she only glared at him. “You enjoy playing the martyr? You’ve always wanted to barter yourself? You have a deep desire to prostrate yourself before the ambitions of others?”

“Family duty,” she said primly. Piously. “I don’t expect you to understand that.”

“Of course not,” he said, and he wasn’t laughing then. “Because everything I have I tore from the world with my own two hands. My father never believed I would amount to anything.” And he did his best to see that I wouldn’t, Nicodemus thought grimly, those same old lies like painful scars deep inside him. “My mother cleaned houses and worked in the factories. The only thing they gave me was life. The rest I worked for.”

And held on to, despite the best effort of grasping materialistic little parasites like Arista.

“No one ever said you weren’t an impressive man, Nicodemus,” Mattie said to him. “But what does it have to do with anything? You’ve been chasing me for so long, I think you don’t even know why you started.”

“No, Mattie,” he said gently. Too gently, maybe. He thought that might have been the trouble from the start. He’d treated her like she was made of glass, and she’d done nothing but cut him with her own sharp edges. It was time he remembered that.

It was time he took control of this.

Her cheeks were flushed and her mouth was so close, and he’d waited so long. He could see the panic in her eyes as she looked back at him, the rise and fall of her perfect breasts against that unfathomably soft dress she wore. He couldn’t stop himself from reaching over and taking her hot cheek in his hand, holding her there and tracing her lips with a single restless movement of his thumb.

He watched her redden, felt himself tighten at once in reaction, and it was like that lightning all over again. A bolt, brilliant and true, burning him alive where he sat.

It had damned them from the start. It had made all of this inevitable.

And made it worth it. He’d been sure of that, too.

“I’ve always known why,” Nicodemus told her, and it was as close to the truth as he could get. The rest hung around them in all that white-hot heat, wrapping them both in the same wild hunger. He could see it in her face, in that bright blue sheen in her dark eyes. He felt it in his own flesh. He smiled. “It’s you who have been confused. But you won’t be for very much longer.”

* * *

They were high over the Atlantic Ocean with nothing but darkness on all sides before Mattie gave up on her internal battle and the magazine she hadn’t read a single word of no matter how fiercely she’d scowled at it. She finally stopped pretending and looked down the creamy, gold-edged interior of the private jet to where Nicodemus sat, looking for all the world like the wholly unconcerned king of his very own castle.

He was sprawled out at the table, sheaves of papers spread out before him and his laptop at his elbow, looking studious and masculine and very much like the deeply clever, world-renowned multimillionaire she was grudgingly aware he was. His dark hair looked tousled, like he’d been running his hands through it, and despite herself, her breath caught.

And he either felt her gaze on him or he heard that telling little catch, because his dark eyes snapped to hers at once.

“Has the silent treatment ended, then?” he asked, dry and amused and so very, very patronizing. “And here I’d got used to the quiet.”

Mattie had been doing such a good job of ignoring him up until then. He’d left her in her father’s house that day with no more than an enigmatic smile, and that had been that. He’d simply...let her stew for the next week and a half with no further threat or argument or input from him.

Mattie had considered running away, naturally. She’d dreamed it at night. She’d gone so far as to plot it all out. One day she’d even booked a plane ticket to Dunedin, New Zealand, tucked away on the bottom of the planet, the farthest place she could find on the map. But despite her wildest fantasies and several more detailed internet searches involving far-off mountain ranges and remote deserts, when Nicodemus had appeared at her door to whisk her off to Greece earlier this evening, Mattie had been there.

Waiting for him, as promised, like a good little arranged bride. Like the daughter she’d never been while her father was alive, as she’d been too busy veering between acting out or acting perfect to get his attention. She’d even packed.

Nicodemus had shouldered his way into her airy, comfortable apartment, walking in that lethally confident way of his that had made a shiver whisper down the length of her spine. She’d assured herself it was anxiety and not something far more feminine and appreciative. Her apartment was in a prewar building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, replete with lovely old moldings, scrupulously maintained hardwood floors and soaring ceilings that made the place seem twice its actual size. And yet Nicodemus made it feel like a closet-size studio simply by standing in it. Like a tiny, claustrophobic box. He was too alive. Too much. He’d nodded at her bags, his people had whisked them away and then he was simply...standing there in a very small, enclosed space. Her space.

Like it was already his. Like she was.

Mattie had refused to entertain that crazy little part of her that had melted at the notion. It would all be so much easier if he was less brutally gorgeous, she’d thought furiously. He wore a dark, fine sweater that did marvelous things for his already too perfect torso and an open wool coat cut to add warmth and elegance, not bulk. And his dark trousers looked both rugged and luxurious at once. He was a remarkably attractive man. There was no getting around it. She’d hated the fact she couldn’t ignore that truth. Even when she’d known perfectly well he’d been there, shrinking down her living room and making her skin feel two sizes too tight, for the singular purpose of towing her off to do his bidding.

The fact that she’d be married to him in a handful of days had felt impossible. Ludicrous. And every time she met his too-knowing gaze, she felt like he’d lit her on fire and tossed her headfirst into a vat of gasoline.

“None of this is pink or even particularly girlie,” he’d said, his harsh mouth curved with that sardonic amusement that had made her feel much too jittery. She’d felt stretched thin between a reckless hunger and a driving panic already, and she’d been back in his clutches all of five minutes. His dark eyes had held hers, hard and mocking at once. “You really do lie about everything, don’t you?”

“Are you really starting out our glorious Two Weeks of Love by calling me a liar?” she’d asked, and she didn’t care how brittle she sounded. How cold and obvious. She’d let out a laugh that hadn’t sounded any better. “That bodes well.”

“I suppose it must be me,” he’d said quietly, eyeing her in a way that had made her feel flushed and flustered while something deep in her gut knotted into a red-hot fist. “If I stood in the pouring rain you’d tell me the sky was the brightest blue you’d ever seen. I inspire this in people, apparently. Especially women. I think you should worry about what will happen, Mattie, when I figure out how to read the truth no matter what lies you choose to tell me. Because I will.”

“I’ve worried about very little else since that delightful meeting at my father’s house,” she assured him.

“Another lie.”

“That was actually the truth. Amazing, I know.”

And he’d reached over and taken hold of her chin like that was his right, the way her body had seemed to think it was as it had burst into all those hectic fireworks and roaring brushfires, nearly knocking her from her feet where she stood.

“That’s not what you’re worried about,” Nicodemus had said, much too close and entirely too sure, as if he could taste that humming need in her that she’d wanted so badly to deny.

Mattie had decided right then and there that she needed to stop talking to him. It was too dangerous. Especially if it led him to put his hands on her.

She’d told herself she was relieved when he let her go again without pressing the issue, but it wasn’t quite that simple. There were the aftershocks to consider—the rumbling, jagged tectonics that shifted and reshaped everything inside her no matter that she didn’t want any of it.

But Mattie was nothing if not pointlessly stubborn. She’d maintained her silence all through the car ride out to the private airfield in the suburbs of Manhattan, through the boarding of the sleek Stathis company jet that waited there and their several hours of flight en route to what he’d called my small, private island in the Aegean Sea.

Because of course Nicodemus had an island, the better to make absolutely certain that Mattie was completely and utterly trapped with him, truly forced to marry him if she ever wanted to leave it again. That or hope she could swim for the mainland. Across the Aegean Sea. In October.

“That wasn’t the silent treatment,” she said now, stretching her legs out in front of her as if she felt as carefree and relaxed as he apparently did.

He shook his head in that way of his that reverberated inside her like another press of his strong fingers against her skin. “I don’t understand why you bother to lie when you must have realized by now that I can see right through you.”

“I merely ran out of things to say to you,” Mattie said loftily. “I imagine that will happen quite often. Yet one more sad consequence of a forced marriage like ours—a lifetime of boredom and silence while stuck together in our endless private hell.”

His lips twitched. “It’s not your silence I find hellish.”

She nodded as if she’d expected that. “Resorting to insults. Quiet little threats. This is what happens when you blackmail someone into marrying you, Nicodemus, and we’re not even married yet. I did try to warn you.”

“There’s no reason to resort to anything quite so unpleasant,” he said silkily, leaning back in his chair. He tossed his pen down on the polished wood surface, and then the heat in his gaze made the narrow walls of the plane seem to contract in on her—or perhaps that was nothing more than the wild drumming of her pulse. “I’m sure we can find any number of things to do that don’t require words.”

Mattie rolled her eyes. “Veiled sexual threats aren’t any less threatening simply because they’re sexual,” she said. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”

“Is that why you’re turning red?” he asked lazily. “Because you feel threatened?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head again, slower this time. “Liar.”

She reminded herself that just because he was right it didn’t mean anything. He didn’t know that he had this insane effect on her. He only hoped he did.

“I’m assuming you have some idea of how this works,” she carried on, because now that she’d started poking at him, the idea of returning to that heavy silence was stifling. She was afraid it would crush her. “Now that you’re in the process of isolating me from everything familiar, as most men like you do.”

“Men like me,” he said, and there was a dark current in his voice that was either laughter or something far more treacherous, and she felt the uncertainty, the edginess, everywhere. “Are there many? And here I’d considered myself a special snowflake—almost an American, I’m so remarkably unique.”

“It’s a typical pattern,” she assured him and smiled kindly. “Run of the mill, really.”

“If you’re attempting to shame me into releasing you,” he said drily, “you have seriously misjudged your target.”

“No one is actually shameless, Nicodemus,” she said, and her voice softened somehow—lost that cool, mocking edge. She had no idea why. “No matter what they pretend.”

“Perhaps not,” he agreed, shifting slightly against his seat, though he never took that hot, hard gaze from hers. “But you don’t know me well enough to even guess at the things that crawl in me and call my name in my darkest hours. You wouldn’t recognize them if you did.”

There wasn’t a single reason that should take her breath away, or why her stomach should flip over, and so Mattie told herself it was a patch of turbulence, nothing more.

“You seem to want to make this a squalid little transaction,” he said when she didn’t throw something back at him, and she couldn’t read the expression on his face then. He lounged back in his chair, propping his head up with one hand, and looked at her. Just looked at her. As if her layers of clothes and even her skin were no barrier whatsoever. As if he could see straight through to what lay beneath. “As painful and as horrid as possible.”

“It is what it is,” she said. “I have no idea how these barbaric arrangements work. Will you check my teeth like I’m a horse? Kick my tires like I’m a used car you bought off the internet?”

Something sharp and hot, a little too much like satisfaction, flared in the honeyed depths of his dark gaze, and his harsh mouth pulled into a very dangerous curve.

“If you insist,” he said, lazy and low.

Mattie went still. She felt her eyes widen and could see from that gleam in his gaze that he saw it.

For God’s sake! the hysterical part of her—currently occupying almost every part of her save her big mouth—shrieked. What is the matter with you? Don’t challenge him! Stop this right now before it gets out of hand!

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he practically purred, reading her much too easily. Again. “Was that yet another example of your mouth getting you into trouble? It’s either lying to me or provoking me, I notice. It does make me wonder what it would be like to put it to better use.”

He was right, Mattie realized. If he was truly the man she’d been treating him like he was, she’d be significantly more respectful and careful around him, wouldn’t she? The truth was, she knew he wasn’t. She couldn’t believe that he’d really do this. She didn’t believe it, even though she was currently suspended somewhere over the ocean on her way to Greece.

Granted, he was doing an excellent job of acting like a scary, overwhelming, my-way-or-the-highway barbarian, but she’d known this man for years. More important, her father had genuinely liked him. Had even considered him a good match for his only daughter. She simply couldn’t make herself believe that Nicodemus would honestly force her to marry him.

Much less any of the other things he wasn’t quite threatening to do, that were pressing into her so hard now that she was certain they’d leave marks.

“I wasn’t kidding,” she said, and she stood up then, uncoiling herself to stand there in the aisle before him. She opened up her arms and spread them wide, as theatrically as possible. “I’m sure the third richest man in Greece—”

“That’s rather less of a salutation than it might have been once,” he pointed out, that cool amusement in his gaze. “I can’t tell if you mean it as compliment or condemnation.”

“—doesn’t buy one of those crotch-rocket motorcycles of his without making sure it lives up to each and every one of his exacting standards,” Mattie continued as if he hadn’t interjected anything.

She’d seen him on a Ducati once, roaring up a winding country lane in France to a weekend party in a friend’s chateau she never would have attended if she’d known he’d be there. She’d escaped shortly thereafter, but she’d never been able to get that image out of her head. A powerful man on such a sleek and dangerous machine, like lethal poetry etched against the backdrop of vineyards turning gold in the setting sun, as if they’d been doing it purely to celebrate him.

She glared at him and held her crucifixion position. “Well? Here I am.”

Nicodemus’s dark eyes glittered, and he didn’t move, yet Mattie felt as if he’d leaped up and yanked her to him. She felt surrounded, smothered. And lit on fire.

He raised his shoulder in that profoundly Mediterranean way of his, then dropped it lazily.

“Go on, then,” he said, his voice this close to bored, though his gaze burned through her, churning up too much heat and that dangerous hunger she’d been denying for years now. “Strip. Show me what I’ve chased across all these years and bought, at last.”

CHAPTER THREE

MATTIE GAVE UP her charade of even, calm breaths. She stared at him—and he only smirked back at her.

Because he didn’t think she’d do it, she realized. He thought he’d push her the way he had outside that club in London—until she broke and ran.

Not this time, Mattie thought icily. If he wanted to act like the kind of man who bought wives, she’d act like the kind of woman who could be bought.

She dropped her arms and shrugged out of the long red sweater jacket she’d been using as much like a blanket as a coat. She tossed it on the leather bench beside her, then kicked off her short boots.

Nicodemus said nothing.

Mattie pulled her cashmere V-neck up and over her head, aware as she did it that a fair swathe of her belly was exposed as she stretched her arms over her head. She thought she heard him mutter something, but when her head was free again he was still right where she’d left him, still watching her as if this was the safety demonstration on a commercial flight and about as entertaining.

So she peeled off her tight T-shirt, too, and refused to allow herself a single shiver of response when his gaze dropped to move over her breasts and the burgundy-colored bra she wore. She didn’t move a muscle on the outside—but her stomach pulled itself into a tight, hard little ball and she could hardly breathe around the fire of it. She stood there, so hot and so long she was sure her skin matched the bra, and still, he took his time returning his gaze to hers.

“Do you like the merchandise?” she asked coolly.

“How can I tell?” he asked in a similar tone. “It remains covered. Surely not an attack of modesty, Mattie? Not after that topless shot that so entranced your adoring public two summers ago?”

“There’s nothing wrong with sunbathing topless on a yacht in the middle of an ocean,” Mattie said, and only when she heard her own voice did she realize how defensive she sounded. “I thought I was alone. Am I supposed to live my life wrapped up in a shroud on the off chance there might be a helicopter above me?”

“Perhaps you could simply pay slightly more attention to how you display your body,” Nicodemus suggested, with a hint of steel in his voice. “Particularly now that it’s mine.”

He watched her for a moment, and she felt too obvious, too exposed. He was right. It was silly. She’d worn dresses to banquets that covered less than what she was wearing right now. Why should this feel so much more intimate?

She decided she didn’t particularly want to explore that line of thought.

But she’d started this. She’d push it all the way to the finish. She’d push him.

“Do you have any other awkward, pathologically possessive remarks to make?” she asked, nothing but brisk politeness in her tone. “Do you perhaps feel the urge to fire up your company logo and brand it into my skin?”

That curve of his harsh mouth. That bright, hot gleam in his dark eyes. That languid, offhanded way he lounged there, as if he was something other than the most physically powerful man she’d ever let this close to her.

She swallowed, hard. Betraying herself. Nicodemus smiled.

“I’ll let you know,” he said, and then he inclined his head in a regal sort of way that was as infuriating as it was strangely attractive, silently bidding her to continue.

Mattie despaired of herself. But she leaned over and pulled off her socks then stood again and shimmied out of her skinny black jeans, kicking them out of her way when she was done. And then she stood there. In nothing but her bra and panties.