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.”
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
