His for a Price

He shook his head , and the battle to keep himself from touching her became pitched and nearly violent. He stood, moving away from the bed to slap on the lights that lit the room with a golden glow—but it was better than all those shadows. All that too-intimate darkness, where he was too likely to imagine he saw what he wanted to see instead of what was.

Mattie sat in the center of the bed, wrapped in his sheets, blinking in the sudden onslaught of light. And he still longed for her, despite everything. He was still as hungry for her as if he hadn’t spent an entire day indulging that appetite.

He understood, then, that this would never change. That she’d had this hold on him since the first and always would. That he loved her as he’d loved no other, and it still didn’t matter.

He never did learn his lessons.

“My father was a strict, grim man,” he told her, though he didn’t know why. But then, he didn’t want to leave her in any doubt as to his motives. “He came in and out of our flat in a dark cloud, and my mother rushed to appease him, no matter what he did or said. For a long time, I didn’t understand why his moods were the only important ones in our home.”

He studied her as she sat there, her eyes wide and fixed on him. “No smart little interjections, Mattie? I’m surprised.”

“You never talk about your past,” she said simply. “Only what you own.”

He accepted that as a hit, though he wasn’t certain it was meant as one. It stung, nonetheless.

“As I grew, my father took an interest in my character.” He folded his arms over his chest and stared at her, though what he saw was that crowded little flat and the angry man who dominated it with his temper and his cruelties. His ability to find fault in everything. “He could smell lies on me, he told me. And when he did, he took it upon himself to beat them out of me.”

“So we are both liars, then,” Mattie said, and he thought her voice was warmer than it should have been. Warmer than made any sense.

“He was given to great lectures he punctuated with his fists,” Nicodemus continued. “He had very distinct ideas about what was wrong and what was right.” He smiled, not nicely. “Needless to say, I was a grave disappointment to him in all ways.”

She let out a small sound that was something like a sigh. “It’s hard to imagine you subject to someone else’s whims. Much less a disappointment to anyone.”

Nicodemus didn’t want to continue with this. He wanted to explore that soft note in her voice, instead. He wanted to pretend none of this mattered to him. He wanted to bury himself in her and let that be enough. It almost was, after all.

Almost.

He wanted more than almost. He’d accepted almost for the whole of his life. From his parents, from Arista. From Mattie. He couldn’t do it any longer. He wouldn’t.

“Luckily, my father did not stay with us all the time,” he said, instead. “Often he was gone for weeks. My mother would tell me he was away on business, and that he loved us very much, as if she thought I needed soothing, but the truth was, I preferred it when he was away. The only time my mother ever hit me was when I said so out loud.”

“I don’t mean to overstep,” she said quietly. “But I can’t say I’m forming a positive impression of your parents.”

He saw his mother’s stunningly beautiful face, those flashing black eyes and that lustrous fall of hair she’d spent so many hours brushing and curling and tending. He saw the creams she’d only used when his father wasn’t there, the drinks she’d favored while alone that were liberally laced with the alcohol she otherwise only served his father. He could picture her, pretty and breakable, staring out the windows as if looking for ships at sea—though they hadn’t had a view of the sea from their flat. And the only one who ever came to visit them was his father.

“One day when I was twelve, I decided to follow my father when he left us,” Nicodemus said then, because he couldn’t seem to stop. “I don’t remember what brought this on. I’d like to think he’d given himself away somehow but I suspect the truth is, I was twelve. I was bored. He had come less and less that year, and the less he came, the more it upset my mother. She coped by drinking and spending her days further and further away inside her dream world.”

“Who took care of you?” Mattie asked.

He smiled. “Did your father take care of you himself while running Whitaker Industries?” he asked. “I imagine not.”

“We had a series of excellent nannies,” she shot back, tilting her chin up as she did, reminding him of all the ways he couldn’t have her. “And a fantastic housekeeper that Chase and I consider a member of the family.”