His for a Price

Mattie jackknifed to sitting position, tearing back the covers to make sure she was still wearing her sour version of a wedding dress. She made no attempt to hide her sigh of relief when she discovered it was still on, as were the bra and panties she’d worn beneath.

“Let me assure you,” Nicodemus said in that low, amused voice of his that seemed to wind through her, setting her alight, especially when it sounded as sleepy and as close as it did just then. “If anything of that nature had happened, after all these years, you would not have to check.”

She swallowed, feeling much more fragile than she should have. She cast around for her outrage, her fury—but there was only that same old panic he always kicked up in her. Simmering there inside her, more mellow, somehow. Or more resigned.

Almost as if it wasn’t panic at all, but something else entirely.

“So I am to have no privacy whatsoever,” she said, her gaze trained on her lap. The yards and yards of gray that had failed to protect her.

“I apologize,” he said in that arid way of his that was no apology at all. That mocked the very notion of an apology. “Were you comfortable in the bathtub? My mistake. You looked cold and underfed. And I think you were having a nightmare.”

Mattie went cold. Her mind cleared. No one had ever been near her during one of her nightmares, and she certainly couldn’t let it happen again. What if she told him what had happened? What if he knew what she’d done?

She felt ill at the very idea and didn’t want to think about the contradiction there.

“No privacy,” she said crisply, as if reading off a list. “Spankings presented as reasonable resolutions to conflicts. Threats issued. Told to dance for your pleasure and to perform chores at your command.” She stared at him. “You’ll understand if somehow, I found the bathtub more inviting.”

“You made a mess, princess.” His dark eyes probed hers, and for once she couldn’t find any laughter lurking there, only that implacable iron that made her shake down deep inside, and she couldn’t lie to herself and pretend it was fear. It wasn’t. “I had every intention of making sure you cleaned it up.”

“Oh, right,” she replied. “You mean that in the broader sense, I gather. I’m supposed to spend this sick joke of a marriage paying penance for not racing into it sooner? That’s the mess I made?”

He was quiet, and that wasn’t any good. It allowed Mattie time—and she didn’t want time. The morning sun spilled over him like a radiant, clinging lover, bathing his perfect form in too much light to bear. The trouble was—had always been—he was flawless. He wore nothing but a low-slung pair of boxer briefs this morning, and in truth, he had nothing to hide. Every inch of him was stunning. The taut, lean muscles in his arms, his flat pectorals and ridged abdomen, those tough, strong thighs. He was dusted with dark hair that thickened and then disappeared beneath his boxer briefs, and she told herself she didn’t notice the rest of him.

Certainly not the part of him that stood ready, huge and impatient and barely contained, right where she absolutely refused to look.

“You’ve been crying,” he said gruffly, and for a dazed moment she didn’t understand what he meant. He reached over and ran a thumb beneath one of her eyes and she jerked her head away. “Why?”

She blinked, oddly off balance. “I can think of a thousand reasons.”

“Pick the one that’s true,” he suggested, still in that rough way that, perversely, made her imagine he cared. She hated that she wished he did.

And Mattie couldn’t tell him the truth. Her nightmares were her business—and anyway, she told herself, he didn’t really care, no matter that note in his voice. He only wanted to make certain she had nowhere to hide.

“It doesn’t matter what I say.” She shifted away from him. “You’ve already decided that I’m a liar. You decided it a hundred years ago, so why should I bother saying a word?”

“Or you could try not lying.”

He rolled toward her, closing the distance she’d put between them and propping himself up on one elbow, and she could have done without that play of all his beautiful muscles beneath his sleek skin, right there in front of her. She could have done without the unearned, unwanted, terrible intimacy of this. It felt like a great and awful weight, pressing down hard on her chest, like he was holding her down with all his obvious strength when what was far, far worse was that he didn’t have to.

“I’ve been bartered off to save a company, as if I were nothing more than a collection of shares in human form,” she said instead of any of the other things she could have said. “A spreadsheet with legs. Anyone would shed a few tears.”