His for a Price

“But you never did,” she said, or sobbed, and she didn’t care which. How could she not care? After all these years so desperate to keep him from seeing any hint of vulnerability? But all she cared about was him. “You were always there. You were always pushing at me, and I got used to it. To you. What am I supposed to do when I push back and there’s nothing there?”

He stared at her then, for so long that she thought she’d almost reached him—but then he shook his head. Once. Hard. Like he was waking himself up.

“I don’t want to spend any more time than I already have, loving someone I made up inside my head.” He looked tormented as he said it, torn apart, and it made Mattie feel like she was falling to pieces herself. “I know where that ends. I know what it looks like. I can’t do it. Not again.”

He’d gotten louder as he said that, more the Nicodemus she knew and less that creature made of stone and blame and judgment, and it was absurd how very nearly giddy that made her then, a dizzying hope like a great, bright beam of light inside her.

“That’s a lie,” she said, wiping at her cheeks and then holding his incredulous, thunderstruck gaze with hers, brave suddenly, because she recognized this. “And I would know. You’re afraid.”

CHAPTER TEN

“I BEG YOUR PARDON?” His voice was a harsh warning, but Mattie ignored it.

“You heard me,” she said, forging on. “What happened to the Nicodemus who told me that our marriage would last forever? Babies and no divorces?”

“I also told you there would be no secrets,” he bit out. “But you can’t do it. You prefer to play your games, trying to manipulate your way out of anything honest with sex.”

“So do you.”

In the silence that fell between them then, Mattie could hear her own heart, catapulting itself so hard against her ribs she worried it might break right through. Slowly, very slowly, his dark gaze fixed to hers, Nicodemus straightened from his desk, and she was reminded how very dangerous he was. How lethal when he chose.

“You know you do,” she said. “Any game I might have played with sex, you’ve played yourself. The fact that you think you had different motives doesn’t change anything. It’s the same game.”

“It most assuredly is not.”

“This has been the same pattern from the start. You push, I push back. Around and around we go, and we’ve been doing it for years. You had no reason to think anything would change when we went to your island—but then it turned out that I wasn’t who you thought I was. And if I was a virgin, you couldn’t stay up there, all warm and comfortable on your moral high ground.”

“You can twist this any way you like, Mattie,” he said in that same harsh tone. “That doesn’t make it true.”

“There are a thousand ways we could have handled this marriage,” she said, searching his face for the man she’d glimpsed in Greece, the man who’d been discarded by his father and had still made so much of himself. The little boy he must have been once, who’d made himself into a king of sorts, by the force of his own will. “It could have been a team effort. But instead, you threatened me and crowded me. Gloated about your victory over me.”

“You’re unbelievable.” He took a step toward her, then appeared to think better of it and stopped. “Are you truly standing here today, claiming that had I approached you differently you would have—what?” He shook his head in amazement. “Come to this marriage dancing and singing?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I do know that you couldn’t risk it. How could you possibly pretend to open up to me and then retreat like this if I was interested in a real partnership? That might make you something less than the upright and honest one here, and then what would happen?”

She couldn’t help the bit of sarcasm that snuck in there at the end, and she saw him register it with a scowl.

“Let me guess,” he said, witheringly. “Somehow, this is all my fault, yes? Isn’t that where you’re headed?”

“Not at all.” It was hard to keep her head up high, her gaze on his, but she did it. “You wanted me to respond the way I did. Because that way, you get to be the martyr, and I’m still the spoiled brat who even managed to remain a virgin to spite you.”

“Then why?” And there was nothing controlled about his voice then. Nothing concealed in his expression. She could feel the kick of it. “If not for spite—for another point in this endless game?”

“Why do you think, you idiot?” she hurled back at him, and she threw her hands up as if she wanted to hit him or encompass all of Manhattan or maybe because she couldn’t stand still. “Because of you!”