His for a Price

“I can’t tell if this is modesty or a dramatic pause,” he said after a moment, his voice insultingly bland. “But it bores me.”

For the first time, a little trickle of fear dripped down the length of her spine, and it occurred to Mattie to wonder who was pushing who.... But she only lifted her chin up then reached behind her to unclip her bra. She pulled it from her body slowly, exposing one breast and then the other, and then she dropped it. He watched, a kind of fierce concentration stamped over his strong face. So she hooked her fingers in the sides of her panties and tugged them down to her knees, then let them fall the rest of the way to the floor so she could move them aside with her foot.

Then she was standing naked in front of Nicodemus Stathis, the bane of her existence, who was now her fiancé. Who would soon be her husband, if he had his way. Her mind shied away from all of that. The terms themselves. The reality.

And she was still completely and utterly naked.

Which was really not the best time to question the decision-making that had led her to this point—so Mattie held her head at a belligerent angle and waited, as if she was perfectly comfortable hanging around planes in the nude with infuriating men.

Nicodemus let out a low sound that wasn’t quite a laugh, and then he stood up. Mattie’s mouth went dry and for a stark, spinning second her mind blanked out.

He was too big for the plane—for the world, she thought wildly when she could think again, and certainly much bigger than he’d seemed when she’d had her clothes on—and he only took a single step closer then braced himself on the ceiling above them and left the rest of his lean, powerful body angled away from her. Looming and not looming at the same time.

It didn’t make him any less dangerous. Mattie didn’t feel remotely safe. But she didn’t dare examine what she felt too closely.

He frowned down at her, and it occurred to her that she should have paid more attention to the things he’d said before. About how little she knew him when they both knew he’d studied her very closely indeed over the past decade. It put her at a distinct disadvantage.

That and the fact she was naked.

“Why are you standing there?” She only blinked at him in confusion, and he made a spinning motion with one long finger. “Turn, please.”

She told herself he only wanted to humiliate her. To break her. And she was still holding out hope that he wouldn’t take this as far as he could. That this was all some kind of extended practical joke. Or, if not a joke, precisely, that he wanted to teach her some kind of lesson for rebuffing him all these years. He’d back down. He had to back down.

But that meant she couldn’t.

Mattie turned, and she took her time doing it. She even put her hips into it, so it was a little bit of a show—

Then she felt his hands on her. And froze.

It took her a moment to understand that it wasn’t a random touch, or even a particularly sexual one. He was tracing the delicate tattoo that flowed over one hip and up her side to cradle the lower edge of her ribs.