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 let you know,” he said, and then he inclined his head in a regal sort of way that was as infuriating as it was strangely attractive, silently bidding her to continue.
Mattie despaired of herself. But she leaned over and pulled off her socks then stood again and shimmied out of her skinny black jeans, kicking them out of her way when she was done. And then she stood there. In nothing but her bra and panties.
And told herself—over and over again—that it was like a bathing suit. It was fine. It was nothing.
Nicodemus’s gaze was so hot it hurt. But he still didn’t move.
“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.