Page 10 of Seduced

“Pass,” the viscount said.

“And you said you had us,” the boisterous gentleman laughed.

“I do have you,” the viscount insisted stubbornly. “This is not hazard.”

Poppy was about to play her hand. Her father would be proud of her maneuvers, especially since she had walked into the card room with not a farthing to fly with, and had already won several rounds.

Yes, so far she was winning, which gave rise to a strange, exhilarating feeling she hadn’t felt in years. She looked up, feeling something akin to a smile begin to stretch her lips. But as she looked up, she realized: her luck was about to change.

Because she saw him.

Himhim.

The man of several names: he was called ‘the Slav’, ‘His Highness’, ‘Mikailoff’, ‘the Dark Prince’, or, more commonly, ‘Lord Hades’. No one knew who he really was, what his realname was, or what exactly his place in society was. But everyone knew that he was the owner of the Hell Club. And that was enough.

He stood there, across from her, one shoulder pressed into the wall, scowling directly at her. Poppy looked behind her, around her, then back at him. No, she wasn’t mistaken. The man was looking straight at her, his steely gaze unwavering, and had been doing so for the past half hour.

Dammit.

Don’t swear. Swearing once equals to two hours kneeling on the rice. Or else an eternity of damnation. Don’t swear.

Dammit.

She glanced at him and quickly averted her gaze.

Hades looked nothing like she had imagined him.

His face was drawn and pale, his porcelain-white skin a complete contrast to hair so ebony black that it turned into silver where the candlelight hit it. It was combed to utter smoothness and falling in soft waves down to his shoulders, a perfect frame for his electric blue eyes, which were brewing with icy fire as they stared at her with open hostility. His body was long and lithe, his clothes all black, his face all angles. He looked like a fallen angel, his chiseled, almost feminine—but too angular for that—features and his marble-white skin barely indistinguishable from the Greek statues that littered the walls.

“What is that bloody animal doing here?” the gentleman next to Poppy swore.

Poppy looked down, distracted from her study of Hade’s perplexingly beautiful face.

There was a cat on her lap.

“It’s me, gentlemen,” she said, in her deep, boyish voice. “I apologize. The damn things seem to take a liking to me wherever I go. Cats, dogs, rats, what have you.”

Don’t swear.

Swearing once equals to two hours kneeling on the rice.

Or else an eternity of damnation.

“Well, shake him off, will you?” the viscount said impatiently. His cheeks were scarlet; he was deep in his cups, and spending money as if it was water. “I can’t abide the closeness of felines; I shall be seized by sneezing.”

Poppy tried to wrestle the cat out of her arms, but this was easier said than done. She blew out an exasperated sigh. Why did these things always happen to her? It was true that animals and plants—even seeds, although that wasn’t funny—had a natural tendency to follow her around, no matter the circumstances, but of all the places…

She patted the cat on the head and shooed it away.

It didn’t move, but Poppy did.

A sudden thought made her entire body jerk as if it had been flung into a fiery pit.

You’re like that cat,she thought.

You have been reduced to nothing more than an animal.

Isn’t this how your brother pets your head when he wants to subdue you?

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