Page 103 of Seduced

Now, weeks later, Poppy finally knew better than to talk back to him. Or at all.

She knelt there in the snow, her knees numb, her stomach cramping, her heart dead.

And then, a voice said:

“Seize her.”

The next instant, strong arms came around her waist like a vise, lifting her quite off the ground, and someone was carrying her through the frozen cemetery, not too gently but not too roughly either. She was carried all the way to a coach-and-four with a familiar crest painted on the mahogany door.

The door was flung open, and Poppy was thrust inside unceremoniously.

Her limbs were too frozen to work properly, and she nearly bounced off the silk seat, falling on the coach’s floor, but a pair of hands caught her and held her. She lifted her eyes and came face to face with Hades.

“You…” she said intelligently.

“Me,” he replied.

Seeing his face after all these days, without warning like this, was like a sudden burst of brilliance. It was as if she came back to herself with a jolt.

Every single memory of her time with him came back inside her soul.

It happened quickly and painfully, like the first gulp of air after nearly drowning. It felt as if she had been buried alive and someone had swept aside all the dirt covering her coffin, just as she was about to die.

She was suddenly in the light.

She blinked, as if in the presence of the sun after being in the dark for so long.

The waters above her head parted, and she took a breath—her first real breath in two weeks.

“Alexei.” She was painfully out of breath, her voice rusty from being unused for so long. She tried again. “How are you he…?” She couldn’t get enough air in her lungs.

“It’s all right, breathe,” Alexei said. He leaned over her and placed his right hand, fingers splayed, on her stomach and chest, and pushed gently, forcing her frenzied heart’sbeating to slow down. “Breathe deeply, from here,” he said, his voice calm, his fingers seeping warmth all the way underneath the layers of her dress and corset. “You’re all right.”

“Did you…Did you order me to be kidnapped again?”

“I did,” he said, watching her.

His eyes looked bigger in his face, his cheeks more prominent. He appeared to have lost quite a bit of weight, and there was a new paleness to his skin, making him look fragile.

“Why?”

She tried to rub her frozen fingers together to warm them, but she couldn’t feel them at all. He took them between his own gloved ones and started caressing them slowly.

“I thought you might enjoy it,” he said. “Do not fear me, Wyatt. Not you. I couldn’t handle it if you…”

“Fear you? Are you mad?”

“You know I am.” He smiled down at her, still rubbing her cold hands. There was a quietness about him, a certain calmness radiating from him that she had never seen before.

“Great God in heaven, you are almost completely frozen,” he swore softly. “Were you being tortured again?”

Poppy looked out of the window. The snow was frozen into patches of ice, coating the grass and tombstones. The sky was a canopy of clouds.

“Don’t tell me that he—” Alexei fought to control his voice, but his eyes were spitting fire. “That bastard is still at it, isn’t he? You said…You said you would fight back, little seed. Youpromised.”

“Well, I failed.”

“It is not your bloody fault.” His arm snaked around her shoulders, squeezing them fiercely, frantically. “I apologize for making it sound like it has anything to do with you, as ifyou—I shall kill him.” He shut his eyes tightly. The peace was gone, and there was torment brewing behind those brilliant eyes. “Even your back is frozen, come here.”

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