Page 36 of Seduced

“I am at leastoneof your secrets, I should hope,” Dante sounded offended.

“Ow!” Poppy gasped and Hades’ hands immediately fell from her knee.

“Damn, Alexei,” Dante swore.

“Who is Alexei?” Poppy asked.

“That’s his lordship’s name,” Dante replied, sounding slightly amused.

“Oh,” Poppy replied. “I always call him ‘Hades’ in my head. Everybody does.”I should not have spoken.But it was too late.

Hades’ hands stilled on her leg, and then something amazing happened. Dante threw his head back and laughed and laughed. Poppy watched him, unable to look away. She had never seen a man more transformed or more enchanting.

“We used to call him Hades’ spawn at school,” Dante said, gasping for breath.

“At home, too,” Hades said quietly, but it might just have been a growl, he said it so low.

“He is a prince, of course,” Dante went on, “but his mother was a who—Sorry, of unknown origins, I meant to say.”

Hades’ hands tightened on her skin.

“The name is Alexei,” he said, tightly.

Poppy tried to stifle a scream of pain and it came out as an embarrassing whimper.

“What the hell are you doing, Mikailoff? You’re hurting her.”

“My…my hands are shaking,” Hades, or ‘Alexei’, said, standing up gingerly. “But I promise you, I am not the one who is hurting her,” he added, his voice harder than she had ever heard it. “Someone beat me to it.”

Alexei.

His name.

It somehow made him sound more human…and at the same time,lesshuman than calling him ‘Hades’.

Alexei.

“Why did that sound as if you meant to hurt her in the first place?” Dante mused, earning a scoff from Hades. “I mean, you probably did not, and I know your grasp of the English language is feeble at best, but…”

“Oh, I most certainly mean to hurt her, make no mistake,” Hades replied, drawing himself to his full height and straightening his waistcoat over what appeared to be a chest made entirely of marble. “You, Miss Wyatt, are in for a world of pain. You are here to pay for your spying, after all. But…” his mouth twisted in distaste. “That,” he pointed at her knees, looking positively green about the lips, “is not my style. I prefer a more…sensual kind of torture.”

“Please,” Dante said, “now I am going to be really sick.”

“His honor’s grasp of the English language seems flawless to me,” Poppy said quickly, wanting to steer the conversation away from the dangerous waters of ‘sensual torture’, which made her want to shiver and vomit at the same time.

“Oh, he had a hard enough time of it at school,” Dante laughed. “His ‘honor’”.

“At least I was not mute for the first seven years of my life!” Hades spat. “And, just a little warning, Miss Wyattseems to enjoy giving me all sorts of ill-fitting titles in some weak-minded attempt to undermine my authority over her.”

“Yourwhatnow?” Poppy tried to spring from her settee, but a searing pain sent her back down on it in a heap.

Most ungraceful.

But oh, who cared?

“I was severelytormentedas an infant!” Dante was shouting now.

And Hades looked about to do the same.

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