Page 49 of Seduced

“Will you not?” Hades’ voice blew across the soft hairs that had escaped her braid and were gathered behind her ear. “Not intentionally, I grant you. Then again, you seem to hate me so much…”

“I don’t care enough to hate you,” Poppy said, and immediately felt her face grow hot.

She heard his sharp inhale and saw his nostrils flare.

This is why you had decided to stop talking, she thought ruefully.You’ve gone and done it now. You have made him angry. As angry as your bro—

“I don’t,” she added quickly, before the fear for Hades and her brother blended into one and incapacitated her completely again. “I mean, sometimes I do. Maybe.”

Hades let her go and she watched him walk away, his eyes tightly shut as if against pain.

“Oh, I see,” he murmured. “You actually want me to die. Do you want me to die? Because you are killing me right now.”

You are doing the same, she thought.

But her courage—or her stupidity—seemed to have deserted her once again, and she didn’t say it. Hades went to the side table and poured himself a glass of golden liquid, which he then proceeded to down in one gulp.

“Seduce me,” he said again, his back to her. “And let’s get it over with. Look, this is torture. I’ll make you a new wager: if you seduce me, I will let you leave.”

She perked up at that.

“You will?”

He nodded. “Why not? It shall truly be a marvel if you succeed. No one has ever managed it before.”

“Wait, what?”

“Do I look like the type of man who is seduced by a woman?”

He lifted an eyebrow and his eyes found her again, but they were back to being closed off, cold. His body was still angled away from hers, as if he was protecting his chest in battle. The place where his heart was supposed to reside—supposing he even had one—was hidden from her.

Which was absurd. Nothing, not even his supposed heart, had ever been in danger from her. Poppy licked her dry lips. The room suddenly felt empty instead of luxurious, too cold and impersonal instead of opulent.

“I should think your lordship would be the one to do the seducing,” she said, shaking. But still, she said it.

“You’ll refuse me,” he replied simply. “I know already how it will go, were I to try to seduce you. Or, as you said, tocareenough to try.”

Oh, that had hurt him, had it? Good.

“I don’t think so,” she said simply, looking down.Yes, the floor; that’s it. Look at the floor.“I do not know how to…refuse.”

“I beg your pardon.”

It was not uttered as a question. In fact, it was said in such an aggressive, ice-dripping way, that she had to abandon the floor and look up at him.

And what she saw was a feral creature.

Hades looked so angry his hair was starting to stand on end. At the same time, he was so completely immobile, as if he were frozen to the spot. His entire body turned to her, his hair flying back as he moved so quickly, but then he stopped. Stopped moving, stopped talking. Stopped breathing.

He appeared to be waiting for her to speak.

“I do not know how to refuse,” Poppy repeated, as calmly as she could under the circumstances. “When someone orders me to do something, or asks me, I have been taught to…I have been conditioned to obey. I do not know how to…”

“Stop right there.” Hades took two strides and reached her. His face came inches from her nose as he bent down to peer into her eyes. “You are conditioned?”

“I do not know how else to describe it.”

“Now look here,” his hand hovered over her shoulder, but he seemed to think better of it, and he dropped it to his side without touching her. “This is not the first time I’m meeting you, all right? Remember, I have been the recipient of your razor-sharp wit on more than one occasion. Do not presume to tell me that this brain does not match a heart as fierce.”

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