Page 73 of Seduced

Hades suddenly flung his head back and roared a curse to the dark skies.

‘Roared’ wasn’t even the right word for what he did; he screamed it.

He screamed for almost a full minute, and then he fell abruptly silent. Poppy watched him, his every strange, tortured movement, wondering what new lunacy had overtaken him. It hurt her heart to watch a human being in such torment.

Hades shivered violently, his thin lawn shirt wet through and clinging to him like second skin. Underneath it, she could see the shape of his lean, hard muscles: as she had suspected when she had touched him the other day, during that training session, his body was sculpted like a Greek statue’s. And right now, the statue appeared to be about to shatter.

He lay back down, flat on his back on the snow, and maybe now that she was beginning to freeze too, Poppy was losing her mind as well, because at that moment, it seemed like a good idea to imitate him. She lay down beside him. Her long braid, uncoiling from her bun, brushed his black mane as it fanned out on the frosted grass around his face, and their fingers almost touched, but not quite.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Hades said in a low, dream-like voice. “I am the only one who is going to freeze tonight.”

“Never to be outdone,” Poppy murmured. The cold was not so bad, once you relaxed into it, was it? She smiled up atthe gray sky, opening her tongue to eat a snowflake. It tasted like winter.

“You need to get up,” Hades said, his voice resembling his usual stern tone. Always stiff, that man, even in the silliest of circumstances. “Now, Miss Wyatt.”

“You first,” Poppy said, gathering a fistful of snow and pressing it with her fingers. She could no longer feel her hands, but it looked pretty, the snowflakes glistening in the street lamp’s faint light. “I forgot to ask you, have you seduced me yet, Your Highness?”

“Oh, we’re back to that, are we?” Hades’ voice sounded more worried than annoyed, for some strange reason. “You must be more frozen than I thought. No, I haven’t, Poppy. You would remember if I had.”

‘Poppy.’

Don’t say my name like that. Like you are scolding me.

Don’t you dare say it like that, not when you haven’t said it ever before.

Hades calling her ‘Poppy’ for the first time somehow irritated her so much that blood came rushing back to her frozen limbs with a vengeance. God, it hurt.

“Why are you so arrogant?” she sputtered.

“Why are you so determined to hate me?”

“I don’t know,” she let her head fall back. “You make is so easy, I suppose.” She turned her head to look at him, and the snow cupped her cheek, piercing her with cold. “Come on, my lord, come inside,” she told him gently.

“Not yet. I have still some feeling left in my lower legs,” he murmured. “I would like it to go away.”

“Well, in that case, would you mind telling me this piece of news that shall be so terrible it will ‘break’ me, before you die?” Poppy asked.

“Oh,” Hades said, and then he said nothing.

She waited.

The snow fell thicker for a moment, then trickled to a stop. There was nothing left but the icy blanket all around them and an empty sky.

“I shall tell you,” Hades said finally, when Poppy thought he might have fallen asleep or fainted. “It’s not news, but it will be news to you. I have concealed it from you for this long, because I wanted to spare you the pain of it. But you…you are nothing like I thought you would be, and it seems that I am nothing like I thought I was, since you came here.”

“I did not come here, you brought me here.”

“Yes, I did. It’s about that. I…”

He stopped. She waited.

“Tell me,” she finally urged, because he seemed to have forgotten how to speak.

“I did not exactly kidnap you, my dear,” he said finally, his voice emotionless, bleak. “I made a big show of it, or I would have, if you had reacted like a normal human being, but it was a lie. A…a ruse. The truth is, I came to fetch you.”

“Fetch me?”

Something horrible, dark and oily was rolling in the pit of Poppy’s stomach. Fear. Terror. And disgust. All of a sudden, she wanted to get up, leave Hades and his club behind, and walk out into the snow until there was nothing left of her or of this evil, soiled world. Nothing but whiteness.

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