Page 85 of Seduced

She didn’t speak for a moment or two. Or three. He watched the color ebb and flow from her face, watched her bring a trembling hand to her mouth. He watched her eyes water.

“How did you know?” he asked simply. “How did you know that I did this to myself?”

No one had, except for Dante, and Alexei had told him himself. Wilder knew, of course, as did the other two guards that had been ordered to do the beating-up, but other than them, no one suspected that the lord of the Underworld punished himself weekly by purposefully being beaten up.

“When you left last night,” Poppy said, “you had the same look on your face as DeVere. As the men who had lost everything at the gaming tables. As if you were about to do something desperate.”

“Look, I—”

“But I didn’t know you would do something so bloody idiotic instead!”

“Don’t swe—” he stopped himself. “Get it all out, swear as much as you like,” he said instead. “It’s good for venting your feelings sometimes.”

“Isn’t it just.”

She was so incandescently angry she would have been the most fearsome, beautiful sight on earth. But she was furious on his behalf. For him. And that was not beautiful at all. It was a bloody waste.

“Why—why are you so worried about me?” the words came out all choked up.

“Why areyounot worried about you? Why do you hate yourself so?”

He shrugged. “Everyone else does. It seemed bad form to disagree.”

She made an abrupt movement in frustration, and doubled over from the pain. He was beside her at once, holding her up.

“Where does it hurt? Show me.”

“M-my ribs.”

He lifted her shift gently and saw the mark on her skin, the bruise forming already. He cursed under his breath, seeing red.

“What were you thinking, running in the middle of four fighting men like that?” he burst out. “My heart stopped!”

“You looked like you were dead, lying there with all that blood dripping out of you…I thought you had surely died.”

Hades regretted shouting immediately. “I tried my best,” he murmured. And then regrettedthat. He shut his eyes tightly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“You shouldn’t havethoughtit, Hades.”

“Call me Alexei, like you did before.”

She licked her lips, shifting her weight. “Dante says you have many friends, from your days back in school. He says they are your brothers, closer than a family.”

He looked away, waved a hand dismissively. “They were,” he corrected her. “I don’t…I don’t talk to them anymore.”

“Well, do.”

Alexei sighed, frustrated. What was happening to Poppy? Where was the little mousy, subdued puppy-like girl he had found? This woman in front of him was a force of nature, resembling that girl in almost no way at all. All that had stayed the same were the delicate curves of her body that drove him crazy and her beautiful cloud of hair. Everything else was transformed, from her beautiful, fierce green eyes to the empowered way she spoke.

She was all command and no fear.

The little seed had become a forest.

“It’s not that simple,” Alexei bit his lip, but inwardly he was thinking:

Why haven’t I spoken to them before now?

What could possibly be so bad or important that has kept me from them?

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