Page 34 of Seduced

She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so happy, not to mention so damn proud of herself.

Don’t swear. Three hours on the rice. Eternal damnation.

So damn proud.

She had figured out his secret.

And wasn’t it just hysterically funny that the great and mighty Lord Hades, the overlord of London’s night life, was keeping someone hidden in his den of pleasure? And what was more, he was terrified to death of anyone finding out. He was powerless against the enormity of her discovery. Powerless and shaking and swallowing and scrambling for words.

She somehow found it immeasurably amusing.

Hades kicked a door open, and she was jarred violently in his arms.

“Hey! Would you knock first?” a different voice said, from inside the room.

“This is an emergency,” Hades said above her head, lowering her onto a fainting couch. It was covered in silk, cool and soft against her cheek. Hades’ fingers lingered on her knee as he arranged her limbs on the settee. “She fainted in the great hall, and now she can’t stop laughing.”

“Laughing?” the new voice asked, incredulous.

Poppy fought to clear the clouds that obscured her vision. The new voice was masculine and young, but it had a sadnessand a hardness to it that made it hard for her to imagine what kind of person it belonged to. She wanted to see.

“Why on earth would you think that I, of all people, could help with that?” the new gentleman said.

“Have mercy, Dante,” Hades said. “It’s not the laughter I need your help with. Contrary to what people say about me, I am not completely insane. I need your help withthis.”

And Hades lifted her skirt and began to roll down her left stocking.

“Would you stop doing that?” Poppy hissed, all laughter disappearing at once.

“I’m sorry, Persephone,” Hades said, “but you fainted from the pain just a minute ago. What I saw on your skin was a gruesome crime. It is vile, Dante, I mean it. And I have seen my share of gruesome crimes—”

“Committed some, even,” the new voice added, helpfully. This ‘Dante’ person’s voice.

“Don’t help me, Dante,” Hades said, but it sounded as if he was smiling. His fingers kept rolling her stocking down, a bit too expertly for comfort, but she was in so much pain now that all she could concentrate on was trying not to be sick on him. Or, worse, faint again. “But the sight of this one nearly mademefaint. Look,” he said to ‘Dante’, whoever he was.

Dante looked.

Then he whistled.

“Don’t do that in front of people, Dante,” Hades said. “It’s rude. We’ve talked about what to do in front of people, haven’t we?”

Poppy sat up, wincing in pain, and beheld a young man with a fop of golden-brown hair, the thinnest, tallest body she had ever seen on a human being, and large eyes that looked like bruises. His features were delicate, symmetrical, and hisface was all angles and planes, as if he had come alive straight out of an Italian master’s painting.

He would be so beautiful, if he wasn’t so broken, Poppy thought.Like me.

“Introduce yourself,” Hades said to the young gentleman. “I’m too busy here to stand on ceremony.”

Poppy tried to push him away and roll down her stockings herself, but as soon as she attempted to touch the fabric covering her legs, she let out a shriek that pierced her own ears, and sat back, panting.

“Let me do that, would you?” Hades said, his voice surprisingly calm. “And look the other way, please. I-I don’t want you to look at this anymore,” he added sharply, bending on one knee in front of the settee. “Dante, stop embarrassing yourself and do as I said.”

Dante was currently holding on to a bedpost—Poppy now saw that they were in a room which could only be described as the most opulent bedchamber she had encountered in her life—and trying not to be ill.

Amazingly, he braced himself and turned towards Poppy, obeying Hades immediately.

“Dante Augustus, of the house of Lyon, at your service,” he bowed in front of her settee.

Up close, he was much bigger than she had already thought; his thinness made him appear of smaller statue, but when standing without slouching, he was almost as tall as Hades.

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