Page 60 of Losing Wendy
But it’s not just me. I’ve roped John and Michael into my fate.
So I’m rummaging through ideas at the same time I’m walking about the Den, picking up leftover orange peels and trash that the boys left lying around, when an amused voice pricks my ears.
“You really don’t know how to have fun, do you?”
I spin on my heel, surprised to find how close Peter has managed to get without me realizing it. He’s near enough that I can smell the casual scent of amber wafting off of his shadows, his smirk highlighting the dimple on his left cheek.
“Someone has to clean up around here,” I say.
Peter raises his brow. “And that has to be you?”
I stiffen, but I have nothing to say.
“What if…” Peter rolls his words over his tongue as if he doesn’t know exactly what he’s about to say. “You just…didn’t?”
I stare down at the orange peel below my feet.
“Then this is going to rot here.”
Peter shrugs. “Maybe. And why should that be your problem?”
“Because someone is forcing me to live in this space.”
Peter’s eyes flicker. “If memory serves me correctly, you’re the one who brought up the bargain that ended you up here.”
I stiffen. “Yes, and you were quick to remind me that I had little to bargain away, given I already belonged to you.”
His eyes glitter in the torchlight, raking every last inch of me. “I suppose that does sound like me. I’m rather possessive in my shadow form. So I’m told, at least. Given how you looked the night of the masquerade, I’m not exactly shocked that I would have wanted to stake my claim to you.”
The bargain I made with Peter in the clock tower tingles against the crook of my elbow, so naturally, I deflect the pleasant sensation with a snort. “I looked ridiculous. My mother…” A bulge forms in my throat, even bringing her up. “She thought it would place matrimony into the minds of the suitors.”
Again, Peter examines me. It’s like he’s no longer seeing me as I am, standing before him in Simon’s gifted clothes, baggy enough to obscure my curves, but in the silk wedding gown I’d donned that night. A bride prepared. “Well,” he says, voice dropping an octave, “I’d say your mother knew what she was doing. I doubt there was a man who saw you that night who wasn’t contemplating whether life was worth living if he couldn’t make you his.”
A wry laugh escapes me as I consider the captain’s harsh words. “If only you knew.”
“Oh, I know.”
Red blotches swarm my arms. I hug them to my chest to hide my body’s reaction to his words, his lingering gaze, but it’s no use. Peter reaches out, trailing his finger over the fresh blemishes on my skin, the evidence of the effect he has on me.
Lightning courses through me at his touch, sending my hairs on end, further condemning me. Peter must notice, because he flicks his gaze toward my face, staring at my mouth through those long copper lashes of his.
And because I’m afraid of what I’ll allow my captor to do, what I’llwelcomehim to do, if I let this moment draw on any longer, I drop the orange peel on his boot. If nothing else, it diverts his gaze, if not his attention.
“What was that for?” he asks, though I can barely hear him over the roaring in my ears from where his fingers still trail the skin of my arm.
“I’m proving you wrong,” I say, voice shaky even as I muster every bit of stability left in me to keep it level.
“You think throwing an orange peel on my shoe proves you know how to have fun?”
“No,” I say. “But it does prove that I’m not content being your slave.”
Peter slips his fingers from my skin, returning his hand to his side as he steps back, putting distance between us. If I expected space to allow me to breathe again, I was wrong.
When he turns to go, my heart is still pounding.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he says on his way out, placing his hand on the doorway with his back to me. It’s then I realize I’ve made a mistake. Tried to take hold of the reins without considering the repercussions.
“And why not?” I breathe, trying and failing to keep the panic out of my voice.