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Holy hell.
I shoved my hand through my hair and hissed when my fingers caught on a spiky tangle. That should have pulled me right out of my dark little fantasy, but when Hook snapped back to check on me, a delicious smirk graced his lips.
“Here,” he said, humor lacing his gruff voice. “Don’t yank. It looks like you picked up a nightshade thistle.” His long fingers wrapped around my wrists and pulled them down, pressing them to my chest. “Keep those there, please.”
“Nightshade? Is it poisonous?”
“If it breaks the skin, yes. Now, hold still.”
I could barely breathe as he set to work untangling the knot. Each gentle tug and pull sent a new flare of arousal through my body.
“Will you tell me more about him?” he asked softly.
It took me a solid five seconds to figure out just what he was talking about, because all my lust-addled brain wanted to focus on was him. His teasing touch, his scent. The man smelled like a god, and I closed my eyes, breathing him in deep.
What had he asked me?
Right. About my brother. About my baby brother, who was the whole reason I was there in the first place. You know, the one who was in danger from a soul stealing demon.
A blood red thistle landed just off the path in front of me. I blinked rapidly and reached up, interfering with his ministrations. “You know, that’s probably good enough. It’s not like I’m here to win any beauty contests.”
He lingered as he was, his amber eyes burning into me, then he dropped his hands with a little frown. “As you wish.”
I stared for a second. Hadn’t his eyes been light brown before?
Man, this place was already doing a number on me.
I shook off my confusion and motioned for us to continue walking, letting him take the lead again without another word. Once his back was turned, I ran a tentative hand through the tangled mass of my hair, but there were only one or two little snags left, easy enough to break loose with a little coaxing.
“Matty is more trusting than me, but he’s no dummy. Except with girls. The poor kid is a blubbering idiot around a pretty girl.”
“Ah.” His response was barely audible and carried with it a tinge of worry.
“That’s a good thing, right? I never read anything about Pan kidnapping girls.” Then again, the information from Wendy’s journal was proving to be only partially accurate. “There aren’t any lost girls roaming the island, are there?”
Even if there were, Matty was a good kid. I knew that better than anyone. There was no way some dickhead demon with a gang of soulless kids was going to trick him into giving up his soul in the space of a day or two. I still had time.
“The demon has never shown an interest in females, at least in my experience.” His confirmation was bland, emotionless. Suspicious.
“What am I missing?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “What was the Pan in your stories like? Was it the same as in the journal?”
“Oh, no. Complete opposites in fact. According to Wendy’s account, Pan is some super powerful demon thing. I don’t know that she ever actually saw him though. Her descriptions were always second-hand. And she never actually called him Peter, so I don’t know where that name came from. Probably artistic license.”
“And the story?”
I thought back through the different versions I’d seen and heard. “It’s one of those stories that has been told and retold so many times. For the most part though, he’s just a magical little boy who wants to have fun. He wants friends to play with and endless adventures, but Wendy and her brothers want to go home.” My memories of the story stung a little. It’d been so long since I’d let myself really think about it. “I always kind of felt sorry for that version of him.”
I fell silent, listening to the chirp of birds and whistle of something I couldn’t identify as I waited for a response. The woods on either side of the trail were open, like they’d been pulled back by some great magical net just so the relentless sun could beat down on us from above.
“What is he really like?” I asked, hoping to spur him into conversation. He was, after all, the only one of us who knew the truth about the asshole demon that had spirited my brother away.
“For starters, the demon is not the kind of creature you should ever make the mistake of having sympathy for.” He paused and turned, pinning me with a serious look. “That creature is a monster, wicked and dangerous beyond measure, and prevented from wreaking havoc in the universe only because a handful of powerful ancients sacrificed their power to create this prison.”
“What kind of demon is he?”
Hook shook his head and turned back to the trail, continuing forward without checking to see if I was following. “The original kind.”
