Broken Kiss (a Teen Wolf story)

Part 11

            She should have been freezing after being outside, but she wasn’t. It was the fire, roaring away in the fireplace. Yes, definitely that. It had nothing, nothing at all to do with the man prowling around her mother’s carefully staged living room glaring at all the furniture like it wasn’t good enough to set her on. It had nothing to do with the strength of the arms holding her or the way his bright blue eyes – heavy with concern – came back to her face every few seconds.

            “What you did was exceedingly stupid,” he said.

            Of course he’d have to speak and ruin the moment. Lydia squirmed, shoving at him when his arms only clamped more tightly around her.

            “Put me down.”

            “So you can run off and make another deal with the devil?” He sneered.

            “He’s not the devil.” The devil might look like that, but he wouldn’t have asked. He would have taken. “And you’re not one to talk. It sounds like you’ve already made at least one deal with him. I hope you got something good for me.”

            Peter lowered her legs until her feet touched the floor, then slid his arm from around her back up to her shoulder. His palm cupped the nape of her neck as he inclined his head until he was a bare inch away. Lydia licked her lips, remembering the feel of him against them. His eyes followed the movement of her tongue, and his fingers stroked the column of her neck. But he didn’t kiss her again, which wasn’t fair. She was haunted by the taste of him.

            “He misled you,” Peter said, wrenching his eyes up to hers. “Gods think it’s funny to toy with mortals.”

            “Unlike you? Isn’t that sort of your specialty?”

            His hand rested on her side, over the place where he’d bitten her. He made a thoughtful noise, as if agreeing with her, then straightened. When he spoke again, his voice was lighter.

            “You’re right. But I did not make a deal to give you away.” Noticing the torn fragments of his jacket, he shrugged out of it and tossed it onto the couch. Jostling her laptop with the toe of his boot, he woke it, then frowned at the screen and her books. “You summoned him? On purpose?”

            “I wasn’t looking for him.” Her voice hitched somewhere along the way and Lydia turned to face the fire. Better than to see him laughing at her.

            “Your friend, Allison? You sought her?” She heard him walk closer, but he didn’t touch her and she wrapped her arms around her middle.

            “I can’t hear her,” she heard herself say, and once those words were loose she couldn’t stop the rest from flooding out. “All these voices screaming at me, and I can’t hear her. What’s the point…” Her hands rose, clutching at the air in front of her. “Of bearing this ability, enduring the noise, if I can’t hear the one person I want to?”

            Peter’s hands closed lightly on her arms, and he breathed against her hair when she swayed against him.

            “The strengths we rely on have a way of failing us when we need them most,” he said. “Hades offered to help you?”

            Lydia opened, then closed her mouth. She couldn’t exactly remember what Hades had said, but she’d felt like he was going to help. “Yes.”

            “And so you want to go into his realm?”

            He wasn’t yelling at her, and it didn’t sound like he was mocking her. Suspicious, Lydia said, “Yes. Why?”