I blink a few times, trying to clear my head so I can respond. “How do you know you’ll still feel the same when you finally have me there?”

“I don’t have to see you to feel you,” his breath feathers against my lips and that foreign feeling I’ve been experiencing since he flew through my window tonight ignites into so much more. “I feel you with me every day. Every adventure I take. You’re always with me, Wendy.”

I curl my other arm instinctively around his waist in wanting. “Really?”

His smile is mischievous. “I want to feel you in ways I’ve never felt before,” his eyes lower, they graze across every inch of my skin. I feel them heat as they go. Exposing me. Baring me in a way I’ve never known before. They’re doing just as he says. Touching me, teasing me, leaving their mark, changing me, keeping me from ever being able to forget the way I feel when he’s admiring me, like he is now.

He hesitates for a moment. His eyes lift to meet mine and his chest rises and falls quickly. “Do you want that too? For me to feel, to know all of you, Wendy?”

I can’t speak. I can’t breathe. So, I give him a nod. Just one simple tilt of my head.

Yes.

“That’s my good girl,” he smirks, as he pulls me quickly to the window and jolts us forward, out into the night.

Second star to the right.

As I fly high above the world with Peter, I know there is no way I can ever come back down, ever come back to a normal life. If I did, I’d always be waiting for him to steal me away again. Away to Neverland. A place where magic exists if you just believe enough. If you just think happy thoughts.

Chapter 4

Hook

“‘Wendy,’ he continued in a voice that no woman has ever been able to resist, ‘Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys.’”

Peter & Wendy

- J.M. Barrie

PRESENT DAY

I force the hook deeper into his right side, twisting and smiling when I see the light fade from his eyes. His death grip on my arm loosens as his inevitable end takes over. Blood spills out from his wound — but I don’t stop. I twist the hook under his rib in a full circle, my jaw clenched tight, his life slipping through my fingers as my eyes grow wide, his fade closed, and I watch him take his last breath.

With no regard for how precious life is at all, I toss his cold body to the floor and turn towards my men. Hatred brews under my skin, hostility increasing with every breath I take into my lungs. I stare them down and wait for one of them to speak. Yet, none of them seem to have the courage.