“I like that,” she sighs, leaning into my side as her head drops to my shoulder. “Never having to grow up if I don’t want to. After all, so much of growing up is overrated, I think. So much of becoming an adult is corrupt.”

I don’t dare ask what she means, or how she knows. Instead, I lean my head on hers as our gaze drifts back out across the mountain.

In reality, isn’t all I’ve ever wanted from Wendy nothing but corruption?

I brought her to Neverland with me to show her my world. But I would be lying if I said I didn’t bribe her here under false pretenses. I always planned to keep her for myself and never let her go back home. Never let her leave me.

Having her here began with very crooked intentions. The longer she’s stayed, the more I’ve found the need, the desire, growing inside me to ruin her. Just for me. The way I ruined her that day at Skull Rock.

All those nights I came to her, laid at the edge of her bed while she slept, played her music. I’ve never felt the kind of power that was between us, like what I experienced that day at Skull Rock. It was a higher kind of magic. An addicting enchantment like I have never known.

Every touch, I knew defiled her. Altered us. Ruined me.

I took a piece of her innocence. Gave her mine. Disgraced us both.

I’ve never felt more alive. I’ve never felt more allured to a power that was beyond my control, in my entire life.

Now, every bit of my body, my soul, vibrates with an itch to do it again.

But that doesn’t mean we have to grow up. Does it?

It’s a thought I’ve wrestled with for weeks now. It’s the reason I stayed away from her after the first time I tasted her lips. It’s the explanation for keeping my hands to myself as I lay awake at night even as her soft, welcoming body wraps around me under my sheets, calling out to every part of my soul to take her. It’s the only thought raging through my mind since a week ago, when I took her to Tiki Forest and told her that I’m trying to be patient, but in reality, I only have so much restraint.

“Peter?” she whispers, and I swallow hard, attempting to clear the thoughts in my head, pushing the worry from my mind. I nonchalantly glance down at her snuggled closely into my side and my lips press gently against her head.

“Yes, Darling?”