11. Wendy

"Fuck violently, huh?" I stab at my greens, clear my throat. My face is starting to burn. "But Peter says you're not supposed to even kiss me."

"Tough." Wes snickers. "And too late."

My mouth tries to smile but I don't let it. "Why not, then?"

"If you guys hadn't showed up," Wes goes on, nodding at Colt and Tink, "I'd have taken you against the wall, girl." He leans back, rubs his crotch. "You were ready for it."

I was, truth be told, and the heat rises to my face. "Tell me why Peter doesn't want you kissing and touching me. You can't keep changing the topic with sex."

Wes smirks. "Why not? Seems to work just fine."

"Why not? Jesus. Tell me what this is about, why I am here!" I throw my hands in the air. "Find a way for Hook not to hear us and just tell me."

"Oh, Hook knows you're here now. It's moot. Might as well tell you."

"Then what are you waiting for?"

He turns to the others. "Were the Wendies always so impatient and annoying?"

"I'm not a Wendy! I'm Wendy Darling. An actual person! Start treating me like one."

"And demanding," Wes says thoughtfully. "So very demanding. I wonder how you are in the sack."

"Wouldn't you like to know?" I lean forward, stare him down. "Huh?"

He laughs. "Well, Peter said you're not the one, so… why the hell not, right guys? We can tell you. And we can fuck you, too."

"That was a trick," Tink says softly. "To convince Hook. She's the one."

"She is? But I did kiss her," Wes says.

"So did I," Colt says. "If she was the one, wouldn't it be too late?"

"You, jackasses." Tink smirks. "You're turning as forgetful as Peter now? Kissing won't change her. Fucking her will."

"But then why didn't he let us kiss—?"

"Because kissing leads to fucking. Kissing leads to loss of control. You—"

"Change me?" I interrupt. "Change me how? What do you think I can do?"

"Save us," Colt says, his dark gaze earnest and clear. "Save this world. Turn off the nightmare. Return it to the dream it used to be. It—"

"Fuck, shut up, Colt!" Tink slams his hands on the table and gets up. "We've said too much."

"She's not the one, Tink." Wes shakes his head. "You know Peter. His mind's a mess."

"He's right, you know," a voice says from the kitchen doorway, and I flinch. "I'm a fucking mess."

"Come eat, Peter," Tink says, his voice hard. "And stop—"

"But," Peter says, "she's not the one."

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Tink's eyes blaze. "When will you stop lying? Pick a story and run with it, will you? She is the one. She's not. Let's go to the center. Oh, no, let's go to town and set it up so that Hook sees Wendy with Wes. Lie to Hook. Lie to us again. Change the story for the thousandth time, then—"

"You exaggerate," Peter mutters, limping inside and coming to stand behind a chair.

"Do I?" Tink snaps, leaning back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest. "I don't even know what is real anymore."

"Nothing here is real," Peter says, his voice also turning to steel.

"Is that so? Then why are we still trying?" Tink mutters. "I don't know if all you do and say is an act or if your memory is really going and…"

Peter says, "Aw, are you worried for me, Tink?"

Tink freezes, eyes wide.

Then he shrugs his broad shoulders, a defiant look in his eyes, rapidly solidifying into anger. "Fuck you." He gets up, gives Peter the finger and leaves the room.

There's a beat of heavy silence.

"Dammit, man," Colt breathes, pushing his plate away. "Stop fucking with our heads. Is she or isn't she the one?"

"Only one way to know," Peter says, his gaze finally landing on me, cold and hot at once. "Isn't there?"

"Are you asking me?" I grumble. "For real?"

"She already changed the island," Wes says. "Through her nightmares."

"Though not for the better," Colt says with a shrug.

"Question is…" Peter is still gazing at me. "Can she change it more? Can she make it better? Can you, Wendy?"

"Change the island?" I whisper.

"Change Neverland."

I hold his gaze. "How can I do that?"

"That is the question, isn't it? I don't know."

"Then what am I supposed to do?" I ask.

"How about you try it in your sleep," Peter says. "Dream of better things."

"Easy for you to say."

"Is it?" His voice drops, low and delicious and lethal. "If my dreams had shaped this place, it would look like the ninth circle of hell."

I shake my head. "That's not helping."

"Peter gets bad dreams," Wes says slowly. "Screaming bad. We all sleep badly, but Peter's are the worst."

"What is it to me?" I whisper, fighting the sympathy, knowing it's a bad idea. "You took me from my home, brought me here to use my dreams?"

"That's right."

Anger rises in a hot, red tide. "How about no? How about asking me first before you use anything of mine?"

"This isn't up to us, girl. Or to you." His eyes are flat and hard, "The magic. Your connection to us."

"Just like that, huh? Not up to you? You're the ones who brought me here!"

"Enough," Peter says, his voice harsh. "Bed time." He nods at the Twins. "Take her. Time to use her."

* * *

Use me?

I yell at them to stop, I fight them. It's not the thought of going to bed that has me panicking, I'm bone-weary—but after all the things they said… I don't know what they're planning to do with me.

"Don't touch me!" I try to bite Colt's hand as he lifts me in his arms and strides out of the kitchen. I slap his face. "Let me down!"

He says nothing.

I twist and shove at his arms. "What will you do to me? Use me how?"

No answer.

Pushing me down on the bed, they tie my hands over my head, to the bars of the iron headboard, as I squirm and kick. Tink is nowhere to be seen. Peter appears at the door of the bedroom as Wes goes around the bed to test the knots.

"Let me go!" I yell. "Untie me!"

"We're just making sure you won't run away," Wes says.

"Run away, how? I'm locked in here! What do you want with me?"

"You asked how we plan on using you." He bares his teeth in a grin. "We want you to dream. Dream of something good, will ya?"

"Good?" I kick right and left but they act like they don't feel it. "Good how?"

"God above, girl. Haven't you ever had good dreams? Dreams where you feel safe and warm and comfortable, where you feel like you belong and everything will be okay?"

"No," I say sullenly. "Have you?"

He gives a harsh bark of a laugh. "Just go to sleep."

"You just like tying me up!" I yell at the Twins as they walk out of the room. "Don't you? It makes you hard when I'm scared. All of you. It turns you on."

Peter is the last one remaining at the door. I open my mouth to yell some more, to curse him, insult him with the best swearwords I know, when he reaches down and grabs his cock through his pants, giving it a squeeze. His eyes darken.

Well, Christ. I was right. He's hard. Very hard.

An image hits me. What if they used me like this? Not my dreams, but my body. Tied up on the bed, what if they pulled down my panties and just… pleasured me? Or took their own pleasure?

Oh God…

The throb between my legs returns, insistent, almost painful, and I swallow a moan. Mortified, my cheeks on fire, I roll my head on the pillow to face away and close my eyes.

Enough, I tell myself. Stop with these crazy thoughts. Just sleep.

* * *

In my dream,I'm drowning.

The ruined town has sunk under the water, graffiti-covered walls surrounding me as I sink. Fish swim by, silver flashes. Bubbles wobble.

My hair rises at my sides like tentacles, wrapping around me, choking me.

I start struggling as my lungs constrict. No air. I have to breathe. Can't. Suffocating. Drowning. Dying.

Please…

Strong hands grab me, stopping my descent. Pulling me up.

"There, there," a low male voice says, a familiar voice. A light touch on my face, then a spicy scent envelops me. "Just dream, sweetheart. No nightmares."

The hands pull me out of the water and my chest expands, pulling in sweet oxygen. I cling to the man as he carries me out.

And then the scene changes unexpectedly—in the way dreams do—and I'm on the floor, a heavy body pressing down on mine and I like it.

I like it way too much. Need it. Crave it.

I strain, unable to use my hands to touch. The throbbing between my legs is maddening. I ache. I want… I need…

"Wendy..."

The whisper is the only warning I get before the world shifts—the weight on my body vanishes, and my skirt is pushed up, exposing my panties. I blink, the light too sharp, blinding—but a man with a bright halo like a saint is kneeling between my legs on the bed.

I'm on a bed.

Not a street.

Yet I can still hear the sea, the crashing waves in the distance, and the hot guy sitting on the bed winks at me before he puts his hands on said panties and yanks.

Just like in my fantasy,I think dimly, as he drags the panties down my legs, the lace whispering against my skin.

"Wes," I breathe as he works the panties off my legs and tosses them to the side.

Another guy climbs onto the bed and I gasp before I recognize Colt, his dark hair loose on his shoulders, his gaze smoldering.

Am I awake?

Wes lifts one of my feet and pulls off my boot and stocking, letting both fall off the side of the bed, while Colt does the same with the other foot.

Wes bends and trails his lips over my inner thigh. Then I flinch when something cold trails after the warmth of his mouth over my knee and then my thigh.

"Wes?" I whisper.

"Sh…"

I gulp. "I thought… Peter said…"

"Yeah, well, he said no fucking, but nobody said anything about using my hands. Or my mouth. Or my toys."

"Toys?"

And he lifts his gun. "Boom," he says and grins.