Hades and Persephone: Keeper of Sins (Gods of Myth #1)

Chapter 31

Chapter

Thirty-One

P ersephone

The way he looks at me like I’ve gifted him something grand and immense is, well, it’s a little sad. He told me he didn’t like something, and I respected it. Granted, I did so with a naked flare. But still.

I sense there is more to this moment with Hades than what meets the eye. Sure, he’s obviously far more jealous than I anticipated. In all honesty, I hadn’t thought the man had a jealous bone. I figured, like I assumed of most wealthy men, that if Hades didn’t like something he’d simply throw me away.

I mean, there is a whole world full of women like me. Young, poor, impossibly starry-eyed and hopeful about the future. I am not special, so why would he think to keep me?

Even still, I’m not certain this thing between us has a life beyond the next few months. It’s not like he confessed undying love for me when I told him I’d be leaving at the end of summer. In fact, he hadn’t protested at all.

There is no question in my mind that this is a fling. I’ll need to keep my heart securely fastened high inside the protective net so that it doesn’t fall at his feet. I should really build a wall to stand behind, but I’m just not crafty like that. My heart feels everything, all the time. In the end, it might be bloody and pricked one too many times by the gentle touch of his hand, the invasion of his body into mine, his depthless black eyes that somehow seem to touch my soul—but it is what it is. At least, even if it’s dripping blood and leaking dreams, it won’t be on the floor at his feet.

I lift my chin, about to speak when Hades presses his big hand into my naked belly. He’s so warm and my thoughts fracture as he shoves me back from the pool. He’s stalking me across the patio to the seating area, I think.

When we pass the seating area, I frown. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

My heart quickens. “You’re not going to throw me off the balcony, are you?”

I’m only half teasing. A man as wealthy as Hades, he’d probably get away with it, though.

Hades glowers down at me. “I would never hurt you.”

Something about the way he says it, I believe him. Still, I press, “You wouldn’t?”

“Never.”

“Why not?”

His impossibly dark eyes darken. “You are mine.”

“Only for the next few months.”

I don’t know why I keep pressing this. Maybe it’s because I’m clinging to some semblance of control when I suspect I truly have none. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to press him into arguing, to insist that I give him more time. Give him more of me.

I don’t know.

I just know that when he grunts a wordless reply, I am disappointed.

My net is really doing very little for my heart.

We round a wall with a walkway that looks out over a sea of endless black broken only by the stars above, and the lights so far down below they, too, look like stars.

The view is beautiful, and yet I am incapable of keeping my eyes on it when the room he’s led me to comes into view. There is another small bar, and crafted into the stone holding up the far end of the gazebo-like structure is a fireplace currently lit with dancing flame. Between the bar and the fireplace sits a sprawling bed topped with white sheets and a thin white blanket. The view beyond the foot of the bed is a sprawling sea of stars.

The sheets are rumpled, the bed curiously unmade. I frown, my eyes landing on a door that sits in the wall, closed.

“Where does that lead?”

“My bedroom,” Hades answers roughly.

My eyes tear from the door to land on his. “Your room?” I look again to the bed. “Do you—do you sleep here?”

“Most nights,” he admits.

I look back to the bed. “It looks peaceful.”

His lips twist, but he says nothing. His hand on my belly, however, grows heavier as he shoves me gently but firmly closer to the bed. To his bed.

When the backs of my legs connect with the structure, I am helpless to keep from falling to my back on the soft mattress. A soft, “oomph” leaves my lips as my body gives one gentle bounce before I scoot up the bed. Nerves titter inside my chest, diving into my belly and back up again as Hades stares down at me, naked in his bed. He’s entirely clothed in his black-on-black suit. I can’t help but think he looks a little like a devil in the dark, cast in shadows, lit only by flame and starlight.

He's so impossibly, heartrendingly handsome. I am helpless against the throb of painful desire that clenches my core as I look up at him, every inch of my body painfully aware the path his dark gaze travels over mine.

I watch his nostrils flare as he inhales deeply, his eyes dipping to the v between my legs.

God, can he really smell my arousal? It shouldn’t be possible.

He drags his eyes reluctantly to mine. Suddenly, I need to tell him. He needs to know.

“Earlier tonight with Addison,” I begin and his jaw hardens. I press on, voice shaking. “You were right. I was aroused.” Hades looses a growl that really has no place sounding from the chest of a man. A beast, perhaps, but man? No. “I put on that red dress and stood in the mirror, wondering how you would look at me if you saw me in it. That was when I felt the first tingle. I had a few drinks and the girls got me on the floor. Minthe was dancing with Theodor and Addison—he—he danced with me. I felt nothing when he touched me. No flutter, no desire. But when I looked down and saw his hands on my hips, I imagined what it might look like—what it might feel like to have you holding me like that. My body got warm. I felt wet between my legs. I told myself maybe I could feel something for a man who wasn’t you because…”

I drift off, uncertain if it’s safe to admit something so intimate. Something that could expose just how vulnerable I am to this man .

Hades presses, “Because, what?”

My eyes flicker to his. Whatever I find there pulls the words from me, forcing a truth I’m not ready to tell. “You’re the only man who has ever made my body warm with need. The only man who makes me hunger for touch.” Shame tints my face pink. “At first, I thought it was an age kink. But there are plenty of older men in my life. None of whom I’ve ever felt any ounce of attraction for.” I wet my lips, watching as his eyes chase the motion. “I’ve been trying to find proof for myself that I can feel something for someone—anyone else—even a fraction of the attraction I feel for you. I thought tonight with Addison—I hoped…”

Hades cuts me off with a firm, “Stop trying.” He shrugs from his jacket, his hands making quick work of the buttons of his shirt. He bares his hard, carved-with-muscle-chest a second before he says, “You are mine, Persephone. Your desire is mine. Your body is mine. No one touches what is mine.”

God, he’s going to be the death of me. The butcher of my heart and tormentor of my soul. I swear, I see him flinch back in surprise as I agree softly, “Okay.”

I’m helpless to refuse this man.

Hades stands still for a solid minute. I’m not even sure he’s breathing as he stares down at me. His eyes are a pool of emotion too complex for me to decipher any single one. I know I’m crazy, but deep beneath the black I am certain I see the shadow of flames.

He doesn’t remove his pants before he plants a knee into the bed between mine. Positioning his big body to hover above mine, he peers down into my eyes. Sincerity bleeds from his words as he tells me, “I will never harm you. Your body will never come to pain by my hands. Protecting you, providing for you, and ensuring your happiness will eternally be my primary focus.”

His words are a blade slicing through the net that surrounds my heart. I grapple at the strings, desperate not to let the organ slip through the cracks. Not to let it fall.

“Hades…” I shake my head slightly, my eyes filling with emotion I’m not ready to share with him or anyone. I croak, “Kiss me.”

“Tell me you understand that you are safe with me,” he commands. But beneath it, I hear the plea.

I want to sob. “Please.”

“Persephone.” My name is soft in the deadly undercurrents of his voice.

I feel like I’m spinning out. Losing control. I am untethered, ungrounded. I need something solid to hold me in place.

I don’t wait for him to kiss me. Rearing up, I cover his lips with my own, shocked for a moment by the sting of hot heat. Hades doesn’t deny me, doesn’t push me away. But he doesn’t lower his body to cover mine even as I try my hardest, with every ounce of my strength, to pull him to me.

I feel so painfully exposed, uncovered and raw. I’m more than naked, he’s filleted me, gutted me with tender words that make this thing that can’t be real feel far too tangible.

My foolish heart wants what my mind knows it can’t have, and my innocent body grieves the man it’s tasted and will forever crave.

“Hades, please,” I beg against his lips. I don’t realize I’m trembling, shaking in his arms until he sweeps one beneath my back, holding me tight. It does little to subdue the shake of my rattled soul.

I’m far too emotional, I think. I must be close to my time of the month, because this is ridiculous.

Something hot and shameful stings my eyes. Tears, I realize, too late to stop the fall.

Hades makes a noise in the back of his throat. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I need—” I shake my head. I don’t know what’s happening.

Is this what it feels like to fall?

This tearing pain and burst of helpless—what— love?

“Tell me, Persephone.”

“I feel like I’m lost.”

Hades shakes his head. He doesn’t understand.

I swallow a sob. “I think—I need—I just—” God, but my soul feels untethered. I need something to ground me. Something to hold me still. Something to tug the balloon of my heart back into place. To anchor me .

I can say none of that. The words simply won’t come.

But somehow, I don’t need to. As though he has a window into my mind, into my innermost thoughts and fears, Hades simply knows.

Dropping his body to mine, he gives me his weight as his mouth takes mine in a kiss that is deeper than any I’ve experienced before. It’s so deep, so deliciously invasive, I feel as though he’s stroking my very soul with the tip of his tongue.

He hugs me to his chest, his body grinding into mine as I whimper into his kiss. Fire seeps from his skin into my own, boiling my blood and leeching into the very marrow of my veins. He is inside me and yet it’s not enough. I need more. Connection. Anchoring.

Him.

Please, God, please. I’m praying, but for what, I’m not sure.

Hades makes a noise, a groan as he tears his mouth from mine to kiss a blazing path down the column of my throat, across my chest and between my breasts. He lingers there to pull one breast into the inferno of his mouth before flicking the tip of the other with his tongue. My hands are in his long hair, twisting in the waves that have fallen from the tie he wears it in.

I suck in a breath, goosebumps rising on my skin as my belly quivers under the tickle of his beard, the rough press of his burning kiss. Desire hollows me, and I cry out at the throb of empty need in my core .

God, I need him. I need him to anchor me. To fill me. Invade me, please.

A rumble of something decadently dark slithers from the deep of his chest to echo in the innermost empty parts of me. My body is alight with flame and need, my thoughts fractured with infectious want I am helpless to cast aside. To discard. It’s taking over me. The only thing that matters in this moment is this man—and me. And the fact that we are two, feels universally wrong when I am certain we were made to stand as one.

I’m crazy. This makes no sense.

My mad soul could swear its jagged pieces were intended to fit into the puzzle of his.

“Hades,” I cry, begging for something, but I am unsure what. “Please.”

His answering groan feeds the fire he sparked inside me. My breasts feel achingly swollen; my core agonizingly empty. A sob spills from between my lips as I writhe beneath the tongue he travels over my navel. Tears leak from my eyes to fall over my temples and into my hair as my hands curl in soft sheets, searching for something—anything—to anchor me.

I don’t understand why I’m feeling this tsunami of emotion, for no reason that I can fathom.

Hades sucks in a breath and moans. I think—I think he’s tasting the scent of me. My arousal.

It only feeds the need I feel. My belly knots and wet heat seeps from the core of me as big hands press into the tender flesh of my inner thighs, spreading them wide. Hades drops his head between my legs, his hot tongue connecting with my clit and sucking hard, almost violently, at my sex.

In response, I throw my head into the pillows, arching my back. Air surges into my lungs with every desperate gasp I pull between my lips. I’ve never felt anything like this. The feel of his tongue on me there . His head between my legs. He sucks and pulls, uses teeth and tongue until I’m a trembling mess of pleas that tumble from the tip of my tongue into this firelit night.

The orgasm comes on faster than I can prepare for. After last night, I knew another orgasm with Hades would be intense. This one blows my first out of the water. It’s like the eye of a storm, in a dark depthless sea. I can feel the waves tugging me under, pulling me deeper, and I am helpless to stop it.

It surges through me, waves crashing into the core again and again until I am limbless on the bed beneath him.

And, God, he’s so beautiful. So darkly, dangerously beautiful. With his dark hair twisted back at his nape, a few thick locks fallen around is face, his gold skin and miles of muscle speaking credence to the power he houses deep within. How could I have thought that I could do this with him—and somehow keep my heart on the sideline? How could I have thought that after this with this man, that my tender, untouched heart would remain the same ?

I am a fool.

Because, God, I think I’m falling for him.

And it—hurts.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs softly. Perched on his knees between my legs, the wide expanse of his chest, the muscles that ripple with his every movement, catching like dark diamonds in the firelight—he should frighten me. He does frighten me. Yet, I’ve never felt so safe as I do when I am vulnerable with him. Vulnerable for him.

I don’t understand this new part of me.

“There is no sight more peaceful than watching you come apart for me.” The raw emotion in his voice only gives his words more power. They invade me, swimming in my veins and hollowing out that piece of me that aches for his possession. His total claiming.

“I need you to—” A blush stains my cheeks. I writhe beneath him, my legs lifting so that I can squeeze my thighs together. I’m hoping to ease the emptiness that seems to expand inside me like a crater, as though aware his claiming wasn’t complete. “Hades, I feel?—”

“What do you feel?” How can a voice feel like a sentient thing with flesh both rough and yet ribboned with silk? How can he speak and leave me feeling physically caressed?

Locking my eyes with his, I give him the truth. “I feel empty. You touch me, and I feel like all the empty spaces inside me are filling—like I am becoming whole and then…”

Hades drops his hands on either side of my head, hovering above me like a dark God come to claim me for his own. The thought comes out of nowhere, but it feels entirely right here in this ancient city, with this man who feels like he very well might be an extension of my own soul.

Hades wets his lips with the tongue he used to pleasure me. My skin heats even as goosebumps pebble my flesh. His lips part. He asks, “And then?”

“And then you stop and the emptiness expands.” I stare up at him, entirely naked and vulnerable beneath him, wanting to pull him to me. “It hurts a hurt I’ve never felt before.”

The muscles in his arms flex in the firelight as he holds himself above me. “What do you think you need?”

“I—”

“I will give you anything, Persephone. Ask me to burn the world,” he dares. “And I will release the flame that will claim it all, fuck Zeus and his ire.” He dips his head to brush my lips with his. “Ask me for the moon, and I’ll take it from the sky at the peril of the tides Poseidon commands. Speak the words and I will call for the war that will end the realms so we can begin again, new. Right.”

I can’t breathe. The man is wealth personified, of that there is little question. But there’s something about that which he offers, so unlike a man of wealth who might promise beaches and houses, cars and diamonds. Hades, like the God of Death that is his namesake, offers something much darker.

“I just want you,” I whisper, feeling the truth of those words to the very core of me. “I just want you to fill the emptiness inside me, Hades. I think—I think maybe you’re the only one who can.”