by Amelia Wilde
The heat of my cheek has already warmed up the desk beneath it.
“I thought you wanted me alive.” I keep my eyes firmly focused on the shuttered window on the opposite side of the train. The thought of him seeing me like this, bent like this—it can’t get any worse.
It gets worse.
“I’ll get considerably more enjoyment out of a live woman than a dead one.” The hand lifts from the back of my neck, but I stay pressed flat against the desk. He hasn’t said to get up. Hades makes a satisfied clicking sound. “Look at you, trying to anticipate my wishes. Can you anticipate what will happen to you next?”
My breath stops, and there it is, that damn chin going again. A million images run through my mind. A million horrible, filthy images, snapshots of things depraved people would do. I—I know that not all sex is bad, but most of it must be. My mother kept all of it from me for a reason. And the things the other girls talked about at school were nothing like this. They involved soccer players and football captains and coaches, not bending over a desk, ass lifted up toward a man who’d just as soon kill me as—
“No,” I breathe. “I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.” He kicks my legs apart, and it’s only then that I realize I’ve pinned them together as tightly as the muscles will allow. “You might wear a white dress and live on your mother’s farm, but she’ll have told you things.”
“No.” Desperation rises in another round of tears and they drip down onto the polished surface below my face. “She’s never told me anything—anything about this, about—about any of that.”
His hand slips down my spine, counting each ridge, until he stops just above the swell of my ass.
“You bleed every month without knowing why?”
“I know why.” I’m incandescent with shame. How can he say all this out into the open air? “I know about...getting pregnant.” The warm air from the train car slips underneath the hem of my dress and strokes me between my legs, where all that separates me from Hades is a thin layer of cotton.
This conversation is beyond the pale. Every movement in the air, every movement of his hand—all of them are magnified, intensified. A whisper of air, of breath, and then—the hem of my dress lifts.
Every inch. I feel every inch of my legs as he exposes them, little by little, torturing me. The dress reaches up above my white underwear and a sob rips from my lungs. I’ve had my thoughts, late at night, about someday lying down with a man, someone like Decker, somebody normal and gentle, probably fumbling. It never seemed like such a big deal, like something that would swamp me so completely with feeling. With humiliation and desire and the tug of linen up to the small of my back. The desk vibrates beneath me, the train vibrates beneath me, and I shake along with it, my body out of control.
Hades curses behind me, voice laden with something dark, edging on needy.
“You’re a fucking liar. These clothes are all for show, aren’t they? You want people to believe you’re as innocent as these panties say you are.”
“I didn’t think anyone would ever see them.” I don’t know what could possibly be a performance about what I’m doing now. If I’d had anything else to wear, I’d have worn that, but my mother threw out my school uniforms a long time ago.
“Except your boyfriend. You thought he might see them.” He puts one finger under the elastic and traces a fiery path underneath, and then it’s gone. “Did he like to play games with you, Persephone?” I’ve never heard a tone so deadly in my life. “Push you against a tree somewhere, let his hands creep up beneath your dress? Let other things beneath your dress?” One big hand caresses the back of my knee, then slips upward, upward, another inch, upward. And my own legs betray me. I’m completely frozen, hardly able to breathe, but at the touch of Hades’ hand I move one thigh apart another inch. He laughs and I squeeze my eyes closed, which does nothing to keep the tears in. “You gave yourself to me all for the boy who taught you about getting pregnant?”
“No, he didn’t,” I finally manage. His fingertips play at the edge of my panties. He slips one underneath again, tugging it out, letting it snap back down. He’s getting closer and closer to the softness between my legs and—and the dampness, and if he touches it, if he finds out, if he can see, I won’t survive. There’s no way I can live with the shame. But the moment comes anyway. Hades cups a hand over my panties, fitting it in between my widespread legs, and I can’t stop the cry that he forces out. “Oh, god,” I sob, rising up on tiptoe.
He goes still, but doesn’t move his hand, waiting. One moment bleeds into the next.
“That’s right,” he murmurs. “Push back into my hand.” My body obeys him, even if the rest of me wants to collapse to the floor. He fits his thumb into the cleft of my ass, and his fingertips—his fingertips brush a place only I’ve ever touched, and only secretly, only furtively, I would never have let Decker lift up my dress like this, not until we got married and moved into a house together. “You’re fucking wet,” he comments, a gravelly edge to his voice.
There’s no arguing with him. I can feel it, too. And I can feel the tendrils of electric desire moving outward from that pressure. I grit my teeth. I will not move my hips to get him to make contact with my clit. I will not, I will not. But my hips betray me, too. It’s hardly any movement, but it’s there. I hate myself. I hate him.
“Who taught you to play this game, then?” He’s searching for something, probing, and I don’t know what. I never saw Decker inside the fence. We could never touch each other like this, even if I’d wanted to, and right now—I don’t think I wanted him to touch me like this. But you want Hades to touch you like this, says that horrible voice. But I don’t. I don’t. “How many of the other farmboys did you fuck?”
As he says it, he works his fingers into the waistband of my panties, and the entire world grinds to a halt on its axis. There’s only the vibration of the train beneath me, my hands somehow gripping the other side, and my toes trembling on the floor in my soft, ridiculous shoes. He’s going to take the panties off and then he’ll be able to see everything. He’ll be able to do everything. He lowers the waistband, and the spiky edges of anticipation tear through me like a clawed beast. The words follow on a gasp, on a cry.
“I didn’t fuck anyone.” Tears, rain, there’s no difference. “I’m a virgin.”
Hades pulls the waistband away from my skin, hard enough that it digs in, then lets go. The hard snap against my skin brings me to my senses and restarts my lungs. I’m still wet between my legs, there’s nothing I can do about that, but at least I still have the panties. That momentary relief doesn’t last. My stomach turns over. Hades walks slowly around to the other side of the desk. I don’t dare move until he reaches down and lifts my face from the wood, holding my chin in his hand.
“Don’t fucking lie to me.”
“I didn’t—”
Something in his blue eyes chases the shakes away from my muscles, at least for now. I’m not fast enough for him. He reaches across and plucks me off the floor, knees barely clearing the surface of the desk, and plants me there in front of him in a little heap of linen. My legs are burning from standing on tiptoe and they sigh with relief—but as always, it doesn’t last. He pulls me up to my knees. Wraps a hand around the back of my neck, tips me back. He’s inches away, smelling like leather and cedar and something else, something that I’ve only ever smelled on him, looking into my eyes like he’s seeing all of my thoughts skittering away from the surface of my brain. He’s waiting, menace embodied, and every breath makes my breasts rise, aching for... something. His touch? Not likely.
“I said don’t fucking lie to me,” he growls. “Be a good girl and tell the truth.”
Hades twines his fingers through my hair, tugging my head back another inch. I’ll do anything. That’s what I said. Telling the truth is part of anything.
“I was telling the truth before.” I swallow and his eyes drop to the front of my throat, then come back up to meet mine. I so
und hoarse, pained. “I’m a virgin. Nobody’s ever—nobody’s ever done that to me.” My voice dries up in a whisper.
And Hades—Hades smiles, displaying a row of perfectly white teeth that have to be sharp enough to tear my skin. “But you’ve been waiting for it. Longing for it.”
“No, I don’t want it.” I want it more than I can say. I want it enough to run away from home, I want it enough to leave my mother and everything I’ve ever known. But it’s not just sex that I want. It’s everything that comes along with it. Everything I thought came along with it. “I especially don’t want it from you.”
“Liar. You threw yourself at me. I’ve never seen a woman more desperate to be fucked.”
Something breaks inside of me, crumbling under the tension and exhaustion from the night.
“You were going to kill him. I had to do something. I had to offer you something. And now—now...”
“Now you’re going to get what you wanted.”
A painful sob changes into a laugh in my mouth and I fall, tipping forward. I can’t hold myself up anymore.
He catches me out of the air, saying nothing. I’m laughing too hard to do anything about it, swallowing the sound, putting my knuckles to my lips to keep it in. Better to let him think I’m crying. At least he likes that.
A door opens on a draft of air and a spike of panic drives deep into my brain. The bedroom, the bedroom. I land on the bed—a firm mattress, I’ve always wished for a firm mattress—and try to catch sight of him in the dim light coming in at an angle from the rest of the train car.
“What now? Is it time to pay more of my debt?”
But he only laughs. “You’re so noble, Persephone. But I don’t want noble from you.”
“What do you want?” My lips are numb, useless, and in spite of myself my eyelids get heavier by the second. I reach for a pillow, tug it down under my cheek. Let him stop me. Let him do whatever he’s going to do.
“Hmmm.” He’s above me, beside me, everywhere. “I want you to cry. I want you to beg. I want to watch your face go red with the shame you’ll never be able to shake.”
“I’ve done all that.” My own voice sounds far away.
“You’ll understand soon enough.”
“I want—to understand now.”
He leans close. “You’ll beg because you want it.”
I shake my head. “I won’t.”
“You will. Now go to sleep. I’m done with you for tonight.”
8
Hades
Giving in to every urge comes with a certain amount of pleasure, but nothing compares to denial. Denial of the body. Denial of the soul. Persephone is going to destroy what’s left of my soul, I have no doubt. I thought there was nothing left, nowhere more depraved and empty to go, and yet here we are.
The train hurtles through the darkness. Persephone makes no move from the bed, and after a minute her breathing turns soft and even. She must know how defenseless she is, falling asleep here. She must also know that it doesn’t matter. Persephone could have all the defenses in the world, and I’d still get to her. Everything is different now. Every fucking thing.
I hold out a hand to shake her awake, then decide against it.
There’s no need to rush this, other than the insistent throb between my legs.
I made it clear I could kill her. She knows. She knows it down to her bones. But what I know is that I never will. Even if it would snap the tension winding through my ribs. Her heartbeat matters too much to me now.
If I break her now, reduce her to a little puddle of a woman, she’ll be alive but not really living. I have the skills to do it. But I won’t. I can’t.
Denying myself her body is like wrapping my cock in barbed wire. I’m not fucking into that, but I can’t resist drawing it out. She wants me to get on with it so badly. And I could. But I’d lose all those delicious tears, and the begging, and the way she fights so hard not to cry. If I break her now, all those tears will dry up. It would be such a pity.
I wipe my hands over my mouth, listening to her breathe. The darkness in here is far more tolerable than the lamp I left on outside. It almost seems plausible to lay down next to her and drift away.
Almost, but not quite.
I am more practiced in denial than most people I know, including and especially my brother. His lack of self-control is why tensions run so high in the city, all the different factions of people with their businesses, legal and illegal, jostling for his attention. He could never have kept himself from Persephone. I go back out into the main section of the car, turning that over in my mind. Surely he knows about Demeter’s daughter. Surely he’s seen her, or knows what she looks like. I have no explanation for his self-control when it comes to her. Perhaps he needs something from Demeter, too. My lips curl into a snarl. There’s nothing I loathe more than needing something from someone else. I’ve devoted my life to exorcising every possible weakness, save the one I can’t cut out.
I wave a hand over the light and it turns off, plunging the train car into darkness. Fuck, that feels good. I let myself sit heavily into the couch and press at my chest, trying to get that odd, painful sensation to go the hell away. It’s not a heart attack, it’s something deeper than that. Maybe an overabundance of lust. Or perhaps it’s extra adrenaline, held back from when I almost killed that fucker but denied myself the pleasure. There is, if I’m honest in the privacy of my own mind, a layer in the depths that I don’t care to acknowledge. It has shades of humanity. I hate it.
Should I turn the train around? I consider the question instead of assessing adrenaline-soaked emotions, tasting the sweetness of giving in to what I want, imagining every detail of what it would be like. The way the train would slow, the tracks rearranging themselves in front of us. Most people know there are provisions to change direction. Obviously, I would never fund a railway that could only go one way, inconveniencing myself to that extreme.
But it’s too simple a taste for me, that sweetness. No, I won’t turn the train around. I’ll let myself want her while we go through the city and back into the dark, let it scratch at my skin, let my cock pulse against my pants.
I’ll let myself suffer while she sleeps.
The communications unit pings on my desk. It’s built to blend in with the surface and can even generate secure lines, if I ever needed it to. Its most convenient feature is its connection with my head of security, even when the train loses access to wifi.
“Answer,” I tell it. Conor comes over and puts his head on my knee. I rub behind his ears, absently. He whines a little, tensing. “I’m fine. Settle down.” He believes me for the moment. Conor has been with me since I moved out of the city. He’s one of the only things I’ve ever been able to save from my brother Zeus—not that I place a high priority on saving anyone, or anything. It’s almost always a pointless expenditure of valuable resources. But I hold a special well of hatred for Zeus in my heart. The fucker wouldn’t know what to do with a good dog if it bit him, which a good dog would. I’ve tried not to become attached to Conor. He’s only a dog, but he’s good at what he does. He keeps me from wasting energy when it matters. And he has the virtue of being mine. He huffs, letting the weight of his head rest against me.
The call connects.
“Mr. Hades, Callahan here.”
I hired Oliver Callahan almost directly out of the streets, where he’d been living until the moment he decided to hitch a ride on the train and come raid the mountain. Never mind the insanity of attempting to perform petty theft in a fortress guarded by private security and by me—the motherfucker watched as the tracks split to send the train car into my private entrance, let himself get three electric shocks, and balanced on one of the connectors until he could get inside. I wasn’t the one who gave him the long scar down his face, but if I had, he wouldn’t have survived it. Somehow he managed to stay alive through that. Anyone with that kind of willpower is best kept loyal to me.
“Do you have an update?”
“No, sir. All the materials from Demeter’s place were loaded without incident and the crew went home.” All except one, of course. Conor lifts his head up and goes back in front of the fireplace. Curls up. Falls asleep.
“If you don’t have an update, then why are you fucking calling me?” I lean my head back against the sofa and close my eyes. With a family like mine, there’s a certain need for vigilance. The best part about the train is that it’s exceedingly difficult to attack when it’s going at full speed, and I know my men cleared the car before we started moving. This is one of the only places I can even pretend to relax. “If you killed someone again, there’s no reason to give me all the details. Bury the body and move on.”
He chuckles. “You didn’t leave the platform for your meeting earlier. I wondered if you planned to turn back, or reschedule...”
Right. That needy, obnoxious ache in the center of my chest starts up again, and I sit up straight, rubbing at my eyes. The fucking moonlight. This was why I needed the meeting in the first place, but that’s not going to happen now. Not now that I’ve got Demeter’s daughter in my bedroom. That’s certain to put a wrench in things. What difference does it make, in the end? Demeter was smart to hate me in the first place. Her paranoia keeps her safer than she would be otherwise, and to my great disgust and irritation I do need her to be safe.
“Callahan, if I wanted to turn back, I’d have given you the order already.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Don’t call again.”
The call disconnects with a two-toned beep, and I’m left alone in the train car. Wind whistles along the outside, a pleasant white noise. But the inside of my mind is rarely pleasant. The very moment the call ends she’s back at the front of my mind, clinging to my shoulder and begging me not to kill that worthless sack of flesh. My cock reminds me of every angle—her delectable body bent over my desk, the way she had to spread her legs so wide to fit my hand, the way she fucking loved it.