by Amelia Wilde
The news of my mood has clearly spread through the staff. All of them scurry out of my path on the way back to my private wing. Not one of those cowards is in sight by the time I get inside.
I slam the door to my office and pace behind my desk. Back out toward the door. Back to the desk. If I had less self-control, I’d pull everything off the shelves and rip it apart. I need the destruction like I need air and water.
What happened in that room—it could be my undoing, as much as it is hers.
I’ve touched Persephone before. It should have been as meaningless as it’s ever been, with every other woman I’ve taken to my bed. But it wasn’t. It fucking wasn’t. And I don’t know whether it was the press of her head against my chest or the sounds she made with my fingers on her naked flesh. I don’t know if it was the way she looked completely clothed as part of my household, not a stitch on her from anywhere else. She tried so fucking hard to please me, and not only because she was afraid.
I saw her.
Fuck.
Persephone is right to be afraid. I’m a dangerous man. I’m not dangerous to her, at least not in the way that makes her tremble. I won’t hurt her any more than is pleasurable. I could never kill her. I know it now, in stark black and white.
I sit down heavily behind the desk and run my hands over my face, then slap my hand down on the switch that controls the lights in the room. It’s gotten bad today. Worse than ever before. The two lamps in my office still have the last of the low-wattage bulbs. They’re the only ones I haven’t replaced. They’ll have to go. I curl up a hand into a fist and stop myself from smashing them.
In the dark I let my eyes settle. Conor pushes his nose against my knee, then rests his head on top of my thigh. I don’t have to see to lean back in my chair and continue controlling myself moment by moment. And I don’t have to see to answer my cell phone when it rings.
“What?”
“I need you to search the mountain.” Zeus sounds like he’s walking fast, and I don’t care at all where he’s going. “Persephone’s not anywhere in the city, as far as I can tell, and I have people everywhere.”
“I love when you call me to make demands,” I croon into the phone. “Especially when you know it’s pointless. She’s not here.”
“There are only a few places she could have gone.” My brother’s voice is harried. “If she left on the train, then—”
“Listen to yourself.” I tip my head back and close my eyes, hating how fucking useless it makes me feel. I take that feeling by the throat and crush it until I can’t feel it anymore. I want him to keep her name out of his mouth. I want him to lose my number, forget my name. “The girl left, did she not? It’s none of my business if a grown woman wants to leave her mother’s house. And frankly, you obnoxious asshole, I don’t see why you care at all.”
“Don’t you?” Now he’s incredulous, and I can almost see his handsome face contorted into disbelief. “You of all people should have a stake in this.”
“I have other priorities.” The desk was built to withstand me. It doesn’t budge when I brace my hand against it and push until the wood threatens to cut into my palm. “This matter doesn’t concern me. And now you’ve brought it up twice in one day. If it’s that important to you, then come here in person.”
Zeus has never set foot here. He calls it the Underworld, and the nickname became so pervasive that eventually I had to take control of it myself. The worthless fucker. Always with his hands and his dick where they don’t belong, causing chaos wherever he goes.
“I might have to, if you’re going to be so unhelpful.”
“Unhelpful?” I laugh at him. I know he hates it, so I let him hear exactly how much I’m enjoying it. “Your little empire in the city would be nothing without me. Are you sure you want to upset our special relationship just because Demeter’s daughter stepped out?”
This will have gotten him where it hurts. He hates to admit that our businesses have a mutual dependence, though on my end it’s more out of convenience than anything else. But he needs me. The city needs me, even if they’ll never admit it out loud.
“If you don’t want me to pay a visit, then come to the city. I have some men here who might give me more information if you become involved.”
Zeus wants to play the good man in every equation. My lip curls, disgust welling up from an endless supply. If he wasn’t hiding such a disgusting personality, I might find something in him to admire. But it’s only a convenient disguise. A handsome face and a trap, all in one. I don’t want him here. I have no plans to ever let him into my private quarters, but there’s no telling what he might try with my staff. If he came here, there’s a chance, however small...
“I’m not agreeing to anything.
“Neither is Demeter. She’s come a little...unhinged.”
A chill creeps along the base of my spine, and Conor growls. Persephone has only been with me a matter of hours. If Zeus is lying to get under my skin, then it’s best not to react in the slightest. But if he’s telling the truth, things could get personally uncomfortable for me. I grind my teeth together.
“Again, this is entirely useless information.” It’s the most important information I’ve ever received. My hackles are up, the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight out. It would be easier to tell if Zeus was lying if I could see him in person. He probably knows that. Under any other circumstance, I wouldn’t care what Zeus is pretending to know. But the stakes are higher now. Zeus. Demeter. Me, with Persephone here, down the hall in that scrap of lingerie. A tangled fucking web indeed.
“Come to the city and help me.” I hate Zeus, I truly do. “It’ll only take a day or two.”
I laugh out loud. “You think it would take me two days to extract information from some weak asshole? It wouldn’t take me two hours.”
Zeus chuckles, like we’re two brothers sharing a pleasant moment, and I glare at the opposite wall. “Then come enjoy the city. I’ll get you some women. Maybe it would improve your mood.”
Acid burns the back of my throat. No. Fuck no. I don’t want any of Zeus’s women, or the restaurants he goes to so people can fawn over him like a handsome prince. But what is the alternative? He can’t come here. I’d have to kill him before I let him set foot this close to Persephone. I wouldn’t mind killing Zeus. I would mind the general upheaval that would follow, in that it would be the kind of distraction that’s impossible to ignore.
I want to squeeze this phone until it shatters, but that would be two in one day. Self-control, Luther. Self-control.
“I’ll come if I have time.” I hang up before he can answer and toss the phone onto the desk. It skids to the edge and falls to the carpet.
The silence of the office without Zeus’ voice is welcome after the clashes and clangs of the mines. Welcome for a moment, anyway. One moment flows into the next and for a while it’s relatively peaceful. Then my mind catches on image after image. Tears spilling from Persephone’s eyes. Her trembling body under my hands. The sway of her hips while she crawled across the floor. No amount of denying myself can keep them away. I want her. I want her too much to sit here, but I keep my feet firmly planted on the floor and my hands against the edge of the desk. The mountain moves around me, alive with people whose movements feel like ants in an anthill. All of them running to do my bidding. Only one of them matters. Down in the mines, the evening crew comes on, pickaxes ready to carve out gemstones from the rock. And Persephone waits.
I don’t know how long it’s been when I finally stand up. The hall on the way to my most private rooms is still and empty, the way it should be. There’s a certain pleasure in the late hours, when it could be any time at all. The night is liquid on the way to my sanctuary within a sanctuary. Even if Zeus came here, I would never let him into my private apartment. A fortress within a home within a fortress. Some people might label this paranoia. But I live every day with the knowledge that anything brave and strong enough to kill me is an earnest threat.
<
br /> The silence deepens as I get closer to my bedroom suite and send Conor in ahead of me. The night attendant will let him in and make sure he’s fed. It’s a deep enough silence for a thought to occur to me—maybe she escaped. There is only one way to escape from here. I did, after all, leave her in a room with considerable furnishings. Something like fear grips my throat. It’s such a foreign sensation that I try to rub it away.
The door to her suite opens beneath my hand as easily as it ever has, the turn of the handle as soundless as the room within. For a few moments I can’t hear anything.
Then—
Even breathing.
Persephone sleeps in a circle of light from the bedside lamp, almost hidden from view by the hangings at the head of the bed. Her small frame blends with the pillows and the blankets.
She’s surrounded by books.
Neat stacks of two or three, perhaps fifteen in total, are fanned out around her. She holds one under her arm, like she fell asleep reading it. My heart tugs at the sight of it and I rear back, turning away.
What the hell, what the hell.
She looks so defenseless, so vulnerable, so young. And the feeling that sloshes through me, messy and uncontained, is one of tenderness.
Fuck me.
I can’t feel tenderness toward her. Or anyone. Ever.
My own dark needs come thundering in a moment late for this fucking party. It’s a relief—that surge of violent energy. I don’t want to caress her, I want to spank her. Or maybe it’s both. I don’t want to let her sleep. I want to haul her out of the bed, shove her dress up to her waist, and cover her mouth while she cries underneath me. I don’t want to deny myself any longer. I want to take her now, with thrusts that will make her feel so alive it hurts, and then hurts again, until there’s nothing left but me inside of her.
It’s absurd, and I loathe it—more than I loathe Zeus, more than I loathe my deal with Demeter, more than I loathe the endless dance of keeping people in their places. She’s so fucking close. I turn back around and look at her again. She does not sense me here. If she did, those eyes would open wide, and she’d know to be afraid.
It’s another man, who isn’t me, or who isn’t all me, who stands up straight.
Who walks around to the other side of the bed and reaches over her to pluck the book from under her arm.
Who considers it, stifling a laugh. I had them set the library for a woman while we were on the train. This is the kind of thing she’d like—of course it is. It’s the kind of thing Demeter would never let her read. It goes on the bedside table.
It’s another man who pulls the blanket up around her shoulders and turns out the light.
And it’s another man who closes the door tightly behind him and goes to his own room, without touching her at all.
17
Persephone
The door to my room—my suite—opens with a breath of air, and Lillian comes in with her silver tray, dark eyes alight.
Breakfast on a silver tray, the way she has every morning for the last three mornings.
Without Hades.
She gives me a warm smile, eyes flicking over me. I’m already awake, just under the covers with a book. Waiting for him.
“Good morning, Persephone.” Lillian makes her way to the side of the bed and positions the tray over my lap like we’ve stepped right into one of the historical books from Hades’ library and I’m the lady of the house. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, of course.” No. I woke up several times, thinking I heard him in the room. I lay the book next to me, touching my thigh so I can be sure of its continued existence. My heart beats faster now that she’s close. Now that I have the chance to ask the only question that matters. Every morning, I find different ways to ask it.
Lillian goes over to the curtains by the window and draws them open, one by one, letting a bit of light in. Like everywhere else in Hades’ home, it’s a strange light. It makes me miss the sun. He must hate the daylight so much that he can’t even allow it in his windows in diluted form.
“Is there...anything scheduled for today that I should know about?”
The set of Lillian’s shoulders—relaxed and easy—tells me before she speaks that no, there’s nothing on any sort of schedule. The only schedule that could possibly matter is the one Hades’ sets for me. I guess I can imagine him telling his plans to Lillian for the express purpose of making my face turn red and hot.
“Not that I know of.” She’s constantly on the move, gently transforming the room around me. Straightening the hangings on the bed. Moving a stray book from the chair by the window to the table by my elbow. I don’t keep much in the suite—I don’t have much to keep—but somehow, when she’s made her rounds back to the door, it looks fresh and new. “Are you reading this morning?”
I smile back at her, but it’s only to cover the frustration twisting and turning like a creature wending its way through my ribs and settling between my thighs. Where is he? Where did he go? The questions are steam in a tea kettle, waiting for its chance to scream.
“Until something happens.” I drum my fingertips on the covers of the book.
Lillian leaves with a swish of her black skirt and the whisper of the door closing behind her. I manage the coffee, which is a revelation. Sugar and cream changes the color to a delicate tan. The food is...fine.
Half a piece of toast later, I’ve abandoned my breakfast to the tray and the tray to the bed. The book fails to hold my attention. I start again. How much would I have given to have unfettered access to this many books in my mother’s house? I’d have given a lot. Maybe a change of scenery would help. But even the library can’t compete with my insatiable need to know. The answers aren’t in this book, or any of the others. It’s just more frustration—frustration I shouldn’t even be feeling.
I. Should. Not. Miss. Him.
And I don’t. I don’t miss him. That’s not it, not exactly. What it is, exactly...
Unfinished business.
An unfinished orgasm, for one thing. That’s at the top of my list. I wander back out into the main room and gaze out the window, not seeing the harsh drop down the side of the mountain at all. How could he leave me like that? Was it supposed to be a kindness or a punishment? The odds of Hades doing anything resembling a kindness are slim, so it must have been the other option. He must be trying to torture me. He must know, somehow, that I’ve been lying under my sheets for the past few nights with flushed cheeks and a clenched jaw and all of my efforts have come to nothing but lost sleep.
Now I do focus on the mountainside, the wall jutting out of it and the drop into misty nothingness. The wide sill is the perfect place to brace my hands so I can press my forehead to the cool glass. I stare until my vision blurs, but it still doesn’t erase the tightly wound feeling at the apex of my legs, pulsing and begging, god, it’s relentless.
“If you’re going to bend over like that, you should do it naked.”
His voice hits first, and then a chill in the room, like he’s come in out of the cold and it’s sticking to his skin. Then the heat. Heat in my face, heat between my legs, heat streaking down my chest like a lightning bolt. I whirl around, forgetting the obscenely short length of the nightgown, letting the silky robe hang open.
Hades stands in the doorway, looking at me like he owns every part of me. He has Conor with him. He always does, and I guess he probably always will. But he doesn’t own every part. I’ll always hold something back from him, I will. I have to, for Decker, if only in memory of him. I’m here for Decker, for my love of Decker, the first person to risk his own job and his own security to make me laugh. I’m not here for me. But the words banging at the floodgates of my mind spring through.
“Where have you been?”
It’s not a smile that crosses his face—something similar, but harder. It cuts. “Sharing my whereabouts with you isn’t part of our agreement.”
“But we have an agreement. Arrangement. Whatever you want to call it.
” My head throbs, my throat tightens, I could combust. “You’ve been gone for days, with no word.” His lip curls. A sneer? The flicker of expression is gone before I can name it. “I’ve been...here. You left me in the middle of—” I can’t bring myself to say it. “I don’t even know if you’ve kept up your end of the bargain.” Hades wears a perfect suit. His shoes are perfectly shined. There is nothing about him that speaks to flaws, and I feel like a crumbling wreck. “I don’t even know if Decker is still alive.”
He takes one step into the room and all of me goes still. Waiting. He signals for Conor to wait at the door. The dog doesn’t take a single step inside.
“You bargained for his life in a... particular instance. That doesn’t mean I have to spare him indefinitely.” He waves this off. “But if you’re insisting that I haven’t been honorable, then let’s go to my office.”
A trap—it has to be a trap. He is not honorable. Hades has never even pretended to be an honorable man. Another swarm of thoughts to the same effect sweeps across my brain. Let’s go to my office. A threat.
He claps his hands, once, the sound sharp.
“Don’t make me wait.”
My bravery flees. All that pent-up energy drops to the floor, then springs back up in another form. What was I thinking, talking to him like that? What if I’ve tipped the scales into something worse? It freezes me in place, barefoot in my robe.
Hades curses under his breath and strides across the room. Every step he takes makes him loom larger and larger until he’s right on top of me. I was right before—he does smell cold, like a winter wind. He bends down low, threading his hand through my hair, and pulls until I have no choice but to look at him and my eyes sting with tears.
“My favorite sight.” His fist tightens in my curls. “I missed you. Now move.”
What else am I supposed to do, other than stumble forward? Nothing. My feet go numb, clumsy. His legs are so much longer than mine. He is so much more powerful. And I am so, so scared. The only way to avoid being dragged is to keep up, and I try. I try my best. I try so hard that at first I don’t notice that we’ve gone past the big door to his private office.