by Amelia Wilde
I haven’t been outside his private space for days, and the hall outside is huge in comparison. He’s built himself a palace fortress, with layers inside layers, all of them as impenetrable as he is.
It’s not quiet out here. Conor’s nails on the floor are the backdrop to a chorus of other sounds. The closer we get toward that big rotunda, the more people there are. I feel them seeing me as acutely as I feel his fist in my hair and the cooler air of the hall slipping under my dress—my nightgown—the clothes. The clothes. The delicate lace underthings I found in the closet, all of them looking like he could shred them under his hands. I blink away tears. Some of them escape and evaporate off my skin.
Hades takes me through the center of the rotunda, his footsteps echoing louder than any of the others. A path opens up for us wherever we go. A wide space. An empty space. No one dares touch him, or touch me. He barks an order at someone, but I can’t hear it through the haze of the pain.
A set of doors opens and we cross over the threshold. A large room. Flashes of leather and steel. A wide glass desk. And the most massive windows I’ve ever seen. Hades releases his grip, only slightly, only so I can straighten up and see where we are.
His office. His real office. And his office overlooks...
An enormous factory floor. His hand goes around the back of my neck and I lurch forward again, following him through another set of doors. Conor stays where he is. He must know this play already.
The sound is like nothing I’ve ever heard. It’s an enormous, relentless sound, an echo off the impossibly high ceilings and a storm made up of all the work that goes on below us. Rows of work tables line a room bigger than some of my mother’s fields. It’s not a space that should fit indoors, and yet...it does. It is. He’s made the impossible absolutely real. At the far end of the room is a yawning chasm, a rip in the rock. From here I can make out a line of people in a constant stream. I blink in the face of the noise. The steady beat of machines. A foreman’s voice, rising above the fray. Tools on metal. And a deeper hum. Mining. They’re mining something, over in that tear.
He pushes me to the railing. This is more than a balcony, it’s a viewing platform, and the waist-high wall is made of glass. We’re high above the people below. But not that high. High enough that a drop wouldn’t kill me. High enough that if they looked up, they could see every bit of me through the glass.
I suck in one ragged breath after another. “What—what—”
“Isn’t it gorgeous?” Hades’ voice sounds like a murmur against all the noise in the room. This is the sound of him pulling his power right from the earth. All his money, all his power. “Everyone down there is working for me. Everything they do is for me. And you’re one of them, too. Only your work isn’t with jewelry and metal and all the other things people want to buy.”
There’s a commotion at the other end of the room, near the enormous hole in the wall. My stomach drops. Hades traces a path around to the front of my collarbone, then clamps his hand around the front of my neck. I can’t take my eyes off the people below us. They’re noticing, one by one, pale faces glancing up and then back down again.
“Here he comes.”
It takes them several minutes to cross the space—Decker, and the two people who have him by the arms. I always thought he looked so tall and strong, but from here he looks like a lanky teenager. Dirty. Pale-faced. Dust stains his white t-shirt, making it gray and black. One of the men with him forces his head up.
When our eyes meet, my legs would give out if it weren’t for Hades with his hand around my throat, pinning me back toward his body. Every inch of him is as hard as the rocks making up his palace walls. My body struggles for a moment, unthinking, and he only holds me closer.
“There. See? He’s alive. I’ve even given him work to do. Tell me how generous I am, Persephone. Say it.”
“You’re—you’re very generous.”
“I’m even more honorable and generous than you think. Do you know why?”
I shake my head.
“I’m going to prove to your little plaything that you’re alive, too.”
Hades steps back, putting space between us, and I feel like I’m dangling in midair as much as Decker was that night. But instead of pulling my feet from the ground, he pulls the robe from my shoulders. The dress goes next, along with all the air from my lungs. The fabric pulls against my skin as it tears beneath his hands and flutters to the floor at my feet. I’m up here in front of his entire factory, in front of a room humming with men, in a pair of lace panties and a bralette that barely covers anything.
“While we’re here, we can address your other complaint.”
“I didn’t have another complaint. I didn’t say anything.” Does he even hear me above the din?
He does.
“You were unhappy I left off in the middle of our activities the other night. If you haven’t been furiously trying to get yourself off every night...” He laughs. “I’d be shocked. Ah—yes. So you have.”
The heat in my face must give me away, but I don’t know how he can tell anything. My entire body feels scarlet. I’m practically naked. There are so many people. And worst of all, Decker. His eyes burn up at me from the factory floor.
Hades jerks me back against him at the same moment he steps up to the railing. His left hand is almost lovingly around my throat, putting just enough pressure to keep me in my place. And with his other hand—
He touches me.
The hollow of my collarbone. My cleavage. When he slides a hand under the bralette a strangled cry floats above the noise. Both nipples, already peaked, feel exquisitely sensitive—he pinches one, then the other. He goes lower. I can’t breathe.
“Keep watching him.”
I can’t do anything else. Decker tries to get free, but even if he did, he couldn’t get to us. One of the men holding his arms throws the first punch as Hades shoves down my panties to the center of my thighs, then strokes his fingers between my legs. Casually. Possessively. Like he’s done this all his life.
My own breath catches, matching Decker’s. He can’t fight those men anymore, and I can’t fight Hades.
And maybe I don’t want to.
One touch, and I sag against him, a wicked desire spreading outward from his fingers through every inch of me. It hurts and it’s so good. It’s everything I’ve ever felt and nothing I’ve ever felt.
He does it again.
“Up. Stand up.” He reinforces this with a squeeze against my throat. Hades uses one leg to knock mine apart, the panties stretching to the limit. He buries his hand between my legs, stroking and pinching and god, no, god, the circles against my swollen clit. He rubs it with the knuckle of his thumb, with the pad of his thumb, with the heel of his hand.
I can’t stand. I can hardly see. Everything narrows down to where his hand meets my skin. My traitorous, wanting skin.
Hades makes a noise that’s half frustration, half satisfaction. Another sensation breaks through the cloud that my mind has become—him. He’s hard, too. A dawning horror—is he going to fuck me in front of all these people?
The moment I have the thought is the same moment I switch to wanting it to start. It’s an endless echo. If he’s going to do it, do it now. If he’s going to do it, let it happen right now. Right now, right now.
But instead he makes Decker watch.
They’re all watching. How can they not be watching? Each set of eyes is another set of pinpricks. He works two thick fingers into me. My slickness helps him on his way but they feel huge, so huge, there’s no way anything more than this can ever happen. Too much, too much. I try to squirm off of them and fail. All I earn is his laughter, rumbling against me.
A sob rips itself from my throat, but to my total shock, it’s not because of the relentless push and spread of his fingers. Or everyone watching him do this to me. It’s because I’m so desperate to come that it’s tearing me in two.
Too much becomes not enough in a sickening instant and I
find myself—I discover myself, like I’m coming upon myself in a deep wood—rocking against his hand. Begging out loud. Are they even words? I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m touching him now—my hands against his hand, against my throat. Pressing harder. I want more, I want it now.
“Don’t make him wait, you filthy thing.” I’m not blinded enough that I can’t see what’s happening below me—that the men are waiting for Decker to make another move. That he’s going to make another move. If I don’t come. If I don’t let Hades make me come in front of all these people.
His hand works harder, pushing deeper, flicking my clit with his thumb.
“Now, Persephone.”
“I can’t.” My wail has to be loud enough for everyone to hear.
I need something else. I need, I need, I need—
Hades lowers his head to the curve where my neck meets my shoulder and bites.
And I come on his fingers, with his fingers inside of me, destroyed. I am destroyed. The shock waves are too powerful to stand against but he won’t let me fall. All I want is to fall, but he keeps me standing, keeps me upright while I shudder and shake and cry.
When the wave subsides he’s still there. He builds it again, agonizing in its slowness, in its precision. Decker remains on his feet, his face scarlet, jaw clenched. He looks like he’s trying to stop himself from screaming.
He makes me come again.
It hurts more, this time.
And it also feels better.
The intensity is too much for my mind to handle, too big for my body. And I can’t get away. I’m half-naked, spread open in front of all the other people he owns, I am nothing but nerves and pain and pleasure.
At the end he scoops me up like the empty shell that I am and carries me back to his rooms, back to the bed, and into a blessed dark sleep.
18
Persephone
I hear him in the night.
Maybe what I’m hearing is only a dream, but it hauls me bodily out of my sleep into the darkness of my room. My mind is blank for a few breaths, numb—but then the sound makes its way in.
His voice.
He’s here, and close.
What night is it? How long have I been asleep?
I don’t care.
The floor is cool under my feet but not cold, even though this place has been carved out of mountain rock. He must heat the floor. Even so, I pull a blanket from the chair by the window and wrap it around myself. I’m going to find him. In the sleep delirium it seems like a good idea. But how asleep am I, really? I’m not. I’m awake, just tired. Just worn out from...what happened.
Decker saw that happen.
I pad across the floor and open the bedroom suite, then listen.
The voice wasn’t a dream. He’s here. But I have to blink my eyes several times to be sure I’m seeing what I’m seeing, which is...
Light, coming from the cracked-door of his office. Not a normal yellow hue, like the lightbulbs in my mother’s house. Not even candlelight. What is it? What kind of lamp makes light like that?
Why not find out now?
“Why not?” I pose the question to nobody while I go down the hall. I could be a ghost, floating above the floor, for all the sound my feet make. This is surely not a bad idea. It might even be a good idea. I watch myself from outside my body, moving down the hall, sleep-rumpled and wrapped in a blanket. I observe myself pushing open the door to Hades’ private office. And then I’m slammed right back into my body, because that is the effect of looking at him. It brings me to myself.
He sits behind his desk, phone pressed to his ear. “It’s a developing problem.” If it weren’t for the tired soreness suffusing every muscle of my body, I might be more shocked to hear it. Hades, having a problem? He raises one hand to his eyes and covers them, like they hurt. I can’t imagine him feeling pain. But it looks like he does. Maybe monsters can feel pain. “I need people in the field. There’s enough happening here to require my presence.” Hades sits up straighter. “No.”
He must sense me, because he uncovers his eyes and turns his head, all of him on high alert. It’s something to see. He hasn’t changed the way he’s sitting, and yet he’s changed everything about the way he’s holding himself. Muscles tensed. Sharp blue eyes narrowed. He ends the call without saying another word and lets the phone fall to the surface of his desk with a muted clatter.
“You’re awake.”
I’m here now, and there’s no going back, so I step further into the office. “I heard you talking.”
A smile curls the corner of his lip. “And you decided to come wandering out of your room in the middle of the night?”
Something about him seems slightly softer in this timeless place between midnight and dawn. At least, I’m assuming it’s between midnight and dawn. No—not softer. Not exactly. He’s still as sharp and as hard as he’s ever been. Isn’t he?
“Yes.” It seems like a good idea as any to drop into a chair across from him, so that’s what I do. “I wanted to find you.”
“You wanted another demonstration of how cruel and dishonorable I am?”
He’s toying with me now, but I’m still too drunk on his fingers inside of me and the orgasms he stole from me, still too worn from the last three days of wondering, to care. A layer of him has been stripped away by the night.
“I wanted to know why you have a big dog.” Conor snores by the fireplace, the orange light playing over his fur. “I didn’t think you would have a dog.”
“I have my uses for him.’
“But that’s not all, is it? You don’t just use him to—to scare people. Or maybe even kill people.” In the haze of the night, I have much less of a filter. “He helps you, doesn’t he?”
“Nobody fucking helps me.”
“I think he does.”
“What else do you think?” Hades’ face has gone hard, but when he glances over to where Conor sleeps, the hint of softness appears at the very edges of his expression. “Do you want to keep pushing me until you get the punishment you want? Or do you want to shut that pretty mouth of yours before you get into trouble?”
“No. What I wanted to say…” I don’t want to say anything. I only want to do. “You kept your promise.” Guilt tumbles down over me, a tower falling. It reminds me of a card I saw a long time ago. A pair of cards. A tower and a fool. “You kept him alive. So maybe you’re not the most dishonorable man.”
“If I’m not the worst man you’ve ever met, then I’ll be shocked.” Hades eyes catch the light. Less of him is in shadow now. “I can’t imagine Demeter paraded you around the city. Or even let you off the grounds.” He laughs, the sound low and rich. “And now look at you.”
I don’t want to look at myself—I want him to look at me. And he is. Be careful what you wish for, Persephone. He’s watching now. The ghost of his fingers pushes into me, again and again. I’m swimming up from a great depth.
“I’ve had problems, too. Complicated ones.”
He narrows his eyes and steeples his fingers in front of his chin. “Eavesdropping is a bad habit. I should train that out of you.”
I pull the blanket tighter, but I lean toward him all the same. “How would you do that?”
“It’s very simple.” The light plays in his eyes, highlighting the blue. “A system of rewards and punishments.”
“Like an animal?” What am I saying? Someone else has taken over my body and is now having this conversation like I can’t still feel him touching me, even now. “Like how you’d train a dog, or a horse?”
“Are you a dog or a horse, Persephone?”
“No.” The room takes on a bizarre hue and I blink it away. “Why is the light so weird in here? You’ve never explained that.” I shouldn’t say anything else. “Does it have to do with your dog?”
Hades stays silent for a long moment. He leans forward in his chair, his suit moving with him. I can’t stop looking at his arms. His biceps. His strong hands. His fingers.
“
You didn’t come here to ask me about the light in the room. Or about Conor. Neither of which is your business.”
I did, in a way. I came here to ask him everything. Or I came here because it’s the middle of the night and something about the late hour has torn down a barrier that was between us. At least I’m pretending that it has. Believing that it has. Am I really so simple that a man’s hands on me are all it takes to bind me to him in a way that even my name signed in ink couldn’t do? I’m electric, with pulses of energy seeking him with every heartbeat. I want to get closer.
“There’s something else I want to know.” I lick my lips. Hades’ eyes fall to the movement, and when he looks back up at me he’s changed again. As if another veil has been stripped away. Something about his eyes. There’s something with his eyes. “I wanted to ask you something. Now that you’re back.”
“There’s nothing I need to tell you.”
“There is something I need to know.” The blanket is soft and insubstantial under my hands, but I gather it up anyway and move to the edge of my seat. The leather is cool against my bare thighs. “I need to know when you’re going to fuck me.”
For the first time, I’ve caught him by surprise. The momentary shock is here and gone again. He threads his hands behind his head.
“Why would you think I’d bother fucking you?”
“Don’t say that.” The numb, dreamlike feeling has spread across my entire face and over my shoulders. What’s the worst that happens—he kills me? Some twisted part of me would probably like that, too. “I know you want to. Why haven’t you done it yet?”
His eyes—something about his eyes. They’re blue, aren’t they? But in this light, and with those words hanging in the air between us, they look almost black. There’s hardly any color. A shiver runs down my spine.
“I want to know why you haven’t done it yet.”
“Come here.”
There’s no point in hesitating. Once I’m on my feet he motions for me to drop the blanket. Suddenly, passionately, I want to keep it wrapped around me—but I know the game he plays. He’ll only take it off himself. So I let it fall to the floor and go and stand next to his chair.