by Vivian Wood
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, and tips me back. He’s inches away, smelling like leather and cedar and something else, something I’ve only ever smelled on him, looking into my eyes like he’s seeing all 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 sound 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.”
Chapter Eight
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 emptier 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 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 lie 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 on 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 wi-fi.
“Answer,” I tell it. Conor comes over and puts his head on my knee. I absently rub behind his ears. 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 off 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, but 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 or....”
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.
I stifle a groan at how much she wants it, how much her body wants all the filthy things I’m going to do to her. And that admission she was a virgin—fuck. I knew she wasn’t lying the first time she said it, but who doesn’t like to push a little here and there? Make them spill a few more tears? Make them think it’s their very last breath they’re sucking in?
It’s painful how much I need to use her. I get up from the sofa in the dark and go over to the desk. Brace against it. Undo my pants with a swift jerk. Let her see me now. I’d love to see a brand-new wave of tears spill out of her eyes. Fuck, how she’d hate it if I made her come on my fingers; she’d hate it down to her bones, down to the center of her soul. Persephone has a soul—that much is obvious—and it’s become my mission in life to dirty it up until she can’t see any way to live without me.
I wait as long as I can, precum gathering on the tip of my cock, and then I take it in my fist and pump it hard, hips angled toward the wastebasket, straining for the sound of her breath. I’ve taken her. I’ve bound her to me by her own words, a pretty extra on top of the fact that I was going to do it anyway. And yes, fucking yes, this will make things infinitely more complicated for me in the short term. There are certain things I need from Demeter in order to live my life. She can never know about Persephone. She finds out, it all comes tumbling down. But none of those complications do a thing to relieve the unfiltered lust rocketing through my blood.
The release is an anticlimax, empty and base, and as soon as it ends, the cycle begins again. Sunrise, sunset. I lean against the desk and catch my breath. Fuck. Fuck. Taking her, that was easy. Making her cry, easier still. But keeping her at arm’s length?
Curses fill my mind, and I fall back against the sofa. Persephone believes I’ll destroy her, and I fucking will—in every possible way that will still let me enjoy her. Only here, in the darkness of my train car, my cock already getting hard again, can I sit in the knowledge that this could be the end of me too.
In far more ways than one.
Chapter Nine
Persephone
My eyes open on a darkness so complete a scream lurches up in my throat, and I clap my hands over my mouth, holding it back while I get my bearings. I can’t see anything, and this makes the memories from last night even worse. Decker’s slow kicks. The leisurely turn of Hades’ head. His hand between my legs. I scrabble for something to hold onto, and my hand meets a pillow.
A pillow. A bed. His bed.
My heart beats hard and sharp like I’ve been running. I made a deal to save Decker’s life, and I belong to Hades now. I tell it to myself again, and then a third time, but no amount of repetition makes it seem okay.
It is not okay.
It is not okay from any possible angle.
I press my knuckles against my eyes, wiping away the dried salt from last night. My skin is puffy, and my face is probably still red. My hair—I don’t have any way to fix the mess it’s in. I smooth my hands over the curls and feel Hades’ hand there too, the ghost of his touch from last night.
Last night or… or another night. How long has it been? How long did he let me sleep? He couldn’t have actually told me to rest, could he have? A man like that wouldn’t care about my beauty sleep. I fumble my hands together and whisper a half-remembered prayer that one of the girls in school used to say. I can’t remember all the words, and I seriously doubt anyone will hear me. If last night taught me anything, it’s that there is probably no God.
There is only Hades.
The door opens, sending me scrambling back on the bed, eyes stinging. The vibration of the train slows then stops. I blink at the enormous figure in the doorway. Light streams in around him. I’m a mess, and he looks like he just stepped out of a walk-in closet. His jacket is back on. “Get up.”
“What—where—”
“Sweetheart, I didn’t say ask me questions about our location. I said get up.”
I tip myself off the side of the bed. My shoes are missing; either I kicked them off in the night or Hades stole them, which seems unlikely. There’s no time to look for them now. Not with him watching me. His eyes are hidden in the shadows, but I can still feel where his gaze meets my skin. A strange heat. What happened before I slept taunts me. My cheeks must be the color of my mother’s garnet-hued orchids. Or deeper. I open my mouth. Don’t say
anything. Shut it again. Don’t. “But where are we?”
I have a small, wild hope that maybe we’re in the city and Luther Hades has decided to go back on our arrangement. He could let me off the train right now, even if he let me off alone, and I could proceed with the plan Decker came up with. Find somewhere to stay. Keep running. It’s the smallest thing, like a newly hatched bird, and I know I’m being ridiculous by indulging it.
The slightest inhale of breath, which I recognize as a laugh.
“Where do you think we are?” He folds his arms over his chest, blocking more of the light. “Do you think I’ve brought you home to run back into your mother’s arms? Come here.”
This time, I don’t hesitate. Hesitation only ends with me crawling across the floor, and I don’t want to cry again this soon after waking up. I stand one step away from him, and he reaches down. With a rough grip, he forces my face upward, fingers tight around my chin, so tight I almost gasp. He was playing with me last night. He was... he was being relatively gentle.
“You’re. Never. Going. Home.” Luther Hades doesn’t bother to raise his voice. He lets the words cut me like the small knives they are. “Not ever. Our agreement will never expire, not until you take your very last breath.”
“Or until you take it from me.” I shouldn’t say it; I know I shouldn’t say it, but it slips out on a wave of homesickness and regret.
A moment’s pause, and then—
“That’s right.” His grip doesn’t loosen, but I think I heard a note of tenderness in his voice. Tenderness. Either that or I’m still half-asleep. “Let’s go.”
He turns and walks away without looking back, and I want to throw myself into the darkest corner of the room and stay there until he forgets about me. Obviously, that’s not an option, not with Conor stalking across the middle of the room. It’s dangerous to be near Hades. It’s more dangerous to be left in an empty space near his dog. And I know he won’t forget. He won’t leave me behind. He made that clear last night. Very, very clear.