by Vivian Wood
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’s 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.
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 her.
It’s absurd, and I loathe it—more than I loathe Zeus, more than I loathe my deal with Demeter, and 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 up 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.
Chapter Seventeen
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 through 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 ly
ing under my sheets for the past few nights with flushed cheeks and a clenched jaw and all 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, barefooted 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 as 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 we’ve gone past the big door to his private office.
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 to 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 worktables 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 groun
d, 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 as 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.