by Vivian Wood
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 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 I am and carries me back to his rooms, back to the bed, and into a blessed dark sleep.
Chapter Eighteen
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 and 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 farther 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 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. “—was 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 aliv
e. 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 it has. Believing 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 could happen—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 stand next to his chair.
It’s a massive thing, built for him like everything else in this place has been, with no arms. Hades has created space between him and the desk. Just enough space for me. We look at other in the weird, impossible light.
“Bend over my lap.”
I suck in a breath, loud in the quiet of the room. My nerves, numbed by what happened before, rear back to life with a thousand sparkling cuts. Needles all over my skin have me instantly, totally awake.
Hades clicks his tongue. “Still so slow to obey.”
He shoves me gracelessly over his lap, legs splayed open, gasping like I’m coming up from deep water. A flash of pain, lace raw on my skin—he’s torn off my panties. Then his hand, searching between my legs. Stroking. I’m a little sore from earlier, and I flinch away without meaning to. He presses his other hand down at the small of my back, pinning me.
“Here’s your answer. Is this what you wanted?”
“I—” I’m struggling for air, for anything. My hips rock uselessly against his legs. I can’t stop. I can’t stop, and it’s so embarrassing, so awful, that another wave of tears comes. Yes, yes, yes. “No. I can’t want this.”
Hades laughs. “But it is. You’re wet.” His tone lifts to a wondering register. “You’re so fucking wet that if I….” He doesn’t bother to describe what he’s going to do. He only shoves his fingers back inside, roughly, without warning, without waiting. “You want this. In fact—” He leans even closer so that his breath brushes my ear. “—you need this. And I love watching you cry and squirm and beg for it.”
“I’m not begging.”
“Not yet.”
“I thought…” It’s difficult, thinking, with the slow thrust of his fingers in and out, in and out, so casual. Almost as if he doesn’t know he’s doing it. But he does know. “I thought you wanted to hurt me.”
“Hurt you?” A note of surprise in his voice. “I would never hurt you.” He pushes his fingers in deeper. Too deep. Fresh tears. “Does this feel like pain?”
This is, without question, the realest thing he’s ever said to me. The words shimmer in the air, behind my eyelids, through the tears. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“Because you want it so much.” He’s fucking me with his fingers, but his voice betrays none of it. “It’s dangerous for me to give you what you want.”
The sensation builds until it’s too much. His fingers. His lap. His office, the furniture looming around me as much as he is. His other hand on the small of my back. He’s so big. He’s so strong. It’s a breathless, needy, desperate hum at the core of me, and it’s too much. It’s too much. It makes me come again. This orgasm is raw, almost painful, a thousand sunburns all concentrated into a bomb.
From far away, I can hear him coaxing me, surprisingly gentle. “That’s it. That’s it. Yes.”
And then—then—I feel myself twisting, my own body moving, like I’m a puppet on strings. Twisting in his lap. Pushing myself up. Throwing my arms around his neck and kissing him.
It’s a deep, vicious kiss, his hand on the back of my neck and the other braced against my hip. I’m straddling him. I don’t even know how I got here. But the most tender parts of me, bruised from his fingers, brush against the fabric of his suit. The orgasm peaks and fades. He tastes like snow and fire and the burn of some searing alcohol I can’t begin to name. My heart is ready to fly out of my chest. My heart’s ready to explode.
Before it’s done, before I’ve managed to re-inhabit my body, he pushes me off his lap. I catch the edge of the desk and force myself upright, trembling. By the time I’m on my feet, he’s standing. Backing up. Eyes blazing. He was telling the truth; there is something about me that’s dangerous to him. It takes my breath away, or it gives my breath back—I can’t tell. He puts a fist to his mouth, breathing hard. I’ve done something to him. All this time, he’s done things to me, and now I’ve done something to him.
“Get out.”
I open my mouth to argue, but Hades raises a hand and points behind me.
“Get. Out.”
There’s no arguing now.
I turn and go, feeling his eyes on me every step of the way.
Chapter Nineteen
/> Persephone
No door wakes me up in the morning, no swish of Lillian’s skirts, no footsteps in the hall, nothing. I swim in a deep and dreamless sleep for a long time and wake up slowly, muscles aching, almost naked. It takes quite a bit of stretching before I feel like climbing out of the bed.
I was wrong about the tray. A silver tray balances neatly on the table next to what I’ve come to think of as my reading chair. And that’s not all—a new robe, pure white, hangs over the back of the chair. What’s going on? I shrug it over my shoulders and slip into the seat. I’ve been sleeping forever, and I’m starving. What happened yesterday laps at my mind like an endless series of waves on sand.
I have to stop thinking of it like that—as what happened, as the thing that happened, as what Hades did. Because what he did was make me come. Three times. A sick, twisted, horribly intense pleasure. Words that shouldn’t belong in the same sentence, but there they are.
“It’s dangerous for me to give you what you want.”
What did that mean? I have the sense that there’s more to this, something I’m missing. But when I look at it directly, it disappears. It’s like a ghost in the night that disintegrates at the first sign of the bathroom light. I rub both hands over my face and look over my breakfast.
I was wrong about the breakfast.
Three plates. One with a slim slice of chocolate cake. One with a fan of strawberries soaked in sugar. One with a cloudlike pastry drizzled with chocolate. Two small pitchers of cream. A mug of coffee, black. A jewelry box. A note.
These are not the normal trappings of breakfast, even here.
A jewelry box?
Note first.
I’ve never seen his handwriting before, but I recognize it instantly—flawless, masculine, taking up every available inch of the small slip of paper.
I’ve instructed Lillian not to wake you this morning in light of our activities yesterday. You haven’t been eating enough, so I had the kitchen replace your meal for the morning. Do better, Persephone. I won’t have my property self-destruct. You’d be useless to me then.