Darker Than Night

by Amelia Wilde

  Zeus raises my knuckles to his lips and kisses them, his eyes on the building and far away. We amble closer, careful not to get in the way. What are they all doing here? A cleaning staff or some kind? More people from the kitchen? We step up to the main doors, and that’s when I see the sign. Neat block lettering. Unassuming. But there nonetheless.

  The Aurelia Blake Refuge for Women and Children

  “It’s a long name,” Zeus says, “But I thought accuracy was important.” I can’t see the sign anymore. Too many tears. He takes out one of his ridiculously beautiful handkerchiefs and dabs at my face. “There’s one more thing, if you want to see.”

  “Yes.” I clear my throat and try to get a grip on myself. I should have known. “Show me. I want to see everything you’ve built.”

  He leads me away from the door to a corner of the courtyard. Here, the landscaping is painstaking and gorgeous. He’s created a grove surrounded by trees, right in the middle of the city. At the edge of the grove is a bench, and by the bench is a round marble pillar, waist high, with an opening toward the top.

  “A fireplace.” Zeus crosses over and puts his hand on the back. After a few moments it turns on, flames flickering through the opening. He presses it again and it turns off. “I rushed a few people through development for the switch so it can’t be accidentally triggered.”

  But that is a sleight of hand, because the real purpose of the fireplace is only visible from directly next to it. Engraved words decorate the top.

  FOR KATIE

  Zeus sits down on the bench and rests his hand on the letters.

  I sit down next to him, and he folds me into his arm. It’s cold now, but it wouldn’t be so bad next to the fireplace. A bird hops from the tree next to us to one of the tilled flower beds. It’s only possible to get the occasional glimpse of the building that’s all around us.

  An escape from an escape.

  The wind rustles at the season’s last leaves, and next to me, Zeus breathes in deep. He takes his hand from the carving. I touch his face. His eyes are sad, but his cheeks are dry. This grief is firmly in the past now. He’s built a new foundation on top of it.

  “Zeus, this is incredible.”

  He gives me a small smile. “It’s all you, sweetheart.”

  I make an incredulous sound. “What are you talking about? I’ve been hard at work napping and doing nothing else.” The pregnancy is taking its toll on my body. My hair and nails look more vibrant than ever, but I need to sleep late and take naps to make it through the day.

  “You’re the one who convinced me to build this. The women deserve more than a pile of rubble and a dark memory. They deserve a place they can always be safe.”

  A fist clenches my heart. “I knew you were a hero.”

  “Faith enough for both of us,” he murmurs, leaning down to kiss me.

  I pull him down farther, deepening the kiss. He makes a rough sound in his throat. There’s another change this pregnancy has wrought. I’m hungry for sex all the time. Always wet, always ready. Even more than before. It’s a benefit that Zeus has definitely enjoyed.

  “Let’s go,” he says, heat suffusing his low voice.

  “I want to look around some more,” I protest.

  “Later. I need to get you into the limo in the next ten seconds. Either that or you’ll find yourself on your back, skirt around your waist, my cock inside that sweet cunt right here in front of all the workers.”

  It makes me laugh even as I blush. Then I see his expression. He’s dead serious. And I know he’ll actually do it. I walk fast around the side of the building, heading for the limo, hearing him growl as he follows on my heels.

  “Ten,” he mutters. “Nine. Eight.”

  It’s outrageous, but then that’s the man I love. We make it into the back of the limo with only a few seconds to spare. Then he’s inside me, around me, consuming me.

  “Drive us around the city,” he says to the driver through the speaker before turning off the connection. This is a man who’s built a new legacy, a man determined to protect women. A man who is nothing like his father. But he’s still wicked. Still dirty. The things he does to me make me moan and blush. They make me scream my pleasure over the sound of tires on pavement. He keeps going until it borders on pain, but it’s a sweet kind of hurt.

  “Please,” I beg him. “Enough. I can’t take anymore.”

  Only then does he relent, dragging my body onto his lap. He’s still hard beneath me. He can keep going for hours. For days. For a lifetime. His hand rests on my belly, where it often rests these days. He seems fascinated with every change in my body, but especially that one. He marvels over the way I grow. “I love you,” he says on a long sigh. It’s a lifetime of shame and regret released in that one breath. Taking over his father’s business, even with the changes he made, wasn’t enough. Only now is he redeemed in his own eyes.

  “I love you, too,” I say, pressing my face to the muscles in his chest, breathing him in, the masculine scent of safety. He can save every woman in the city, but he still belongs to me.

  22

  Zeus

  Springtime on the mountain is like every other season on the mountain—that much is clear. The two-story window set into thick rock looks out over the green valley where once upon a time I almost realized my lifelong dream of killing Hades. The scene out there changes. In here, it’s always the same. Hades, the sly fucker, has his own small hospital wing here. I suppose I should have realized it—he’s too far from the city in case of emergencies, and I’d put my money on him being the cause of most of them. This wing has three rooms, a small operating theater, and other rooms besides. My curiosity is dampened by the howling.

  She stopped for a minute, the hall going eerily silent except for the occasional low hum of Hades’ voice. I can’t make out what he’s saying. Brigit adds something else, and then both of them are talking at the same time.

  An animal groan ricochets through the hall, rising in pitch until it’s a sustained scream, and all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Why did I ever agree to be here while Persephone gives birth? Brigit has convinced me of something for the last time. No more after this. No more.

  And then—laughter.

  Laughter?

  Another sound cuts through, raspy and pissed. Being born should be against the Geneva conventions, honestly. It’s a terrible business, and then afterward, you have to live.

  I turn away from the window just as Hades stumbles from the room, narrowly avoiding a nurse in blue scrubs going in, and steadies himself with a palm flat against the wall. His eyes are completely blown out, his face strangely pale. Ah, yes—the water.

  I hand him the glass I’ve been filling and refilling all this time and he gathers himself enough to take a small pill case from his pocket and tip one into his mouth. It’s shocking to see him do it. So unguarded. I snap out of staring at him and pound him on the back. “Congratulations. I trust everyone is alive?”

  He puts the glass on a ledge set into the wall—recessed artwork of some kind—and stabs two fingers into my chest. “You’re next.”

  Then he disappears back into the room. And I find myself drawn irresistibly to the door, a moth toward flame. I lean against the doorframe and feel the ghosts of other doors against my shoulder. The scene this time is different.

  Brigit, her belly big and round, leans over Persephone’s bed with a cloth, wiping gently at her forehead. The two of them are laughing. Both of them have their hair swept up in buns, Brigit’s sleek and perfect, Persephone’s a mess of curls. They’re all lit by a window that displays white clouds and miles of blue sky.

  Persephone has the smallest infant I have ever seen cradled in her arms, and her face—

  The expression on her face makes my heart clench with an old metallic fear. Not for her. It is, surprisingly, impossible to be afraid for her with Hades sitting at her side, looking at his new baby wearing something like awe on his face, running his fingertips gently over the tiny
pink cap.

  I’m afraid for Brigit. For Brigit, and my child yet to be born.

  I stand up straight and shake it off. The fear is only a temporary thing. A thin layer of spring frost. Beneath that is a deep well of certainty. I feel it every time Brigit smiles at me.

  I’m never going to be my father.

  That cycle is broken. It’s a shattered wheel, buried in earth.

  The clouds shift in the sky, and a shaft of sunlight streams in through the window. It catches the curls in Persephone’s hair. Hades raises one hand to the side of his face to shield his eyes, a crooked smile on his face, and the baby lets out an irritated wail.

  “I know,” murmurs Hades. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”

  Brigit laughs, caught up in the baby too.

  I should go. I shouldn’t be intruding on this moment. There are other places I could be. Brigit will come get me when it’s time to go home.

  I’ve shifted backward, the smallest step, when Persephone lifts her head and stops me with her silver eyes on mine. I’ve never seen anyone look so tired and proud and happy at the same time. “Zeus,” she says. “Come meet our baby. You can hold her, if you want.”

  Hades tears his eyes from his new baby daughter, and for once there’s no old pain there, no wariness. “Yes. Come.”

  Epilogue

  Poseidon

  The first time my phone rings in my pocket, I mistake it for one of the gulls bickering on the deck. There’s constant noise on the bow of this ship and every other. The rush of the ocean. Those fucking gulls, fighting with one another for scraps.

  And a phone, ringing.

  Wind whips around my head, the salt spray reaching over onto the deck. It just keeps ringing. People will cell phone numbers never give up.

  I watch two hands appear on the bulwark and my first mate, a guy named Nicholas, heaves himself over the railing and onto the deck. He appears to have caught himself before he fell all the way into the ocean this time. I didn’t throw him quite far enough. I’ve always said, if you don’t have a volatile relationship with your first mate, what’s the point? He’s good in high seas, anyway, and doesn’t mention the argument we just had that ended in him going feet-first out over the water.

  He watches me take the call with open suspicion, as he should. The phone is a recent development. It’s my usual custom to force anyone who wants to talk to me to go through several layers of whoever’s below deck, which is always a rotating cast. Better that way.

  But now, Zeus is busy claiming that in order to repay me for my services he needs what he calls “a reliable method of communication.” Fine, I said. But only because he owes me. This phone will probably go straight to the bottom of the sea when all that’s done.

  The voice on the other end of the line has news. A baby girl, born healthy. To Hades, of all the motherfuckers in the world. Whoever would let him near a baby has issues of their own. Hearing this, even from thousands of miles away with no land in sight, makes my gut twist for a reason I refuse to explore. I’m mainly shocked that Persephone had the stones to call me.

  She sounds just like Demeter did when she was younger. It takes more concentration than you’d think to stop my skin from crawling. But unlike her mother, Persephone doesn’t say anything psychotic or taunting or stinging. Maybe she’ll escape her mother’s curse. Jury’s still out.

  “—wanted you to know,” she’s saying.

  “Copy that,” I snap. Then I hang up.

  Nicholas tracks me as I shove the phone back into my pocket. The sun breaks out from the clouds, staining the ocean a deep, glittering blue. I resist the urge to tip myself overboard.

  “Was that the shipment?” He steps over leaving more than an arm’s length between us.

  “No. It was my niece. Seven pounds, twelve ounces.” The word tastes strange on my tongue, but what else am I going to call her without making it complicated? The last thing anyone needs now is to get drawn into a lengthy explanation of my fucked-up family tree.

  Nicholas squints at me. “I didn’t know you had a family.”

  I rub a hand over the bristle on my jaw. For a long time, I didn’t have a family. Not in any typical sense of the word.

  I guess I do now.

  Nicholas didn’t ask a direct question, so I peer out at the endless blue and ignore him.

  In the far distance, a shadow appears on the horizon. The sight of it heats my blood, dumping a shot of adrenaline directly into my veins. Nicholas doesn’t see it yet, but I do.

  And I know what’s coming.

  I put my thumb and index finger in my mouth and whistle, the sound floating off all over the wind, and answering shouts are buffeted by the breeze all the way back to me. The sun smiles down on us, the waves are tame, and the ship is sturdy.

  “You’re fucking terrifying when you grin like that,” Nicholas says, but I don’t bother wiping it off my face. Not out here. Not when there’s so much fun to be had.

  I slap him on the shoulder and he stumbles. “Let’s go to work, boys.”

  Thank you so much for reading Darker Than Night! I hope you loved the sexy and romantic ride that Zeus and Brigit went on to find their happily ever after. But somewhere in the ocean, Poseidon waits for his own…

  A modern-day pirate. An heiress lost at sea. And the treasure of a lifetime. The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is a dangerously sexy contemporary romance that will blow you out of the water.

  One-click The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea now!

  Find out what happens when innocent Persephone makes a deal with lethally dangerous billionaire Hades in KING OF SHADOWS!

  This contemporary retelling of the Hades & Persephone story will keep you up all night.

  "Breathtaking, intense, and scorching hot, KING OF SHADOWS is the modern myth I've been waiting for." –New York Times Bestselling Author Skye Warren

  One-click KING OF SHADOWS right now!

  Need another forbidden romance right this instant? Try my epic best friend’s little sister romance with a scorching military hero in BEFORE SHE WAS MINE!

  Download BEFORE SHE WAS MINE, free everywhere!

  Connect with Amelia

  Amelia Wilde is a USA TODAY bestselling author of steamy contemporary romance and loves it a little too much. She lives in Michigan with her husband and daughters. She spends most of her time typing furiously on an iPad and appreciating the natural splendor of her home state from where she likes it best: inside.

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  See you on the other side! <3

  P.S. There’s more where that came from!

  Are you in the mood for wounded warrior heroes with huge hearts? Read BEFORE SHE WAS MINE, free everywhere!

  Do New York billionaires strike your fancy? Read about the irresistibly intriguing men of the Purple Swan, starting with DIRTY RICH, free for a limited time!

  And don’t miss my favorite sweet, angsty, hilarious single dad hero in SINGLE DAD’S WAITRESS, first in my laugh-out-loud Main Street Single Dads series! Read FREE today!

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