Summer Queen

by Amelia Wilde

  His free hand comes back to my face and for once it’s a light touch. A thumb brushing over my cheekbone. Fingertips skimming over my lips. Like he’s memorizing me, though I can’t imagine what he’d need to do that for. I’ll be with him forever.

  Hades tests my teeth with the pad of his thumb and coaxes my mouth open wider. “I’m going to fuck your mouth now, Persephone. I’ve waited long enough.”

  Take it, take it. Accept it, and you’ll have a chance at getting what you want.

  “I can’t,” I blurt out. “It’s too big.” His cock bobs in front of my face and I’m so torn. I can’t look away from it. But I need to look at him, because what’s the point of begging otherwise? All the bravery I’ve built up—and it’s not much—flees. My lip quivers. I’m not going to cry over this, damn it. I want this. I want to be here, on my knees before a king. That’s what he is. He rules everything in sight and out of sight, including me.

  “It will choke me,” I whisper.

  He makes me look up into his eyes. “Yes, it fucking will.”

  Hades puts a hand on the back of my head to steady me and I get a final burst of courage. “What do I get? Will you answer my questions?”

  He tips his head back and laughs. “You’ll get what I give you. All of it.”

  Hades silences my last-gasp attempt at an argument with the full length of him. It shouldn’t be a shock at this point. I should not be surprised. The night he took me for the first time I thought that he could never feel bigger than when he was splitting me apart. Everything I think turns out to be so, so wrong.

  Except for the choking. I was right about the choking. It happens almost immediately because Hades isn’t kind or gentle or any of the things I’d expect from another man. He’s himself. He promised he would fuck my throat. He’s following through. I gag on him, and no amount of self-control can keep my hands down by my sides. The skin of his thighs turns pink under the sharp moons of my nails.

  Hades groans.

  He works his fingers through my hair and holds me in place, tugging at intervals to keep me close. Tears gather and spill down onto my breasts, all down the front of me.

  “Yes,” he says, almost to himself. His fingers swipe at the tears and I swear I hear him lick them off his fingers.

  Hades pulls out long enough for me to gasp in a breath. There is no other reprieve and I don’t expect one. The shocks come one after the other in a relentless roll. Thrust. Gasp. Breathe. Try to keep my head above water. Cry around the hard length of him. Another thrust. Another gasp.

  It’s not long, or maybe it’s hours later, that his rhythm breaks down. His fists curl tight in my hair and I flatten my tongue, trying to give him room. There’s no more room to take. He holds tighter. Begging with your mouth full is a wordless, shameful experience. It pushes Hades right to the edge. He loses all sense of his strokes and shoves in deep. He’s going to kill me and the darkest, dirtiest part of me is going to love it.

  “Fuck, Persephone. Hold still.”

  I have to hold still. I can’t go anywhere else. My toes are already braced into the carpet and if I hold his thighs any tighter I’ll draw blood. Air—air. I need air. Instead I get the hot spill of his release. There’s so much to swallow, so much, oh my god. A dark cloud pushes in at the edges of my vision and I can’t tell if it’s because I’m dying or because I’m dying for him.

  He pulls away and I fall forward onto my hands and knees. I’d crawl for him right now. I’d do it, if he would touch me. I would do anything. But he casually steps around behind me and lifts me in his arms. Hades carries my gasping, glassy self to the wide sill set into the window. I wait for him to bend me over it, for this to escalate into something that will leave me sleeping off an orgasm for several hours, but instead Hades pins me to himself and hits some hidden switch.

  The window becomes an actual window. It’s green out there. His arm glides around my neck. Anywhere else, I’d be his hostage. But here? I don’t know what I am. Except for his. There is an actual valley outside the window and a small part of me aches to be out there almost as much as I want to be in here with him.

  “What is that place?” I whisper. More details come into focus. A small house at the edge of all the green. Tiny white flowers. A small figure in the distance. This place should be impossible. It shouldn’t exist.

  “You were a good girl.” The compliment makes me want to melt into him, despite everything, despite the way it’s meant to cut me. “You’ve earned the answer to one question. Are you sure you want it to be what is this place?”

  I buy myself a beat with a long inhale.

  “Choose quickly. Or I can teach you some more about the consequences of hesitation. I’ll gladly accept your payment a second time.”

  I can’t do it. There’s no way I can do it. My throat feels bruised and I’m unsteady on my feet. A lightheaded mess. I can’t do it, but I will if that’s what it takes. The space between my legs is molten and raw and he hasn’t even touched me. He won’t touch me. I need him to touch me.

  The window, the valley, his hand tantalizingly close to my clit but not quite there, not where I need it. The obvious thing to ask him about is the window. The dark room. The mountain. The way he was standing last night. Does it hurt you?

  “Zeus.”

  He holds me tighter. “That’s not a question.”

  “He said—he said—” I fight for a semblance of control over myself but I don’t have it. I want to be outside. I want to be bent over this windowsill. I want to be back in his bed. “He said you’re his brother. That you and my mother are siblings.” Hades shifts his weight to one side, then the other, and the angle of the window makes it feel like I could fall straight through it to the valley below. Would he save me? “Is it true?”

  Now his hand goes in the wrong direction. I could cry. He’d probably like it. But I’ve already cried so much, and gagged so much, that I’m not sure I have the energy. “The same man adopted the three of us.”

  I sag into his arm, the most depraved, disgusting possibility vaporating. A tiny part of all this makes slightly more sense—mainly the way that he and Zeus look nothing alike. Nothing alike at all. And neither of them look like my mother. I could never have guessed. The future where that betrayal happens veers away and disappears.

  Hades scrapes a nail along each of my ribs, teasing me, taunting me. His hand moves down only an inch at a time.

  “My relationship with Zeus and Demeter is a technicality.” His voice is a low rumble in my skin. It goes all the way through to my heart. His fingers sink lower and lower and my hips try to find him again. The wanting will never end. I’ll be doing this forever. I grit my teeth to keep from begging any more. “Here’s a small reward, since you let me fuck your mouth until you cried. Are you ready?”

  “Yes. I am, I am—”

  Please, let the reward be a chance to come. Let it be that, because if it’s not I won’t survive this. Let it be that, because I will never relax again for the rest of my life if he leaves me like this. I’m wound up so tight that only someone else’s hands can free me. Only his hands. And another possible future dies—the future where I could tolerate anyone else. It’s a distant door closing down and becoming part of the wall, like it never existed. It’s a shadow ship where everything is the same, only I never feel like this again. I hate feeling like this. I’m sure I do.

  He leans down and his fingers finally make contact. One final shuddering sob escapes me. “I hate them both,” Hades says into my ear, his voice calm and measured, the opposite of the fever dream I’m currently living. “Just like real siblings.”

  13

  Persephone

  The last word floats out of his mouth and he drops me.

  He drops me.

  Hades lets go, stepping back, and I catch myself on the windowsill. A reflection of the room comes into focus. The bed. The scattered clothes. Hades, rubbing a hand over his mouth.

  “Stay,” I say to his reflection. Is it me,
or does he hesitate?

  Hades drops his hand and straightens. “It would be too much.”

  By the time I whirl around to demand an explanation he’s gone. Somewhere down a short hallway a door closes. Water starts running a minute later. Too much? What could he have meant by that? Hades has never cared about what’s too much for me. Unless he means to drag this out a little longer, play with me some more...

  I crawl back into the bed and pull the sheet up. The sound of the water blocks out everything else. He could have taken me into the shower with him. It would have been kinder. Sexier, anyway. I muffle my laugh with the pillow. This is what I wanted. I wanted to buy his secrets from him, and this is part of the price.

  Fine. He can lock me out here, away from him, and I can do what I want.

  I follow the path of his hand with my own fingers and squeeze my eyes closed. He fills my mind like he’s there in bed with me. The only impressions that matter are his hands on my skin and his cock filling me. The small release I get doesn’t compare to what I might have had if he’d given it to me, but it’s enough. It’s enough to let me breathe but not enough to settle my racing heart. I’m not going to be the person who follows him into the shower. Not today.

  I throw back the covers and go to the hallway, where I find another door that leads to a walk-in closet three times the size of the one in the guest suite. This one is all man—all pressed suits and sharp shirts, a neat row of polished shoes. All of it smells like him.

  All of it except the new row of clothing, which is mine.

  I recognize it from before I left. There’s my red caftan. This feels like home. But not the home I shared with my mother. A new home, somewhere in that hazy future. And now that I’m dressed, I need to get a grip on myself.

  The small library is just as I left it. Not a speck of dust out of place. Hades’ people have been through here cleaning, the way they always do. The world here didn’t stop because I was gone. But the real comfort is taking a book from the shelves and curling up in the chair with it. No fire necessary. The temperature in here has been adjusted so I don’t need more than the caftan and I’m not overheated.

  The book is a filthy romance.

  It’s explicit, raunchy, the kind my mother would never let me read. It has diamonds and gold on the cover, and I sink into it like I sank into Hades’ bed. Nervously. Tentatively. Finally my head detaches from the world and I lose myself in this story of a rich man in love with his own secretary.

  By the time I manage to put it down and go back to Hades’ room, he and Conor are gone.

  So it’s my turn to get ready for the day. It should be a simple act, showering and dressing, and it is. But it’s not my simple act. This is not how I’ve gotten ready every day of my life, but it doesn’t feel as strange as it should. Standing on the big black tiles in Hades’ bathroom should have me quaking in fear, but I’m not. Choosing another dress from my space in his closet should have my heart beating so hard it gives out, but my pulse only races and thrills. How did this place begin to feel like mine? It’s not mine. But maybe all those linen dresses and fields weren’t mine, either.

  A soft knock at the door scares the shit out of me. I wrench my hand away from the shirt of Hades’ I’ve been touching. I wasn’t thinking.

  It’s Oliver, the redheaded man with the scar on his face. Hades’ head of security.

  He clears his throat. “Mr. Hades wanted you to know that he’ll be back this evening.”

  He hovers in the entryway of the closet.

  “What aren’t you saying, Oliver?”

  A half-smile makes the scar stand out even more, but it also gives a new depth to Oliver’s eyes. “He’d like you to stay in his private wing. If he wishes to see you, he’ll send word to me and I’ll bring you to his office.”

  I trace a finger around one of the buttons on the shirt. “Right. Because I’m his prisoner.”

  “It’s for safety’s sake,” Oliver says. “I’ll be at the main entrance to his quarters all day if you need anything.”

  Oliver goes to stand guard and I’m left alone in all the empty rooms. I go back to the book in the library, but it doesn’t hold my attention as well as this puzzle does. Oliver didn’t deny that I’m Hades’ prisoner, but there’s more to it than that. Or am I just imagining things—getting it wrong, the way I always do? No. I heard his voice in the train car and this morning in his rooms. There’s more. For both of us.

  But Hades is the only one who gets to disappear into his office while I stay here, a princess in a tower.

  I put the book on the nightstand and wander from room to room. The sitting room. The bedroom. The entryway, with its sunken living room. The kitchen. The guest suite. I discover a small gym with a hot tub attached.

  I’m definitely his prisoner. I signed up to be his prisoner. I traded my life away, and now I’m in the middle of a series of deals with the most dangerous man in the world.

  After an hour, a woman appears to tidy Hades’ bedroom, and leaves with a nod of her head like she’s stepped out of the past. Another hour ticks by. The silence starts to get to me. I sing a few songs I remember from childhood and lapse back into the quiet of my thoughts.

  Hades left me in here. He left me frustrated and needy, and there’s only one other thing I want as much as I want him to come back—I want more. More facts. More knowledge. More explanations for the tangled web that is my life, both before him and with him now. On my next loop through his private wing I stop outside the closed door to his office.

  My mouth goes dry, a familiar fear setting in. If Oliver catches me, he’ll tell Hades. Then again, if I spend the rest of my days doing nothing except wearing a path in the carpet, I’ll never make it. The risk makes me feel...alive.

  I’ll try the door. That’s all. If it’s locked, I’ll give up. If it’s locked it wasn’t meant to be. I put one finger on the smooth handle.

  That’s all it takes for the door to swing open.

  It’s not locked.

  14

  Persephone

  I’ve been here before, more than once, but never alone. Never like this. I feel rushed, like there’s not enough time, but there is. He won’t be back soon.

  Hades’ office, like everywhere else, was made for him. That makes all the furniture—his desk and two chairs across from it, and the overstuffed chair by the fireplace—too large for me. One of the books my mother approved was Through the Looking Glass. In this moment I’m Alice, but there’s no magic tea cake that will make me fit into this world.

  I’ll fit myself in, then.

  But first I listen for any sign that Oliver’s back in here. There is none.

  This part is easy. If Oliver appears, I can say that I was only exploring. That I was revisiting the site of my contract signing. That I was doing almost anything but snooping.

  The next part isn’t so innocent.

  Well, fine. I’m not innocent. I’m not the girl in white linen who came here with Hades on the train. That girl is gone now. It’s a new person who steps behind Hades desk and bends low to try his drawers.

  My pulse thrums in my ears. Not now, anxiety, this is important work. My nerves don’t cooperate. Why should they? They’re trying to warn me that this is reckless, this is dangerous, that any number of things could happen to me from taking this chance. Any number of things have already happened to me. That’s my answer to my stupid feelings. I need more of those things to happen.

  In the narrow top drawer, I find an empty pill bottle. I roll it curiously in my palm. There’s no label on it, so it could belong to anyone. But it doesn’t—it belongs to Hades. I don’t need to second-guess that. What was in the pill bottle is another story. He’d make me pay for it. I don’t know how much more payment I can take today.

  I put the bottle back.

  The second drawer down is locked.

  The third door pops open to reveal...

  Files.

  Lots of files in a neat, thick row. This is the kind o
f thing my mother used to have in her filing cabinet. She kept her files under lock and key and she kept the key under her pillow. I was never allowed to know what was in those cabinets, on those papers. Maybe that’s why I sink my hands down into them so I can feel the heft. There is so much here to know. My fingernails make a zipping sound along the top of the files. It’s business documents, not personal things, but I could sit here and read them all day. Hades has read them. If I did too, we’d finally have a similarity between us.

  An off-white page at the bottom of the cabinet catches my eye in the middle of separating the folders from one another so I can peek inside. I shove them farther apart. There’s not much extra room—too many documents—but I manage to reveal more of the paper.

  The logo at the very top makes my breath catch.

  It’s my mother’s logo.

  From what I know of the world—and I know it’s not much—it wouldn’t be that unusual to have a business deal with someone you hated. This deal, though—this is an old deal. I know, because the logo is old. It’s five or six versions ago. The last time my mother used that logo on her envelopes and letterhead, I was three. Maybe four.

  I try to convince myself it’s not that weird. If Zeus, Hades, and my mother were all adopted by the same person, then they knew each other before this logo was made. I’m probably not looking at anything that matters. Zeus even said something about this—how my mother uses Hades in the same way Zeus does. What did he mean? I wish I’d been less of a coward.

  I can be less of a coward now.

  The paper won’t tell me anything new. I’m sure of it. That’s why I’m just going to read it quickly, then put it back before anyone notices I’m here. I use one hand to brace the files. For a man with a meticulous closet, he’s got too many things in this drawer. If I’m not going to wrinkle the page at the bottom beyond all recognition, I’ll have to do this very slowly. My hand goes down first and the files neatly pin my wrist between them. I’m almost there, almost there...