She giggled.
“Third,” he continued, holding up another finger, “Hermes was just here and has no reason to come again, and probably thinks I’ll throw him head first into the Cocytus the next time he walks in on us.”
Her giggle turned into a full-throated laugh, and Aidon couldn’t help but kiss her cheeks and tuck a lock of hair behind her ear.
And lastly, he said, winding a trail with his upheld fingers down the valley between her breasts, meandering across her stomach, then gently caressing her sex. I want to give you a reason to return to me as soon as possible.
She arched and answered him with a kiss. As though you haven’t given me reasons enough already?
Play along with me, wife. He smiled against her lips. Let me give you a proper send off.
“Proper?” She laughed shakily when he kissed the pulse point just under her jaw line, then closed her eyes in pleasure as his fingers dipped into her heat ever so slightly. A sharp, aching need thrummed through her in their wake. “Aidon, we’re outdoors… in a grove! A-about to—”
Our grove. More than anywhere else in existence, this place is most thoroughly yours and mine. A light pluck at the peak of her breast made her gasp and she looked down to see him rolling the puckered flesh between his fingers again. And don’t tell me you haven’t thought about this… or something like it.
She sighed. “Yes…”
When the world above is healed, I want to make love to you in the cypress grove. In Nysa. In the sunlight. He perused her thoughts as he mentioned it, and found a peculiar, enticing vision. The two of them weren’t in the grove at Nysa, but surrounded by poppies and grass in a wide-open field, his body driving hers into the earth, flowers bursting from the fertile soil all around their wanton joining. His mouth replaced his fingers, which in turn made their way back to her core. Oh, so you have been thinking about it, then? Where is this grassy field, wife?
“Eleusis…” she answered breathlessly. “Near the oak glade where I saw that wedding. The day you were at Olympus.”
Outside Eleusis… That is where your fantasy lies? Aidoneus said through thought, his mouth otherwise occupied. He delved deeper, surprised by his findings. And me carrying you off over my shoulder, like some conquering king taking away my spoils…
“Yes!” She grew hot. “Gods, yes. If the arrow had struck true…”
Not the beginning I would have wanted for us. And the beginning we did have—
He paused, looking into her eyes while she explored his thoughts. Scalding recollections flooded through her— feelings, sensations. She felt with his lips the unforgettable first kiss they shared in the darkness of Erebus. And felt her own warm weight in his arms when he knelt to wrap her sleeping body securely in his cloak and carry her home once the chariot had stopped in the stable yard. Every moment in between, every detail of her abduction from the world above was seared indelibly into his mind. Both were awash in desire when the memories flooded through them. And then, beyond the desire, a palpable twinge of regret.
Persephone shook her head. “No, my husband, my love. It was not what either of us had envisioned for our first time, but… it was as the Fates intended. We’re here now because of it. And you love the memory of it,” she said, looking into his eyes, “and so do I. So why are you upset?”
Fates, Persephone… He settled over her and closed his eyes remorsefully. I had planned everything so carefully…
“The Fates seldom listen to our plans, my beloved,” she said, brushing her hand over his forehead and tangling her fingers in his hair.
He looked away from her and smiled, his mind decided and clear. “I’m fine with that,” he said aloud, positioning himself at her gate.
“You ah…” Persephone felt a growing fullness as he joined himself to her in the most elemental of ways, the earth under her tilting back and vanishing. “You are?” she gasped between heavy breaths.
“Oh yes,” he answered, his voice roughened by the tides of her slippery heat. “If they deny me for the rest of my existence, I can still live happily. As long as they decreed that you should be mine.”
She smiled up at him. “I love you, Aidoneus.”
“And I you,” he whispered into her ear with the first surge of his hips. “My Persephone…”
She clung to him, feeling his pulse reverberating within her. The ground was unyielding against her back, and she winced. Their bed always cushioned his thrusts, but the hard ground of the grove made his entry into her difficult. When he sensed it, he stopped and withdrew part way, lifting his body from hers. She reached to grasp him at the root, trying to return him to her fully.
I want you, Aidon. I don’t care about the pain, she said, the corded muscles on his neck prominent as he restrained himself.
But I do. He gently moved her hand away and pushed in shallowly, the flared tip raking repeatedly over her most sensitive spot until she was lightheaded. He settled his fingers on her pulsing bud and drew circles around it. Aidoneus closed his eyes, focusing intently on the rise and fall in her sensations. When he could feel her pleasure starting to throb, he drew his hand back, teasing her inner thighs with feather light touches until her hips lifted from the earth and inched along his length to reclaim him. He strained as her body tried to swallow him and his thumb returned to brush and press against her bud in earnest until Persephone lay gasping underneath him.
He felt her grow hotter, clasp harder around him, grasping desperately at him, and saw the tips of her breasts pucker deliciously. His thumb left her folds to gild her aureole with her essence. She mewled and squirmed, and he rewarded her with a deeper plunge before pulling back to taste and suckle at her breasts, her sweetness caught on the pink flesh. Persephone moaned and threaded her fingers through his hair, impatient and wanting.
Her reservations about making love in the grove were forgotten. There was only him, only his flesh surrounded by hers, his hands, and his tongue, all working in concert. She felt her body screaming for him, begging for him under this delicious torture. She wanted him— she needed him, not just to bring her to her fast approaching peak, but to push deep within, to the place only he could reach. To wildly give himself over to her with abandon— mercilessly and without his ever-present control.
Aidon felt her tighten around him in urgent pulses, knowing she was close. He returned his digits to her center, strumming until her channel pulsed around him.
Aidoneus… My love, please… please…
I’m right here…
I need all of you…
Sweet one, you will…
Now!
Come for me…
Pleasure broke over her like a storm and she arched her back, her mouth open and crying without a sound. With a single motion, he gathered her up in his arms, holding her at the curve of her back. He sat on his knees with her, pulling her down and sheathing himself to the hilt. Her silent cry broke into a full-throated scream when he filled her, her eyes squeezed shut and her fingers grasped at his back. Skin slid slick against hot skin, and he tilted his head back, reeling in the exquisite delight of her climaxing around him, her pleasure his as he throbbed within her tightening channel. When she came back to him, he stood, still intimately joined with her legs wrapped around him.
“I need you, Persephone,” he slurred huskily against her neck. “Before you go… in the way I first took you.” She nodded, dazed, and he pushed up hard inside her, bending to brace himself and spreading her thighs further apart. He plunged into her in long strokes while slowly walking forward until her back was against a sinewy pomegranate tree.
He needed more. Aidon cushioned her shoulder blades with his forearm, the bark scraping against his skin and sparing her naked back. He filled her once more, leaning into her tentatively at first until he was sure of their balance, then thrusting wildly, lost in sensation. Through fluttering eyelids she saw his brow furrowed, his jaw clenched. Persephone braced herself, holding a low branch at her side and the trunk behind her, offerin
g him greater resistance, pushing back with her hips. A low growl rumbled in his throat, a feral harmony to accompany the primal rhythm of flesh against flesh.
She moaned in awe at his raw passion, aftershocks of her peak having left her wordless. Her world was compressed, consisting only of the branches gripped in her hands, his arm supporting her back, her body moving at the insistence of his. She felt his need in full while he took his pleasure on her, every thread of control unwound, moving ever faster. His voice broke and sang with hers in sighs and curses. His skin grew flushed and his muscles tensed. When he drew close, Persephone let go of the branches, needing to feel his skin pressing against her. His body was on fire. She clung to his shoulder with one hand and grabbed the flank of his rear with the other, feeling each quick flex as Aidon’s uncontrolled lust burned into her.
His eyes rolled back, and tension fled from his face and body in one glorious moment, then violently returned as he bucked into her, bowing his back as though every bit of heat he could offer was pouring into her. It seared through her in rapid pulses, fast and potent, and she heard him call out her name and his love for her to the branches twined about and above them. They stilled and fell against each other. She carefully brought one leg down, then the other, reluctantly uncoupling from him. Aidon’s knees shook. He held her close and breathed harshly, his softening organ pressed against her stomach and slick with their shared essence.
“I love you too,” she whispered in answer against the center of his chest. “I love you, Aidoneus, and I’ll be back before you even know I’m gone.”
He chuckled at this and kissed the top of her head, inhaling her scent before he spoke at last. “My love, there will not be a moment you’re gone that I won’t experience deeply. Painfully. I assure you.”
“Only a day…”
“Misery.”
She smacked playfully at his arm. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic, Aidon! What if it takes two days?”
“Agony,” he smiled, and kissed her forehead.
She laughed. “And three days?”
“Unbearable,” he sighed against her cheek. “Any longer than that, and I’ll split the earth and claim you again.”
His tone was playful, but she sensed the promise behind those words, especially when he tilted his head and claimed her mouth in a passionate coda to their lovemaking. When he separated from her, Persephone rested her hand against Aidon’s cheek. “It won’t take long. After I speak to my mother, she will return everything to—”
“Let us not,” he stroked her hair, “let us not speak about Demeter right now. Let me just enjoy this time with you. Only you.”
They inched to the ground and rested in the grove, sated and blissful. Aidon leaned his back against the tree and Persephone against him, his hand resting lightly against her abdomen. She felt the rise and fall of his chest behind her head. She smiled at the thought of them reclining here as though they did this every day, uncaring that they were as naked as the day they were born. This moment felt innocent— as though they were the only two beings in existence and all of it was new and theirs.
“That’s interesting…” Aidon said, motioning to the center of the grove. In the place where they had awoken, a perfect, six-pointed narcissus had sprouted, its saffron-colored trumpet reaching upward.
She gaped at it. “I-interesting?”
“Yes,” he said, twining a lock of her hair around a finger, and quaking in silent laughter. “After all the little miracles you’ve brought down here, this is the one that leaves you dumbstruck?”
“But… I thought I wasn’t able to…” Was that single augural flower, the same she’d plucked in Nysa, the first thing she’d grown here outside of a dream?
“I think we should come out here more often and see what else we can grow,” he said, nuzzling her neck. Persephone jumped when Aidoneus broke her reverie, and he chuckled against the shell of her ear at her reaction.
“Aidon, Do you think this place itself brought us here last night?”
“More likely than not. It’s what I’d like to believe, at least.” He stared up at the pomegranates. Reaching for the lowest branch, he pulled at one of the fruits until the bough bent, then released the ripe globe into his hand and rebounded, shaking above them. “Until they started growing here, I’d never actually seen a pomegranate.”
“Really?” She turned around to sit cross-legged in front of him. He followed her lead and played with the rough-skinned fruit, tossing it back and forth.
“I had no opportunity— too busy fighting in ash and fire. The mortals don’t hold feasts to honor us, and these aren’t given as libations to the world below or buried with the dead, so there’s no way they would have come before me.” He examined the perfect, six-pointed star at the bottom and the stem at the top, turning it over curiously. Aidoneus lifted the pomegranate and smelled it, then opened his mouth to take a bite.
“What are you doing?” She blurted out. He halted, mouth wide open.
“Eating it,” he replied matter-of-factly.
Persephone laughed until she almost fell backward, drawing a quizzical look from her husband.
“This amuses you?”
“Aidon, it will taste horrid!”
“Then why would anyone eat these? I thought pomegranates were sweet.”
“The arils are sweet, but the flesh is bitter,” she said, taking it from his hand. “Here…”
Digging her thumbnail sharply into the pomegranate, she scored the hard skin and pulled it back carefully. Dark red spray from a pierced aril cascaded across her neck and collarbone like a smattering of garnets. Aidoneus leaned forward and swept his tongue across the trail, eliciting a surprised squeak from his wife.
“Mmm. It is sweet,” he remarked. “Of course, that could be due to how it was served…”
Persephone bit her lower lip and smiled at him before she broke off a section of the scored rind. “I’ve had so very few of these, I forgot how difficult they are to open without a knife.”
“Why? Are they rare?”
“Not at all. I just wasn’t… allowed to eat them.”
Concern overtook his features. “Are these fruits poisonous?”
“…No.”
“What was it then that forbid you to eat them?”
“People say they have potent properties. Something about stopping seeds from taking hold in the womb—” She doubted it would affect her. Women had been eating pomegranates and having babies for as long as they had been harvested. But when she saw his jaw set tight at her words, she banished that line of thought from her mind. For now. She still needed to speak with Hecate. “The main reason Mother didn’t allow me to eat them was because pomegranates are… amatory.”
He raised his eyebrows and looked at her blankly.
“It’s a food meant to arouse passion,” she offered.
“What a cold sounding word for it,” he mused, and then pulled at one of the arils. It burst on his fingertips and he licked up the juices before digging out the two next to it. He tossed both into his mouth and crushed them, smiling at the burst of juice and the crunch of the seeds between his teeth. The next one he delicately rolled along the roof of his mouth, feeling the shape and texture of it. He closed his eyes and rapidly flicked the tip of his tongue over it, thinking about how very much the little aril felt like a favorite part of his wife’s body. When it gave up its essence, he sipped and savored it— dark and sweet, tart and heady— the taste and recollection sending a fresh jolt of desire through him.
“I take it you like it?” she said, reading his expressions.
“Very much so. I could eat these with you all day long. I think I can see why they claim this arouses, though I’m certain sure my present company helps.”
Persephone grinned widely at him and pulled a ripe aril from the exposed rind. She lifted her fingers toward her mouth, only to have Hades wrap his hand around her wrist.
“Don’t.”
I am already bound here, Aidoneus. She l
ooked into his eyes; his jaw was set seriously. Persephone held up her left hand, her fingers adorned with the Key. Is this not telling enough, my love?
“That is by choice,” he answered aloud and loosened his grip on her. “But this grew in the Underworld. And if it is anything like the asphodel roots that feed the shades, the fruit that bound me to Chthonia, then it’s… final. Those are rules governed by the very order of the cosmos itself, ones that supersede the will of all others— the Gods, the Fates…”
I choose to stay with you, she said. To love you. To be your queen.
“And because that is true, I don’t want Demeter thinking that I drove you to eat the fruits of the Underworld— that I trapped you here, unawares. It would undermine every word that came out of your mouth. If you taste even one of those seeds, you might as well stay.” She paused, considering the choice, then nodded in agreement. He lifted her hand to his lips and sucked the aril from her fingertips, leaving a soft kiss in its place. “Just… wait. At least until you speak with her— convince her to relent.”
“When I get back, then?”
“When you return, I’ll feed you those seeds myself, if you wish it. But with everything hanging so precariously in the balance, let’s not alter the order of things any more than we already have.”
“Alright,” she said, kissing him, his lips made sweet by the pomegranate. “We can wait.”
7.
He shivered and cursed. Despite the hearth fire, the cold air bit at his skin as he hurriedly put on his tunic. Hermes’s feet danced on the freezing floor for a moment before settling, thankfully, on a thick fleece rug. The nymph lying huddled under a pile of furs atop her bed giggled. She’d whimpered for him not to get out of bed, that it was freezing, it was the middle of the night, and now he could almost hear her biting back an ‘I told you so.’
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