by Skyler Andra
I held my hand out to Hades, who was looking at me as if I were made of magic.
“Be here with me,” I murmured. “Give me what I want.”
“Every day of my life,” he swore, and I ached with his promise.
He came to lie down with me on the grass, leaning over me on his elbow to kiss me. I kissed him back, but I did it in my own time exactly as I liked, tasting him, getting the measure of him resting against me. The moon had risen over a wall, bathing everything in black and silver shadows. With his lips on mine, he was just as beautiful and mysterious as the moon, but I felt as if I contained mysteries myself—ancient and sweet, that I could choose to reveal to him or not.
“Take off your clothes,” I commanded. “I want to see you naked now.”
“Imperious,” he muttered, but it didn’t sound like a reprimand, and that sent a bolt of pure need through me.
I watched with avid eyes as he rose up and started to strip. With every piece of clothing Hades removed, he revealed a body that I was growing to love. One that seemed as if it had been shaped exclusively for my pleasure. When he was finally bare, I noticed that his cock already stood at half-mast. I rose up to meet him, welcoming him with another kiss.
I was wearing the green dress that he had provided for me back in the Underworld, but at the moment I didn’t feel much like removing it. It was more important to kiss him and feel him against me. What a wonder it was to know that a man like him, a god like Hades—someone so solitary, so lonely—needed me. Something in us both called to one another.
“Tell me what you want.” His voice rumbled through both of us.
Bracing myself against the wall, I stood with my legs slightly spread. Silently, I pointed at the ground in front of me, feeling as if I danced on the edge of a knife. Memories of what he had done to me on that past day and night resurfaced. He was the one in charge, the one whose command was absolute. And while he had pleasured my body to exhaustion, now I made the demands.
For a moment, his body stiffened and stilled. He took one breath, and then another before he bent on his knees in front of me, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The look he gave me could have put a hole in steel while he lifted the skirt of my dress up to my waist. Here I thought he would slip my underwear down with the same courtesy, but he twisted his fingers in the band before tearing them clean from my body. I yelped at the drag of the fabric over my hips.
“Another pair you owe me,” I reminded him.
“Imperious little thing.” He grinned up at me, and somehow I felt like I was seeing something in him that he rarely showed, if he ever did at all. “No matter what I am doing, I am still me,” he said, leaning over to kiss my thigh. “Best you not forget that.”
Okay. He still liked an element of being in charge.
“I like that.” I tangled my fingers in his hair. I didn’t pull him forward, letting him lean in of his own accord and opening me with his thumbs to bare the parts that we both wanted him to touch.
Urgency in Hades’ movements belied the controlled way he moved. The moment he tasted me I could tell he wanted more, and I groaned, pushing my head back against the wall. He used his mouth and his hands to turn me into a quivering mess as I moaned and whispered his name, lost to everything but the way he touched me. For all he knew, I might have kept him kneeling for fifteen minutes or fifteen years. I didn’t care though, so long as he kept on making me feel like this.
Tension, like that in a rope during a game of tug-of-war, built, ready to snap if he pulled too tightly. At some point, the rope would drag me along with it. No other options existed there and then, and I mindlessly held on, knowing that the eventual reward for doing so would be all the greater.
I groaned out loud when Hades thrust two fingers inside me, curved just enough to send sparks of pleasure through my body. It was almost overwhelming, but suddenly it wasn’t enough. My knees buckled, and now he was the only thing holding me up against the wall. Mindlessly, I pressed my hips against him, crying out without any concern for who might hear me.
“Oh, please!” I begged when he stopped and pulled back.
I looked down into his eyes, but caught my breath. He had transformed into something wild summoned out of the legends, an unearthly being that predated the lies we told each other about love and what it meant. We’d both been distilled into something strange and essential in this place, this garden, and I nodded at him.
“Let me have you,” I voiced, but I couldn’t tell if he was the one who was being commanded or if I was.
He stood up, and with his hands under my thighs, raised me up higher against the wall. My legs wrapped around his hips instinctively, and I clung to him. I knew that if I let go I might fall, but the prospect of being farther from him was what frightened me more.
Hades leaned in to kiss me, and while I marveled at how very good I tasted on his mouth, he entered me with one smooth thrust, filling me and making me cry out. No other word besides perfect described it. He drove into me with quick snaps of his hips that left me reeling with need and desire.
Soon, I felt too full. As if there was nowhere to go but up. The only thing that mattered in the entire world was the two of us together, and now that we’d found each other, we would never be apart.
Heat built low in my body, like a fire blackening wood, and I tried to fight it off. I didn’t want this to end so I pulled back from the idea of completion to enjoy the need of it, the tension so taut between us that it thrummed. It was a losing battle, and I knew that even as I reveled in the way he whispered my name in my ear, the way he bit down on my earlobe as he drove into me.
Despite my best efforts the pleasure overcame me, and I no longer had a choice. I got lost in the incredible thing my body did when I was with him—stars exploded behind my eyes while my orgasm burst through me like a river forced through some narrow channel. I shouted his name to the moon above us, digging deep scratches into his arms, and he followed me just a moment after with one last plunge that filled me full of his need.
I thought he would let me down, but he simply held me there, his mouth pressed against my temple, his lips murmuring something in a foreign language. The words entranced me, but after a while, a twinge in my legs told me I needed to get down. I gave him a soft kiss on the cheek, squirming to give him the hint, and though he grumbled, he set me on my own two feet, allowing my dress to fall and cover me. Except for the way my hair fell around my face in flyaways and how my mouth felt swollen, I imagined I looked fairly innocent of everything we had been doing.
“You better watch out,” I teased him. “If you let me have my own way too often I might become the one in charge.”
He growled at that, pinning me hard against the wall for a final searing kiss.
When he let me go, I discovered the space of grass behind us entirely covered in flowers of all kinds. They were all icy white, some the size of half-dollars, some bigger than my hand. They waved in the faint breeze, and suddenly, I was terrified.
“What is all this?” I demanded, pushing around him to lean down for a closer look. “This one doesn’t grow in the northern hemisphere and this one doesn’t grow at all without greenhouse conditions… I don’t think you can even get this one in white. What’s going on? Did you do this?”
Chapter 20
Autumn
I turned to Hades, half-expecting him to say that the flowers were some kind of gift for me. I’d already seen him do things less than a week ago that I once thought to be impossible. He was impossible. If he would have told me that he magicked up impossible flowers just to startle me, I would have believed it.
But no. He didn’t. The look on his face was rife with guilt and panic.
Somehow I knew that a much, much different answer was coming to the surface, and it caused my throat to tighten, making me feel afraid. It was the exact feeling I had felt several times already. With the appearance of the flowers I knew something was wrong even before I asked him.
&nb
sp; While I’d been examining the flora, Hades had redressed partially in his black trousers and white shirt, still half-unbuttoned. His hair remained rumpled from me putting my fingers through it. If I leaned closer, I’d smell the both of us on him.
He’d opened my heart in a way that I never even dreamed possible. Broken through the barriers I’d put in place to protect my heart from losing someone I loved. Three times he studied my body like it was his favorite book. Even now, a trace of my need from before swept over me, telling me it would always be like this between us no matter what happened. That thought felt odd in light of what I knew and didn’t know—what he hid from me. A blistering betrayal replaced that passing urge, leaving me scorched and bruised like a flower caught in a bushfire.
“You know something,” I said into the silence. “You’ve been hiding it from me.”
“No. Not hiding.” It sounded like the words were being dragged from him by a tow truck, but I didn’t care.
I took a step toward him before I remembered what a silly idea it would be. He was far more powerful than me. Nothing I could do would threaten him, not even a little, but I still shook with what might have been anger. And I wasn’t an angry person. After my mom had died, I could have been a screaming furious wreck lashing out at everything that set me off, whether it was an attempt to comfort me or not. But lashing out was a choice, and it felt strange to me even though it was the only word I could use to describe the rising emotion inside of me at the moment. A sense of righteous unfairness.
Behind me, I sensed the plants moving as if they had a life of their own, curling and waving, almost snapping with my anger. My feet sunk slightly into the earth, connecting to something old, something powerful, a force to be reckoned with.
I stopped just short of Hades. He hadn’t moved, watching me with fascination.
“Tell me,” I ordered. “I deserve to know, don’t I?”
He glanced down at his hands and then buttoned up the rest of his shirt.
“Do you know who Persephone is?”
“The name’s familiar.” But the moment I heard her name, I knew that it belonged to me somehow.
Shaking my head, I staggered back from Hades as if he had struck me. I blindly stumbled toward the flowers that had sprouted during our lovemaking, stepping right into them without flinching. The roses should have torn me up with their thorns but walking amid them was as easy as stepping onto a Persian carpet. Stalks and wands twined around my ankles and wrists, tickling and stroking me with an affection and respect. Instead of being afraid, I knew they were only trying to comfort me, to reassure me that everything was all right. Without thinking, I reached down to stroke their nodding heads with my fingertips like I was scratching a cat behind the ears.
I didn’t take my gaze off of Hades, who stayed still, watching me with those night-dark eyes. A memory resurfaced from our first meeting in the funeral parlor—his repeated questions that carried over into Mama Tickey’s.
What are you?
“Tell me,” I demanded, my voice choking. “What in the world is happening to me? What am I?”
“Human,” he said promptly, making me laugh not out of humor, but because it was the same answer I’d given him. “I promise you, you’re human.”
That actually relieved me a little. I nodded but continued to regard him warily. “Are you stalling? I feel like there’s a ‘but’ coming.”
A ghost of a smile passed over his face, prompting me to wonder whether he meant it for me or someone else. “But you have a goddess sleeping inside you.”
I almost stomped my foot. “Tell me the whole story!” At the look in his eyes, I relented. “Please. You must know that there is no one else I can ask.”
He glanced behind me at the plants still on edge and responding to my uneasiness. “Will you come to me? Or allow me to come to you?”
I glance down at the stalks curled around me. Plants didn’t feel love like people did, but they understood simpler things like light, water, heat, cold, and the tickle of bees collecting their pollen. Under the brilliant moon, I could have sworn they appeared spontaneously after we had made love. Catching me off guard, I heard them inside my mind. They told me how they considered me their light, their sun, their water. Hesitantly, I reached out to touch another.
It’s all right. I’m fine. Um… stand down.
I wasn’t even sure what would happen, but the plants seemed to understand. They uncoiled from me and returned to nodding in the breeze or curling up to sleep. One of the rose stems moved away, leaving not a single scratch on me.
“Come here,” I beckoned.
Another man might have been concerned about approaching someone who could control plants, but he never hesitated, crossing assuredly to me among the profusion of wildflowers. Gently, he took my hand. Despite how tense my body felt, despite everything that had unfolded between us, part of me relaxed at his touch. At least the part that he called to did. The other part, the one who had sworn off love to protect my heart remained on guard, like the roses with their thorns ready to cut away anything that threatened to break it again.
“All right, talk,” I insisted, desperately wanting answers.
The Lord of the Underworld sighed, and I realized that he hadn’t stalled at all; he merely had no idea how to tackle this subject. Something told me he’d been pondering how to broach the subject for a few days now. I never got the idea that he spoke to all that many people in the first place, and he certainly wasn’t used to having conversations like this.
Well, neither do I, but I’m doing it anyway, I thought a little defiantly.
He’d clearly buried this issue long ago. When the goddess had left. But now she returned. That must have been why I dreamed of her, why I felt something powerful and ancient inside of me awaken.
“Start at the beginning,” I suggested.
“Go on until I get through the middle and stop at the end?” A humorless smile stretched across his lips.
It indicated he didn’t know where to start, that I might not like what he had to say.
“Fair enough.”
He didn’t let go of my hand as he commenced, but he didn’t look at me either. His gaze seemed lost in the moon that was beginning to set, causing the long shadows in the garden to extend and darken.
“In today’s world,” he began, “it seems as if people only consider the twelve major gods of ancient Greece who ruled over his or her own domains, covering every aspect of the world. It all looks very neat and tidy until you start learning more and realize that there are a great many more gods than that dozen. Humans are not so easily categorized, and gods are no different.”
I cocked my head at him, yearning to know more.
“A select few of those gods sat up in Olympus,” he explained. “I did not. I ruled my kingdom in the Underworld.”
Beneath his words I detected a deeper truth, one he didn’t offer as reluctantly, but I was determined to dig to the very bottom of the pit to find out.
“Persephone.” He said the name slowly and croakily as if it hurt to speak it. “The daughter of Demeter did not reside in Olympus either. When she was young, they called the goddess Kore, named for her youth and beauty, and when she grew up she became the wife of Hades.” He stopped short.
“Your wife,” I repeated bluntly, ignoring the sting that bit through me. I remember asking him about a jealous wife when I first met him. Apparently, I should have asked more questions.
“Yes… and no.”
An icky heat bubbled at my core. “That’s… not very clear.”
“No, it’s not.” His shoulders sagged slightly as he exhaled. “I’m trying to get through the middle, but it’s a very long and strange middle.”
He looked lost and so helpless that I wanted to soothe him, but not until I got my answers.
“So Persephone and Hades lived together in the Underworld,” he continued. “For six months of the year, the springtime goddess dwelled on Earth, making the flowers grow. The o
ther six months she returned to Hades, and winter descended upon the world. That’s the start of it, and where it gets more complicated is the inclusion of avatars.”
“Avatars?” I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Yes.” He stared long and hard, examining me again like he often did. “Gods cannot work their will on Earth. Eons ago they were banned by Zeus because Ares destroyed a long-lost planet in this solar system.”
A bolt of recognition shot through me at that mention.
“Ever since, the gods had to choose a human, an avatar, to work their will in the world,” he said. “These people contain aspects of the god, the fury of Ares or the cleverness of Hermes, or the strategy of Athena for example. They are, themselves, part god and part mortal.”
I glanced at the sea of flowers swimming around us. “And… that’s what I am?”
Hades shifted, looking a little uneasy. “In a way. Persephone… did something that no god had ever done before by sealing herself away, her essence passing unnoticed from mortal to mortal who should have become her avatar. Over the centuries, she grew weary of things, of the way things were and how they were done. She wanted to rest, to go fallow for a time. And so she went.”
I swallowed, barely able to keep up with the reality of what he told me. It was too much to believe, too much to bear, and it strained at the limits of my own mind even though his story registered in some deep part of me.
I lifted my chin higher. “How long has it been since she’s gone fallow?”
“She’s been gone from the world for almost six hundred years,” he filled in with a strangely dark, calm voice, but beneath it dwelled a distant longing.
My stomach sank with a sickening dread. Hades still loved her. Then what did that mean for me? That I was just someone to keep him company since his wife had left? No. No. No!
When he finally turned to me, his expression shone with need barely restrained by self-control, which said it all. Without that self-control, he’d have me in his arms and devour me, but just as part of me was willing and even eager, another half rose up in protest at the same time. It reminded me that I didn’t really know him. Didn’t understand this twisted and complicated relationship or how exactly I fit into it. All I knew was that I was not going to let some faulty six-hundred-year relationship tell me what to do.