“I never saw you until you kissed me. What I mean is I never really looked at you.”
He waited patiently for her continue, no judgment on his face and no other emotion either. He was Death in that moment and yet he was not. It was a curious melding and she was intrigued. Most gods would already be wound up by what she’d said, done listening with a retort on their tongues. Not Thanatos. He listened to her—heard what she had to say before he started thinking of his own reply. She imagined he’d been a solemn little boy and wondered what he’d been like then. Nyx had kept him away from the other godlings until he was old enough to control his power. He must have been so alone. The thought twisted her heart.
“But when you kissed me, it wasn’t supposed to be something real.”
“What do you mean by real?” he asked evenly. Still, there was no judgment on his face, no reaction to her but wanting the meaning beneath her words before he responded.
Persephone looked into the crackling flames of the fire, watching them dance instead of looking at him. It had been easier to speak of such things when she’d been close to orgasm and the stark, blunt force of her words had been used as a tool. This was a baring of her heart and her soul, of her deepest desires. Ones she’d only now come to face.
“It wasn’t supposed to make my skin feel like it was on fire. It wasn’t supposed to keep burning after you’d stopped. The memory of it wasn’t supposed to live in a whisper and haunt me with fantasies of all the other things that could happen between us.” She forced herself to look at him so he could see the truth of it in her eyes. “If you wanted them.”
This time, it was Thanatos who couldn’t look at her. With his elbows propped on his knees, he leaned in to the bowl of his hands before he pushed his hand through his hair. “Gods, Persephone. You scare the shit out of me.”
His reaction wasn’t what she’d expected. “I don’t understand. Tell me what I’m doing wrong,” she pleaded. Should she not have told him how he made her feel?
He focused on her. “You’re offering me almost everything I want, Persephone.”
“Almost? Where have I fallen short?” She didn’t ask this as a precursor to an argument, she wanted to know what he thought was lacking and if she could fix it, she would. Persephone wanted to please him.
“You don’t love me, Seph. You’re in love with Hades.” He spoke as if this were an irrefutable fact.
“What happened to simply taking what I offered?” she asked quietly.
“Because I’m not that kind of god anymore.” He shrugged as if this revelation had only hit him in the last few moments. “I used to be, but I want someone I can bring home to my mother. I want my own godlings. I want a family, a life. Tail is easy to score—even tail as lovely as yours.”
“How do you know I don’t want those things?” she questioned, ignoring the slap to her feminine charms, and biting down on the core of what he’d said.
“You don’t want them with me.” He leaned back in the chair, so sure of the truth in his words.
The way he said it tore at her. As if there were no way she could possibly want a future with him. Images of what their godlings would look like slammed into her hard and fast. She wondered what it would feel like to be round with his young and her power sang at the thought of bringing forth life. She’d never thought of this with Hades, it had never occurred to her. But the idea of that part of Thanatos growing inside of her filled her with joy.
“You never asked me. How do you know? You and Hades both keep making choices for me. I can choose what I want for myself.”
“Obviously, you can’t be trusted,” he said lightly, an attempt to ease the tension. “You chose to go back to Hades because you loved him. Now, you’re playing at wanting a relationship with me while your heart is full of another god. You don’t know what you want. Have you tried being alone? Living with yourself?”
“I’m not playing at anything. I’ve lived with myself for a long time, Thanatos. And I do love Hades, I always will. Love, true and honest love, it doesn’t ever leave you. If you love someone, it stays with you for all the days of your life. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings for you.”
“I call bullshit, Persephone.” His face was a mask of stone.
“What do you mean?” She didn’t understand. He didn’t believe her?
“Only hours ago you were ready to die—,”
“No!” she cut him off. He didn’t understand at all. “I wasn’t. I called Death because I wanted you. I wasn’t going anywhere. I hurt, yes. And I still do. But when I’m in your arms, the whole universe falls away and there’s nothing but me and you. Isn’t that a place to start?”
He moved to the bed and took her hand gently. “And when you tire of me and realize I’m no replacement for Hades, what then, Seph? You leave me broken and begging for some surcease of sorrow?”
“You speak so eloquently of suffering.” It was hard to keep the condemnation out of her voice, but she didn’t want to fight with him, she wanted him to understand what she was feeling. The truth of what it was and the truth of what it would be.
“I know her well.”
“Not your own you don’t. You’ve inured yourself to the grief of the world. Is that why you’re so afraid of having any of your own?” Persephone asked while she twined her fingers through his to take the sting out of her words.
“I’m not afraid, I’m pragmatic.” He looked defeated.
“Sometimes, they’re one and the same. Look at the mortals’ lives. It would be pragmatic for them to never love because you are always there, Thanatos. You take everyone. To love for them is to lose and to suffer. Yet, they continue to do it without reservation. You asked me what I would do if I only had one day left to live—,”
“I said a week.”
“Whatever. Don’t try to change the subject. If I knew my time was limited, you’d asked me what I would do. I’m ready to answer you.” A feeling of warmth welled inside of her like a hot spring and her hands finally stopped shaking. “I would spend it with you, Thanatos.”
“You say that now.” He didn’t speak coldly, but there was no warmth in his words either.
“Yes, I do. But you look for the truth of it. Death and all things that are his belong to you too. So look at me, use your power and look into me and see the truth of it.” She took his other hand and opened herself to the harsh gaze of Death.
And he looked.
The power of Death fell over him in a black shroud and the fire dwindled to nothing—the last ember frozen in his presence. The vast abyss of the dark filled his eyes and the anti-light radiated from him as the winter of all living things filled the room. He stared into her and looked for the end of her eternity.
“Persephone.” His voice had changed; it reverberated through her and settled into the hollow places in her bones. “Peer back in to the arctic dark and speak again of things warm and sacred.”
If she’d been a lesser creature, that voice would have shattered her bones from the inside out instead of creeping over them in a dark caress. Her skin would have turned to papyrus and the rest of her body would have met its decay in a swift embrace, but she was not a lesser creature. Persephone was the next Goddess of Spring. Life pulsed through her sure and strong. She hadn’t let go of his hands, but she gripped them tighter. Persephone stared back into the dark as he’d demanded, but she didn’t fear the things hiding in the shadows, or wonder what was looking back at her. She knew what was looking at her and it was the god she…loved.
How could she have fallen in love with him? Persephone knew she could love him, a god like Thanatos was easy to love, but her heart had been so full of Hades. Maybe he was right, maybe she just afraid to be alone and she’d convinced herself to love him. She didn’t want to be alone.
No, that wasn’t correct. She didn’t want to be alone without him. Without Thanatos. Without Death. This being before her, this incarnation of the end of all things, she loved him too—accepted him for what
he was. He was so utterly beautiful in all his forms.
Eros had told her a heart chooses not where it loves. He’d also told her that it was possible to love more than person at once, possible to be in love with more than person at once as long she loved them both more than herself.
And she did love them both more than herself, but she wasn’t in love with both of them.
In that moment as she drifted into shadow with her heart and soul open to his view and her own, she realized her love for Hades hadn’t been what she thought it was. It was her dependence on him as a protector and he’d known it. Seeing him with Hera had shattered the foundations of her world—of what she believed was safe. He’d forced her to stand on her own.
Something she could do now, with or without Thanatos. She wasn’t falling into his arms to hope he’d catch her and hold her up. She wanted to hold him up too. She wanted to be the one he presented to his mother, the one with whom he shared his burdens and the one who made the world burn away when he was in her arms.
“Yes, Thanatos. If I could choose where I would take my last breath, it would be with you.” She spoke clearly, with the surety of a goddess who would do anything for the god she loved.
He leaned in closer to her and she knew he was going to kiss her. Persephone wanted his mouth on hers no matter if his lips were the great and terrible scimitar of Death, or if he were simply Thanatos.
His kiss was hot and hungry, an incongruity with his chilled demeanor and icy appearance. She surrendered to his embrace. Her gown slid off her shoulders and bared her to him; the material bunched in his fists.
There was a flutter of fear of the unknown, but not enough to tell him to stop. Persephone wanted this with him, only him. She’d been stupid to think she could let him touch her so intimately and it wouldn’t mean anything more to either of them—further, she’d been stupid to think she wanted it that way.
Persephone pushed her hands beneath his shirt, her palms explored his hard body and she delighted in each touch; every ripple of muscle and new spanse of heated flesh beneath her fingertips.
His lips were a reverent tribute on the hollow of her throat and he cupped her breast as he bent to taste the pink bud of her nipple. She cried out when he took her into his hot mouth.
“Would you be loved by Death?”
“Yes,” she said, breathless.
He runched her dress around her waist and she didn’t hesitate to reach between them to the waist of his black fatigues. She pushed them down his hips. When he lay naked between her thighs, his cock poised at her entrance, the chill left the room and Death’s power faded back inside the god on top of her. He smoothed his hand over her brow and studied her with tenderness for a long moment.
“I wasn’t going to ask you, I hate how it sounds. Weak and un-Alpha. But I have to know, are you sure you want this? With me?” His tone promised there would be no recriminations, no anger if she said no. “I want forever, Seph.”
This time, she could answer the question. She didn’t need him to take away her culpability, to push her beyond the edges of desire and take what he wanted so she could blame him for it later. Persephone wasn’t afraid. This was what she wanted and she was going to take it.
She wrapped her legs around his waist and ghosted her thumb over his bottom lip and then pulled him down to her. “Yes, Thanatos. We’ll belong to each other forever.” Persephone brushed her lips over his. “Yes,” she said again.
Arching up to meet his thrust as he pushed into her, Persephone was surprised there was only a little pain. A brief burn that was over as quickly as it had sparked. At first it was a foreign feeling, another’s body inside of her own, but then it was perfect. Their bodies working in tandem to bring each other to the height of pleasure.
He froze when he sank fully inside of her and groaned softly, it was obviously a kind of pain to hold his body still. Persephone instinctively rolled her hips against him and urged him on. Thanatos moved experimentally, his length and breadth stretched her almost beyond endurance, but the more he touched her, weaving his spell of desire, the more she wanted. Even now, with his cock inside her, she couldn’t get close enough to him.
Persephone clung to his shoulders and he braced her bottom with his forearm and tilted the angle of her hips so he penetrated deep. She cried out and threw her head back as he hit the core of her. He answered her cry with one of pure male satisfaction.
“Please,” she begged, but she wasn’t sure what she was begging for. This didn’t feel anything like the times when she’d brought herself off, or when his mouth had been on her clit and made her scream. This was something different; if Persephone didn’t find the edge soon she’d shatter.
But then she shattered anyway.
It felt like she was breaking apart, but he was making her whole again. Then the bliss hit, different than the other times, but just as good. He took her mouth to silence her cries and they rode the waves of ecstasy together.
As they crashed back down to Olympus, Persephone was struck again by how right this was between them. For better or worse, she belonged to Thanatos forever.
“I love you,” she whispered into his ear.
He propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at her with so much tenderness it made her ache. “You’re just saying that because I’m good between the sheets.”
Her jaw dropped, but snapped shut when Thanatos gave her a wry grin and kissed her forehead. “I love you too, Persephone.”
“How much do you love me?” she asked, giving him a secret smile of her own.
“Oh, here’s the catch, huh?” He laughed. “What is it you want, goddess of my heart?”
“Can we do that again?” she asked shyly.
He proceeded to show her just how many times they could, in fact, do that again.
27
PERSEPHONE
P ersephone was cold. She couldn’t get warm. Thanatos had plied her with warm fig cakes and wrapped her in down blankets—he’d lit a blaze in the fireplace and given her hot cocoa. Her hands were shaking too violently to hold the mug.
But none of those things offered the heat she craved. She wanted Thanatos to hold her.
She’d always heard Death was cold, his fingers clammy and kiss frigid and sharp like an icicle dagger. But he was none of those things. His flesh ignited hers with his heat, his hands strong and warm, and his kiss—Sweet Elysium, his kiss was like nothing else she’d ever experienced.
Part of her said this was wrong; she wasn’t the only one vulnerable. He was too because he’d made the mistake of loving her. Persephone knew she wasn’t worthy of him. She was selfish and vain; she and Hades had been a good match. He’d seen what he’d wanted and he’d taken it, kidnapping her and keeping her from the topside… Yet, somehow, he’d grown. He’d changed.
Then there was the part of her that had only now matured and she ached with the need to be touched. Persephone could see the way Thanatos looked at her, the way his eyes were drawn to the plunging neckline of her Grecian gown, the swells of her breasts as she breathed. He wanted to touch her as badly as she wanted to be touched.
“Still cold, Seph?” He tossed more wood into the fireplace and the flames leapt high.
The way the orange firelight played over his ethereal features entranced her. Almost as if he wasn’t Death at all, but the Dawn. And maybe he was. The Dawn was the beginning of things emerging out of the dark.
“I can’t get warm. I suppose it’s my just desserts for freezing all of Olympus with my emotional vomit.” She gave an uncomfortable laugh and shivered.
“You were upset. It was a reasonable reaction. It’s not like you killed anyone.” Thanatos grinned.
“Thank you,” she blurted.
“For what?”
“For everything? For coming when I called you.” She bit her lip hesitantly. “For caring about me.”
“Seph,” he began.
“For asking Hades to take me because you’d rather see me with him than dead of
a foolish broken heart. For being patient with me even when what I’ve done hurts you. For treating me like a goddess instead of a porcelain doll. Everything, Thanatos.”
“That’s what friends are for.”
It sounded as if it had almost killed him to repeat those words to her and oddly enough, it hit her the same way. She didn’t like it. “I think we’ve already crossed the friend line, haven’t we? Eros is my friend, my very best friend and he’s never had his face in my nether bits.” She blushed.
“That’s because two virgins don’t know what goes where,” he teased.
Her face flushed a brighter crimson. “No.”
“Well, why hasn’t he then?” Thanatos smirked.
“He doesn’t make me feel the way you do,” she confessed and Persephone felt the tension in the room like a lead weight.
“And how do I make you feel that’s so different?” He took off his trench coat and hung it carefully over the back of the chair.
Persephone liked to watch him move, the way the light played on his skin and the sheer grace with which his hard muscles all worked together. She liked the outline of his biceps in his t-shirt, the planes of his broad shoulders and the curve of his back. Persephone loved how his hair looked like moonlight—it was exactly like his mother’s, but there was nothing feminine about it on him.
He sat down and tugged off his boots. “You don’t know or you don’t want to tell me?”
“What? Oh.” She’d been utterly distracted simply watching him. “I’m embarrassed to tell you.”
“Persephone,” he said and made it a point to look at her. “After a god has been ears deep in your nether bits as you’ve described them, and you’ve ridden his face like a pony, nothing should ever be a taboo discussion between you. If you don’t want to tell me, it’s okay.”
Persephone blushed so hard she thought her face was going to explode. Memories of that night came flooding back to her and she licked her lips as desire flooded her. Her gaze was immediately drawn to his mouth and all of the delicious things it could do to her. She realized she was staring and the long moment that was all the heavier for the silence. She took a shaky breath, as if something so banal could ever wipe out the flame of white-hot desire for him. But she had to say this, lust or no, embarrassed or no. He deserved to hear it.
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