9. Sandro
Sandro
H ades gave me a curt nod and offered me his hand. I took it, and he kissed the back of it, as I’d come to discover was his signature move.
And that was why it was hard to believe any of this was real. I was really up against the true god of the dead, the king of the Underworld.
Wasn’t he supposed to be cruel? Ruthless? A monster?
Ever since he’d been awakened, he’d been nothing but sweet. And kind. And affectionate.
I had no idea what was even happening in my life anymore, but whatever it was, I had to see it through.
What’s the worst that can happen?
I tightened my hand around his, and with the courage his icy touch gave me, I guided him toward the stairs and up two flights toward the bedroom. If we were going to do this, if I was going to have to sleep with a stranger who looked at me as if I was his breath and sustenance, then I would do it in the comfort of my own bed.
The higher we climbed, the more my stomach clenched, the shakier my legs got, and the kaleidoscope of emotions pounding in my head weakened me.
I was about to have sex with a stranger.
I was about to have sex with a god.
I was about to have sex with my “soulmate.”
I was about to save myself from this illness.
None of those emotions wanted to take it easy on me. Each and every one of them battled for attention, for control.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pushed all of them to the back.
Then I opened my bedroom door.
Immediately, I felt my eyes rolling back, the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck rose, and my neck strained.
I hated this. I hated this power I was born with. How it made me feel. How it took control. How it rose through my insides and turned me into something different. Something awful.
“I’m going to die. Die. Die, die, die.” The voice wasn’t mine. It was rough and growly. Animalistic. And it spoke without my consent, but I felt it clawing at me.
And just as suddenly as it took me, it left me the same way. It retreated to a part inside me I neither knew nor had any control over. Until it was time for the next warning of the next death it could sense.
Only there wouldn’t be another warning, would there?
This was my last one.
It warned me of my own undoing.
My knees went weak, and I fell forward.
I didn’t though. Because he caught me.
Hades.
His arms wrapped around my chest and hips, and he held me, replacing the wounds my power had left on my soul with a soothing chill. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like it.
It was as if everything that wasn’t good, that wasn’t helpful or necessary, went numb, and all that left me with was the good stuff.
“What was that, my love?” he asked when I managed to find my footing.
I wanted to look at him, I really did, because if I felt as if all the bad stuff didn’t matter when he touched me, I felt like a different person when I looked into his eyes. But I couldn’t.
All I could think about was my death.
It was imminent.
“That’s my power. We need to hurry. I don’t think I’ve got much time left to live.”
Hades stepped in front of me, breaking my staring contest with the black bedroom wall.
He brought his hands up to cup my face, and with a smile so delicate I almost didn’t notice it, he closed his eyes and gave me my answer.
He guided us to the foot of the bed and proceeded to make his fingers dance on my body as he found the hem of my T-shirt.
I lifted my arms, and he took it off me, feeling the cold get more intense in the room and under his rule.
Next were my jeans, and as he attempted to undo my buttons, my stomach sunk, and my lungs ceased to work, all the blood on my body traveling toward one single area.
As he slipped them down past my hips, leaving me with my black briefs, my erection was undeniable, a fact that didn’t deter him in the slightest.
He got down to his knees and kept his eyes trained on my crotch. My cock twitched under his watch.
I wondered what it was like for him. He’d been expecting to be reunited with his Persephone, and instead, he’d gotten a Sandro. Did he even want to do this, or was there an ulterior motive? Did he feel obligated because he thought I was his lost soulmate?
“You don’t have to?—”
But he didn’t hear me. Or if he heard me, he didn’t care because he pulled the briefs down and my cock bounced in front of his face.
I didn’t get a chance to breathe in or brace myself when he opened his mouth and took me in his mouth.
If his touch was cold, being in his mouth was glacial, and I pulsed in response before I stilled, unable to move, to inhale, to react in any way other than watching him, watching his blue-tinted lips wrap around my length and swallow ink, magic, and me before letting it go and doing it again.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been blown. Hell, it wasn’t even the first time I’d seen a man suck me off, but it was the first time I was mesmerized by it just as much as I was aroused by it, and I found myself filled with both pleasure and astonishment.
And, of course, that was the right time for my eyes to go hazy and offer me an alternative view. That of a big, strong body of a man on top of a sleek and lithe woman’s body doing the kind of unspeakable things to her that Hades was doing to me, and as the pair of blue eyes looked right at me and he flicked his tongue over the woman’s clit, I felt it reverberate through me and took a deep breath at the same time as the woman.
Wait a minute.
Am I the woman?
What is this?
My head was about to explode, and I blinked hard and fast. In seconds, the alien view dissipated, and I returned to my room where Hades was in the same position as the man from the vision, whose face had been shrouded in shadows but whose eyes had been eerily similar.
Was that vision real? Had that been… Had I just seen my past life as Persephone?
I’d always thought the visions were random. Hell, I hadn’t even paid much attention to them. I’d just attributed them to my illness. Another part of what was wrong with me. Hallucinations.
But the more I watched Hades suck my inked cock with those intense turquoise eyes, the more connected everything felt. If only I could confirm it. If only there was a way to be sure.
There wasn’t. I just had to believe, probably for the first time in my life, that there was nothing wrong with me. At least when it came to the visions.
Hades’ focus was solely on me, on the act of pleasuring me. Even if I could move, I didn’t know that I would for fear of breaking his concentration, for breaking whatever spell he seemed to be under.
I was expecting him to be new to this, a stranger to it. I was expecting him to hesitate or do it out of obligation, but the longer he did, the faster he went, and the faster he went, the more whimpers seemed to escape him until he was moaning more than even I could.
His noises vibrated across my body, reverberating through the earlier vision that flashed before me in fragments, pushing at something I hadn’t known existed inside me until now.
The woman from the vision moaned in unison with me.
Was that his queen?
Was that really his Persephone trying to claw her way out?
And what did that mean for me? Poor, young Sandro Petrelli?
Whatever I was feeling, whether it was his queen or not, I also felt a different sensation. One I was very familiar with.
One that forced me to put my hand on his shoulder and push him off me.
“Everything okay, my love?”
I tried to fill my lungs with oxygen, but I fell back on the bed before I was able to do that.
“I’m okay. But I was about to…erm…come.” Was that okay to say to a god? Or would he think me unseemly for saying so?
It doesn’t matter. As long as he saves you, it doesn’t matter.
“And is that a problem?” he asked, rising to his feet, and even though he was the same height as me, when he towered over me while I was all naked and vulnerable, he felt like a giant.
“I…I don’t know. Is this part of the ritual?”
Hades’ gaze glided up and down my body, probably taking me in for the first time since he’d undressed me and realizing how grotesque I looked. With more ink than skin, the little there was to see, especially on my face, was nothing to write home about.
“It’s all part of the ritual, my love. As long as you’re enjoying this, there’s nothing wrong with what we’re doing.”
Was I enjoying this? Yes. Yes, very much so. When he was touching me, I forgot about the illness waiting to claim me.
Whenever he was touching me everything started to feel better. Even parts of me I didn’t know could be satiated.
“Oh…okay. Then, keep going,” I told him.
Only Hades didn’t return to his previous task. Instead, he got to work removing my jeans and underwear from around my ankles and then proceeded to grab my foot and kiss my legs, starting from the bottom and working his way up.
When he got to my knee, his fingers rested on the joint behind it and gave me goosebumps. Or, I should say, even more intense goosebumps.
God, even language isn’t enough to describe how he makes me feel.
He didn’t stop. He didn’t stop even when he got to my cock, which twitched in response to his breath. He continued to kiss along my body as if he…
As if he was worshipping me, and if I let myself, I might believe it too. But I knew he was probably worshipping what was left of his queen inside me.
What a downgrade. Going from a queen to a poor little witch who covered his flaws with flowers, thinking it would hide them.
When he reached my head, I dared to put my hand on the back of his, resting it there while he kissed me.
It felt wrong not to be doing anything, reciprocating, but I couldn’t do much. I didn’t want to offend or annoy him. Because I knew the stories of what happened to those who pissed off the gods.
And I was scared he’d realize it had all been a mistake, and he’d run off, and I’d still die.
He let go of my lips and rubbed his face against mine, up to my hairline and the back of my neck, moaning.
“Mmm, I’ve missed you, my love. I’ve missed you so much.”
For a moment, I allowed myself to buy it. I allowed myself to believe he was truly talking to me and not who he thought I was.
And it felt good.
And, of course, it was then he decided to trace around my ear with his fingers. I turned my head toward his touch in an attempt to break the contact, but he only used his other hand to trace my other ear.
“What are these?” he asked, and my stomach sank.
“He-hearing aids. I was born with severe hearing loss. They’re not perfect, but…” I shrugged.
Just another thing to add to my miserable, pathetic life. However much of that I still had.
How could the queen of the Underworld be as imperfect as I was?
Hades didn’t pull away. He offered me his kindest smile yet before he leaned down and kissed my tragus. I stilled, and he kissed the earmold, the hook, and the battery of the hearing aid. Shivers washed all over me.
“There’s no part of you that isn’t perfect, my love,” he whispered. “You could never be anything but perfect. Everything you are…even the parts you don’t like are sheer beauty. What beauty was made of.”
I finally swallowed a lump in my throat.
I could almost believe him when he said things like that.
“I want to take you again. I want to feel you again. Do you want that?” He looked at me and waited for an answer, and I had no choice but to nod.
Everything else was not really an option. I just hoped that when Hades realized I wasn’t his Persephone, he wouldn’t punish me.
With a single movement, Hades sat up and spread my legs. At the same time, blue flames enveloped him and licked along my skin, but they didn’t last long. They burned his clothes to cinders and disappeared, leaving him just as naked and exposed as I was.
I looked at his chest, his nipples, the abs, the cum gutters, and smooth but defined skin that didn’t belong anywhere near a beast like me. But I’d be damned if I didn’t want that cock inside me.
It was thick, uncut, and glorious, and I would never in a million years imagine that a man as small as me would be hiding such a monster in his pants. But then again, I wasn’t the most experienced gay in the world.
The darkness of the caves in Mother Red Cap’s lair had been very deceiving. That and the fact he hadn’t been aroused. Or maybe it was the fact that he was so close to fucking me that made him look bigger.
I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. We were far too close to care.
“Fuck me, H. I’m running out of time. Fuck me.”
He tutted and wagged his finger in my face.
“No. Not fuck. Love. I’ll make love to you, Sandro. That’s what we do. We make love.”
Pfft. Semantics. What’s even the difference? At the end of the day, I’ll still end up with his cum inside me, whether he calls it fucking or making love.
“There’s lube in the drawer.” I attempted to reach for it, but Hades pulled my hand back and opened it himself.
“Is this it?” he asked, and it suddenly hit me that he probably had no idea what it was.
Hadn’t he said he’d been trapped in the Underworld all this time?
“Uh-huh,” I nodded and snatched the bottle from him to pump some on my hand before I took a deep breath and wrapped my slicked hand around his manhood.
I swallowed.
Damn, it really is big. My eyes weren’t playing tricks on me.
Even Austin’s hadn’t been that big—an utter disappointment when I’d found out. One would think a wolf would be carrying the big guns, but no, it was Hades who did. Small, delicate, kind Hades.
Or, I guess, if I really thought about it, it was Tao who was gifted. It was his body Hades was possessing.
Well, thanks for the gift, Tao. I owe you one.
“Oil,” Hades exclaimed, and I shrugged, the smirk creeping up my face.
“Kinda.”
Hades smiled and put his hands on the backs of my knees, pushing them farther apart and pressing his cockhead against my tight ring of muscles.
As he pushed inside me slowly, one inch at a time, my guts clenched and I forgot how to breathe. Again.
And at the same time, I sank back into the vision of the woman and the man. Her legs wrapped around his hips, his tall, muscular body towering over her, one hand cupping a breast. It was as intoxicating as Hades felt against me.
The shadowy man with piercing blue eyes kissed me. He kissed me so hard I felt my lips aflame from the sheer force, and when I dared to push against the kiss and deepen it with my own tongue, he let out a groan that made the space underneath me shake. I didn’t know what it was, whether a bed or a floor, because everything other than his body and mine was covered in darkness.
I let go of his lips long enough to see his cock pushing into the woman’s pussy, and as the vision faded, I felt the same burn when Hades pushed another few inches into my asshole.
The way his dick stretched me was supposed to burn. I wasn’t used to his length or girth, but the sharpness of his icy skin soothed the pain before it could reach me, and a whimper of pleasure escaped. He buried himself inside me, inch by inch, with eyes fixed solely on me, witnessing every twitch, every spasm, every gasp.
I didn’t like it. I didn’t like eye contact when having sex. I didn’t like the other guy seeing all the imperfections, noticing how ugly I turned when I moaned or when I came. But the way Hades hung on my every move, you would think he was fixated on the most beautiful thing in the world, not me.
Like it or not, it was impossible not to like my position. How many people could say they’d been fucked by a god?
It was impossible not to feel different, as if suspended in the air the deeper in me he drove. And with every push, I soared higher and higher.
So high that I could have come if he so much as blinked at me.
It was then he extended his hand to the side and flames gave way to a knife. It looked like a miniature trident, only the middle blade was much longer.
I’d seen that kind of weapon before. I’d drawn that before. It was called a Sai dagger.
I flinched. “What are you doing?”
I should have known this was too good to be true. That a god like Hades couldn’t be sweet and nice.
“For our mating to be complete, we have to drink each other’s blood.”
I grimaced. I didn’t know if I believed him.
But then again, what choice did I have. Either I died under his blade, or I died anyway.
“Okay. A…a little warning would have been nice.”
“I’m sorry, my love. I didn’t mean to scare you. I promise I’m not going to hurt you. I could never…”
I nodded quickly. If he was going to kill me, he might as well do it now rather than debate this for too much longer.
“Go on,” I said.
Instead of using his blade to cut me, he drove in me again and again and again, and I forgot about the Sai and focused on the sensation of his cock and the pulsing sensation it sent through my body.
“I give myself to you,” he groaned, and I opened my eyes. He was staring at me and didn’t waver. “To have and to hold, to protect and to defend. I-I bind myself to you for all eternity. Let my life force…be your life force. Your blood…my blood.”
Each shove got deeper, rougher, harder, and I didn’t get a chance to ask him what he was talking about because he let out a big moan. It pierced through my hearing aids, making them crackle with static.
My insides filled with his seed. It seared through me and only drove me closer to my own edge, which was an entirely new sensation.
A sensation I didn’t get a chance to revel in because Hades grabbed my hand and slit my wrist.
I was about to complain, but when he put his lips around the wound, the burn turned sweet. As sweet as him, and my orgasm wasn’t far from the surface.
Even as he drank me, his gaze was pinned on me, and even though I still wasn’t sure if he was trying to kill me, I allowed the bliss that was within reach to overtake me.
I didn’t know how much time passed before he let go of my hand to grab my cock, but one moment I was ready to come without being touched, and the next, I was being aided by him stroking me with rapid, sharp movements that I finally succumbed to.
He enveloped me with his lips and drank me in as I came. My entire body convulsed, and without thinking, I grabbed him by the head and unloaded on him with force.
My eyelids got heavy, but he didn’t give me a chance to breathe. He released me and used his blade to cut his own wrist, then dangled the open wound over my lips.
If I weren’t in this state of post-coital bliss, I would have flinched away from the blood, but as I was victim to Hades and his strange ritual, I snatched his hand and drank his blood, and it tasted…coppery, bitter, and also, divine.
“Now repeat after me,” Hades said, his breathing heavy. “I take you and you take me.”
It took all the control I could muster—which wasn’t much to begin with—to part with his blood and allow myself to speak. “I take you and you take me.”
“To nurture and to feed, to shield and to shelter.”
I repeated the words trying not to focus on the fact they sounded too much like wedding vows.
“I bind myself to you for all eternity. Let my life force be your life force. Your blood, my blood,” he said.
For all eternity?
What if I don’t want to be with him for all eternity?
“I bind myself to you…”
It was either this or death.
I guess I could live an eternity rather than not live at all.
Wasn’t this why I was even doing this in the first place?
“For all eternity. Let my life force be your life force. Your blood, my blood.”
The words were powerful and potent as they surged through me.
Maybe he hadn’t been lying when he said he could save me.
Maybe he just had.
As quickly as I felt more alive than ever before, I convulsed.
My body got a mind of its own, and I fell into the darkness.
And as I fell, all I could see was him.
Hades staring at me with horror written across his face.
I…
I was dying.
And then everything—even he —went dark.