17. Hades
Hades
“I t’s not—” I started.
No.
I wasn’t having this. I wasn’t having him think this was his fate. That he was supposed to die in my arms seconds after mating.
I threw my hands up in the air. My flames rose from my toes and encompassed the entirety of me before they receded and I entered Sandro’s living room.
“H, you can’t do that in public.” Sandro appeared not long after with Pluto in tow.
“You’re not meant to die!” I shouted. I didn’t like raising my voice at him, but what he was saying was preposterous.
He wasn’t meant to die. Our love story wasn’t supposed to end. Not like this. He was meant for me, and I was meant for him. If he couldn’t see it, I’d make him. I wouldn’t stop until he knew he was my godmate and was meant for great things.
“Look, I know you feel responsible, and you want to hel—” he started.
I put my hand up between us and shook my head. “No!”
“Listen to me, H. You’re wasting your time. You should go look for her because it’s not me. I know it’s not. I’m just a… I was a simple witch with a rare disease. It’s not your fault. You didn’t kill me. You shouldn’t let my problems be a burden to you.”
“Stop it,” I repeated. “You are not my burden. You are not a disease. You are not simple. You’re a dormant god, my queen of the Underworld, the reason for my existence. The thought of you fills my dark, cold insides with its intoxicating fire. Your love for me kept me sane and alive all these centuries. Imagining the moment I reunited with you was my only source of happiness in the dark abyss I’d been trapped in since I lost you.”
I placed a hand on his cheek, and as if to prove a point, his outline felt warm against my palm.
“You, my beautiful love, are my heart. And if you die, so will I. I’ll jump headfirst into the dark unknown to make sure it’s safe for you before I let you slip from my reach. I’d rather let the Wraiths take me first so I don’t have to live one more moment without your sweet, beautiful face in my vision.”
Sandro remained still against my touch, watching me with big, wet eyes and a quiver in his lip.
“Now let me love you. Please.”
It was hard looking into his deep-blue eyes and seeing that light of recognition in them. To have him talk to me as if I were a complete stranger he needed to protect from his world of misery. But I had no doubt in my mind, heart, or every cell of my body that he was mine and, most importantly…
I was his.
“Hades, I…” He licked his lips and let out a small breath as a tear ran down his cheek. “I’m…I don’t know what to say.”
He brought his hand up to my cheek, and I turned toward it. My human heart was racing, but my godly soul settled.
“You don’t need to say anything,” I whispered, leaning over him.
I trapped a hint of his lips in mine and held his face. He was so beautiful, so gorgeous, so unique—even in death.
I wanted him. I needed him like I needed oxygen. I needed him alive to hold and to kiss, but seeing as I couldn’t do it—yet—I had to make do with him this way. Better a little piece of him in whichever way I could get it than none of him at all.
His hands glided across my chest, my abdomen, my waist. An influx of tingles sparked through my core and awakened me.
This was highly unconventional, but I couldn’t…I couldn’t resist him. I wanted my fill of him.
And, forsaken chaos, if that was the only way to get it before we both perished into oblivion, then so be it.
I slid my hands down to his neck and accepted the oddity of it all. My cock twitched and embraced this unique moment too.
I kissed him again and breathed deeply. For a second, it was almost as if he were here, truly here, but it passed.
Maybe being surrounded by his things, in the home he’d made for himself, created this perfect illusion.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all.
The shivers of his touch reached my member, which pulsed in reaction.
Before I could say anything, do anything, think anything, my sweatpants slid down my hips and dropped to my ankles.
I broke away from the kiss, and Sandro took the opportunity to go down on his knees and stare at my freed cock.
I watched him, salivating over the awe on his face.
I waited. My insides flared. My cock throbbed, but I waited.
I waited with bated breath.
He leaned forward and touched his translucent lips to the tip of my crown. A shiver erupted from the mere contact. I lost my footing but landed on the sofa behind me.
Sandro didn’t seem to mind the adjustment as he took me into his mouth. I balled my fists at my sides, but I couldn’t close my eyes. How could I when I could see the foreskin on my human cock slide up and down under the influence of his spirit tongue?
The jolt of the movement sent shockwaves to my legs and the small of my back.
Sandro stopped and looked up, using his hand to replace his tongue. Even though he was opaque and tinted, I had no problem telling his eyes apart nor focusing on them as he massaged me.
A strand of hair fell in front of them, and I was all too happy to move it out of the way and glide my hand over his thrumming presence.
Sandro offered me his warmest smile and closed his eyes as if he could feel me and as if it affected him.
Maybe it did.
He was a spirit, for fuck’s sake. He wasn’t dead yet. He could still feel. The Wraiths hadn’t infected him with their darkness. As long as he stayed away from them, he could feel everything.
“This is weird,” he mumbled, the air around his mouth vibrating against my fingertips.
“You can stop if?—”
“Are you joking? This is…it feels great. It feels…alive.”
Before I could answer him, he rose from the floor, and in the blink of an eye, he was naked. He opened his legs and slowly lowered himself over my cock.
I twitched when the tip slid between his ass cheeks and my entire length was washed in an infinite pool of goosebumps that utterly immobilized me.
I could do nothing but breathe and watch, and even when he fell on top of me and planted little sparkly kisses on my head and forehead, I still couldn’t move.
This was surreal, yet if I could make it my sole reality, I would.
There was nothing more intoxicating than watching my cock slide in and out of him—through him—yet I felt a tightness around my length as if I was truly in him. Instead of heat, I felt the chills that stretched to every part of my body like it was the blood I needed to survive. And it was.
My foreskin opened and closed around my swollen head, my slit twitched, and precum dripped down my length. As all that was happening, Sandro moved his kisses to my neck and ears.
His specter lips on my body made me pulse. My cock throbbed and my ass cheeks clenched, calling forth the sort of bliss I’d been denied for far, far too long.
Each moment that passed was another spent in near-ecstasy.
Each thrust of air was another moment I didn’t have to worry about finding answers and instead focus on the here and now that we had left.
Each wave of desire meant I was still alive, and as long as I was, I’d get him back.
Even if it meant moving heaven and earth.
My muscles tensed, my taint tightened, and my orgasm shot into Sandro’s spirit and then rained back down on me. Only moments later, Sandro spilled his essence too, each drop a static of electricity on my skin.
He collapsed onto the sofa beside me, trying to catch his breath, but he kept his gaze on me. I did the same with mine. It could be Armageddon out there. Zeus could be hurling lightning all around, Gaia could be splitting the ground under my very feet, and I still wouldn’t look away.
This .
This was fated.
Not his death.
What we had, what we shared, that was our story.
I refused to believe otherwise.
Because if this was his fate, I loathed what I had to do next.
But it was necessary.