32. Sandro
Sandro
Y ou’d think it would take time to get used to the new me. To having all my memories back and living as both Sandro and every other person I’d ever been, but it was as natural as a heartbeat. As natural as breathing. As natural as blinking.
Power surged through me like a song. It was beautiful and warm and bent to my will with ease.
I wished I’d believed Hades sooner because this was intoxicating.
The way I’d changed the course of Hermes’ fate with barely a thought. The way in which I could give Hades back what was rightfully his. It felt like there was nothing I couldn’t do.
But power wasn’t limited to my body. It was everywhere around us. I could feel its whisper on the back of my neck. I could feel its pulse throbbing in my ears, calling out to me like a background noise you couldn’t quite switch off.
I’d never been half as strong.
No.
Not half.
I’d never been a millionth this strong.
It was a stark difference to the poor, sickly boy who was dying without his soulmate.
Was it any wonder then that this much energy was giving me a throbbing boner? It was…my body’s reaction to being so complete again. It hungered for more. It hungered for everything my mate had to give.
Static electrified us both when we merged our lips, yet dipping my tongue in his mouth was all I needed to settle the inferno.
I knew this feeling. I remembered it. It was one of the reasons I’d fallen in love with him all those lives ago. Because being with him eased the responsibility I was born with.
My warmth made him feel more alive, and his cold made me feel less so. We were the ying to each other’s yang. The dark to my light.
His arms closed around me. The voices flooding my head went quiet. Who knew having life flow at full force inside you could be so overwhelming that only a hug from your soulmate could calm it.
“I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so much, my love.” The hum of his voice gave me goosebumps.
I held him tighter, his growth poking my bare stomach. A gasp escaped my lips, and I reached for his shirt and shed it off him like the obstacle it was.
He ground against me, and I slipped my hands under his sweatpants, wrapped them around his firm ass cheeks.
Hades moaned inside my mouth, and the sound made me vibrate with need. A need that shot straight to my hole, clenching in response.
He slid down my body, burning any remnants of my clothes with a single touch, and the desperate man I was, my lips followed him until they couldn’t anymore, until he was on his knees with his fingers wrapped around my cock.
He gave me a smile and lashed his tongue over my slit, once, twice more, edging a gasp out of me that I only let out when he took me in his mouth.
I just about exploded with feelings and memories of lovers past.
So many people. So many partners. Casual encounters. Over thousands of years of finding pleasure in human shells, yet in this moment, my cock deep in Hades’ mouth, they were all nothing but a blip in my collective history, barely able to scratch the itch left behind by the very king of the Underworld before me, weakened at the sight of me.
I pulled his hair, bit my lip, and hissed, erasing them, erasing all those lives lived without him, easing the load of the echoes inside my head I’d been blessed with.
It would have happened anyway, at some point. It was impossible for one person to remember multiple lifetimes without going crazy, even for the god of them, but why delay the inevitable? Why carry all of them with me when the only ones I needed to carry with me were my first and last. They made the misery of spending the in-between eternity without him all the more bearable.
I cast it all away until it was just him and me and the promise of the future ahead of us.
As if he could sense it, Hades took me all the way to the root, looking up at me with tear-stricken eyes, and I held him tighter, stroking his cheekbones, and let every one of my cries come out and harmonize our union.
The small of my back tensed as Hades choked and pulled up, took a deep breath, and dove right back with the same insatiable hunger that couldn’t be sated.
He went long and hard, and I panted loud and greedily.
“Come for me, my king. Let go. Give me your seed,” he pleaded, and we had been apart so long that I couldn’t help but obey him.
I stopped holding back. I stopped restraining my desire, and I let go, spilling my power right down his throat.
And through it all, his gaze never veered off mine, watching me like his favorite movie. How could I blame him when we’d spent so long apart? I couldn’t look away either. I didn’t ever want to.
I hooked my finger under his chin and pulled him up for a kiss. He shoved his tongue deep into my mouth, and I could taste myself on him.
It sent a shiver right down my very middle that incapacitated my throat, my lungs, my very heart. Its effect sent shivers all the way to my taint, and my hole flexed, desperate for more. Desperate for him.
“My turn.” I pushed him off me and yanked him over his throne, making sure to get rid of his sweatpants before climbing on top of him and crashing our mouths together.
His thick, hard cock jolted, rousing my own back to full mast. I wrapped my hand around both erections and stroked us in the rhythm of our kiss, our moans adding bass to the music of our bodies.
I wanted to speak, to tell him everything I’d been through as Sandro, as a lost soul destined to wither without him, share the glimpses of my lives that remained embedded in my mind. I wanted to tell him how much I’d missed him, how much being back with him meant. To apologize for not recognizing him the moment he awoke, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to peel myself off him any longer than necessary.
Regardless, he didn’t need to hear it. He could feel it in the urgency of my kisses, the roughness of my hands on our cocks, the way my voice came out as unquenchable grumbles.
Hades gasped in me, and I stopped. I didn’t want him to waste any of his orgasm on my hand. I sat up on him and pushed his cock under my balls. His slick left a trail of shivers along my taint before he pressed against my hole, and I bit down a whimper.
His fingers tingled, and the coolness of his fire spread to my tight muscle, allowing him entry, and to the rest of me, setting my body on fire along with his.
His thickness stretched me so much, so quick, that I sank my teeth into his lip to alleviate the pain. He hissed in response, adding fuel to the fire, and I drove him deeper inside me.
Screw the pain.
Pain was being apart from him for so long. This kind of physical pain was nothing in comparison.
My bite drew blood, and while I’d never had an affinity for the copper taste, except for my past life as a vampire, I drank it up, willing to get any part of him into me, to keep more of him inside me.
His hands tightened around my ass cheeks, and he spread them apart as I rode him. My prostate took hit after hit, sending waves of pleasure through me. It brought back memories of my life as Persephone when he’d fuck my pussy raw. Remembering those orgasms, mixed in with the reality of him inside me now, brought me over the edge, and I spilled my load once again without aid or effort.
Hades rasped as if my cum was liquid fire on his skin, and he thrust his hips up, colliding with force into me. Our exposed skin clashed, adding more urgency and sound to our desperation. I held on to his face as if letting go meant falling to my death and breathed into him as he breathed into me.
“Make love to me, my death. Yes. Do it. You’re the only one who knows how to fuck me. Only you can make me feel complete.”
I was breathless, craving mercy. Craving release. Never had I been this turned on as just Sandro. Never had I been able to come so close together, one after another, but now it was like a tap that couldn’t be turned off.
I moaned and begged and gasped and squeezed, and while a part of me wanted to keep it quiet, the part of me that was still lonely, self-conscious Sandro, the other part of me, the godly parts, didn’t care.
So I didn’t restrain myself. I didn’t keep it down. I didn’t choke back the bliss of pain and pleasure coursing through my body. I let it all out.
It bounced off the walls and carried out into the long eternal night.
Hades smirked and ran his hand over my front, my chest, my stomach, my cock, taking hold of it.
I took a moment to catch my breath, and he mistook it for worry.
“Let them hear us,” he groaned, thrusting into me. “Let them hear their kings are back.”
I threw my head up, opened my mouth, and let out a roar as I came for the third time.
This time, Hades didn’t ignore it. He scooped it all up with his fingers and fed it to me and to himself so that when we kissed again, it was all me we shared between our tongues.
He moved his hands to take hold of my shoulders, then, as if not enough, he moved them to my neck and pressed down on my collarbone as he drove in and out of me with bated breath.
I clenched my hole, and the whimper that came out of him was so decadent that I couldn’t help but smile as he filled all of me with his divine load.
He filled me with more power, more magic, more life, and it fed my own hunger over and over. The more I came, the more he fucked me, the more orgasms, the more of his cum pooled inside me, lighting every part of me and charging it with a deadly but powerful chill.
I didn’t know how long we’d been going or how many times we’d come, but eventually, we pulled apart, panting and slick with sweat.
“I can keep making love to you until the end of time,” he told me as if to reassure me, and I grinned, stroking his chin.
“So can I.”
“I can’t believe you’re back.”
“Oh, but I am, H. I so am,” I said.
Hades rubbed the sides of his face and narrowed his eyes.
“So explain to me how this works. Are you Persephone now? Or are you Sandro?”
I sat beside him, resting my bare and raw ass on the armrest of his throne, the constantly moving material, both hot and cold, created a neutrality, just like our union.
“I’m definitely Sandro. And Persephone. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. It’s like I’ve always been Sandro, even as a woman, and I’ll always be Persephone, even as a man. As if we were two separate but very similar people who merged into one and realized just how identical we were.”
Hades reached for my hand, and the kiss he planted on it made my skin flutter with shivers.
“That’s all I need to know. And I love both sides of you. All sides of you. There’s nothing you could ever do that could make me not love you.”
Such a hopeless romantic, even after all these years.
But that was exactly what I loved about him. He could be brutal and unforgiving, but when it came to me, he was a little cinnamon roll with the icing.
“I know, my king. I know. And I love you just as much, if not more.”
“That’s impossible,” he snarled.
I guessed there was no debating with him on that one.
Which suited me just fine.
I brushed my sticky hair out of my face and touched the hearing aid behind my ear.
I guess I don’t need those anymore.
It took me no longer than two seconds after removing both to realize everything went eerily quiet and I couldn’t hear a thing.
I grimaced and turned to Hades, who jumped off his throne with concern written across his face.
He started speaking, but he sounded as if he was miles away.
“Are you okay, my love?” he asked again after I put the hearing aids back on.
“I thought I wouldn’t need those anymore, but I’m still deaf.”
Hades held my face with both hands and smiled, staring deeply into me.
“Your deafness is as much a part of you as any other part, my king.”
“I know. I just thought…being a god again would mean my body would be…stronger? I don’t know.”
He moved one hand and ran it along the side of my face, all the way to my ear, leaving a trace of goosebumps on my skin like every time he touched me.
“But, my love, there’s nothing wrong with your body. That part of you doesn’t make you stronger or weaker. It just makes you you . This perfect being that I love with all my being.”
I dipped my head and sighed.
He was right. I knew he was with all sides of me. Except…Sandro.
“Thank you, my death. I…I guess I spent all my life thinking there was something wrong with me because of my illness. I learned to associate every aspect of me as flawed. The Persephone in me knows what you say is true. The Sandro? He will take some time.”
I turned with a deep breath and took in the room, which glowed like a diamond with my return, and smiled. I didn’t like focusing on the old me. The me that had just been Sandro. He had been a miserable guy who thought he was cursed. Who thought he was the ugliest person in the world, even if it wasn’t true. There were parts of him still in my head that still thought that. But I knew—I knew—the more I lived life as the god I was, the more those parts would go quiet. They would embrace everything, even the old life we led.
It had brought us to this moment, hadn’t it?
“I see not much has changed.”
Hades cast a glance my way and pursed his lips before he took in the throne room too.
“I didn’t want to change anything. I wanted you to find everything just as you left it.”
I looked at our feet and sighed.
“Not everything.” I whistled and searched for him.
He materialized halfway across the room, but Pluto bolted right for us in his full spirit form, stealing kisses from both of us as if we’d neglected him for centuries.
“You remember him?” Hades asked.
“Of course I do. He’s been with me in so many lives.”
Only in this life, though, had someone killed him. And not just anyone, but someone close to me.
Hades leaned on my shoulder, staring at the Doberman, and whispered. “Can you bring him back?”
That was a good question.
I’d cremated him only a month or so ago. Technically, he needed a body to be reincarnated, but maybe it could work. The ashes were still a physical part of him.
“I’ve never tried,” I said and reached for Pluto’s head, focusing my power on him.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and waited.
Orbs full of life surrounded Pluto’s spirit form, and he chased them as if they were balls.
I couldn’t help but smile at my partner-in-crime. The little devil that had managed to find me somehow in this life and a few more in the past.
In all their lives, in all their breeds, they’d been there for me when I needed them the most, and when I was dying, it was them I hugged tight before I surrendered to my fate.
If anyone deserved another life, it was them.
His black fur glimmered as it materialized and butterflies fluttered in my stomach witnessing it. When the glimmer reached his head, it split into three, and while the main head was Pluto’s, the one on the right was Daphne’s, my chocolate Pomeranian from the early twentieth century, and the one on the left Jason’s, my husky hunter from the twelfth century.
They released a cacophony of barks and launched at me, licking my face, my neck, Hades’ nose. Their tail could have come off the way it was wagging so fast.
“Hey, Cerby. Nice to see you again, buddy.” I scratched under their heads and was kissed again by all of them, making me feel even more full of life than I was already.
This was it. This was happiness. Our family was back together again after millennia apart, and nothing and no one could stop us now. Not the god of thieves or any fraud.
“I’ve got a job for you, sweet Cerberus. There’s a very naughty god who needs to be punished. Would you go and play with him? And by play, I mean make sure he suffers for as long as possible?”
Cerberus stepped back, his tongues sticking out of his heads, gasping, and without warning, he spun around and ran out in pursuit of the stranded, mortal Hermes.
Hades snatched me by the wrist and pulled me into his arms with no warning, smashing his lips to mine.
“I love watching you when you’re vindictive,” he whispered after a deep but short kiss.
“And I love it when you watch me.” I winked at him and pulled him in by the neck.
I would have taken him again, but the guards rolled out from beneath us and formed a shield around us.
“I think we’ve got company,” I said.
“Fresh blood.” Hades raised an eyebrow.
I nodded. We may have been to hell and back, but he still had a job to do. As did I.
“We should probably put some clothes on.”
I walked backward and found the twisting staircase that led to our chamber. A chamber I hadn’t stepped foot in for so long. And yet I found my way through the corridors as if I’d never left. As if I’d just been here.
When I tried to make sense of the combined memories of both lives and the glimpses left of all my other ones, my temples throbbed, so I preferred not to think about it and just embrace the absurdity of my life.
From witch to god. From deathly to ruler of life. From just a tattoo artist to king consort of the Underworld.
Everything was just as I’d left it, my side an altar to the woman I once was, but Hades’ side was disheveled.
I picked up a thick, dark velvet robe that was so soft I barely felt its weight and threw it around my naked body. Hades’ scent of smoked wood and pomegranate was potent around the collar. It was like a hug from him.
I couldn’t wait to explore more of the Underworld, find out what had changed, what had stayed the same, and find the ones most worthy of another shot at life.
Although, first things first.
There was still a lot of mess to sort out, whether caused by Hermes or my long absence.
I grabbed another robe for my love and returned to the throne room, where Thanatos and Hypnos knelt before my king. He held his Sai daggers, ready to take their lives.
“No, H. Stop.”