Chapter 35
Chapter
Thirty-Five
H ades
A flush of rose-pink blooms on pale skin. Her red hair is drenched in the blood of the moons that spill in from the balcony. She glides straight white teeth over her bottom lip, her canines pointed just enough to promise a touch of pain.
A low growl of hunger bubbles in my chest, demanding a freedom I refuse.
If I loose the growl, I will inhale a breath I can’t afford.
If I inhale, I’ll taste the scent of her need.
And it will be my downfall and her destruction.
I can’t risk it, wish for the first time since I caught the heady warmth of her delicious scent that it would take pity on me and vanish.
I’m coming to suspect that it has something to do with the moons in the sky, and their turning red. After they first appeared, the red had dimmed to a milky rose white. But over the cycle, they’d deepened to this blood red that they now glow.
And the scent of her need grew more and more irresistible to me. I’d asked Thanatos if he could smell her. He couldn’t but pointed out his preference for Hermes.
I’d cracked and asked Hypnos, who chased women like a hound chased a mutt in heat.
He’d admitted to finding Persephone compellingly attractive, much to my frustration, but had no idea what scent I spoke of.
The scent I was sure taunted madness from the cage I worked constantly to keep it contained within.
Now that scent is stronger than it has ever been. I am certain if I stole even a whiff, my resolve to not test her tolerance for my heat further would crack.
My eyes drop from the glow of her deep green gaze to the hands she lifts to the tie at her waist. Already, the robe she wears does little to keep the want from bulldozing my control.
If she does what I think she’s about to do…
The robe falls open.
For the love of Tartarus. Fuuuuck.
“What are you doing?” I rasp without stealing that breath.
My lungs burn.
She shrugs from the robe, letting it fall to a shimmery pool that catches in the shifting light of the ceiling.
She looks like temptation.
I don’t think my dick has ever been this hard in this form. Ever .
I stand stone still, unwilling to let my eyes drift from where they hold hers. She has no such compunction. Her eyes drift languidly down my body to land on my cock. I feel her gaze like a touch.
My cock weeps. My balls are so full of want for her; my dick can no longer contain it.
I grind my jaw.
She wets her lovely lips with a tongue I imagine lapping at the seed I spill.
Tartarus . My fists tighten.
She steals another step. Little more than an arm’s length stands between us now. The urge to flee for her life wars with the need to take what is mine .
She catches me entirely by surprise as she presses her palm to my chest. Horror lashes like a whip against my soul. I know my eyes are impossibly wide as they fall from hers to the palm that presses into my chest and— it’s not in flames .
Her flesh isn’t melting from her bone. Blisters don’t boil the delicate skin of her arm.
How?
My eyes snap to hers when she says firmly, “I feel no pain but the empty ache in my womb.”
Her womb…
Empty…
I’d tried relentlessly to fill her womb in her past life and had failed.
How could anyone expect the God of Death to have anything other than dead seed?
Struck by the shock that she is touching me, I am unable to move as she lifts her other palm to my chest, stroking me. Exploring.
Impossible. It can’t be possible that this human woman is doing what even the most powerful Gods and Goddesses can’t do. She is touching the embodiment of torment, unscathed .
And it feels fucking good .
Pleasure frees a dark rumble in the deep of my throat. Her green eyes, so fucking lovely, flick up to mine all wide and doe like. Innocent.
She is a seductress.
Her fingertips drift slowly down my core, muscles flexing and bunching under her tender touch. Something this form has never experienced in all the millennia’s I’ve lived.
It is exquisite.
I am addicted.
A moan escapes from the prison of my pleasure. Her lips twist into a delighted smile.
My dick throbs, lengthening toward her.
She drops to her knees and fuck me, her little hand grips my base.
I inhale a sharp breath. Big. Mistake.
The scent of her need is enough to bring a monster to his knees. The shadows that cling to me in this form writhe toward her, desperate as I am to feel the smooth of her unscathed skin.
“Persephone,” I rasp.
Her green eyes flash up to mine. There is a decadently dark intent in them that I’ve never seen. Not in this life or her previous life.
Her tongue slips out to wet her lips, and keeping those hypnotic eyes on mine, she dips her head forward and licks the juice from my tip.
I see an explosion of sparks behind my eyes. No, not sparks. Stars.
A whole fucking universe.
I feel like a virgin. Go figure.
But I’ve never been touched in this form. Never came in this form. Never even had the thought while in this form.
Before, even when she would watch me, I’d always been too caught up in my own fear as I studied her flesh for signs, she’d been in the presence of my Gods’ Form too long. Always hunting for signs of burned skin. Redness. Blisters…
How in Tartarus is she doing this?
I want more.
I need more.
“You’re so big like this,” she murmurs. I don’t know if she’s talking to me or herself.
I can do little more than muster a grunt in response.
“You taste sweet and—” Have mercy, she licks me again . “Nutty.” Another taste that pulls a whimper— a whimper —from the depths. “Like roasted nuts.”
She’s killing me.
Her eyes land on mine as she stretches her mouth around the tip of my cock, her lips red against the charred black of my skin. She pulls back with a sucking pop and smiles sweetly up at me. “I’ve always liked nuts.”
My flaming eyes narrow. Is she trying to kill me?
Is this punishment for something?
My thoughts are like shards of glass shattered on the floor. I don’t know where all the pieces connect to make them whole again.
She runs the tip of her tongue along the underside of my cock. The tip oozes desperately and I hiss when her tongue laps it up again. Heat pools in her eyes. Or maybe they’re just reflecting the flames in my own.
Steam is billowing now from my form, twisting into the shadows.
My eyes scan the length of her nakedness. No red. No burns or blisters.
Relief cools my burning lungs, but only for a moment. Because on my next inhale, hot desire scores inside me like a newly forged blade.
Her scent.
She stretches her lips around my tip again, this time taking me as far into her mouth as she can. It’s the sweetest torture. My hands itch to dive into her hair, to hold her in place. To fuck her sweet little mouth until tears and cries spill from her…
No. I can’t touch her. Won’t touch her.
Won’t risk it.
Indecision wars inside me as she pumps her mouth on my dick. My balls tighten and heat ramps up yet another notch.
I’m so close. I’m going to—she pulls back.
Wiping her mouth demurely, the little temptress finds her feet. With a knowing darkness in those eyes I could lose myself in for the rest of eternity, she spins on her feet and sways her hips—her naked hips—as she moves to the bed.
“What are you doing?” I growl. She’s quite literally left my dick bobbing pathetically after her. It glistens with the wet heat of her mouth.
Over her shoulder, her wet lips stretch wide in a smile. She taunts, “Whatever do you mean?”
What do I…
Thoughts stutter and die in my charbroiled mind as she crawls onto the bed. Her ass waves in the air, pussy glistening beautiful and pink before she drops onto her back.
I’m rooted in place, unable to move as I watch her.
She’s spread out on the bed, head in my pillows, her lovely unmarred body on full display. Her hands begin to roam, plucking and twisting at her breasts, nipples. Tiny breaths grow into tempting little moans that sharpen one single thought in my mind.
Mine.
Her eyes track me as I prowl to the bed, staring down at her.
I ask again, “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” she returns sweetly.
My nostrils flare.
She moans again.
“Don’t play with me, little goddess. Not in this form.”
She wets her lips as her hand begins to snake slowly from her breast down the length of her belly to the V between her legs.
“I’m not afraid of you, Hades. Not in your human form, and not in this form.”
She spreads her legs wide and I hiss in a breath that burns of her in my lungs. I nearly fall to my knees.
“Persephone,” I warn darkly.
“You started this game,” she tuts. “I’m only finishing it.”
“Finishing what?”
She dips her finger inside her cunt with a pretty little hitch of breath. A flush rises to her chest, but it’s not the kind that makes me fear a burn.
She’s beautiful. Exquisite. Maddening.
She moans, “I’m finishing myself, of course.”
The fuck she is.
My hand snaps out and I catch her wrist as she shoves her finger deep into her cunt. I hold her in place.
For long moments, I can’t take my eyes off the connection. My hand around her wrist. No burns. No blisters.
My eyes slide slowly to hers. It appears she’s never looked away from mine.
I growl. “Explain.”
“You withheld yourself from me, Hades. I told you I won’t beg, and I won’t.” Her eyes hold mine fiercely. “But I will finish myself, since you’re so unwilling.”
I swallow, but say nothing as I slowly pull her finger from her body. The scent that plumes in the air is too much to resist, and I lift her finger to my mouth. Shuddering breath invades her lungs as I suck her taste from her finger, before gripping her hips between my taloned hands.
She yelps, but not in pain of my touch as I pull her to the edge of the bed. My hands move from her hips to her ankles where I position her heels on the edge of the bed before pushing her knees wide.
My dick strains toward her at the sight.
So fucking beautiful. So pink and wet and fuck me .
“Mine.” I drop my mouth to her core.
She is everything. Her taste feeds my hunger as her whimpers feed my soul.
I am lost to her, I almost forget that I’m in my Gods’ Form as I suck at her clit, circling with my tongue before bracketing her pussy with my fangs. My hands force her legs wide as I thrust my tongue into her core, reveling in the way she tightens around me.
“Oh, my God—” she gasps. And then she gasps it again and again. “You’re so hot, Hades. Your tongue is like fire.”
I freeze. Could I have mistaken her moans of pain for ecstasy? Her writhing on the bed for a need to escape me?
Terror hits me like a bullet to the chest and I begin to pull away, but she gabs my horns with both hands and nearly screams, “Don’t you dare stop.”
Her hips roll and she’s—she’s riding my tongue.
All right. No mistake.
“I love your heat,” she adds, and screams when I thrust my tongue into her again, rougher this time. I’m trying to lick the womb I ache to fill. As though that act might soothe my inability to do as she needs and truly fill her the way I ought to be able to.
Her back bows, head thrown back, lovely neck arched. I watch in wonder as her peaked nipples stretch for the jagged ceiling with my tongue lapping deep inside her core.
She’s exquisite. If she’s not a Goddess, I don’t know what she is.
I don’t know how this is possible.
She’s amazing.
She’s everything. Mine .
I am hers.
Her body begins to quiver. Her thighs are desperately trying to close around me now, to escape me. From her mouth, little pleas of, “Too much—” war with chants for, “more.” And, “Oh, God, pleassse…” escape in pleasure-muffled mumbles that only spur me on.
“So close.” Her hands tighten around my horns. “Oh, God, Hades. I’m so close.”
Pulling my tongue from her core, I suck her clit roughly into my mouth, and she detonates.
Her body lurches on the bed and the sounds she makes are sounds that will eternally be imprinted on my soul. Etched onto the beast of torment for eternity like the ink of a tattoo on skin.
I lift my head to watch as she comes undone, shattering into lovely little pieces for me. I’d thought the scent of her would diminish somehow, but oh, how I was wrong.
That scent of need that constantly seems to emanate from her bursts into the space between us with a violence that has her bowing off the bed in desperation. She cries out in pain, gripping my shoulders. Her eyes are wide—and I think she’s afraid as she breathes choppily.
“Not enough. I need more.”
There is a deep need twisting inside me. It’s more than sexual. Primal. Instinctual.
I know exactly what she needs, because I need it too. It’s the insistent twin to the need I’d felt for her before I took her virginity. This need isn’t something I am capable of walking away from. It’s driven by a force that is more than me. It’s woven into the threads of our very fate.
And I recognize it now for what it is.
It’s the same need that had driven me to steal her from the living realm so long ago. The same dark need that syphoned my sanity until I was left with only the madness to claim what was always intended to be mine.
“Please,” she cries out, and then her lips are on mine.
I kiss her, devouring her mouth and whimpers as I pull her from the bed. If I crawl into the bed in this form, the entire thing will go up in smoke.
She clings to me, her legs wrapping around my waist as I walk her to the bathroom. The little streams of blue aragonite that have been cut into the polished black stone of the floor sizzle and steam as I step over them. Even the water repels my Gods’ Form. How she clings to me, intact, is something I will never explain.
I redirect from the warm pool to the cold pool in the back of the room. The light that stretches from the raw aragonite chandelier is dimmer here, and I lay her down on the smooth stone that angles into a small, shallow pool of ice-cold water.
She doesn’t seem to feel the icy cold as I lay her in the shallow water. Her head is nearly all the way out, but the water is deeper by our hips, nearly covering her completely while I am mostly still exposed to the air.
My lips find hers again, seeking connection in this form that has never known connection like this before. I could change back. Could morph from beast to man. It would be easier for her, no doubt. But I can’t deny the need that pulses alive inside me now to take her like this. Raw. As I’ve never had her before.
She moans a breathy plea, her hands roaming over my body until that tightly wound need in her has me twisted up in the same vicious demand. Sanity winks in and out as her scent overwhelms me. I push her legs apart to settle myself inside, the weight of my cock falling against the warm wetness between her legs.
My rumble of dark pleasure wraps around the delicate plea of her soft moan. Cocooning it, capturing it as I’ve captured her heart. Teasing me with her very soul.
She rocks her hips, stroking my need with her own as I battle with my restraint. My body shakes as I hold myself up over her, bracing my weight so that I do not crush her in this form.
She’s so tiny.
“Hades,” she gasps, her mouth crashes against mine before she can speak anything more. I kiss her mouth the way I want to fuck her pussy. Roughly. Deeply. Possessively.
She moans into me, and I feel seed leaking from my tip to coat her sex. Desperation and hunger rage inside me as I work to move slowly. I don’t want to hurt her.
She is so soft.
“I need—” Her words are choppy. “I need you, Hades.”
Another dark rumble vibrates from the deep of me to invade our kiss. She sucks in a sharp breath as I shift my lips from hers, my fangs dragging carefully over the tender flesh of her very human skin.
Familiar, ancient pressure begins to pulse within my fangs. I reject the temptation of the ritual that would bind her soul to me for eternal protection.
I can’t?—
I haven’t even spoken to her about it.
She rocks her core against my aching length. Two ancient needs war within me. To fuck and claim. To bind.
Shards of sanity thorn into the swirling chaos of my madness to take all that she is and make every part of her mine. Those shards are the only thing that keeps me from sinking my fangs with their ancient venom into the delicate flesh of her throat. The only thing that keeps me from attempting to force an eternal bond. From an act that would only ensure I live wrapped in a regret I already know so well.
No, she needs to be willing.
If she is not willing, the bond will not take. Not properly. It will sour and turn brittle. In the end, it could very well be our undoing.
I swallow the venom that leaks from the tips of my fangs as I bury my sealed lips against her throat, inhaling the scent of her through my nose. She both calms the madness and inspires it.
“Hades,” she cries out again as I stroke her core with my tip. She’s so wet now, so swollen with need. “Please. I need you inside me.”
And I need your soul.
Pulling my face from the nook of her neck, I look deep into green eyes I could sink into and drown in. I bracket my weight with my forearm in the stone, palming the back of her head gently with my massive, taloned mitt.
The words to beg for her soul are on the tip of my tongue, but that is where they remain as I line myself with her hot entrance and begin to push.
A prickle of heat erupts over my form, swirling in the magma that veins the black of my flesh. Her mouth parts in a shocked O as I push again, stretching, invading.
She is so tight.
Her little pussy grips me in a vice that threatens to suck me dry, and she whimpers again.
“Oh, God. Hades.” A tiny gasp sounds. “I don’t?—”
I thrust, a little rougher this time, stealing another inch against the resistance. She lets out a little shriek, her head lifting quickly from the cradle of my palm. Her forehead connects with my shoulder, rough breaths tumbling from beautifully kiss swollen lips.
She gasps. “I don’t think you’re going to fit.”
“I will.” Am I trying to convince her or myself? “Relax.”
“Hades!” she cries out as I take another inch.
Every part of her is quivering now. I hold her tighter.
“Breathe,” I encourage. I beg. “Let me in, little goddess.”
She mumbles something incoherently muffled against my shoulder and I pause to allow her to adjust, panting. It takes every ounce of strength that I possess not to slam into her in a brutal invasion that is the way of the Gods of which I come from. From taking all of her and making her entirely mine even at the cost of her comfort.
I work to still the raging demands of my Gods’ Form. To be gentle for her.
I think it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. To go against the instincts of the God and instead bow to the ways of a mate.
I am a trembling heap of mass above her when I finally feel the tightening around my cock begin to ease. I think I thank the Fates their kindness for the first time in my existence as I sink deeper inside her. When I am entirely sheathed, rooted to the hilt in her sweet core, the nub at my base connects with her clit and she throws her head back and looses a whimper of overstimulation.
I catch her head in my palm, pull out and sink back in. I do this again, slowly and methodically, until I can no longer commit to such sweet torture and my rhythm becomes unsteady, frantic.
I pull back to slam into her again and again, drinking in the sounds of her body opening under mine, taking me in, inviting the invasion. Her legs are wrapped around me now, her heels in my back as I thrust harder and harder, my tip invading her womb with every deep thrust.
And still, that need that radiates from her in a swirling scent of my sweetest obsession only heightens. And that only adds to my own need until I’m fucking her so hard and so desperately— anything to give this need what it wants —that she’s screaming beneath me.
“Not enough!” she cries frantically, her blunt nails clawing into my chest as though she might claw her way beneath my very flesh. A glistening tear of frustration falls from the corner of her eyes as she repeats. “It’s not enough.”
I know what she means, because I’m chasing the same frantic peak we can’t seem to find. Can’t seem to catch. My balls are full of seed I can’t make myself spill, even as her empty womb calls for it. Begs for it.
Fuck!
Pulling out, I shove back on my knees to grip her hips and flip her over onto her hands and knees. I feel crazed, on the edge of something far bigger than I’ve ever known.
Her ass is lovely and round as I pull it back toward me. She cries out as I hiss between my teeth, line up with her hot core, and fucking thrust balls deep inside her. Her screams are of pain and bliss, ribboning the violence of the roar I free as I pull back, and thrust in deep again. My balls slap at her clit with every rough thrust into her body, pulling whimpers from the deep of her.
I fuck her like this for what feels like an eternity and yet—it’s still not enough.
The scent of her taunts the hunger in me. Something foreign builds inside me before it desperately attempts to rip free in an animal roar. I buck forward, one palm in the stone next to hers as the other hooks her around her waist. Holding her tight against me, I fuck her until my muscles burn and my insides ache.
Still, it’s not enough.
We both need more. Demand more. Pushing off the ground, I kneel with her back flush against my chest. Her head rests in the nook of my shoulder and chest, face tilted up to me, pupils blown with pleasure.
I’ve never seen a sight more beautiful than when her eyes get dazed like this while I’m buried balls deep inside her.
The thought lands with another lash of need that threatens to carve me up and spit me out at the mercy of her. Of whatever power drives me to fill her.
“You’re so close,” I rasp, and I can feel that she is. But she’s been hovering at the brink of this orgasm for nearly the entire time I’ve been thrusting inside her. Just as I’ve been unwillingly edging my own release. I urge, “Let go, little goddess.”
“I—” she moans as I twist her nipple between my fingers, careful not to prick her with my talons. “I can’t.”
Sitting back on my haunches, I pull her into my lap as I continue to fuck her from behind. I slide my hand to the bundle of nerves between her legs. Her lips part on a soft breathy O, those blown pupils dilate further. She’s incredibly tight in this position, fisting me like a vice. The pressure edges my madness, and I grit my teeth as I pump into her.
We’re both so close, I can feel it. Inside her chest, her heart drums an unsteady dance that strives to sync with the spill of her ragged breaths. We’re exhausted.
We’ve been at this for—fuck. If I’d known, I couldn’t fucking come in my Gods’ Form—that I couldn’t make my woman come?—
The idea that I haven’t brought her there fills me with a feeling of inadequate rage, and through the exhaustion that is beginning to slow the magma that runs in my veins, I manage to pick up the pace.
Her head rolls against my chest. She moans, “Hades…”
“Come for me, Persephone,” I beg. “I need to see you come.”
“You come,” she dares in return.
Fuck! Why the fuck can’t I come?
I fuck her like a wild demon set loose on the world. She screams and moans and pleads for more and I swear to Tartarus, she’s crying. Every sound she makes edges me on. Pleasure and pain and a need for more clash violently as I plunge deep again, and again.
I follow her when she pitches forward, her exhaustion weakening her limbs to jelly, and still, her ass pushes into me as though she just can’t help herself. Can’t help but take more even through the exhaustion.
She lays weakly in the shallow water, her head to the side, cheek to stone. My body curves around hers, and even as my muscles shake, I am careful to keep my weight from crushing her fragile form. She whimpers as my thrusts take a gentle, exhausted turn as I push my knee into the back of hers and lift her knee for better access to stroke slowly in and out of her body.
“Hades,” she calls my name, and through flaming eyes I watch her face.
She’s so beautiful when she cries. She’s so beautiful all the time.
I dip my head and run my mouth across the blade of her shoulder. Goosebumps rise on her flesh, even though I’m hotter than the spill of magma from the heart of a world ending volcanic eruption.
Amazing.
“You’re so beautiful,” I grunt the words through slow, measured thrusts.
She feels so good. So pure and crafted just for me.
Her eyes drift open, and she looks back at me over her shoulder. “You’re beautiful too, Hades.”
Not like this, little goddess.
As though privy to my thought, she whispers, “You are, Hades. You’re so beautiful even in this form you think is so monstrous. I love you. I love the light and the dark that lives inside you.” Her breath hitches as I thrust deep, rooting my tip in her womb and leaving it there. Suddenly, this is what feels right. This position. With her beneath me, my cock rooted in the womb it was made to fill. As though she hasn’t cut deep enough inside me, she continues, “I feel like I’m safest when you’re in this form. Like you’d burn the realms down if it meant keeping me safe.”
I would.
I would sacrifice every last soul in every last realm just to ensure that the heart in her chest continued to sing that beautiful lullaby it sang to me now.
“I love you, little goddess.” The words feel lacking. But there are no words with the power to convey the magnitude of my feelings for this tiny human woman with the soul of a goddess.
I take her mouth in mine and feel something new .
Pressure. In my cock and behind my fangs.
Make her yours and keep her safe. The tongueless words drift in threads of three as they weave their knots into my mind.
I know who they are like I’ve known every other time I’ve heard them, even though such communications have been rare. The tongueless Moirai. The three sisters of Fate.
Venom drips down my chin as the pressure mounts in my cock.
I will not take her soul without her understanding the cost.
The disembodied voices of those with no tongues reverberate inside my mind. Then tell her the cost. Show her the price that will be paid. Take her to Asphodel City.
I growl a low and desperate sound. I’ve avoided taking her to Asphodel City since I brought her into the Underworld. I have my reasons.
She is my reason.
I feel the moment the Moirai disconnect from this moment. From my mind.
The pressure behind my fangs recedes with the pressure in my mind, and I finally, finally feel as though I may erupt.
Persephone feels the shift, too. I can tell.
Her little cry of startled release sounds as her pussy clenches around my rooted arousal. Her body tenses, clenching beneath mine as she pushes her ass into my groin, as though seeking all that I can give her and more.
I shove my hips into her, even as I loop my arm around her belly to angle her just right. And together, we erupt. She shatters around me as my head falls to her shoulder, her pussy milking me of every drop of hot seed that shoots from my tip to fill her womb.
It feels like it goes on forever.
When I am finally empty and she is finally full, the scent of maddening arousal begins to slowly offer me reprieve.
Persephone lets out a soft little laugh as her body tries to melt into the stone of the cold pool that now feels shockingly warm.
I’ve been boiling the water this whole time.
Carefully, I pull back from her body and can’t help myself as I search her body for burns. There are none. I am relieved and confused as to how it can be. Steam rises from what was supposed to be the cold pool, and yet the human woman I’d just fucked senseless has not a single mark on her body.
I watch her as she lets out a long, soft sigh, and then promptly falls asleep.
My Gods’ Form does something else it’s never done. It laughs with pure joy.
I shift back into my human form before I lift her into my arms and carry her to our bed.
Then I fall into oblivion beside her.
But not before I note the fact that the moons outside are no longer blood red, but a bright burning white.