Chapter Sixty-Five
Persephone
Iwasn’t running to escape. Nor out of fear, nor urgency. I was running to be found—and by the gods, I loved every second of it.
The hedges and vines blurred as I sprinted, my breathlessness snagging my laughter.
The air was thick with the scent of moist earth, greenery, and wild roses.
Each inhale was sharper than the wine we left untouched on the dais, enough to make me heady.
A fork in the path loomed ahead. I didn’t think, didn’t pause, didn’t question—I darted to the narrower path on the right.
Behind me, footsteps echoed, dull thuds of his boots catching up.
My core clenched, impatiently. It wanted to get caught and get caught now.
Except where was the fun in that? Making him earn it, earn me—that was the genuine thrill.
My pulse spiked. A flicker of movement in the disrupted shadow, a ruffling of foliage, made me swallow thickly. Every choice was an instinct, every heartbeat was a countdown.
I smiled, pressing closer into the hedges of the labyrinth, letting it enroll me in its depth in a bid at hiding. Torchlight from above trickled down, casting a starkness to every shadow and an orange glow to everything left in its wake.
A whisper of movement—too close. I whipped my head to the left, narrowing my eyes to see in the dim.
The air shifted, the promise of capture tensing every muscle.
His outline was faint, but it was there.
Heart in my throat, I spun, laughter spilling from my lips as I darted away, lunging down the nearest corner to break his line of sight.
“Keep running, little shadow.” His voice drifted through the maze, like smoke on a breeze.
“You’re getting slow in your old age, Hades,” I taunted, not hiding my grin. His words, the chase, curled through me like warmth.
A low sound echoed, half growl, half chuckle, unravelling something deep in my chest. “Is that so?” A whisper on the back of my neck sent gooseflesh alight over me. “I like seeing you this enthralled.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said forcefully, looking around to see where he could be. From my position in the middle of the path, I could clearly see if he came from either side, and I would have a headstart in the opposite direction.
That dusky laugh again. “Then why can I hear your heart pounding from here?”
My breath caught, my eyes still scanning. He must be close. Or his hearing was far better than I’d given him credit for. My face burned to think of all he must have heard at my expense during my time here.
Driven by instinct, I ducked left beneath a long hallway of ivy.
Every turn looked the same. Footsteps exploded into motion behind me, but I dared not look back.
I darted left again, twisted right. I couldn’t stop, couldn’t pause, my body taken over by the urge to move.
The maze turned, and I turned in time with it, swallowed happily by the shadows and taken in by the thrill of the inevitable.
He stayed with me, despite every effort I gave to thwart him.
He wasn’t running just to win. He chased me to claim me.
The maze had rearranged—stopping me in my tracks.
He was somehow in front of me, grinning in that unhinged way that had my pulse thrumming. I backed away slowly, my gaze rigid on him, knowing the moment my eyes left his, he’d be on me. I was nothing if not a sore loser.
“Uh-oh,” he tsked, stalking closer. “Lost, little shadow?”
I swallowed, taking another step back. “Just luring you into a false sense of security.”
He chuckled, danger and fondness somehow fitting together neatly. “Is that what you’re calling running in circles?” A step closer, tensing like he was about to pounce. “Careful, I do love when my prey thinks it’s clever.”
I darted as he did, rounding the corner of the maze—
To hit a dead end.
I balked. Hadn’t I just come from this way?
The wind shivered the leaves, as if they were laughing at me too. Hades’s head whipped up as he approached. “Even the maze is on my side, it would seem.”
“A bit traitorous, if you ask me,” I said pointedly at the hedges.
Apparently they have a will of their own when I wasn’t actively commanding them.
They didn’t respond even as Hades strolled up to me.
Neither of us moved. I wasn’t even certain I breathed as the dark god before me crackled the very air he moved through.
The wind stirred once more, the cool air at odds with my flushed, too sensitive skin.
The promise—or perhaps threat—of what came next hung between us like an unspoken secret, too big for words.
There was only he and I.
He prowled forward, all arrogance and boasting as he finally reached me.
“Mine.” A single word had my core heating. Tensing. Searching.
“Yours,” I affirmed. I watched, fascinated, as his eyes darkened, that tight grip on his control loosening with every beat. His hand came up to graze my collarbone before gripping my throat, gently enough I could breathe, but securely enough to know I was firmly his.
“Shadow.” The heat in his tone was evident, a beacon in the dark.
I burned where his lips met whispered against mine, a tantalizing caress before the sharpness of his teeth rolled over my lip.
“God got your tongue?” I said nothing. Instead, my arms wrapped around him like the ivy and roses and vines hedging us in, keeping him close and giving him no room to pull away.
“Nothing to say?” His dark amusement sparkled in his eyes.
“I wonder if your tongue will be softer for me when mine is between your legs.”
My breath left my body. Sense left my body, and I was mindless with need. Tightening my grasp on his shoulders, I leapt, winding my legs around his waist, the heat of me pressing shamelessly into the hardness of him.
His breath turned ragged as he cursed.
He ground into mine, his fingers biting into the soft flesh of my thighs, the small discomfort keeping me grounded on this plane.
“Please.” A single utterance. A command. A plea. “Hades.”
“Say it once more.” His shadows poured off him like corporeal things, writhing in the muted light. “Beg.”
“Please,” I whispered, giving him exactly what he wanted. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”
The words had hardly tumbled from my lips when his shadows coiled tightly around my wrists, jerking my hands upwards and breaking my contact with him.
My lips parted on a startled gasp as I glanced up to where the shadows held me tethered, and entirely under his control.
There was something about ceding control to him that was incredibly liberating.
I leaned into it, already heady with his brand of mercy.
“I wouldn’t dare.” Pressure on my wrists yanked me further upwards, his hands guided my legs around his shoulders to support myself. Panic flared. I’d just been running, yet he was busying himself with the skirt of my dress.
“Hades—” My concern died on my tongue as he lashed me with his, his name tumbling from my lips when he found that hyper-sensitive apex.
He glanced up as he devoured me, a dark, heady mixture of amusement and sin plain for me.
I cried out when his fingers came up to stroke me, readying me, sending heat scattering along every limb. “Fucking gods.”
“I hope you’re only fucking one god,” Hades crooned into me as he pushed two fingers inside.
My head tipped back, lips parting on a moan as my hips flexed into him.
He didn’t stop his assault as he glanced up at me.
“You don’t come until I give you the order.
I’m very skilled at punishment, little shadow, so show me how obedient you can be.
Or don’t and let me have a whole different kind of fun. ”
I nodded frantically when his fingers crooked inside me, desperate to keep my volume down. Hades’s tongue rolled over that spot that craved and needed. I had the distinct feeling I was going to have strong mixed feelings about this game, giving the pressure that had already tightened in my core.
“Persephone,” he warned.
“Yes.” The word fractured between a moan and a gasp.
His assault didn’t stop.
His tongue never left me again. His teeth raked over that aching spot, sending shivers of pleasurable pain that radiated each limb.
I tensed, trying and failing to grab the shadows tethering me, trying to brace, to find purchase against his onslaught.
Every time my body quickened, desperate for release, his tongue would roll away, and a huff against my thigh would betray his amusement.
I wanted to grab him, to shove my fingers into his raven hair and force him not to stop.
Not to roll away. I panted, I trembled, and I cried out for a mercy that wouldn’t come.
“Hades, please,” I begged as he brought me higher again. “I need you.”
“What do you need?” His tone teasing. “Say the words.”
“I need you to let me—” A cry when his teeth met that spot again, sending my thoughts back to whence they came.
I tried to reach for him, anything to prod him on, but the shadows coiling along my wrists had no dual allegiance as my labyrinth does.
They kept me quite still, quite bared to him, quite at his mercy.
“No. What do you need? Be specific,” he admonished. This time when he stroked me it was almost too much and still it wasn’t enough. I’d been to the edge and back so many times I was dizzy, panting, desperate, and ready to cry.
“I need you to make me come. Please, I’m begging,” I whimpered through the embarrassment of my words. Hades’s eyes darkened in lust. This time when his tongue and fingers teamed up, it only took a few seconds to drive me upwards.
“Come for me, little shadow. Not for any other god. It’s my face you make a mess on. It’s my name you scream into the quiet.”
I exploded.
My vision blurred, everything in my body pulled tight, only for it to fall into blissful oblivion. The world fell away as my release ripped through me. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, there was only us.
When my mind returned to me, his shadows had lowered me down, my legs around his waist again.
“Did you think I was finished with you?” His grin was wicked.
Sinful. Feral. And completely inescapable.
He lined himself up with my entrance that was already begging for him.
He slid home, making me give out a strangled cry.
I yanked against the tethers, the only things keeping me on the ground.
Growing need moved my hips in time with his, greedy for more.
The pressure built again, a quickening of my core building, going higher with each powerful thrust of his hips hitting just the right spot.
“Fuck,” he ground out, jaw tight. “Persephone.”
I couldn’t answer. I bit my lip, trying so hard to control my volume, but moans and gasps still tumbled from my lips before I could stop them.
I felt him somehow grow harder within me.
“Give me one more,” he ordered, his hands spearing me onto him harder.
I shattered once more, falling into ruin just as he grunted, following me.
We stayed locked like that for several heartbeats as my breath returned to me. My limbs that had been so tense, so strung tight, felt leaden and languid now, as if I’d had the workout of my life. Even Mother’s combat training sessions hadn’t left me this exhausted.
Slowly, gently, he pulled out of me and helped me put my skirt back in place, smoothing a few telltale spots with a smirk. His shadows vanished, leaving me to rub feeling back into my hands. He noticed.
“Are you okay?” His fingers threaded sweetly through mine, an act entirely at odds with what his hands did to me only moments ago. I cupped his cheek with my other hand, dragging him down to meet my lips.
“Yes.” Our kiss was gentle. Worshipping. The kind of kiss that made you sigh, bat your lashes, or pop your foot up. His other hand pulled me closer.
“You always do that,” he murmured, more to himself than to me, his expression unguarded in a way I’d only just begun to appreciate.
I blinked. “Do what?”
“Tame chaos,” he murmured.
“Maybe even the Lord of the Dead,” I crooned with a smile that widened at his glare.
“A danger that I find I don’t want to run from,” he admitted, his fingers squeezing mine endearingly. “Not anymore.”