Chapter 85
About Damn Time
HADES
Lyra winds her arms around my neck, holding on to me tight. “How do you know?”
I groan, still so relieved I don’t know which way is up. “Because, my star… I know your taste, your feel under my hands, the sounds you make. Not even Aphrodite herself could imitate those elements that are so completely, elementally you. Not to me.”
“Oh.” She burrows into me.
“Shy?” I chuckle into her hair. “You’ve already given yourself to me once.”
“More than once,” she murmurs.
I suck in, my arms tightening around her compulsively. More than once. Because we have a future together. All this gods-cursed time holding back and breaking Lyra so she can survive the Crucible bursts like a damn giving way.
I need her.
I need to know that I don’t lose her.
“Then…your body knows my hands,” I say. Soft.
She shivers as I slide one hand under the bottom of her shirt, smoothing over the bare skin of her back.
I tease her with the tips of my fingers, relishing the difference between us—rough and silky soft—lightly brushing around her waist to tease at the sensitive flesh of her stomach.
To trail upward, though not as high as she wants, and dip down, but not as low as she wants.
And all I can think is how much I need this.
To lose myself in her. In us.
“Hades.” My name escapes her on a breathy whimper.
She feels it, too. She knows all the parts of us, all the moments before the Crucible, the connection built over time. “I know, my star. I know.”
Holding on to her with one arm around her waist and my hand still teasing her belly, I stand us both up. Capturing her gaze, I walk us backward. Still teasing, unable to stop smiling. Unwilling to stop.
And she looks right back at me with green-gold eyes so full of trust, but also a hint of something else. It’s as if she’s trying to absorb every nuance of my face, of the feel of my hands, of…me.
She gasps when I press her up against the wall.
Then slowly—agonizingly slowly, because I love the way her breath increases to needy little pants—I draw her shirt up. I stop just at the top, with her arms trapped inside, pinned above her head, and half her face covered.
Mine.
Fucking mine.
For the longest moment I just keep her there, my gaze tracing over everything I see, and she shivers, but her full lips are smiling.
I lay my cheek against hers. So godsdamned soft. So godsdamned mine.
“Your lips know my lips,” I murmur in her ear.
But I don’t kiss her. Not yet.
Instead, I suck on the lobe of her ear, and she whimpers, tilting her head to give me more access. But I don’t accept the invitation. Instead, I trail slow, tantalizing kisses across her jaw, only to hover just barely out of reach of her lips.
“Kiss me,” she whispers. Demands.
I grin.
She will be mine. My queen.
I slip the shirt the rest of the way off only to capture both her wrists in one hand, pinning them above her head, curling my other hand into her waist.
“Do you know how long I’ve waited for you?” I ask her.
Millennia. Ages. A fucking eternity.
She lifts her gaze from my lips to my eyes. The gold has nearly swallowed the green now as if her very blood has heated to boiling, to overflowing.
She doesn’t hide a single emotion from me, and I let her see mine—all of me—in my own eyes.
Wanting. Of course wanting. I could turn to ash in a blink at the heat stoking inside me.
But the unguarded emotions that reach between us, ones I couldn’t let her see yet in any time…
those I give to her freely now, knowing our future together is close, even with what she still has to endure.
If she didn’t survive it, she wouldn’t be here now.
So I show her. Tethering me to her in all new ways. I show her all of what I feel.
Craving. Longing. Desperation.
Promises. The world.
But also wariness, because I can’t quite believe it’s real, this future where I can keep her by my side. Somehow.
And underneath all that is the patience, the wild kind of faith in her, that it took to get us this far.
“I’ve wanted you all my life,” I say. “Loved you for I think at least half as long. I’m not even sure when the loving started.
It crept up on me between your sporadic, confusing-as-fuck visits.
And I think your curse doesn’t work on me, because I was already half in love with you the day you tried to throw a rock at Zeus’ temple. ”
She sucks in sharply, eyes widening.
“And now you’re here, in the present and not disappearing for centuries at a time. But I can’t—” My voice breaks, and I swallow hard. “I can’t have you.”
The words are a growl, laden with my need, frustration, and pain.
Her gold-and-green eyes turn glassy, and even though I have her pinned, because I’m suddenly fucking terrified to let go, she still manages to press a soft kiss against the corner of my mouth. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.
Sorry.
She’s sorry.
And I can see that she is. Feel it.
All that time I’ve spent just…waiting. But I don’t know what she was doing. I tried to stop myself from imagining it. From worrying over it. If I wasn’t already a god, I’d pray. Hells, I’d get down on my knees to even Zeus if it meant that the waiting was over.
Especially since she reminded me that how I react to the prophecy is still my choice. The biggest reason I’ve been pushing her away. It didn’t take away the problem, but the different perspective gave me…permission. Hope.
She presses another kiss to the corner of my mouth. “Thank you.”
I tilt my head, wanting to kiss her, chasing that contact, until the words sink in, and I pause.
“Thank you?” My voice is a rasp now. “For what?”
“All of it,” she says. “For waiting. For falling in love with me. For trusting me. Enduring me. All of it.”
Heavens save me.
I lean into her, pinning her harder against the wall with my entire body, pressing the ridge of my arousal into her belly. Even then, I still hold back.
“I don’t want your thanks, Lyra,” I snarl.
But the way she always does when she should fear me, she smiles instead. “What do you want, then?”
Everything. “Your fucking eternity.”
Her smile falters. Just the tiniest bit, but I see it.
“I’ve earned eternity with you.” I’m still snarling. “With the time I’ve already paid.”
She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t say the words I want to hear. Make me promises.
“Can you even give me eternity?” I demand. Accuse.
I slip the hand at her waist past the band of her pants, past her panties, and twist to slip inside her.
“Fuck me.” She’s already slick.
I pump that finger once, slowly, before going still.
Her hips chase more, but I don’t allow her to move. “You can’t promise me eternity. Can you, Lyra?”
She looks me in the eyes. “No one can promise that.”
What does that even mean? Obviously, she survives the Crucible, or she couldn’t be here now. But does she leave me after? What the fuck happens that would make me let her go?
The way I’ve pinned her, I’ve left her with only one way to reach me.
She takes it, dropping her head forward so we’re cheek to cheek.
“What I can promise is my heart, no matter where or when I am. And nothing—not time, not death, not the heavens or the hells, not even the Fates—can take it away from you.”
Fear and fucking feral possession war within me, and I go rigid against her, fighting both. The only movement is my chest, pressing into Lyra with the rapid rise and fall of my breathing. She lifts her head slowly, meeting my gaze.
She doesn’t shy away from what she sees in it. In me. She never has. If anything, she’s always run straight for it.
“You can promise me this?” I demand through stiff lips.
She offers me a smile, letting her heart shine through.
All of her—the teasing, the faith in me, the trust, the need.
All those words she said to me after I stopped the Anaxian Wars, words I was too afraid to hear then—still am, if I’m honest—those words settle inside me in a way that I will never turn my back on again.
“I promise,” she whispers.
Mine. Only because she gifted herself to me. Mine. Only because I’m going to give myself back to her. Every part of me. Holding nothing back ever again.
“Leave your hands above your head,” I command.
A flush of pink warms her skin, and she nods. Then doesn’t move as I slowly lower the hand holding hers above her head.
“Toe off your shoes.” Another command.
She obeys.
Fuck if I don’t love it. Maybe especially because she usually doesn’t obey a damn thing I say.
I strip her of her pants and panties, rising to reach behind her and untangle her from her bra.
Then, gaze devouring every inch of her body stretched out on display for my eyes alone, I take several steps back. I reach one hand overhead, and my shirt comes off in one tug. And I love the way her eyes greedily trail over my body.
I remove the rest of my clothes, and the instant the last item hits the floor, I teleport, and when I return, I am on my knees in front of her. I grin, throwing all my fears and questions aside. This moment is for us alone.
“Every queen should be worshiped,” I murmur. “Now…spread your legs, my star.”
Despite the way her limbs are visibly trembling, she eagerly obeys me in this, too.
Fuck if having her submit to me, because she’s as desperate for me as I am for her, isn’t the sexiest godsdamned thing I’ve ever seen.
I’m so damn hard, every pulse of my blood through my cock is on the edge of pain.
The instant she parts her legs, my mouth is on her. My tongue. The taste of her my own sweet heaven. I slide a finger deep, even harder because of the sound she makes. One finger. Then two.
She drops her hands to either side of her hips for balance as she gives herself over to me.
I torture her with my tongue. Lash at her before gentling, then pressure. I drink in her taste but also every moan, every shudder, every buck of her hips, every tremble.
Her orgasm comes hard and fast, catching us both by surprise.
She cries out and then tumbles forward, as if she can no longer hold herself up. But so fast that I have to use my god speed to catch her against my chest.
She looks up at me with pleasure-hazed eyes, the pupils blown out wide so that only the gold glitters at me from them, cheeks flushed and her body replete against me.
I can’t help the laugh that rumbles through me.
To make her look like this.
How long I have dreamed of it.
“So that’s what stars look like when they collapse,” I tease.
But before she can smile or grumble in return—either response is possible—I pin her back against the wall, hands above her head again. Only this time, with my other hand, I lift one of her legs and wrap it around my waist. “Hold on.”
Keeping her upright with one hand holding her wrists as she stares back at me with so much desire, I feel heat flush through my body at her look alone. I almost fumble positioning myself with my other hand.
Then I’m gripping her leg, under her fucking perfect ass, lifting, and…
Her head drops back as I enter her in one long, lazy stroke, taking my damn time as I lower her agonizingly slowly, as if we’re both moving toward each other and what we can bring each other.
I don’t stop until I am as deep as she can take me, slick and hot and tight, her eyes on me.
I groan and drop my forehead to her shoulder. “Paradise,” I whisper. “And madness.”
Maybe that’s why I love her so much. Because she reflects my kingdom—heavens and hells—and my kingdom reflects me.
She is my mirror.
Made for me.
And me alone.
Then I lift my head to stare into those beautiful eyes that adore me even as her hips press into me in an unconscious physical plea for more.
“I want more.” I echo that need aloud. But I’m not just talking about pleasure. “I want your heart. Your soul. Your fate. Your future. All of it.”
There’s a desperation in that demand. I can hear it in my voice. I don’t care. I’d strip my soul bare if it meant I’d never lose her again.
“Only in exchange for you,” she whispers. And my heart stops dead in my chest. “All of you for all of me.”
My heart goes from dead to exploding with elation.
“Done.”
I snap my fingers, and a glittering golden ribbon made entirely of light winds around us, playing between our bodies, all as I start to move, sliding in and out of Lyra.
Then I start to speak, timing my words to what I’m doing to her with my body. “I, Hades, King of the Underworld and god of death, bind myself to you, Lyra Keres. All of me. For eternity.”
The ribbon tightens, as if the fabric of the cosmos is tying us to each other.
And my heart is near to bursting with the moment.
It doesn’t feel heavy, or wrong, or as if I’m trapping her, tying her to the monster that lurks under the surface. She’s right. I will find a way to beat that fucking prophecy. Because of her. Because of her faith in me. But also for her.
I’m making a faith. Pledging myself to the woman who has loved me across time, despite who I am fated to be.
Will she give me this, too? This magical bond I’m asking her for?
I continue to move my body. I will bring her to that peak of pleasure again, follow her into that abyss gladly, even if she doesn’t choose to say those words back to me.
“Only if you wish it,” I whisper. She needs to know this is her choice.
“I, Lyra Keres,” she murmurs.
And I didn’t think it was possible, but my heart explodes again.
She’s absorbing every stroke, every thrust, surge after agonizingly beautiful surge, and staring down into my eyes as she says the words.
“Queen of the Underworld and goddess of things still unrevealed, bind myself to you. Give myself to you. Vow myself to you, Hades. All of me. For eternity…” She swallows. “Even should we be parted.”
Parted?
I dislike that word intensely.
She presses her hand to my face. “Don’t worry,” she whispers. “We’ll find a way.”
The ribbon of power and energy around us tightens even more, cinching down.
“I believe you.” Everything she’s told me to do has been true. Not always easy. In fact, most of the time, they’ve been the hardest challenges of my life. But true.
I lower her enough that she’s clinging to my shoulders so I can take her hips in both my hands. “Hold on, my star.”
And then the ribbon turns from sparkling bands of light to…fire.
It starts at the tips, the blaze eating along the trail it’s made over our skin, and heat follows. Heat and Lyra. I move inside her with the speed of a god, claiming her body as our bond burns into our very flesh.
And the pleasure that builds in the wake of both heats extinguishes everything except for her…and us.
Until it ignites inside.
When she comes undone, I swallow her cries with a kiss, groaning into her mouth as I follow her over the edge—incandescent, indescribable, ineffable.
Rapture.
She’s mine.