Chapter 21 #2
I guided his hand to my throat, where my pulse jumped beneath his fingers, then to my chest, where my heart beat for him.
“I won’t leave you.”
“Don’t leave me,” he whispered. “Ever again.”
I brushed a kiss against his lips—how I loved the feel of them—to soothe him before pulling back.
“Where is Morrigan?” I asked carefully. The question had to be asked, no matter how it hurt. “I haven’t seen her around. She didn’t come with you to rescue me.” I paused, my pulse quickening. “It’s hard to say this, but you need to know something about her.”
His body went rigid. His eyes turned to ice.
“I already know Morrigan betrayed us,” he said. “She’s been working with our enemies. She gave them the key to breach the wards at the lake house. That’s how Kingsley found us.” His tone grew colder. “She drugged Dante and Orren. She led you into a trap.”
“I convinced her to go with me,” I said softly. “I had to try when I learned Mortis Bloom was the only thing that could counter Hera’s Whip. I’m not going to apologize for drawing that venom from your veins.” Over his outraged expression, I lifted my chin. “Others may fear you. I don’t.”
He let out a low chuckle, his knuckles grazing my cheek. “You have nothing to fear from me. Never, love.”
“I knew France was a trap after we ran into those creatures,” I said, leaning into his touch. “That’s when I knew she wasn’t on my side. But I also knew she’d get the cure to you. That was all that mattered, and mission accomplished.”
On the ride back, I’d told him what happened. I skipped the encounter with the Fates, lied about being unconscious, said Sebastian pulled me from the water. The lie sat bitter on my tongue, but he didn’t press, as he didn’t want me reliving the ordeal.
“You’re too good for me, Bloom,” he said. “I don’t deserve you.”
He still couldn’t call me Persephone. His mate. His queen. He had no idea I’d truly awoken.
“Your secret is safe with me.” I smiled at him. “So where is Morrigan now? In your dungeon? You didn’t kill her, did you?”
“No. She escaped,” he said. “But she confessed everything. She wasn’t happy I chose you. She wanted you gone. She thought if you were dead, I’d turn to her.” His gaze held mine. “I need you to know there was never anything between us.”
“I trust you,” I said.
His throat moved. Emotion stormed in his eyes, like my trust meant everything.
“And I’m sorry she failed you in the end.” I understood that betrayal. Morrigan had been at his side longer than I had. “What will you do about her?”
“I’ll hunt her down.” The promise in his voice was colder than ice. “When I find her, she won’t live. Betraying me is one thing, but betraying you?” He shook his head. “That is unforgivable.”
“She isn’t our priority now, though,” I said.
“No.” He took my hand, threading our fingers together. “My priority is you. Always you. Keeping you safe.” His thumb stroke circles on my wrist. “And you need to know there’s a trial coming for all students.”
Dread pooled low in my stomach. “What trial?”
“Officially, it’s supposed to weed out the weak.” His eyes held mine, grim and furious. “But you’ll be the primary target.” He never sugarcoated things. “Our enemies will use it as an opportunity to finish what they started.”
He shifted closer, his hand rising to cup my face. “Dante and I will train you. As soon as you’re recovered, we begin. You need to be ready, love. You need to be able to protect yourself when I can’t reach you in time.”
The unspoken words hung between us: Like today. Like every time before.
I nodded to show him that I understood the weight of what he left unsaid.
And I had an advantage our enemies didn’t know about—I’d stolen my threads. I was no longer bound by the Fates’ machination.
I was writing my own story now.
After he finished washing me with tender care, he helped me stand. Water and rose petals streamed from my skin back into the tub. His gaze darkened, hunger replacing fear.
Then he kissed me.
It started tender and quickly turned desperate. His hands roamed my skin, pulling me closer until there was no space left between us. I melted into him, feeling the hard planes of his body through his soaked shirt.
The silk clung, outlining every hard muscle. I could feel his heart hammering against my chest, could taste his male need on his tongue as it swept into my mouth.
“I need you.” He growled the words against my lips, the sound vibrating through me. “After today, after nearly losing you, I need to be inside you. Need to feel every inch of you.”
“Fuck me however you want,” I breathed.
His eyes smoldering, my pulse spiking, my need responding to his.
He lifted me from the tub in one smooth motion and carried me to the vast bed. The silk sheets were cool against my heated skin.
He stood before me and, with a silent snap of his will, his soaked clothes vanished.
I’d seen him naked thousands of times, and it still stole my breath. Every single time.
He was carved from bronze marble. A broad chest narrowed to a defined waist, his abdomen sculpted enough to cast shadows in the low light. Scars mapped his body, some old and faded to silver, others newer. Each one a love story to me. Each one a testament.
And his cock, already hard and ready, jutted thick and long from the dark hair at his groin.
“I crave you,” he said, his voice thick with need. “Always. It’s never enough. Will never be enough.”
He joined me on the bed. Our bodies collided— hands grasping everywhere at once in desperate hunger.
His mouth found my breast, his tongue circling my nipple until it peaked, hard and sensitive. His teeth grazed the bud, sending sparks of pleasure-pain straight to my core.
While his mouth worked, his hand slipped between my thighs. His fingers found me wet, ready, aching for him.
“So wet for me,” he growled, the approval dark and thick in his voice. His fingers circled my entrance, my arousal. “Your body knows who it belongs to. Doesn’t it, love?”
“Yes. You,” I gasped, arching into his touch. “Always you.”
The truth was written in every trembling cell.
He slid two fingers inside, and I cried out at the invasion. His thumb found my clit, circling and teasing ruthlessly.
“That’s it,” he murmured, watching my face as the pleasure built. “Let me see how I please you.”
He worked me like he owned me, his fingers curling to stroke that deep, blinding spot. His thumb maintained its steady, maddening pressure, building the sensation until my world narrowed to his touch.
I was close, dancing on the sharpest edge.
“Not yet, baby girl.” His fingers withdrew, and a whimper tore from my throat at the loss. “Not until I truly fuck you.”
He positioned himself between my thighs, the broad head of his cock nudging possessively at my entrance. The heat of him, the sheer weight and promise, stole my breath.
“Breathe, love,” he whispered, leaning down to brush a soft, fleeting kiss against my lips. A sliver of tenderness in the storm.
But I didn’t breathe. I held perfectly still, suspended in the aching anticipation, waiting for him to shatter me whole.
He slid in. I felt every inch, every ridge, every pulse of his cock as he filled me. A stretch so intense that it was more than perfect.
When he was fully seated, buried to the hilt, he paused. Let me adjust to the fullness. Let my body accommodate his size.
Then he began to move.
Slow at first. Long, deliberate strokes that dragged against my inner walls. Then faster. Deeper. Harder, until the bed frame groaned in protest beneath us.
“I’ll fuck you every morning,” he vowed between thrusts, his voice ragged. “Leave your needy cunt wet and sore, aching for me. You’ll spend all day thinking of me. Remembering how I feel inside you. Waiting for me to come back and fuck you all over again.”
He thrust deeper and harder, delivering his promise.
“Sounds good,” I moaned in pleasure.
His hand found my clit again, rubbing in tight circles that matched his thrusts. Pleasure built, coiling tighter in my belly with each stroke.
All of a sudden, I was caught between past and present, trapped in a loop where memory and reality bled together.
This had happened before. This exact scene. Hades above me, inside me, loving me with a desperate intensity—the scent of rain and him, the whisper of my name on his lips.
In how many lifetimes had we fucked like this? How many times had we come together, trying to outrun the same relentless, terrible fate?
My fingers traced the scars Hera’s Whip had carved into his back. The fresh ones from the flogging were still tender, the skin raised and angry. There were other scars, too. Older ones. Some so ancient they were faint, silvery lines on his sun-kissed skin.
An eon of battles. An eon of fighting for me, protecting me, trying to save me.
I thought of his torment through each of my deaths and his wait through decades of emptiness. His search would begin, scouring the mortal world, desperate to find me before our enemies did, only to lose me again.
Every one of my tragic deaths had left wounds in him that never healed. They’d accumulated over millennia, until his very essence was scarred through. He’d never had a chance to mend before the next loss tore him open again.
He could have moved on. Chosen another goddess, another lover, another life.
Yet he had never bent. Never faltered.
Always faithful. Always mine.
Nero thrust deeper into me, his face tight with concentration, pleasure, and emotion he was trying not to show.
A confession sat at the tip of my tongue, heavy as a stone.
I wanted to tell him so badly, to end his suffering, to erase the fear from his eyes, to let him see that I remembered everything—that the curse was broken, that this time was forever.
But I couldn’t.
My heart hardened. My resolve tightened like a fist.
I had to leave him in the dark, just as I’d been left for so long. He needed to think me vulnerable, still mortal, still in need of his protection, while I gathered my strength and plotted my revenge.
“I won’t let you go, love,” he vowed, embedding himself deep within me. “I’ll protect you with my black soul, every twisted piece of it.”
I gazed up at him through my lashes. “Will you still be with me if I betray you like Morrigan?”
“Even if you betray me a thousand times over, I’m still yours,” he said fiercely as he moved again, fucking me brutally. “That will never change.”
“And I’m yours.” I renewed my vow. “Forever.”
“And if I wronged you...” he started, his voice heavy with guilt.
I knew what he meant. The kidnapping. The forced marriage. Stealing me from the sunlit world into his darkness.
He couldn’t reveal the details directly, so he spoke in riddles, in implications.
And no matter how he had wronged me at the start, his love since had burned everything else away. Erased every grievance.
I’d died and escaped into oblivion, free of memory. But he’d remained. Had to watch me die, over and over. Had to carry the weight of every loss while I forgot. That kind of agony, stretched over millennia, would have broken any being. But for me, he endured.
What woman would not forgive him? Who would not love a man like that?
Our loyalty had survived time, death, rebirth, every tragedy.
And yet, I still had to keep my truth locked away.
It hurt. Like swallowing glass.
But it was necessary.
“All is forgiven,” I promised, framing his face with my hands. “Whatever you did, I forgive it all.”
I sealed his lips with my kiss, pouring everything I could not say into it.
He growled in gratitude, lust rolling off him. He pounded into me, hitting every right spot with brutal force, as if he was bringing me to war.
I threw my head back in ecstasy.
His rhythm turned frantic. I met him thrust for thrust, our bodies crashing together with burning need. Pleasure built to an unbearable peak.
“Come for me, baby,” he ordered.
I exploded and shattered and took him with me. As my pussy milked his hard shaft mercilessly, he roared my name while chasing his release.
Afterward, he cleaned us with a whisper of magic. Then he gathered me in his arms and carried me back to the tub.
The water was still warm, still scented with herbs. He settled us both in it, my back to his chest, his arms locked around my waist. His cock still rock hard.
I felt safe for the first time in days. Weeks. Lifetimes.
“Sleep, love,” he murmured against my hair. “I’ll watch over you.”
He remembered that sometimes I loved to sleep in the tub.
“I don’t want to sleep,” I said. “I want you to fuck me again.”
“And I thought you’d never ask, little pale flower.”
He thrust into me from behind, and he fucked me like I was his most treasured possession. His greatest prize.
Pleasure misted my eyes.
Oh, yes.