Chapter 14 Hades
Hades
The gardens remind me of her. Although they’re only crystals shaped to form petals laid in emerald chips, I’m hopeful she’ll love them.
They won’t be a reminder of what she's lost, but rather a reminder of her power and how she changed the world. My thoughts drift to kissing her neck and the loneliness that I’ve felt without her when there is a crack in the sky above me.
The sound is muffled by the walls of my home, but I wheel around to look in that direction. Cerberus barks a joyful sound, as if someone has come home.
As if Persephone has come home.
Shadows move across the windows inside. Firelight flares in my rooms. I take one step toward the house, then another, and then I have no choice but to stop, every piece of my being on edge of what might be.
Every sconce on the walls inside is lit, and there are fires lit in the hearths.
The flames get brighter in a pattern I can see from where I stand in the garden.
The light follows a path down the hall outside my rooms, then rushes across a floor below, then another, until it streaks across the ground floor and bursts out the garden doors.
My queen has arrived.
Persephone. My heart falters for a few seconds at the sight of her silhouette, but it is more than enough. Her curves are undeniable. Her long hair blows in the breeze. Her shadow moves gracefully, and at first I’m struck by her beauty and grace. My memory did not do her justice.
My queen is home. She has returned to me. She is here.
The breeze carries the murmurings of a conversation and before I can even move, she picks up the hem of her gown and runs. Toward me. Persephone’s steps kick up ash as she goes, throwing a cloud of it into the air.
Again I’m struck by the thought that it’s a dream. My love. She runs to me. Her steps are light as she rushes down the garden path toward me. With my arms out, I erase the distance between us, craving her more and more with each beat of my heart.
Is she real? She must be.
Then the starlight catches her face, and it is my queen. She is here. The curve of her cheek begs me to brush my thumb over her soft skin.
There are a few final seconds where there is still space between us, and then Persephone is in my arms. Where she is meant to be. Her embrace is everything my shattered heart needed.
There is no hesitation in the way we come together.
I throw my arms around her, and she throws her arms around me, scrambling up onto her tiptoes to loop her arms around my neck.
My love. My heart races and my blood heats.
My love has returned to me. I’ve never felt such relief, such a feeling of completion.
Persephone drops kisses all over my chin and neck until I put my hand on the back of her head and pull her in for a deep, fierce kiss. I’m hungry for her. Needing her love more than I need air. Her legs lift with the kiss, wrapping around my waist, and I groan into her open mouth.
My queen. She clings to me.
All I can do is taste her. I’ve been starving for her.
I’ve died a thousand deaths without her.
I’ve been condemned to an eternity in the dark without her, and I did not know how close I was to insanity until I could kiss her again.
With every thought of losing her again plaguing me, I hold her close to me, my heart beating against hers.
My grip is ever moving with my hands on her back, under her ass, around her waist. It would not matter if I let go, because Persephone has her legs wound so tight around my waist that she would not fall.
She kisses me back with equal ferocity, her body arching into mine, the heat between her legs pressing into my waist. Persephone threads her fingers into my hair and grabs it in her fists.
Forcing a hint of pain that intensifies the pleasure.
Fuck me. I’ve never been this hard for her.
She slides her hands around my neck and tugs me closer.
Her nails gently scratch as she goes. It’s heaven.
She’s my heaven. She grips my shoulders, then my face, panting into my mouth.
“Is it you?” I ask, my voice hoarse with all these days apart. Nothing has ever felt worse. Nothing has ever been more torturous than having Persephone on Olympus. “Tell me it’s you, my queen. Promise me it’s you. Not some trick or spell.”
“I’m not a trick.” She breathes with a twinkle in her beautiful eyes, and then kisses me so deeply she can’t speak.
She tastes like honey, and her skin carries the scent of flowers and sunlight, and this is everything she is.
My queen is life and warmth and a beating heart.
She pulls away for a moment, breathing deeply, her chest rising.
“I’m here. I came with Hecate. She brought me back. ”
“Hecate,” I repeat, my mind slow to understand anything beyond my embrace with Persephone. Slowly, I register what’s happened. Hecate did not betray me, then. “She stayed with you?”
Persephone makes a needy sound and kisses me again, seeming as if she has forgotten my question.
I’ve almost forgotten it, too, by the time she tilts her chin and looks me in the eye.
She settles her weight more firmly into my arms and gazes into my eyes, stroking my hair back from my face and tucking it behind my ear. “I…what did you say?”
“Hecate. Did she stay with you?” More thoughts race in my mind as I swallow thickly, imagining my queen on Olympus. I’ve only known stories of her laughter and beauty she brought to the heavens. Images of her from the dark pool of water.
“She was not my chaperone in Olympus. Surely you know the Titan was not needed there where—” She drifts and then clears her throat before looking me in the eyes once again.
Persephone shakes her head. “She was there when it counted. She was there when I needed her. She brought me back, and they don’t know. We hid in the garden.”
“What garden?”
“I used to go to this place in the garden when I was a child and wanted privacy. No one knows about it. Not even my mother. So I waited there with Hecate until the moon rose, and then—”
Then I know what happened. Hecate bends the crossroads to her desire.
She moves between realms with her hounds.
And she did as she has for centuries. Hecate, the mistress of the dead, came back to the Underworld with the sliver of the moon before it turned dark completely, and she brought my queen with her.
As I gaze into Persephone’s eyes, I fall into the depths of them. My need to love her turns ravenous. Hecate can take what she needs from this place, for at this moment, I am an absent king. I need my queen and that is all I know.
Persephone cannot speak anymore, although she doesn’t try to. I have my mouth on hers again, and I cannot stop tasting her. With one hand and a snap of my fingers, I form a silk blanket from the ashes on the ground and lower us both down so that I lie above her.
She blinks, her eyelashes fluttering, and strokes my hair that’s fallen again.
One kiss is tempting and the sound of it fuels me for more.
Her hair is spread out under her on the blanket like a halo.
I kiss her lightly again and this time a flush rises from her chest into her cheeks.
Light glows on her face. It is from sconces in the gardens around us, but it is a low, pleasant light and was not burning until she came. She brings light to my darkness.
Persephone searches my face, tracing her fingertips over my features. “It felt like forever,” she murmurs. “It felt like lifetimes.”
“Yes.” I lean down and kiss her again, trailing my lips along her jaw to the side of her neck. “Longer than forever. Eternities. I could not stand it.”
“Neither could I,” she agrees with a quiver in her voice. “I couldn’t…I…”
Persephone’s eyes widen as if she is awestruck by me.
As if she has never seen anything more beautiful.
As if I am the only man she has ever wanted like this.
It is true—I am. There was no one else before me, and there will be no one else after me.
I will not let her go. I will never let her go. “I…I need you.”
There is more she wants to say. I can tell. So I kiss her neck and suck softly at the flesh there, feeling her breathe faster. I drag my lips up to the tender spot just beneath her ear and suck there as well.
“Hades.” She breathes my name and my cock throbs.
I drag my lips over her skin now, down to her shoulder, pulling the neckline of her gown open to expose the tops of her breasts.
“You are my queen no matter where you go. On Olympus, in the mortal realm, in some other realm no one has discovered…you would still be my queen. You will be my queen. Always.”
“Don’t—” She shivers as I pull her neckline down farther, until both of her breasts are exposed to the air and her rose colored nipples pebble.
“Don’t you—oh.” Persephone gasps as I breathe above her right nipple, then directly onto it, then close my mouth over it.
“You are my king,” she says in a rush. “Wherever I go. There is nothing that can stop you from being my king.”
A groan leaves me from deep in my chest. I nearly lose all composure. “Say it again.”
Persephone repeats “You are my king,” and I bend my head to hers to kiss the words out of her mouth. Deepening it and losing myself in her touch. She arches up to me, her hips rocking against mine, and I cannot hold back.
I need her now.
With rough fingers and a primal need, I push her gown up to her waist and kiss the insides of her thighs as I tear open my clothes.
Persephone braces herself on the blanket, watching me, her lips shining in the garden lights, her eyes sparkling, and when I kiss her other thigh she reaches down and pulls her gown higher and higher until she works it up and over her head.
Then she is naked in the garden, and it is right—it is the place she belongs, in my realm, in my garden, underneath me, writhing with need.
She spreads her legs for me. I do not hesitate.
I need to kiss her clit, too. Loving how she moans when I do.
I suck her and in response, her fingers fly to the back of my head, holding me there with unadulterated greed.
I need to taste her sweetness, even stronger between her legs, and lick her clit as she gasps.
Her thighs press into my head once, then twice, and then she threads her fingers into my hair and pulls me away until I am back at her mouth again.
I kiss her own desire into her mouth and drag my cock through her soft folds. I could come from that feeling alone, and I let myself linger in it for as long as she will let me. Teasing and preparing her for what's to come.
It is not long before she tilts her hips and I sink into her, letting out a low groan as I do.
“Persephone,” I manage. “My queen.” My forearm falls to the blanket above her head as I rock myself inside of her, forcing myself deeper and deeper as her back arches off the blanket.
She’s tighter than I remember. Hotter. Wetter.
There’s nowhere else I want to be. Fucking hell.
She is everything I need. There is nothing else I can think of.
Only her body accepting me as I thrust in hard.
And then harder. Forcing small gasps from her sweet lips.
I grow with every thrust, holding my breath and fucking her like I need her to come on my cock just to live.
Persephone cries out, her muscles clenching around me.
She holds on to me when she can, but her grip moves to the blanket as I fuck her.
Clenching the silk and pulling as if it will save her.
She writhes under me, arching her neck, and I kiss her there as I fuck her mercilessly.
She takes me as deep as she can. She comes with my name on her lips, then a cry that is not any word at all, just an echo of her pleasure.
I kiss her until I must stop to breathe, but I cannot stop fucking her. My body demands it. The sound of her. The sight of her. The taste of her. I take it all, and I will never get enough.
I fuck her as if the depravity of it would chain her to the Underworld. Mine. All I can think, as she cries out my name and her nails dig into my back, is mine.
Persephone comes again, gushing on my cock, and I want to keep fucking her until all my realms end.
Until Olympus comes down and shatters into the Underworld.
Until the mortal realm becomes one with this one, and there is nothing left in the world.
It could all happen around us, and I would not want to stop.
I hold her to the blanket and bury myself deep in her, as deep as I can go, and though I want it to last, my release takes over.
I’ve never had a more powerful orgasm. It is all my need and love and worship for her.
Persephone lifts her head and presses her face in my shoulder, her legs shaking. She trembles with the force of our union. In the quiet afterward, the only sound I can hear is her frantic breath.
Then she says something too soft to hear.
“What was that, my queen?”
She lifts her head from my shoulder. “Again,” she whispers and then kisses me sweetly.
“My ever demanding queen,” I murmur against her lips and then thrust my hard length back into her sweet cunt.