Chapter Sixty-Two
Persephone
To my surprise, even after several days, Hades never mentioned Minthe. Never mentioned to me that the ugly plant left to fester on his desk was her. I’d taken to watering it when he was busy, my contrition forcing me to.
“I’m sorry. I’ll undo it as soon as I know how,” I promised.
Even now, my magic had some traction here, but it was unreliable at best. It seemed to work only on its own accord, not mine.
I swore the ugly, wilted bud, red like the color of anger, shifted to face me slightly.
Even as I watered her, she hated me. I sighed. At least now she had a reason.
When I found Hades on his throne, his head was shoved into his hands. I blinked. The shades must have been especially complicated cases for him to look so tense. He looked as if he could shatter under the tension at any moment.
That made the pomegranate wine bottle I had in my hand a fortunate coincidence.
I cleared my throat on my approach, the soft fabric of my dress swishing against my ankles with every step.
My heart startled, watching as he glanced up, all hard angles and narrowed eyes—a scathing warning—and I watched him immediately soften when he saw me.
“You look weary, God of the Dead. Would you join me for a drink?”
“I am. Though I must admit you’ve chosen a poor companion if you hoped to lighten the mood,” he brooded.
I smiled wryly before taking a sip of the wine straight from the bottle, loving the sweetness of it, before offering it out to him. “Good thing then that I don’t come to lighten it. I come to share it with you.”
"I don't understand my good fortune in the fates sending you." He murmured in awe. I smiled gently at him.
"You've toiled endlessly beneath the weight of the dead. You protected them, judged them, and gave them justice. You take care of them all. Did you ever stop to think that perhaps you deserved the same?"
His answering laugh crawled over every wall, too dark to be harmless. Grabbing the bottle, he tipped it back for three large swallows before passing it back. “I still can’t believe your magic works now.”
“It’s only sometimes,” I begrudgingly admitted, purposefully allowing his deflection, stepping up to the dais with him. “I don’t know why my magic suddenly worked. Or why it’s so temperamental now.”
“Maybe you’re finally synchronizing with this realm,” he mused before placing the half-full bottle at his feet. “Are you just going to stand there, little shadow?”
“Well, there’s only one chair. That’s kind of the thing about your throne.
There’s only one.” His eyes darkened, the same familiar darkness that accompanied his lips on mine, his hands buried in my hair only short days ago, the memory worrying my lip between my teeth.
A movement his eyes caught and tracked. A muscle worked in his jaw, the only warning I received before the shadows danced, converging on us.
They licked outwards, sliding beneath my feet, shifting gravity.
Soft. Inevitable. A moment of freefall, a gasp that left me, only in time for his hands to come around me.
When the shadows receded, I faced him in his lap, my legs on either side of him.
I was straddling the God of the Dead. On his throne.
He smirked up at me, that devious, wicked grin. Suddenly, I was hyperaware of every plane of his body against mine, heat igniting instantly at his touch. His hands settled tantalizingly high on my hips, fingers tracing mindless, abstract art that had me resisting the urge to squirm.
“Hades—”
He pulled me forward, so my ear was accessible to his mouth.
“Do you know how much I’ve wanted this? Every time you look at me like I’m not something to be feared.
” My heart thundered between us until I was certain he could hear it.
His one hand pulled me closer still, the other threading through my hair. “Tell me you want this as I do.”
There was only one answer I had for him. One without fear. One with only pure conviction born of need and something softer that demanded this. “Yes,” I breathed.
His teeth grazed the edge of my jaw, a slow, dangerous smile ghosting across his lips before he reached up to claim mine for his own.
In my wildest fantasies, in the small, silent hours of the night, I’d dreamt about what it would be like to thread my hands through his hair, to tangle my lips on his like this. To feel his warmth, to drown in his scent, to worship the hard angles of him.
But nothing would prepare me for him. This wasn’t just a demand, a collision, and it was nothing like the soft kiss we’d shared days before.
This was no breaking of a dam. Of emotions sparking, eternally hopeful.
This was a claim. A command. Feral. Unyielding.
He shifted me in his lap so I could feel the evidence of how much he wanted me.
Wanted this. My core pulsed in response.
I gasped against his lips, giving him the access he’d desired.
He consumed me like a starving male, devouring each breathless gasp.
“You taste like a reprieve in the darkness, Persephone,” he growled against my lips only to claim them once more. “In all my eons, I’ve never wanted anything more.”
“If you want me, claim me. But not here,” I whispered slyly. I withdrew, my feet finding purchase on the stone floor. I braced my hands on his wrists, keeping him pinned, enjoying watching his eyes darken under his furrowed brow. “Catch me, King of the Underworld, and have me.”
“Oh, little shadow, even the dark envies what I will take from you when I catch you.” Grasping my wrists and blocking my escape, he drew me down to sear me with a kiss, not letting me go until his teeth sank into my lip, just enough to make me gasp.
He smiled slyly. “You have until the count of ten. Then I’m coming after you, so you’d better make every step count.” He released me, and I wasted no time.