Page 71 of Hades

“No.” That word leaving her lips was like a spear in his heart, until her kiss-reddened lips curved slightly. “I am not fond of this tower, but there is a place near here, or there once was, where I met the most incredible man—god—in this world and fell madly in love with him.”

Hades growled and claimed her lips again, unable to stop himself from stealing another kiss as her words warmed him and eased his pain, and a guilt that was so old it was part of him now, fused with his soul. It was a strange sensation as it faded away, as if she had kissed a scar that had long irritated him and it was suddenly gone.

“Do you mean that?” He drew back again, seeking the answer in her eyes, desperate with a need to hear her tell him that he had been wrong all these years.

“What? Do you think you were the only person who fell in love that day, Hades?” She reached up between them and smoothed her palms over his cheeks, her touch the most incredible kind of bliss. Her smile was soft and her eyes glittered with love as she gazed up at him. “I think Eros shot an arrow in us both that day.”

His wife was sentimental for believing the god had anything to do with their feelings for one another, but he didn’t call her on it. He was too glad to have her back in his arms, where she was safe. She could be sentimental all she wanted right now.

Maybe because he was feeling a little sentimental too.

He couldn’t stop gazing at her and was finding it hard to curb the need to kiss her again, to taste her lips and feel her in his arms, even when he knew this wasn’t the time or the place to lose awareness of their surroundings like that. She wasn’t free of her prison yet.

As soon as she was, he would surrender to the needs building inside him.

He clamped down hard on them and looked her over again, the softer feelings that gripped him growing sharp edges as he took in the rips in her nightgown, the blood on her skin, and the cuts that darted over her arms and chest. He reached for the one that ran across her biceps, one that was fresh, his dark eyebrows knitting hard as he growled.

Persephone placed her hand over his and clutched it. “I am healing. Do not concern yourself with it.”

“Do not concern myself?” he rumbled, his tone so dark he was sure it was clear that was something he couldn’t do. “You are my heart, Persephone. How can I not concern myself with your wellbeing? How much of that blood is yours?”

She smiled softly, her emerald eyes glittering with love, and tangled her fingers with his as she brought his hand away from her arm. “Very little. I think most of it came from the man whose throat I—”

Her smile wobbled and faltered, and he pulled her back into his arms, crushing her to his chest and palming the side of her head, needing to hold her and needing her to know she didn’t have to make light of what she had done or pretend it hadn’t affected her.

“I am here now, my love. Do not think about what you did. Those deaths should have stained my soul, not yours. Will you ever forgive me?” He didn’t want to release her, but he needed to see in her eyes that she did, so he eased her back and gazed down at her.

“Of course,” she murmured and tiptoed, bringing her lips to his again.

He greedily kissed her, unable to hold himself back, eager to give her what she wanted and not only because he wanted to ease her pain and distract her from her sombre thoughts. He needed this kiss and this contact as much as she did. He needed the reassurance that she was real, alive, and with him again.

When she broke the kiss, he released her and stooped to pick up his helmet. She frowned at him when he lifted it above her head.

“To shield you from their eyes.” He lingered with it close to her head, drinking his fill of her beauty and bathing in the loving look she gave him, one that was all tenderness and gratitude.

He would have to be a monster to make her head out of the tower visible to all eyes, and she had long tamed that part of him, bringing the man he had once been to the surface instead. He told himself to place it upon her head, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not yet. He just needed to look at her a little longer.

“I love you too,” she whispered, as if she had reached right down into his soul to divine the truth locked within it, seeing straight through him to the heart of the reason he didn’t want to stop looking at her.

He loved her, and for a moment he had feared he had lost her.

She feathered her fingers along his jaw, her touch maddening, rousing the beast he struggled to hold back. The look in her eyes said she knew exactly what she was doing, courting his darker side and drawing out that part of him that was crazed with need for her.

She was playing with fire.

Thoughts of getting her away from their enemy and somewhere secluded, where they could be alone and could satisfy this raw hunger that blazed within him, and within her too, had him placing the helmet on her head with one hand as he took hold of her hand with the other. Her fingers trembled as she laced them with his, betraying her fatigue and her fear. The idea that she was shaken was like a knife in his gut, cleaving him open, and he looked back at where she had been, awareness of her thrumming in his veins.

In his soul.

“You did what you must,” he whispered, words he hoped soothed her and the pain she no doubt felt. He squeezed her hand, silently telling her that he was there with her—for her. She didn’t have to fight anymore. She didn’t have to take another life.

His beautiful goddess of creation had always despised death, even when it had been necessary.

Sometimes he wondered why the Moirai had made them for each other. One who stood in the shadow of death, and one who stood in the light of life.

The romantic part of him, a side he kept well hidden from everyone but Persephone, whispered that it was because they balanced each other. He had the feeling she provided more balance to him than the other way around, that the cosmos had witnessed what he had been becoming and had created her to tame him and pull him back from the brink.

Something he would never stop thanking the Fates for.

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