Page 114 of Queen of the Underworld

And then she shoved onto her knees beside him.

“Come, let us go for a walk.” She beamed at him. “You can teach me more of your language while we are out.”

Hades banded his arms around her and pulled her down onto his lap, eliciting a squeak from her as she crashed into him.

“Let us stay here.” He tugged her up him and peppered her throat with kisses. “I can think of other ways to distract me from my dark thoughts.”

She leaned into his lips, her fingertips pressing into his bare chest, and loosed a breathy moan as she angled her head, giving him better access to her throat. She had done that several times when he had been kissing her throat, giving him the impression she liked it, and rousing a wicked hunger to bite her and mark her as his.

Would she like that?

The blush of colour on her cheeks whenever he looked at her after lavishing attention on her throat, and the awkward edge to her gaze, made him believe she might.

For a moment, he thought he had won, but then she whispered.

“There is another place I would love to see.”

And he was defeated.

What his love wanted, his love would always get.

He kissed her throat a little more, lingering there to steal more of the feel of her in his arms, attempting to settle the darkness that still ran rampant in his blood. His head filled with pleasing images of cutting down every guard and pilgrim who had dared to gaze upon Persephone, and he kissed her harder, drawing her closer to him to pin her against his body.

“Hades,” she murmured, her light voice working its magic on him to calm the darkness and push it back.

She shifted in his arms, her mouth coming to meet his, and her kiss was soft, bewitching, and filled with love that stole his heart all over again. Even when he was close to raging, to losing himself to the darkness, she showed him affection. As if she loved that side of him too. The darkness slowly receded as he greedily kissed her, devouring her affection and claiming it all for himself.

She was his.

But she still hadn’t said the words.

She still hadn’t agreed to be his queen.

He was growing impatient. Each day that ticked past without her saying that she would be his forever was a day in which the darkness within him grew stronger, gaining ground against the light, and rose more easily to engulf him and snatch control from his grasp. He needed her to be his. Couldn’t she see that?

Hades drew back and sought her gaze, and the way her brow furrowed as she met it and her emerald eyes warmed, told him that she could see it. She could see how badly he needed her and that she was everything to him, as vital as air in his lungs and a beat in his chest.

And he could see the flicker of fear in her.

One he had yet to vanquish.

Something was holding her back, and if he pressed her to tell him, she would clam up. She had in all the times he had tried to goad her into talking to him about Olympus and her remaining here with him.

Rather than pushing her to answer, he had decided to give her everything she desired, to do whatever she wanted, slowly stripping down her barriers one by one until she was defenceless against him—just as he had no defence against her.

“Where does my love want to go today?” He tried to smile, an act that was still strange and foreign to him but one she apparently adored, because her face lit up whenever he smiled and whatever troubled her seemed to dissipate, no longer clouding her eyes.

Or perhaps it was because he insisted on calling her his love.

She liked his pet name for her, one that betrayed his feelings.

She was his love.

His everything.

“The Elysian Fields,” she said with a little smile of her own, one that wobbled slightly to reveal the nerves he could already sense in her.

Because the first time she had asked about visiting that place, he had denied her.

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