Page 53 of Queen of the Underworld

The darkening stain on her cheeks and the flare of heat in her eyes said the reward for his patience would be sweeter than ambrosia. It would be bliss. He needed to remain strong and deny the darkness that goaded him into seizing what he wanted and taking it right now. He was a god-king. She should admire and want to please him, as everyone in his realm did. She should be on her knees, begging for his aching cock.

Hades growled and slammed a lid on that dark desire, denying it.

Because he didn’t want her subservient. He didn’t want her to be like every other female in his kingdom. He didn’t want anything they did to be born of a sense of duty, something she did because it was the way of things and those lower than a god-king were merely there to serve him in any way he wanted. He wanted more than her body.

He turned away from her.

He wanted her heart.

Hades strode away from her before he did something he would regret, each step he placed between them tearing at him. He reached the bed and eased back onto it, and was uncorking the bottle of ambrosia to take the edge off again and dull his needs when the servants arrived with the food.

Four females set the wide trays of roasted meats, vegetables, cheese and fruits down onto the table. The fifth placed a carafe of wine down together with two cups. They each bowed as they left, and when he heard the tower door close far below him, he gestured to the food.

“Eat,” he growled and then sipped the ambrosia. “You must be hungry.”

Persephone eyed the food as suspiciously as she had eyed him during their time together, looking between the trays and him. He had to be imagining that flare of heat in her gaze whenever it brushed over him. He put it down to the ambrosia as he waited to see what she would do.

Willing her to taste the food.

Take the bait.

If she ate food of his realm, she would never be able to leave.

She would be forever tied to him.

Chapter 14

Hades knew.

Persephone had feared he would, but he had all but confirmed it when he had asked about her bath and whether she had been nude. Her cheeks flushed all over again, every inch of her heating and a wicked ache forming between her thighs as she thought about what she had done in the bath.

A bath that was still in the room with them.

Hades’s calculating blue gaze landed on her again, searing her, and she diligently kept hers off him, afraid of what he might see if their eyes locked. She was just being foolish. There was no way for him to know what she had done and if he did know, she was sure he would have mentioned it rather than just asking whether she had bathed nude.

By the gods, she hadn’t missed his reaction to her betraying blush though.

The way his lips had parted and his gaze had grown dark with desire, his pupils expanding to devour the blue of his irises, had roused her own needs, but it had been the flush of colour that had graced his sculpted cheeks that had made her tremble.

Again.

Had his thoughts been as wicked as hers had been when she had been in the bath?

As they had been when he had pulled her onto the bed next to him?

Being that close to him, breathing in his dark, spicy scent and feeling his heat, had almost wrecked her control and she’d had to tense and fist the sheets to stop herself from reaching out and taking hold of him.

Even now that ache to kiss him remained.

Burned through her.

Attempting to torch her fragile control.

She fought to stifle another wave of heat that rolled through her as she thought about what she had done while she had been thinking of him. Her fingers twitched and she balled them into fists, and Hades frowned down at them.

He moved away from her, allowing air to rush into her lungs again as the distance between them grew and his heat and scent no longer enveloped her. She remained where she was as he lounged on her bed again, battling for calm and control. She couldn’t let her unruly desires get the better of her.

But she also couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to be with a man.

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