Page 57 of Queen of the Underworld

Because he would mock her.

He wouldn’t.

Whenever her guard had dropped and she had revealed a glimpse of herself, he hadn’t mocked her or said a single cruel word. He had gentled and had looked pained, earnest, and had wanted to know more. He had wanted to share her pain.

She wanted to share his pain too, but they were far too alike, and she knew how it would go if she found the courage to ask him about it. If she asked him of his pain—his suffering—he would react as she had and clam up, refusing to speak of it.

But there had to be a way to convince him to share the burden of it with her.

She just wasn’t sure how yet.

“Sit,” he murmured and stroked the covers beside him, his voice black magic that coaxed her into doing as he wished—as she wished.

The rebellious, wicked part of her wanted to sit with him. She wanted to be close to him. As close as she could get. The annoyingly sensible part of her reminded her that it wouldn’t be wise.

Why wouldn’t it be?

Was it so wrong of her to be attracted to him?

To want him?

If she went and sat with him, would it shock him? Please him?

Her mind betrayed her again, imagination running wild and leaping forwards to picture him capturing her wrist and tugging her beneath him.

Persephone averted her gaze, looking anywhere but at him as her pulse rocketed and that heat bloomed inside her again, revealing how deeply she would like that. Her gaze landed on the bath and she couldn’t tear it away. She pictured him as she had in her fantasies, standing over her in the nude, hard and ready for her. And now he was here, on her bed, inviting her to sit with him. She could live out those wicked fantasies.

Nerves flickered through her and her palms dampened, and she was tempted to go back on her refusal and ask for that sip of ambrosia he had offered earlier, because she wanted to steady herself.

But that sip would be a double-edged sword. It would calm her, but it would weaken her defences too, loosening her inhibitions. She had witnessed plenty of inebriated males and females at the festivals on Olympus. People who hadn’t liked each other at the start of the evening had been all over each other once the right amount of ambrosia had been imbibed.

Hades offered the violet bottle again, as if he knew her thoughts, tipping the neck towards her and saying nothing as he tempted her.

Persephone resisted.

Barely.

He shrugged slightly, set the bottle down on the platter with the grapes, and pushed to his feet. He crossed the circular room in a handful of strides and plucked a pomegranate from the colourful display of fruit.

Hades opened it with a hard twist of his hands and offered one half to her.

His eyes locked with hers, holding her in place as he extended his hand to her, the look that glittered in them sending a cold sort of chill skating down her spine. He was waiting again. She could sense it. See it. He wanted her to eat the seeds.

Persephone shook her head.

His handsome face darkened and the air around him dimmed as shadows gathered, and she felt she had been right to be suspicious of the food. He was up to something. What would happen if she ate the pomegranate seeds? Would she lose her inhibitions?

Or would their effect be something worse?

Her eyes widened as it hit her and she looked out of the window at the distant orchard and then back at him, the thought he would go to such a length to keep her here in his realm stoking her anger and snapping something inside her.

“I will not eat something that might bind me to this dead realm—to you,” she bit out, hurt that this whole evening had been a lie, an act by him to lure her into eating something that would keep her here by force when she had thought he genuinely wanted to get to know her and had even been courting her in his own fashion.

Shadows burst from beneath his feet and he snarled, flashing his fangs as he swept everything off the table, sending it tumbling to the black stone floor, and then he advanced on her.

Only as he stalked towards her, all darkness, fangs and crimson eyes, she was hit by a feeling that was far from fear.

Desire.

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