Page 97 of Queen of the Underworld

The heat was intense, and had moisture beading on her skin as Hades guided the chariot around the edge of it. She swiped at the droplets that gathered on her chest, and Hades growled. Her fingers stilled, her pulse picking up as she slowly lifted her eyes to his face. His gaze remained fixed on her hand.

On her chest.

The flames in her veins became a wildfire that threatened to torch her control.

She swallowed and couldn’t deny the urge to brush her fingers over her damp flesh, to tease him and make him crave her as fiercely as she craved him. She stroked the swells of her breasts.

Gasped as darkness suddenly enveloped her and cool air rushed around her.

It wasn’t a teleport.

Her eyes widened as she stared back at the opening onto the valley, catching a glimpse of the lake, and then tilted her head back and looked at the huge cavern that now surrounded her.

Her breath rushed from her.

“By the gods,” she muttered, another shiver dancing over her skin.

Crystals clustered at the edges of the cavern and protruded from the ceiling, each three times as wide as she was, and in their hearts, violet light glittered, casting a soft glow over her.

And Hades.

She looked at him, bathed in muted light, into eyes that glowed crimson with hunger.

That searing look was fire.

And it torched her control.

Persephone seized the reins near his hand and pulled on them, bringing the horses to an abrupt stop as she grabbed Hades with her other hand and tugged him down to her. He swooped on her lips on a wicked growl, swallowing her gasp in a hard kiss that poured frantic need through her.

That same wild feeling seemed to consume him too.

He hemmed her in against the edge of the chariot, bending her slightly over it as his body met hers, the full contact between them tearing a moan from her and flooding her with a need to feel him naked against her. Her entire body trembled and hummed with need—desire that swiftly stole control from her. She was a slave to it, all reason forgotten, all fears falling to the back of her mind.

There was only Hades and this burning need to have him.

She clawed at his leather shirt, snapping the laces and pulling it off him. He eased back an inch to help her, his lips leaving hers only as long as it took for him to pull it over his head. The second it was gone, he claimed her lips again, and she claimed his chest.

Oh gods. He was steel covered in silk beneath her questing fingers, the way his muscles flexed as he moved bewitching her and cranking her temperature up, until she moved past frantic into something more, something wilder. Before she was aware of what she was doing, her hands had glided downwards, stroking the ropes of his stomach, and were tugging at the fastenings of his trousers.

Hades growled again and his hands joined hers, making faster work of the lacing than she could have, and then he gripped her hand and brought it against his bare cock.

Her entire body seemed to pulse as her palm met his hard shaft, moisture swift to pool at the apex of her thighs as realisation slowly dawned on her. She was touching a male. Touching Hades. Nerves tried to get the better of her. Hades vanquished them by lowering his mouth to her throat and growling against it as he kissed her, and for a heartbeat, she thought he liked kissing her throat.

And then she realised she had started wantonly stroking him.

And apparently couldn’t stop.

Even as her cheeks flamed at what she was doing and her mind tried to scream that they were moving too fast, her hand continued of its own volition, wrapping around his cock to grip and stroke him from the base of his shaft to the blunt crown.

Hades yanked her dress down to expose her breasts, and she gasped as he palmed one and pulled the hard bud of the other into his mouth. Thrills skittered through her, shooting like arcs of electricity from her nipples to her feminine core. She leaned back and glanced down, past Hades’s dark head as he laved and sucked her nipple, sending more whips of lightning down through her body, to her hand where it gripped his long cock, working up and down it.

A pulse of arousal shot through her, a single thought screaming in her mind.

She wanted that inside her.

Hades’s thoughts must have been travelling a similar path to hers, because he grabbed the skirts of her dress and pulled them upwards, the sensual glide of the soft material over her bare thighs sensitising her skin and making her ache to feel his hands on them. He didn’t make her wait. He released her skirts and palmed her thighs instead, inching her dress up as his hands roamed upwards and the material caught on his wrists.

“Persephone,” he murmured as he drew back, his crimson eyes meeting hers, searing her and drawing a moan from her as she realised he wasn’t just breathing her name.

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