Page 18 of Hades and Persephone: Keeper of Sins

I don’t like it. The very idea that I’m at all possessive of my boss has alarm bells ringing in my mind.

Willa pouts. “Seriously, it’s not fair. How does this kind of thing even happen to people? And why am I never the people it happens to?”

I give her a smart little smile as I let my lips linger on the rim of my cup. “Probably because you see the negative first, and therefore miss your shot.”

“I do not see the negative first.”

“Was it not just you trying to talk me out of working for the creepy, but hot billionaire named Hades?”

“Whatever.” She gives me an indignant sniff. “I still think you’re crazy.”

If only she knew just how on point she was.

“Maybe a little.”

The sound of bare feet shufflingover tile has Willa craning her neck as she peers to the side to see Theo lumbering into the little eat-in kitchen. With his eyes still half-closed in sleep, he doesn’t see Addison come from the other side, and is unprepared for his attack. Having been together for the last week, both living and working close, things have gotten quite comfortable between most of us. We’re like a little family, which is kind of a bad description if I’m being honest. Too many have either slept together, or have intentions of sleeping together, to be called family.

But since I have no intention of sleeping with anyone, I don’t mind the little euphemism in my mind. It works for how I feel around them. How I’m coming to feel around them.

I’m entirely unsurprised when Addison reaches out to twist Theo’s bare nipple. I’m even less surprised by the roar Theo lets out as his eyes snap wide and he shoots off after Addison for retribution. The two of them have gotten close fast, probably because they’re nearly the same person.

Not only are they the same person, but they’re both man-whores, said with the utmost respect, because although I don’t engage personally in casual sex—or any sex, really, I know a lot of people like to.

The idea of casual sex blows my mind. No matter how I’ve tried, it’s simply not something I understand. Maybe it’s the way Mom and Dad have been together since high school. Maybe it’s my upbringing in the church, although I’ve never felt particularly close tothe God my parents’ worship. Probably because, when I’d been a young child, afraid and hearing a voice in the deep of my mind, there had been no real comfort within the walls of my church. Where there should have been love, and acceptance, and healing, there had only been fear, and judgement, and divide. The sourness of my near damning diagnosis had clung to me in the years after, a stickiness I’d been unable to wash from my skin.

Maybe my lack of sexual interest has nothing to do with my parents or the church, after all. Maybe it has everything to do with the fact I’ve never felt the kind of attraction that would drive me to sexual exploration. At least not before now.

No, casual sex isn’t something I engage in. But it’s also not something I bother judging others for. How another wants to live their life is of no consequence to me.

Still, I can’t help the realization, as I watch Addison catch Theo in a headlock, with his muscles and tan skin and floppy, golden blond curls, that maybe the sexual part of me I thought I lacked is finally awakening. Because I can’t deny the tickle I feel in my belly as I watch the handsome boy all the girls giggle over and bat their lashes at, dominate—and wonder deep inside what it might be like to be the prey.

Chapter

Ten

Hades

Everything is soft and,as both a hit to Demeter and a gift of comfort and familiarity to Persephone, floral. Soft neutrals accented in soft pink and softer green complement the warmth of sun gold and cloud white.

I’d decorated her room with the same magic I’d used and honed for centuries, gifted willingly by Persephone, at the wrath of Demeter, to craft not only the Elysian Fields, but the Isle of the Blessed, Vale of Mourning, the Grove of Persephone, and the Asphodel Meadows, where an abundance of life thrives withinthe Underworld.

Before I had crossed paths with the young girl who would become my wife—before she would become my Queen—my realms had been a dark and dank place, lacking life and meaning for the souls who met their living end to rest in my care.

I had been a creature of darkness, lacking patience or softness before her. I had ruled with a hand heavy of cruelty and demand, offering little in the way oflifeafter death. I took what I desired with no care of consequence. In my domination of her soft body, my stealing of her tender heart, my determination to plant my seed of life within the girl destined to become the Goddess of spring, growth, and love, she taught me the ways of softness, of living. It was through her tears, her grief, and later, her gentle love, that I came to shed the shadows of darkness and violence to better my realms and myself.For her.

With her capture, the domination of her body and heart, seeds of life sprouted within the Underworld. The magic that flowed within her blood ran life into the rivers that fed the barren land. Her fertility stretched beyond her body to birth a paradise in what had been a realm of only darkness and despair, to become a place of life after death. A promise of something more.

It is for this reason Demeter had rained her wrath on us both. On the entire realm I ruled with her daughter, my Queen, at my side. She had tricked andschemed, lied, blackmailed, and maimed to see the destruction of our great love.

She had thought with the death of Persephone, the stealing of her eternal soul, that the new life in the Underworld would die. What she had not counted on was the gift of eternal life Persephone had bestowed upon me when she’d given me her love.

But life must always be fed, and without my Queen to give with her natural ease, my realm was left to feed upon the only thing it could. Me and the Gods who chose to exist there, banished from Olympus or unfit for the sea.

“How’d you manage this, Hades?” Minthe pulls a pastel green pillow veined with shimmering lines of a lighter green from the bed, giving it a gentle toss before she pulls it into her chest for a hug. Her sharp, slightly slanted green eyes are fixed on me, and as usual, her soil-colored bob, dagger straight, falls to frame her pixie-face.

Minthe, like Leuce, is beautiful. Exquisitely so.

I recall a time when I thought the two nymphs were the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. I’d been wrong.

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