Page 23 of Hades and Persephone: Keeper of Sins

His voice drops to a rough kind of dark that strokes against the very core of me like a physical touch. “I would be hard pressed not to take you. To corrupt you. Completely.”

My breath stalls in my lungs. Oh, who am I kidding, I’m not breathing at all. He’s stripped me of breath with only one sentence. He’s tossed a match to the embers of me with only one dark look.

I really shouldn’t, but I can’t help myself. “It doesn’t bother you?”

“What?”

I tip my head. “That I’m so much younger than you.”

His eyes drag the length of me, blazing the fire inside me even hotter. “Should it?”

“Probably.” I wet my lips. His eyes track the motion.

My belly knots.

He takes another drink. “You are a woman. Young, sure, but a woman all the same. And I am a man. If you invited, I wouldn’t deny.”

“Oh, wow.” I breathe breathlessly. I clutch the glass between my hands, willing some of the chill to fan the flames inside me. “I—I—I don’t know what to say.”

“Persephone,” he calls. I can’t look at him. He rounds the island. He stops so close to me; I can smell the dark scent of him mixing with the sweet explosion that is the champagne in my glass. He commands, “Look at me.”

I suck in a shuddering breath and squeeze my eyes closed. I feel ridiculous, but I’m shaking. Quaking down to the very bone. I started this inappropriate conversation with unintended consequences, and now I’m reaping those consequences. Because Ican’tlook at him.

I’ve never felt fear like this.

“I am going to touch you,” he warns, and then finger and thumb connect with my chin, tipping my head back. My eyes flutter open entirely of their own accord. I’m hit with the fullness of the dark attraction he exudes.

“Hades.” His name is a tumble of overstimulated, raw nerves between us. I can’t think.

“I’ve made you uncomfortable.”

I shake my head. Then I nod. Then I murmur, “I don’t know. I’ve never been like this with a man.”

“Like what?”

“Alone like this. In a man’s home. Trying to learn him.”Why does this feel so intimate?“What he likes and doesn’t like. What he expects from me.” He is still holding my chin, keeping my eyes. I don’t tell him he doesn’t have to do that. I’ve been ensnared by his coal black gaze. There is nowhere else I can look. I rasp, “I don’t know what you expect from me—from this.”

“Exactly what you have given me. Natural conversation.”

“I don’t want to do something that might,” I stutter. “Lead you on.”

His dark eyes darken, but he chuckles, releasing my chin. “Natural conversation often results in light flirting.”

Is that what we’d been doing? Flirting?

“Oh.”

“I will endeavor to be honest with you in all that Ican. I am a man entirely capable of engaging in light flirtation without physical expectation.”

My face couldn’t possibly be hotter. All I can manage is another a pathetic, “Okay.”

He holds my gaze. “This is why I’ve hired you.” I’m confused, and it must show, because he continues, “Talking to you makes me feel like I can breathe. You don’t feed me what you think I want to hear. You don’t show me what you think I want to see. You are natural and refreshing and innocently unexpected.” His lips quirk. “And I very much look forward to your dinosaur nuggets.”

Chapter

Thirteen

Persephone

---