Page 56 of Hades and Persephone: Keeper of Sins

I won’t take her like that again.

Before I can do anything else, can shift to free herfrom my need, she spins in my arms to throw her own around my shoulders. Shock holds me prisoner as her hands dive into my hair, gold paint surely streaking the black. Her lips crash against mine and the fire her taste ignited blazes out of control.

Gripping her thigh, I lift her leg as I pull her into my lap. I devour the breath that falls from her lips as she wraps her legs around me, the warmth of her core connecting with the hard ridge of need I feel for her.

She gasps when she feels me, tension spreading through her body. Insecurity and hesitation leech into the hot spill of her desire, cooling the flame.

I’m not about to let her push away from me now. Not out of fear.

Pushing from the stool, I stand with her in my arms. Drying paint clings to the skin of my neck as she holds me tightly. I want to carry her from my office and take her to my bedroom. I want her body in my bed, the walls to collect the sighs I fail to absorb. I want her under me, around me.

I just want her.

I take her to my desk instead. I can’t recall a time in my history where my legs trembled, the waves of want surging through my body rendering me weak. As soon as her ass connects with the surface of my desk, she drops her legs from around me. She tries to straighten, but I’m already shoving closer. My hands pin the desk on either side of her as I steal a kiss from her lips.

The flavor of hesitation andinnocence linger under the taste of spring. When her hands lift to connect with either side of my face, a rumble of pleasure spills from the deep of me to echo in the vault of her. She’s so deliciously warm, like the spill of the sun over the sand on a cloudless day. There is a ribbon of heat to the scent of spring that radiates from her. It comes with a nagging of familiarity I can’t place, before it’s washed away by the small exploration of the tip of her tongue against my lips.

I freeze for her, letting her kiss me even though I ache to take control of this moment.

I want to make her crumble for me. Shatter around me.

“Let me make you come.” I’m not sure if it’s a demand or plea. She doesn’t seem to know either as her lovely green eyes widen. Her hands begin to fall from my face as blood rushes into her chest, her neck, her face. I catch her around the wrists, holding her hands in place. I pin her eyes with mine now that I’ve gotten the flames under moderate control.

“Hades, I?—”

“Please, Persephone.” Well, fuck, I am begging.This is a first.“Let me show you how good it can be.”

“I’m not—I haven’t—” She sucks in air, giving her head a small shake. “Hades, I’ve never?—”

Fuck, but she’s sweet. So damn sweet.

“I know.” I lean in to nip the delicate skin under her jaw, soothing it with the tip of my tongue before Islide the bridge of my nose along her jawline to her ear. “Say yes, Persephone.”

“God,” she moans. I bury my grin in her skin. “Yes.”

Yes.Her consent surges through me like wildfire. It’s a thing I never took the care to possess before. I never thought it mattered. But now that I have it, I know there’s nothing better. Nothing more precious.

She’s offering herself to me and I—I am honored.

Slamming my eyes closed, I find her lips again as I release the cuff of my hands from around her wrists to grip her hips. I pull her to the edge of the desk, grinding into the warmth of her core. I’ve never hated the invention of clothing more than I do in this moment. I long to feel her skin. I ache to explore the slick wet of her sex.

She’s going to drive me to the edge of madness.

My fingertips slip under her shirt and the sound of her breath hitching is music to my ears. I want to brand her untouched skin with my mark so that every man, every woman, human, God, nymph, and whatever else might crave her knows she belongs to me.

Sliding my lips from hers to her jaw, her head falls back and a moan topples from her lips. I nip a path down the length of her throat before soothing her skin with my tongue. She tastes like nectar and life and abundance. She is the embodiment of fertility, bestowing life into all that surrounds her.

Yet my seed never took root inside her when she was my wife. Demeter claimed it was because my seedwas decayed, and even the Goddess of fertility couldn’t grow life from damaged seed.

I wonder if, with her human body, I might succeed in filling her so full of my rotten seed that just one might take. Might spill roots into the earth of her. Might growlife.

Something more than desire swells inside me. It is a need I ache to see through with a violence I’ve never felt in all the years I’ve lived. Its focus is singular. Dangerous.

My fingers dip into the band of her shorts. Fire burns in my veins.

Tension floods her body as uncertainty sparks in her eyes, flaring caution. My fingertips graze a band of lace. A hiss escapes from between my teeth, calling pebbles of gooseflesh to the surface of every inch of her skin. My chest heaves as I stare down at her, filling with dangerous possession to claim every inch of her body, every crevice of her heart, every shard of her soul.

“Hades,” she sighs my name.

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