Page 68 of Hades and Persephone: Keeper of Sins

He doesn’t remove his pants beforehe plants a knee into the bed between mine. Positioning his big body to hover above mine, he peers down into my eyes. Sincerity bleeds from his words as he tells me, “I will never harm you. Your body will never come to pain by my hands. Protecting you, providing for you, and ensuring your happiness will eternally be my primary focus.”

His words are a blade slicing through the net that surrounds my heart. I grapple at the strings, desperate not to let the organ slip through the cracks. Not to let it fall.

“Hades…” I shake my head slightly, my eyes filling with emotion I’m not ready to share with him or anyone. I croak, “Kiss me.”

“Tell me you understand that you are safe with me,” he commands. But beneath it, I hear the plea.

I want to sob. “Please.”

“Persephone.” My name is soft in the deadly undercurrents of his voice.

I feel like I’m spinning out. Losing control. I am untethered, ungrounded. I need something solid to hold me in place.

I don’t wait for him to kiss me. Rearing up, I cover his lips with my own, shocked for a moment by the sting of hot heat. Hades doesn’t deny me, doesn’t push me away. But he doesn’t lower his body to cover mine even as I try my hardest, with every ounce of my strength, to pull him to me.

I feel so painfully exposed, uncovered and raw. I’mmore than naked, he’s filleted me, gutted me with tender words that make this thing that can’t be real feel far too tangible.

My foolish heart wants what my mind knows it can’t have, and my innocent body grieves the man it’s tasted and will forever crave.

“Hades, please,” I beg against his lips. I don’t realize I’m trembling, shaking in his arms until he sweeps one beneath my back, holding me tight. It does little to subdue the shake of my rattled soul.

I’m far too emotional, I think. I must be close to my time of the month, because this is ridiculous.

Something hot and shameful stings my eyes. Tears, I realize, too late to stop the fall.

Hades makes a noise in the back of his throat. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I need—” I shake my head. I don’t know what’s happening.

Is this what it feels like to fall?

This tearing pain and burst of helpless—what—love?

“Tell me, Persephone.”

“I feel like I’m lost.”

Hades shakes his head. He doesn’t understand.

I swallow a sob. “I think—I need—I just—”God, but my soul feels untethered. I need something to ground me. Something to hold me still. Something to tug the balloon of my heart back into place. To anchor me.

I can say none of that. The words simply won’t come.

But somehow, I don’t need to. As though he has a window into my mind, into my innermost thoughts and fears, Hades simply knows.

Dropping his body to mine, he gives me his weight as his mouth takes mine in a kiss that is deeper than any I’ve experienced before. It’s so deep, so deliciously invasive, I feel as though he’s stroking my very soul with the tip of his tongue.

He hugs me to his chest, his body grinding into mine as I whimper into his kiss. Fire seeps from his skin into my own, boiling my blood and leeching into the very marrow of my veins. He is inside me and yet it’s not enough. I need more. Connection. Anchoring.

Him.

Please, God, please.I’m praying, but for what, I’m not sure.

Hades makes a noise, a groan as he tears his mouth from mine to kiss a blazing path down the column of my throat, across my chest and between my breasts. He lingers there to pull one breast into the inferno of his mouth before flicking the tip of the other with his tongue. My hands are in his long hair, twisting in the waves that have fallen from the tie he wears it in.

I suck in a breath, goosebumps rising on my skin as my belly quivers under the tickle of his beard, the rough press of his burning kiss. Desire hollows me, and I cry out at the throb of empty need in my core.

God, I need him. I need him to anchor me. To fill me. Invade me, please.

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