Page 69 of Hades and Persephone: Keeper of Sins

A rumble of something decadently dark slithers from the deep of his chest to echo in the innermost empty parts of me. My body is alight with flame and need, my thoughts fractured with infectious want I am helpless to cast aside. To discard. It’s taking over me. The only thing that matters in this moment is this man—and me. And the fact that we are two, feels universally wrong when I am certain we were made to stand as one.

I’m crazy. This makes no sense.

My mad soul could swear its jagged pieces were intended to fit into the puzzle of his.

“Hades,” I cry, begging for something, but I am unsure what. “Please.”

His answering groan feeds the fire he sparked inside me. My breasts feel achingly swollen; my core agonizingly empty. A sob spills from between my lips as I writhe beneath the tongue he travels over my navel. Tears leak from my eyes to fall over my temples and into my hair as my hands curl in soft sheets, searching for something—anything—to anchor me.

I don’t understand why I’m feeling this tsunami of emotion, for no reason that I can fathom.

Hades sucks in a breath and moans. I think—I think he’s tasting the scent of me. My arousal.

It only feeds the need I feel. My belly knots and wet heat seeps from the core of me as big hands press intothe tender flesh of my inner thighs, spreading them wide. Hades drops his head between my legs, his hot tongue connecting with my clit and sucking hard, almost violently, at my sex.

In response, I throw my head into the pillows, arching my back. Air surges into my lungs with every desperate gasp I pull between my lips. I’ve never felt anything like this. The feel of his tongue on methere. His head between my legs. He sucks and pulls, uses teeth and tongue until I’m a trembling mess of pleas that tumble from the tip of my tongue into this firelit night.

The orgasm comes on faster than I can prepare for. After last night, I knew another orgasm with Hades would be intense. This one blows my first out of the water. It’s like the eye of a storm, in a dark depthless sea. I can feel the waves tugging me under, pulling me deeper, and I am helpless to stop it.

It surges through me, waves crashing into the core again and again until I am limbless on the bed beneath him.

And, God, he’s so beautiful. So darkly, dangerously beautiful. With his dark hair twisted back at his nape, a few thick locks fallen around is face, his gold skin and miles of muscle speaking credence to the power he houses deep within. How could I have thought that I could do this with him—and somehow keep my heart on the sideline? How could I have thought that after this with this man, that my tender, untouched heart would remain the same?

I am a fool.

Because, God, I think I’m falling for him.

And it—hurts.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs softly. Perched on his knees between my legs, the wide expanse of his chest, the muscles that ripple with his every movement, catching like dark diamonds in the firelight—he should frighten me. Hedoesfrighten me. Yet, I’ve never felt so safe as I do when I am vulnerable with him.Vulnerable for him.

I don’t understand this new part of me.

“There is no sight more peaceful than watching you come apart for me.” The raw emotion in his voice only gives his words more power. They invade me, swimming in my veins and hollowing out that piece of me that aches for his possession. His total claiming.

“I need you to—” A blush stains my cheeks. I writhe beneath him, my legs lifting so that I can squeeze my thighs together. I’m hoping to ease the emptiness that seems to expand inside me like a crater, as though aware his claiming wasn’t complete. “Hades, I feel?—”

“What do you feel?” How can a voice feel like a sentient thing with flesh both rough and yet ribboned with silk? How can he speak and leave me feeling physically caressed?

Locking my eyes with his, I give him the truth. “I feel empty. You touch me, and I feel like all the emptyspaces inside me are filling—like I am becoming whole and then…”

Hades drops his hands on either side of my head, hovering above me like a dark God come to claim me for his own. The thought comes out of nowhere, but it feels entirely right here in this ancient city, with this man who feels like he very well might be an extension of my own soul.

Hades wets his lips with the tongue he used to pleasure me. My skin heats even as goosebumps pebble my flesh. His lips part. He asks, “And then?”

“And then you stop and the emptiness expands.” I stare up at him, entirely naked and vulnerable beneath him, wanting to pull him to me. “It hurts a hurt I’ve never felt before.”

The muscles in his arms flex in the firelight as he holds himself above me. “What do you think you need?”

“I—”

“I will give you anything, Persephone. Ask me to burn the world,” he dares. “And I will release the flame that will claim it all, fuck Zeus and his ire.” He dips his head to brush my lips with his. “Ask me for the moon, and I’ll take it from the sky at the peril of the tides Poseidon commands. Speak the words and I will call for the war that will end the realms so we can begin again, new. Right.”

I can’t breathe. The man is wealth personified, of that there is little question. Butthere’s something about that which he offers, so unlike a man of wealth who might promise beaches and houses, cars and diamonds. Hades, like the God of Death that is his namesake, offers something much darker.

“I just want you,” I whisper, feeling the truth of those words to the very core of me. “I just want you to fill the emptiness inside me, Hades. I think—I think maybe you’re the only one who can.”

Chapter

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