Page 1 of Hades and Persephone: Threads of Fate

Chapter

One

Persephone

“Oh!”I startle at the sight of Hades sitting on the edge of my bed, the three pups waiting regally at his side. “You surprised me.”

“You weren’t where I left you.” Hades’ nostrils flare. His brows furrow and he rises from the bed. “Are you well, Persephone?”

“I’m good.” I’m not about to tell him about the stabbing cramps that woke me or myliterallybloody reason for fleeing from his rooftop bed for a long, hot shower in my room.

Nodding slowly, Hades slides his hands into the pockets of his pants, his eyes never leavingme. Sometimes, the man is eerily still. Normal people aren’t as still as him. They don’t stand as though they’ve had a millennium to practice absolute quiet, as though their very breath might shatter some delicate balance.

But Hades does.

Sometimes, he’s so quiet, so still, I wonder if he’s even real. It wouldn’t surprise me to find I’d made him up. After a lifetime living with my mind, it wouldn’t surprise me to wake up and find that my entire adventure to Greece was a figment of my very vivid, potentially ill mind.

I do my absolute best not to stare at his bare chest. It’s hard, though. I think I mostly fail.

After last night, I probably shouldn’t feel so bashful. The man has seen every inch of my body. He’s tasted me, for goodness’ sake. I honestly don’t know how I’m still a virgin.

And I don’t know why I’m blushing.

“I expected you to sleep in today.”

I wave off the thought. It would have been nice, alas, womanly curses and all that jazz. “I need to make breakfast.”

“Already done.”

Before I’m able to stop it, my foot is lifting and falling. The floor is too hard to really give credence to my stomp, but Hades notes it all the same. The corner of his lips twitch with the threat of a grin.

I huff. Folding my arms across my towel-wrapped torso, I tell him, “That’s my job.”

“Mm.”

“Hades.”

“After last night, I thought I owed you a breakfast in bed.”

Breakfast in bed.Really, how is this man single?

“You don’t owe me anything.” There’s fire in my skin. There’s always fire in my skin when the man looks at me. When he speakswordsto me, as though no other man alive has ever spoken words to me before.

Honestly, the way this man affects me is ridiculous.

“Persephone—”

I cut him off. “If anyone owes anyone, I owe you.”

Hades says nothing, but his eyes never leave me. I feel as though he’s seeing me through the towel to the very flesh he bared the night before. The flesh Ilethim bare. Begged him to possess.

Oh, my God.

Finally, when I feel like I might burst apart at the seams with nerves, he speaks. “You owe me nothing. You could neveroweme, Persephone. I want everything, when you are ready to give it to me.”

Every inch of me—inside and out—feels hot. I whisper, “I don’t know what that means.”

“You will.”

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