Page 67 of Hades and Persephone: Threads of Fate

Before she knows the real me to even love me.

Lifting my hand to my mouth, I suck my fingers clean of the taste of her. Behind my shorts, my hard cock aches as it leaks seed, affected by the taste of her. So sweet, like nectar and honey drenched in the warmth of sunlight.

Pushing from between her legs, I take in the perfection of her body. Her smooth, creamy skin, and white blonde hair I know will stain ruby under the stretch of the Underworld. Her lithe limbs and elven-tipped ears.

I lift her body into my arms as my cock strains for her, desperate for the warmth of her core even as I feel I may burst into flames. Grinding my teeth, I position her in the bed to sleep. Unable to help myself, I drag my thumb over the swollen pink of her lips that she assaulted with blunt white teeth. Her leg falls to the side, and I drag my gaze down the length of her. My eyes land on her swollen pussy, still glistening with the wet of her spent arousal.

My cock jumps, and I deny him once again as I pull the blankets up over her to cover her nakedness. Then, needing to cool off, I storm from the bedroom to suck the night air into my lungs. Not even the cool wash of the moon can dull the heat. I hate to leave her, fear it,even—but I vow I won’t go far as I dive into the black waters.

The dogs are there to protect her, if need arises. In that there is some comfort as cold water rushes over my flesh. Still, it does little to dull the burn that sears my bones, or the now painful itch that pierces even deeper to the marrow within.

I wish I knew what this was, what it meant.

I crest the surface and instantly see my brother. His eyes are unmistakable in the dark, illuminating a blue bioluminescence that sees far too much.

“You found her,” he says by way of greeting.

I free a sound of displeasure as I recall a conversation, I had with Leuce. A conversation she admitted to having with Minthe, where Persephone confessed she thought she saw a merman with glowing blue eyes and opalescent hair. “You showed yourself to her.”

Poseidon smiles. “We were once great friends, her and I.”

I tense, because even as I knew Persephone often visited Poseidon where the sea met the Underworld, I never could gather the courage to ask after the exact terms of their relations. Now, I want to rip into him—to gut him like a fish that swim in his seas—if he even thinks of touching her.

“She is mine.”

Poseidon raises a brow. “She has always been yours, Hades.”

“She is not the same as she was.”

“No, she isn’t, is she?” Poseidon asks, but he does it in a way that has me suspecting he knows things that he shouldn’t know about the woman who is meant to be my wife. The Goddess who is meant to stand as my Queen.

I swim closer, even knowing that a fight with Poseidon in his waters would be a losing battle for me. One I could never hope to win, even as, in all truth, neither of us would lose. For we’re both immortal, but in the seas, there is nowhere to contain a God’s immortal soul, even if one manages to strip him of his mortal form.

It is why Oceanus was so difficult to defeat, and I’d needed Poseidon’s help in order to contain him in his prison world first in Tartarus and now, unbeknownst to the other Gods, within the canvas that teased of a sea that would scorch his dry, cracking scales, if he dared submerge himself. An ocean of acid.

Minthe had thought I’d been offering the Titan a reprieve when I painted an ocean into his new prison, but no. After a world void of all water, under a stormy sky that never dared drop even a kernel of rain, I’d needed to expand on his torture.

To see that which you desperately crave, and know it will cause only excruciating pain—now that is the truest torment.

At the threat that burns in my eyes, Poseidon’s lips stretch into a grin. “You are jealous. This is new.”

I have not been close to Poseidon, ever since themoment he chose to align himself with my Queen over me. To try to sway her heart to crack wider for him than I could ever hope it would crack for me.

“I’ve always been jealous,” I admit.

His voice is hard, even as he says, “I know.”

I don’t allow my eyes to sever from his, even as the silver lash of his tail whips in the water below me. It is a beastly thing, threatening in a way I could never hope to be. At least not in the water.

“I never asked, brother, but I am asking now. What was your relationship with Persephone?”

Poseidon peers at me for a long time, the glint of his tail catching the light of the moon as it sweeps through the sea. “I will answer you, if you answer me this first: why did you share her? Why did you ever allow her to offer herself to others, encouraging her to share, and join in the,” his lip curls. “Activities, if it upset you? And I’m seeing now, that it did. Deeply.”

I consider telling him to fuck off. That my relationship with my wife was, and is, none of his business. But as my brother holds my gaze and waits with a patience lacking judgement for my answer, I realize that I’ve never admitted my reasons for being as I was with Persephone, to anyone else.

The sins of my past—the acts I submitted to as an unformed God—have been the torment to haunt me for centuries. Even free, I’ve been living in my own purgatory.

“I stole her body and her freedom.” The words feellike acid on my tongue. “I craved the gift of her heart. The gift of her body, freely given to me, as she gave it to all the others. I hoped that my giving her the freedom she obviously sought to choose her lovers for herself after I—after I raped her—that she would one day choose me. Only me. That she would one day love me. Exclusively. Completely. As I’ve loved her since the beginning.”

---