“Persephone…”
“Please don’t reject me.” I slide my finger out, and in. His eyes blaze. “Please, I’m begging you, Hades,take me.”
His throat bobs as he swallows hard. His hand closes around my wrist, and he gently pulls my finger from my center to lift it to his lips. I ache, my insides on fire, as he sucks my finger clean.
“I love the taste of you. Hunger for it.” He licks his lips, as though determined to devour all of me. I shudder.
He lowers his body to mine, and I swear I feel heaven when he slides his hot tip into the wet of my core. He rocks against me, the ridges of his cock playing with my clit.
I moan and beg, “More.”
“Do you love me, little goddess?” he demands, his voice rough with the last remnants of his control.
My heart shrinks, knowing that this is the make it or break it moment. Still, I answer honestly, “Yes.”
But it won’t make me stay.
He groans a sound of pleasure and broken will as he notches his tip to my entrance. I cling to him, locking my legs around his back. With his eyes onmine, he speaks a dark vow that invades the wreckage that is the untethered heart in my chest. “I’ve always loved you. I will always love you, little goddess. I’ll make you mine in a way that you will never belong to another. Never be free of me.” He pauses, breathes against my lips, and vows, “And never question the way I feel for you or your place at my side.”
Looping his arm around the small of my back, his tip still threatening to invade, he holds me tight. His eyes dare me to challenge his words, but only for a minute before he plunges deep. My eyes snap wide as he stretches me, invading so deep inside me, I swear I feel him in my womb.
It’s not a gentle claiming. It’s deep and complete. One fell swoop and I know I’ll never belong to another. I’ll never be full like I am right now with this man invading me. My body, my mind, my heart, my soul…
He lives in every part of me, fills all the empty voids as though this was where we were always meant to land. Together. As one.
His breaths shudder across my lips as he stills inside me where he’s rooted to the deep of my core. My legs are spread so wide to fit the broad width of him. I can’t help but cling to his shoulders as I ride out the waves of stinging pain as my body stretches and changes to accommodate him.To welcome him.
“Relax, little goddess,” he encourages as I suck in sharp breaths that taste of him. Woodsmoke and sin andHades. “You can take me.” He shifts gently insideme, a slow rock out and back in. “You were made to take me.”
His eyes never leave mine as he pulls out again, pressing in. Out and in. In and out. Over and over. I don’t know when it happens. When the sting fades to pave the road for pleasure. I just know that the burning in my bones devours the pinch in my core until my hips rock into his thrusts, meeting him for every thrust. Every stroke.
He moves inside me for what feels like forever and not long enough. My heart riots in the cage of my chest, desperate to land in his palms. At his feet.
Hades invades my mouth with hungry kisses. Pressing his lips tenderly to my jaw, my throat, my chest. We trade breaths as we move together, climbing higher, soaring. Against my skin, his is slick. Maybe I’m slick too. I can’t tell where I end and he begins. I can’t find the divide as that thing so deep inside, the crackle of starlight and shadows, sunlight and flame, the above and beneath—me and him—snaps into place.
I gasp and Hades grunts at the lash of a fastening of souls. I swear, that’s what it feels like as the band in my chest tightens, the lock clicking into place, the key melting into the magma of the heat that spills from my bones.
A crescendo of something far bigger than an orgasm builds inside me. It spreads like fire in myveins. Consuming me.
“Hades,” I cry, because I don’t understand thisthing.
This is more than sex. More than love.
Threads of fate snapping into place.The thought is not mine, even as it echoes in my mind.
Hades’ arm under the small of my back pulls me tighter into his chest, as though he can’t get me close enough. As though the divide between us is still too far. My head falls back and his tongue dips into the hollow of my throat. We murmur an ancient sound of man and woman—a coming together—a primal, primitive sound of connection formed in a time before words.
I feel Hades hook his foot into the bed for purchase, shoving deeper into my body. His tempo quickens, thrusts unmeasured. Hot breaths threaten to burn into the hollow of my throat as he grunts into my skin, hips bucking, bottoming out with every thrust home.
Home.
And I take him. I take all of him, spread wide and open for his claiming. For his possession.
That thing that has been building. The orgasm that is more than pleasure—more than coming apart—builds and finally erupts. Hades roars into my throat as I scream into moonlit darkness.
I’m shaken to the core as he roots himself deep on a thrust that edges on violent. Hot seed spills from him to fill the void of me. And finally,finally, the burning in my bones is gone. A cool relief left in its place even as that band of something ancient and ageless tightens. The clashing of us. The binding of souls. The weaving of fate.
The beginning and the end.