Page 43 of Hades and Persephone: Threads of Fate

He’s right. I can see it. It’s faint now, but the red lashes are there. Nausea rolls in my belly. My tongue feels bone dry. “I—I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about.” He doesn’t bother to rebutton his shirt as he resumes his position, staring into the distance as anger dances in his brilliant blue eyes. “But you need to be aware of who you’re fucking around with.”

I can’t help it; I flinch at his tone. “He’s not a bad man, Addison.”

Those blue eyes cut to mine. “He lit me on fire.”

“I don’t even know how that happened. It doesn’t make sense.” Still, I can’t dispute it. “He wasn’t even holding a match.”

“Doesn’t matter how he did it. He did it.”

“Look—” I start to stand but stop when his hand falls on my knee. His skin against mine has my belly clenching as it swoops. Like a murder of crows sweeping from the sky: their mission a soul to steal.

Darkness hovers at the edge of my vision, growing, spreading like a virus until there is no more daylight. Only darkness. Only shadows.

I can still hear Addison, his smooth, lovely voice calling my name in the distance. “Annie? Annie?” There’s panic there in the depths, clinging to it. “Annie?” I can’t see, though. Can’t think. Can’t pull myself back as I feel his hand on my thigh, shaking. His voice sounds again, far closer, right in my ear now.“Persephone.”The panic is gone. Something else is there in its place. Hunger. It’s so deep, so delicious and dark. Sensual.“Don’t go.”

A shudder rolls through my body at the feel of teeth there on my ear. A nip, a glide. His voice sliding over my skin, feeding the beast of desire that spills endless hunger in my core. A hungerhewon’t feed.

His hand slides up the back of my thigh, and I feel the wisp of fabric drift open as it falls away. My eyesflutter to see darkness where there had been light. The big belly of a swollen moon casts silhouettes of tall temples over the land. Beneath my bare feet, I feel the baked stone of the mouth of a temple I’ve walked too many times. A temple crafted entirely for my passage. A temple the people have come to associate with the seasons. Even now, beyond the heat of his body pressed into mine, his mouth on my neck, his hand drifting higher and higher, I can feel the chill of winter in the air, drifting up from the sea as though it knows tonight is the night I leave.

He pulls his mouth from my throat, and I finally see him. Addison—but not. He looks like him, so much like him, but there is something different in those familiar blue eyes. Something dangerous in the twist of his easy smile as he looks down at me. He says, “I love you.”

I laugh, low and husky and—not my laugh. I hear my voice say, “You love everyone.”

“I love you most.” His hand is between my thighs now, drifting higher and higher, to the core of me. He strokes me.

I don’t flinch, but spread my legs wider, hooking one around his hip. I purr, “We won’t tell Aphrodite that.”

He groans. “I’m addicted to you. Losing you to him for so long—” He drops to his knees, lifting my leg over his shoulder as his hands shove at my dress. And then I feel him. His hot tongue at my core, sucking. Myhead falls back against the stone even as I sense the shift in the air, the warmth of flame that feasts on the chill. I let my head roll to the side. Let myself see him.

It’s been so long.

He’s so darkly handsome.

Hades.

My husband. My love.The man who might never love me back enough…

I smile, a true smile, my eyes fixing on him even as my hands drift into the golden hair of the man between my legs. I want to push him. Need to. I’ve been schooled for this, taught to play the chords of his obsession. I rock myself against Adonis, watching as Hades’ eyes flare with flames, brightening with jealousy that feeds that dark place inside me.The place she created to one day keep him, but it’s now so deeply engraved in me—it’s a part of me—the strings of this deception so twisted up in the threads that bind me to him, I’m not sure I can ever hope to untangle them.

I moan as the man between my legs sucks harder at the button of my arousal even as Hades ambles closer, his jealousy ever restrained. Always so tightly bridled. But Iwantto push him. To break him. To watch as he finally snaps.

As he takes what he wants from me like he did that first time, when he bred the succubus that crawls now under my skin, addicted to the carnal wickedness of his rough touch. The creature she uses now. The thing deep within that she whispers to.

Locking my eyes on Hades, I plead, “Adonis.”

Hades wraps a hand around the back of Adonis’ neck, and my heart quickens. There is a thrill that jumps inside me. Something darkly wrong. And yet I need it, can’t deny it. Won’t bother trying.

He pulls Adonis’ head away from my core, and I whimper with need as I watch the two men lock gazes. There is hate and intrigue spilling from both men, wrapping me in twisted knots I’ll never be able to unwind myself from. I don’t know that I want to.

“Do you like the taste of my wife, mortal?” Hades asks darkly.

Adonis nods, unable to lie to the God of the Underworld. The God of Death. The King of the Afterlife.

Hades’ eyes slide to mine. “Do you want him to come with us, my love?”

Those knots twist around my heart even as that yawning hunger, that pit of darkness he hollowed out in me grows. I want to hurt him back. To know he cares enough to be hurt. To believe, just once, that the cruel words she whispers aren’t true. I lift my chin, I challenge, “Yes.”

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