Page 57 of Hades and Persephone: Threads of Fate

This invasion into his realm is my challenge to all the power he believes he possesses. The power he wields with the cruelty and distance of so many of the world leaders, Kings, and Queens, and politicians who, inevitably, face my judgement. My wrath. Souls who, crafted in his image, Zeus has thrown to the livingrealm to reap destruction and devastation, concealed in care and inclusivity. They are the souls I find most lacking, those souls who lead grand lives favored by Zeus, predestined for a short existence of pleasure that only ensures their eternity of torment.

How it must drive him to rage, that I am able to invade his realm so high in the sky when he is unable to access my domain far below the surface of the living. That he cannot even access me here, lest the white feathers that drape from the wings at his back incinerate in the flames of the Phlegethon that protects my domain.

The very thought of my youngest brother has a ripple of rage dulling the itch, if only for a moment. A moment that is too soon gone when the doors to the elevator open to my space. The scent of her is strong. So strong, I am nearly brought to my knees. As it is, my hand snaps out to connect with the wall for balance, and I see the black smoke of swirling shadows that encompass me in this form. The form of the God I am so careful to keep contained under the flesh of the man.

It takes a nearly insufferable amount of concentration to pull the God within the man, while the splitting itch threatens to debone me like a filleted fish on the shores of Poseidon’s Sea.

Snapping my teeth together in a vicious clench, heat erupting from every pore, I follow the pull of herdown the hall. The fact I am scenting her like a bloodhound is not lost on me. Not at all.

Neither is the fact I scent another fragrance. It clings to the air as I hunt her, masculine and familiar. My nephew, a man time and trust morphed into my brother. Until he shattered that trust with the arrow of a foolish act.

Hermes.

The growl I loose would have sent every nymph in the Underworld scurrying for protection, every God transforming in preparation for battle. Jealousy and possessiveness is a dagger that threatens to gut me as I burst into her room. The scent of another male—Hermes, fades in the plumes of softly scented petals of rose. Steam wafts from the open door of her bathroom, the sound of the shower cutting through the ringing between my ears.

I think not once of her privacy as I storm into the space, stopping dead in my tracks when I see her. Naked under the spray of water, I can’t mistake the spill of tears or the tremor that shakes her body. Not even as she scrubs the sponge violently into her flesh, a vicious flush of red blooming across the surface of her usually pale skin.

Again, I don’t think as I move across the space and beneath the spray of water. I’m already naked after the transformation. I hadn’t possessed the awareness to dress before coming to her. Finding her. The madnessthat clings after a visit in Tartarus is beginning to ebb. Reason is, again, beginning to flow.

“Hades,” she sobs my name on a sharp hitch of breath. It is like a blade cutting to the quick of my heart, scoring scars into the core of my black soul. I want to score scars onto her soul, scars so deep she won’t ever forget me again. Scars so embedded in the trenches of her innermost self that not even the raging current of the Lethe can invade.

Water sprays my flesh, sizzling to steam upon contact. I’m still burning with the flames of Tartarus, still deadly.

A flash of fear, quick and sharp, has me stepping back away from her in the same moment she throws her body into mine. The contact is full, and Hecate’s warning echoes in my mind.

“You will incinerate her.”

My hands land on the flare of her hips to push her away, to save her from me—as she burrows closer.

How?How is she touching me?

“It’s going away.” Stricken relief fills her words. Her arms circle the broad width of my shoulders even as her legs lift around my waist. She is climbing my body, unaffected by the deadly heat that pours in waves of torment from my form. Not even in the form of her Goddess so long ago had she been able to touch me after a visit to Tartarus. She had loved to look, though. For hours, I would sit for her as she painted the image of me onto canvas.

Now, though, confusion and fear plague my thoughts as I force space between our bodies, searching for wounds her human flesh could not possibly repair.

There are none. No melting flesh. No bubbling blood. No gore.

How?

My confusion wanes as the need I felt only moments before returns on a wave of desire that infects every part of me. It tightens my very veins until I feel they may snap as her hips roll, her core seeking to be filled.

“Hades, it hurt so much.”

What is she talking about?My hands snap to her hips and I palm her ass, locking her in place, stopping the delicious grind of her core into my aching cock.

If she continues, I’m going to take.

I don’t want to take.

I want to be given.

I want her to know the man—the God—she is giving to.

Fuck.

“I’m so mad at you,” she gasps, and again, I am confused.

“You don’t seem all that mad at me right now.”

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