Page 59 of His in the Dark

Hades’s gaze stays on my face for a few beats, then skims down over my naked body.

“How angry are you?” I ask. “I do not wish to fight,” I whisper the words with emotion I did not realize I had.

He is slow in returning his gaze to mine, lingering over my hips and breasts and throat first as I swallow thickly.

“My love will always be greater than my anger.”

My heart hammers once at the word, love. I do not know if he is aware of what the word could possibly mean. He lacks it so. But I know truly what it means and I feel something there. Something forgiving. Something merciful.

Needing his touch to soothe the uncomfortableness for I do not wish to go backwards, I hold my arms out for him, then, and Hades climbs onto the bed. In his masculine form, he allows me to hold him and in return he shifts his body to his side and holds me back. His embrace full of comfort and security.

With a soft gasp from me, he claims my mouth in a hot, possessive kiss, balanced over me. I run my fingertips over his shoulders and down his flexing arms as I moan.

It is like touching a stranger, but it is also familiar to me, as if I have done this many times before. Only for him. This dangerous and powerful God.

I have done this in my dreams, I know. And who is to say that the dreams were less real than this? Hades’s realms have taught me that many things that are seemingly impossible—even for Gods—dwell in the Underworld.

I kiss him back, tasting him. He tastes fresh, like running through a garden on a clear night. The act is natural and in an instance, the pain and uncertainty is lost. I know not what I feared before or the anxiousness that ran through me.

My body responds as it has never responded before. My hips rock toward Hades on a wave of desire. It’s a new heat, and I feel like I’m coming awake a little more every time he touches me. Every time his strong body meets mine, he is showing me where my own power lies. He maneuvers me beneath him and I love it.

I wrap my hands around his neck, loving how hot the skin to skin tension is, and hold him closer, arching up towards him. For a minute, nothing else seems to exist but his mouth on mine, and his tongue exploring me, and his weight carefully above me, keeping me in place but not caging me. His pulse races underneath my fingertips.

Hades spreads his fingers at my ribs, and I move into his touch, craving more of it. His hand moves down to my hip and moves me with him as he pleases.

The rhythm of it is familiar, too. It is the rhythm of my own desire. Our hips touch. Hades is hard against me, but for these moments, he does not enter me. It is just the two of us, moving together. It takes my breath away. I do not know how he has made it so intimate. Maybe it is not him. Maybe it is the two of us. But kissing like this, moving like this?—

It is tender and raw and I’ve never felt so close to him or to anyone. I can barely breathe at the revelation. I need this. I need him.

He groans my name in the crook of my neck and my head falls back loving the warmth and the timbre of his tone.

It makes me crave even more.

I spread my thighs and hook my heels around the small of his back. Hades lets out a low sound into my mouth and presses closer, his cock dragging over my clit. Pleasure unfolds from that place like an entire garden in bloom, and I gasp as it travels down to my toes, making them curl.

Hades makes another sound, this one more curious, and repeats the motion. The evidence of how much I desire him is between us. It is yet another thing that seems new and familiar and forbidden and sacred at the same time. The wave of pleasure becomes a wave of heat and turns back into pleasure again.

I am not only hisqueenwhen I am like this. I am also myself. It is the first time in many months that I have felt the power of my own body. And I have needs and desires that no one else has ever brought out in me.

Hades repeats the motion a third time, even more slowly, and a moan escapes me. He says something too low for me to hear, his body pressing even closer, the hard muscles of his abs against the softness of my belly. This is a realm I have not had enough time to discover. My curiosity grows until it is the size of the Underworld, and I feel I must have it all now.

I must know all of himnow. I must have all the pleasure he can give menow. I must know all the ways we can fit together and move together and find pleasure together.

“Please,” I beg of him. His answer is only another rough grunt from deep in his chest.

I gasp in another breath and he lowers his head to kiss the side of my neck, sucking the spot until he must be leaving a mark.

I run my fingertips down the back of his neck to where his shoulders work as he braces himself, one thought demanding to be voiced.

“Love or desire?” I ask. I must know. For my sister speaks of both things. Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love. And at this moment, when I feel such things for him, I must know.

Hades lifts his head and stares into my eyes with a depth that seems to see through me. “Unlike you, I mean what I say,” he tells me, his voice steady. “I willalwayslove you.”

My lips part with wanting. I cannot help shivering as the words hit me and sink in. I do not know what to do, or what to say, when there is no doubt in my mind that he has just spoken a plain truth. There seems to be only one path forward.

I kiss him quickly, pouring all my emotions into it. Hades groans into my mouth, and then, without breaking the kiss, he repositions himself over me and notches his cock to my entrance.

He breaks the kiss, his eyes closed in peace before opening them again with a striking primitive need. “You’re prepared for me,” he says, his voice full of lust. “My Queen.”

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