Page 96 of His in the Dark

The anger turns to rage. Soon? How soon? The questions pile in my mind but they all lead to one conclusion. I must take her now. I have to save her.

“How?” I ask him.

“How what?” he responds as if the question isn’t obvious.

“How did you take her powers?” My eyes meet his in the mirror.

“The wine of course. Poison in the wine.” He answers so easily.

“I have matters to attend to,” I tell him and end it.

“As do I.”

The mirror goes dark.

I curl my fist in front of my mouth and breathe deeply. She ismine, and I have little time left.

No more dwelling on Zeus. I turn away from the mirror and leave it behind, moving down the halls to my rooms as quickly as I can. Minox steps out of an alcove up ahead of me, but disappears into shadow when he sees that I will not stop for him.

I need her.Now.

A small voice in the back of my mind whispers to me as I stride down the hall.

You could have had her for infinite time,it says.If she was a mortal soul in your Underworld, you could have kept her forever.

I wave away that suggestion like I would wave away a cloud of smoke. Persephone was not born to be a mortal in my realm, the thread of her life snipped by the Fates for any number of reasons.

She was born to be a Goddess.

And she was born torule.

I open the door to my rooms. In comparison to the hall, it is bright, though not overwhelmingly so. The fire burns hot in the grate, casting flickering shadows over everything. Those shadows will caress Persephone’s skin like a lover.

I steel myself against the rush of arousal and approach the bed.

With the fire crackling and the rustling of the sheets, I can imagine her here. She turns over in my bed. There’s a sultrysinful look in her dark eyes, filled with lust as she peers back at me. The innocence is still there as she pulls the silk threads to her chest and her pouty lips, slightly swollen from pleasuring me, slip open at the sight of me towering over her.

My Persephone. My Queen.

Her chest rises and falls with heavy breaths.

I know her so well. Every curve of her body already. For months I have watched her as she slept. I have been in her dreams, cloaked in darkness.

A deep groan of discontent bellows up my chest. The voices of warning hiss at my impatience.

She will be mine in every way. Every possible essence of her will bear my mark.

Time,the warning echoes in the back of my head.In time…she will be yours.

In time.

I come back to the present hell, my forehead cool against the glass, and straighten. My realm stretches below the window, but it is empty.

Oh, it is filled with souls. Bursting with souls. There are too many of them. The balance has been thrown off.

But without Persephone, it is empty.

The crackling of the fire in the grate sounds like a mockery now. It’s taunting me with the idea of Persephone in my bed. Desire so fucking strong that being without it could be the end to me.

---