Page 81 of Hades and Persephone: Crown of Souls

Her brows inch high. “Your command?”

Fucking Tartarus.“Persephone.”

“Your command?” she repeats, this time with a little laugh that is the picture of incredulity. “You don’t command me, Hades.”

The vision of throwing her over Alastor’s back and beating her ass until it’s apple red flashes in my mind once again. I stay the unfamiliar urge.

She continues, “We’re a partnership or we’re nothing. That’s the only way this works.”

Her threat has my spine snapping straight, the God inside me alert and ready to pounce.

I move dangerously closer to her as she smartly takes quick steps back. I stalk her until her back connects with the bark of a tree. Her rose red lips part, the dark of her malachite green eyes flashing as they connect with mine.

She is so exquisitely beautiful. Pale flesh adorned in flashes of red. Red gown. Red hair. Red lips.

Even angry, I long to taste her.

I dip my head to peer down into those eyes that wreak havoc on me. “You don’t threaten the end of us. Not ever, little goddess.”

She lifts that little chin. She is like a spitting kitten, all fluff.

I almost laugh.

“I don’t live my life under the thumb of anyone, Hades. Not even the man I love.”

“When I tell you not to do something, it is for your own safety,” I say coolly. “You are human in a land of the dead. You are vulnerable in the way that no other soul here is vulnerable. The souls can withstand torture and continuously return, time and again. But you—if you die here—” I cut off the words, fearing to say them aloud.

“If I die here, what?”

“The last time you died here I couldn’t find your soul. It was cloaked to me and to Thanatos. You wandered the Underworld for centuries, little goddess, alone. If you die here, I’m not certain I would find you again—and I can’t go centuries—without you.” The words escape on a hoarse breath as my fistedhand connects with the bark at the side of her head. The words nearly taking me to my knees.

The defiance in her eyes drains away. Pain scores wrinkles into her brow.

“Hades…”

“Don’t.”

She does. “My soul was lost last time because of The Lethe.”

“Persephone, we don’t know that for certain.”

“But we do.”

My other hand lifts to the bark on the other side of her head, effectively caging her. I dip my head, so my eyes are level with hers. I growl. “It is not a theory I am willing to test.”

At the hitched sound of her breath, I know I’ve won. I can scent the shift in the air—in her. The ember of burning need that seems to live, ever present, inside her.

She draws in a shaky breath. “I won’t go to the Elms again.”

My chest expands and deflates with breaths for a long while. Finally, I murmur, “Good girl.”

I don’t miss the way her pupils dilate or the flutter of her pulse in her neck. Her breath trembles as she exhales. “What was that with Minthe? About Adonis?”

She’s not looking at me now, as though she thinks she can lessen the building hunger if she doesn’t look at me. It won’t work. Even though I don’t understand this hunger that plagues her, I know this much. The only thing that can fight the flame once it’s been set is me. Inside her.

I decide to punish her after all.

I won’t give in this time. Won’t give her what she needs.

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