Page 26 of The Queen & the King

Persephone

“WHAT DO YOU FEEL, PERSEPHONE?”Hades' deep voice vibrates through me, mingling with my powers like a caress. But that’s not all I feel. My fingers tingle with the power I feel from the flora surrounding me. It’s not a daunting power, not a dangerous one, and not a power to be used against. It’s a power from within, and its only purpose is to enrich and nourish.

A soft moan escapes me, and my cheeks heat a little in embarrassment. The feeling of all the living things around me is so intoxicating that the discomfort quickly dissolves, and once again, I lose myself to the way the power brushes against my skin.

“I feel,” I whisper, “everything…”

“Describe it,” Hades commands. There’s a strain in his voice that I can’t quite identify.

The phantom feeling of denim grazes my fingers, and I have to bite back another moan.

I dive deeper into my connection with the greenery, permitting myself to get lost in it for a moment. The darkness within me swirls, as desperate for freedom as I am. It swells as Idive deeper, greeting me like an old friend, swirling around the light power like a long-lost lover.

I find myself slightly distracted by the feeling of the strange brush of denim against my fingers, and they twitch in response.

“This… whole other part of me that I didn’t?—”

My words are muted as I feel the brush of a hand over mine, pushing the pads of my fingers more into the material, but when I flex my fingers, there is nothing there. I snap my eyes open. To my horror, black vines with rich golden leaves have sprouted from the ground and are wrapped around Hades’ legs, caressing him.

Please tell me those are not my vines…

Hades tilts his head at me and glides his fingertips gently along the upper epidermis. I shiver at the feeling. I can feel everything my vines feel, and his touch may as well be against my cheek. My whole body feels like it is aching and yearning, but how is it possible that I could feel this way about someone who may as well be a stranger?

My vines tighten, and I flush. “Oh! I’m so sorry. Fuck…”

My cheeks heat even more as the curse word passes my lips, and I push my flat palm downward, trying to pull the vines away, but they don’t budge.

Hades furrows his brow. “Sorry? For what?”

I yank at the obsidian vines, trying to pull them away from him. “The… um, black vines.”

Hades chuckles softly. “Leave them. I like them,” he replies, and his eyes seem to sparkle a little before dark smoke appears. No, it’s not smoke… they are shadows. They flow from Hades and coil around my vines, almost nuzzling them. Again, I feel his touch through my vines, and they seem to vibrate slightly in excitement at being wrapped in the darkness.

I tilt my head and lower my hands, withdrawing whatever poor control over my vines I was pretending to have. Theyrelease Hades’ legs enough to coil around the shadows. I can’t suppress the shiver that travels through my body at the feeling of his shadows playing with my vines.

I meet Hades’ gaze, noticing that his pupils have nearly swallowed the sapphire of his irises, turning them almost black. The ache between my thighs intensifies, my core throbbing and pulsing.

My cheeks heat, and I clear my throat, yanking the vines away and forcing them to disappear. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

Hades tilts his head. “Why?”

“It’s inappropriate. I can… feel what they feel.” I’m certain my face must be as red as the tomatoes in my mother’s garden. My cheeks feel as though they are on fire. I look away from him, trying to hide my embarrassment.

When he doesn’t reply after a few moments, I look up at him. His lips are pulled into a wicked smirk, dirty and panty-dropping. “And?”

Panty-dropping? Where did that come from?

“Well, I…”

Gods, P. Stop blushing!

In my peripheral vision, I notice Hades’ shadows sliding toward me, but I don’t move my gaze from his. My breath hitches when what feels like large, strong hands graze my ankles and slowly move up my calves.

“I can feel what they feel,” Hades says, his eyes dark with an emotion that makes my core tighten. Something about his expression is primal. I feel like I should run away, but all I want to do is get closer to him. The urge is extremely difficult to resist.

The shadow hands brush the back of my knees, and it’s an effort to stop them from buckling. I pull my bottom lip between my teeth to stop my moan as his shadows creep up my thighs torturously slowly.

“Tell me to stop,” Hades says. There is an edge to his voice like he doesn’t want to ask the question outright, but he wants to give me the power to stop this. If I let it continue, what will happen?

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