I can’t deal with looking at the rest of the room, so I focus entirely on the man kneeling at my feet. Doesn’t he understand how unnatural this is? Yes, he’s been on his knees before me before, but it was different then. Private, just between us. No matter our positions, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s dominant down to his very soul. He’s never actually submitted to me.
He’s not doing it now, either.
But it looks like he is, which is all that matters to the people witnessing. They’re watching Hades of the Thirteen kneel at the feet of a woman sitting in his throne. I thought we were marking me as his and his alone, but this doesn’t fit that plan.
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
“Paying tribute.”
The words don’t make sense, but he doesn’t give me time to comprehend. He catches the hem of my dress and strokes his hands up my legs, taking the fabric with him. Baring my calves and knees and thighs and finally bunching my dress around my hips.
It’s so different from the last time we were in this room. I wasn’t worried about modesty then, was so out of my mind with desire that I didn’t care who saw what we did in the shadows, but Hades’s position makes this act feel secret.
Like it’s just for us.
He looks at me like he’s never seen me before, like I’m the powerful one in this equation and he truly is paying tribute to someone above his station. It doesn’t make sense, but my confusion does nothing to dampen my desire. Especially when he skates his thumbs up my inner thighs and urges me to spread for him.
His attention narrows on my pussy. “You love sucking my cock.”
“Guilty. But you knew that already.” We’re both speaking softly, barely above a whisper. It lends an extra layer of intimacy to this moment despite the eyes on us. “Hades…” I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. “What are we doing?”
He answers with his mouth, but not with words. Hades lowers his head and kisses my pussy. A long, lingering caress that drives all the questions from my mind. They’ll hold. Right now, the only rule is pleasure and he’s dealing it out in spades. He guides one of my legs up and over the arm of the chair, spreading me wide for him.
Each lick and kiss is like he’s memorizing me. He’s not intent on my orgasm, that much is clear even as desire sings through my blood. He might be going down on me, but Hades does it like it’s purely for his pleasure. Somehow, that makes the entire experience that much hotter.
And then I look up.
It’s no exaggeration to say that every eye in the room is on us. People have stopped doing whatever they were up to before Hades and I started our own little show. Their lust drips over me, driving my own higher. Power and need twine through me as I meet one set of eyes after another, as I see jealousy and want there.
Some of them want to be me.
Some of them want to be the one kneeling at my feet.
Denying them feels like nothing else I’ve ever experienced before. We were right to stick to the shadows, to not put ourselves on display in the light. This is so much better, spinning a fantasy of forbidden fruit that everyone in the room is able to see but not touch.
Everyone except for Hades.
He sucks my clit into his mouth, working it with his tongue. It’s so shocking after his light touches and teasing licks that it bows my back and draws a cry from my lips. The tension in the room ratchets up several notches, but I’m not looking at our audience any longer. No, only Hades holds my attention. I run my fingers through his hair and dig in, holding him to me.
He growls against my skin, and it feels so wicked, I can barely stand it. “Make me come,” I whisper.
For a second, I think he might pull back, remind me that no matter how equal we are, he is the one in charge right now. He doesn’t. He…obeys.
Hades wedges a finger and then two inside me, twisting his wrist as he searches for the spot that will turn all my joints liquid even as he traces my clit in steady circles with the tip of his tongue. Where before he built my pleasure in steady waves, lapping at my control, now he spins a tsunami of desire that I have no hope of fighting.
I never intended to fight it.
I come with his name on my lips, the sound of it seeming to sing to every corner of the room. Even as he gentles his touches and coaxes me back into my body, I’m shaken by the feeling that nothing will ever be the same again. We’ve crossed a point of no return that neither of us recognized. There’s no going back now. I’m not sure I want to, even if the road remained open.
Hades finally shifts my dress back into place and rises. At first glance, he seems perfectly composed…at least until I get to his eyes. They’re wild with the same need surging beneath my skin. This wasn’t enough. It barely took the edge off.
He holds out his hand.
I stare at it for the space of a heartbeat. It seems such a simple gesture, but even as shaken as I am, I know better. He’s not demanding. He’s requesting. Putting us on equal ground. The thing I don’t understand is why.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. I slip my hand into his and let him tug me to my feet. He turns to face the rest of the room, all of whom have stopped pretending to do anything but stare at us. It feels…strange, but not necessarily in a bad way. They’re waiting on our whim, and they’ll wait as long as we demand.
Is this what power feels like?
Hades seems to stare down each and every person present. “Be sure, when you go running back to your high-rises and glamorous lives in the upper city, that you’re telling the full truth of what happened here tonight. She’s mine.” His hand tightens ever so briefly around mine. “And I’m hers.”
This wasn’t part of the plan. I’m not exactly sure there was a plan going into tonight, not after I got cold feet. But Hades isn’t declaring me his the same way he has been since the beginning of this, the way designed to provoke Zeus.
He’s declaring it mutual.
It’s something we spoke of privately, but doing it like this is something else altogether. I don’t know what it means. Because I don’t know what it means, I can only fight to keep my expression under control as Hades turns us toward the exit and we leave the room. The door barely closes behind me when I murmur, “Not holding court tonight?”
“Fuck them.” He barely sounds like himself. “They’re only here for the gossip, and I’m not in the mood to play villain.” He moves down the hall toward the stairs, nearly dragging me behind him. “They don’t see me. No one fucking sees me but you.”
My heart lodges itself in my throat. “What?”
But he doesn’t speak again until we enter his bedroom suite and he slams the door behind him. I’ve never seen him like this. Angry, yes. Even a little panicked. But this? I don’t know what this is. “Hades, what’s wrong?”
“I swore I wouldn’t do this.” He drags his hands through his hair. “What we have isn’t simple, but it’s the most honest I’ve been with another person for as long as I can remember. That means something, Persephone. Even if it doesn’t mean something to you, it does to me.”
I still don’t understand, but I at least have an answer to this. “It means something to me, too.”
That calms him a little. He drops onto the couch and exhales roughly. “Give me a minute. This isn’t your fault. It’s shit in my head. I just… I need a minute.”
But I don’t want to give him a minute. I want to understand what’s upset him. I want to fix it. He’s given me so much over the last few weeks, more than I can begin to categorize. I can’t stand by and let him hurt while I twiddle my thumbs. So I do the only thing I can think of.
I walk to him and sink to my knees in front of him. When he just watches me, I wedge myself between his thighs until he’s forced to either push me back or make way. He spreads his legs with another of those heartbreaking sighs. “You already sucked my cock once tonight, little siren.”
“That’s not what this is.” If I thought for a second it would help, I’d have him in my mouth and gladly. Sex won’t fix this, though. Of that I’m sure.
Instead, I press myself to his torso and wrap my arms around him as best I can. He goes so still I might think he was holding his breath if I couldn’t feel his chest rise and fall against my face. Slowly, oh so slowly, he wraps his arms around me, gently at first and then hugging me tightly to him.
“It’s going to hurt when you leave.”
He speaks so softly, I barely register the words. When they hit, it’s with the force of a nuclear explosion.
I had suspected he cared, of course. Hades might be fearsome in so many ways, but he’s too honest to be able to lie with his body. He touches me like I mean something to him. He’s drawn back the curtain on bits of the lower city, showing me things he cares about, letting me in. Even if I haven’t allowed myself to contemplate the implications of that too closely, I’ve noticed. Of course I’ve noticed.
I care too.
“Hades—”
“I meant what I said before. I won’t ask you to stay. I know that’s not possible.” He releases a long breath.
I bite my tongue before I can say anything else. He’s right—it’s not possible for me to stay—but that doesn’t change the fact that I meant what I said earlier tonight. If we were different people, this place would be home and this man would be mine.
“Three months felt like an eternity when I agreed to this.”
A soft laugh slips free, muffled against his shirt. “It doesn’t feel like an eternity now.” Just under two months left and it feels like a blip in time. Look away too long and it will slip past, leaving the distance between us growing.
I’ll never see Hades again.
Somehow, with everything going on, that never occurred to me. That I might miss this man. That it will feel like tearing out a part of myself to walk away. Silly, foolish thoughts. It’s only been a few weeks. Maybe one of my other sisters would fall so hard for a partner in that time, but that’s not me. I understood the boundaries of this when I fought so hard to get Hades to agree to the deal. It was only for show, only because we had no other choice.
He wouldn’t have chosen me if I hadn’t been Zeus’s before I was his.
He wouldn’t have even looked at me twice, a woman who’s the epitome of everything about the upper city that he hates. A walking sunbeam, a fake persona that I project to get people to do what I want.
I lean back and try for another laugh. It comes out broken, closer to a sob. “I…” What am I supposed to say? Nothing will change the course we’re on. A path shared for a short time while his need for revenge and my desire for freedom overlap.
It was never meant to last forever.
It should fill me with relief to know that Hades won’t ask me to stay, that he won’t muddy the waters around us with things neither of us should want. It doesn’t. Instead, a strange desperation claws its way through my body, up and up and up, until it spills from my lips. “Kiss me.”
He only hesitates for the briefest of moments, as if to memorize my features before he closes the minuscule distance between us and takes my mouth. Hades kisses me roughly, with none of the tender care he’s displayed time and time again. Good. I don’t want his tenderness. I want the memory of him woven into the fabric of my very soul.
He pushes to his feet and yanks me up with him, barely breaking the kiss. We use rough hands to drag off each other’s clothes, ripping my dress when the fabric doesn’t move fast enough, sending buttons flying from his shirt. I’m still kicking free when he walks me backward through the room to his bed.
“I can’t wait.”
I’m already nodding. I don’t need the slow seduction right now. I just need him. “Hurry.”
He lifts me and I wrap my legs around his waist. The smallest adjustment and his cock is pushing into me, Hades’s hands on my ass controlling my descent onto his length. Fast, fast, too fast. I don’t care. I writhe, trying to get closer. We haven’t stopped kissing, can’t get enough. Who needs to breathe when I have Hades? He’s my very air.
The thought should scare me. Maybe it will when I’ve had some time to think about this. Right now, all I have is need.
He lifts me and lowers me, using his strength to fuck me where he stands. It’s enough to make me light-headed. I pull my mouth from his long enough to say, “More. Harder.”
I expect him to take me to the bed. Instead, he turns and moves to the dresser to set me on it. Hades brackets my throat, pushing me back to pin me against the wall. “Watch.” He barely sounds like himself, his voice gone low and vicious. “Watch how much you need me in this moment. When you’re free and chasing that dream of a life you want, you remember how good it felt to be filled by me, little siren.” He slams into me and then withdraws, his cock glossy with my wetness. I can’t look away. I don’t want to.
Hades keeps seducing me with his words, entrapping me. “Someday, when you let some asshole seduce you and you’re riding their cock, remember tonight and know that they will never compare to me. You think of me when they’re inside you.”
My gaze flies to his face, the possessive fury there just as hot as what he’s doing to my body. I want to sink into it and never surface. I can’t, though. I can’t. “Don’t be cruel,” I gasp.
“I am cruel.” He slams into me again, sealing us together as closely as two people can be, and kisses me roughly. He lifts his head enough to say, “You’ve ruined me, Persephone. Forgive the fuck out of me if I want to return the favor.”
And then there’s nothing else to say. We devolve to our base selves, chasing our mutual shared pleasure. When I come, it feels like my orgasm has been ripped from me, like it’s something I can never take back. Hades follows me over the edge a few moments later, sealing us together and burying his face in my neck as he comes.
Stillness descends.
I cling to him and keep my eyes closed, unwilling to let reality intrude. It’s there, though, hovering at the edge of our fading pleasure. The coolness of the room against our sweat-slicked skin. The ache of various parts of my body from what we’ve done to each other. Hades’s rough breathing slowing out even as mine does the same.
He finally lifts his head, but he doesn’t look at me. “I’m sorry.”
I should let it end at that. We can circle all we want, but it changes nothing about our situation, about our deadline. Instead, I swallow hard. “I’m not.”
