Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
P ersephone
Things have felt different between me and Hades since the night in the pool. Maybe that thing he stirred in me when we first met has fully awoken. Maybe it was just my time. Maybe it's the sun.
All I know is that my flesh feels alive. The blood in my veins stirs restlessly and the hum of need in my core is endless. I feel itchy in my skin with a need I am unable to scratch.
"How is work?" Hades asks from where he sips his coffee as I whip the eggs for an omelet. I no longer have to hurry quite so much in the mornings, since Hades now has a car take me directly to the dig site. The man is spending far too much money on his need for a companion and cook.
"Hot." I smirk at him. "But good. We got a new girl. You won't believe her name."
He raises a brow in question. "I won't?"
"Minthe." I chuckle. "I feel like the Underworld has literally crept to the surface to meet me. Did you know, since I've been here, I've met a Hades, a Leuce, and now a Minthe?" I laugh incredulously. "I mean, what are the odds?"
Hades simply watches me the way he so often does. Like he can't look away.
Like he's waiting for something.
My skin hums. My blood stirs.
I whip the eggs harder.
"Very few people even know who those—" he pauses, then murmurs, " Characters are."
I give him a dubious expression. "I'm pretty sure everyone knows who Hades is, Hades."
"Hades, perhaps." His smile is devilish. "But Minthe? And even less expected, Leuce?"
I shrug, conceding. "Minthe's story is very known. Leuce, though, I'll give you that. Her story is a bit less popular when it comes to the telling's of Underworld lore."
"But you are familiar with it? The myths of the Underworld, that is?"
Pouring the eggs into the buttered pan, I nod. "I love Greek lore. It's been a passion of mine since grade six when we did a unit on Ancient Greece."
"What about it do you find so intriguing?"
"Everything." I can't help but look at him, my heart skipping in its cage at the intensity I find in his dark eyes.
His lips curl. "And who is your favorite God?"
I roll my lips, narrowing my gaze on him. "I don't know why, but that feels like an awfully personal question."
He grins, but his voice is deep. Husky, even. "How so?"
I shrug, biting into my bottom lip and instantly regretting it for the way fire erupts in his eyes, igniting my core in the same. I look away, busying myself with adding veggies to the eggs, topping with cheese. I flip the omelet before covering it and letting it simmer to finish.
"I don't know. It just feels a little exposing."
"Will you expose yourself to me, then, Persephone?" The way he asks makes me feel like he's asking for more than to simply hear the name of my favorite God. Like he's asking me to strip right here in his kitchen, to bare my flesh to the devil in his eyes. To let him feast on the yearning he sparks alive inside me.
There is a low hunger in the depths of his voice that will not be sated by the omelet I'm cooking.
I shiver, blaming it on the air conditioning.
Suddenly, it seems less harmful to tell him my favorite God. "I've always been fascinated by Hades more than the rest. "
"Is that so?"
Is that pleasure that hums in the deep of his voice? "Yeah."
"What about the God of the Underworld fascinates you so much?"
I shrug again, wetting my lips. I feel oddly incapable of catching my breath. "I don't know."
It's a lie. I know exactly why the God of the Underworld fascinates me. But I can't tell him. I can't.
I hear his stool slide over obsidian tile as I avoid his gaze, sliding the omelet off the burner. I sense he's close when the air conditioning stops working, and heat erupts over every inch of my flesh. I don't understand how his mere presence burns me like an inferno when so many others avoid getting close to him. I've seen it more than once; the wide berth people give him. As though touching him sparks fear and threat of eternal torture. Maybe that's why he's paying me to be his companion. Maybe my lack of self-preservation when it comes to this man has inspired his desire to be close to me.
He's at my back now and my heart is threatening to rip from the cage of my ribs. It's beating so violently inside my chest; I imagine he can hear it. Breath tumbles from my lungs in tiny, sharp pants. As my hands grip the counter for purchase, they tremble.
I don't know what it is about Hades that sets me off like this. What is it about his nearness that rattles me this way ?
"Are you afraid of me, Persephone?" God, he's so close. I can feel the hot wash of his breath against the shoulder my tank top has left bare.
"N-no." The word falls from little more than a breath into a space that crackles with electricity.
"I can practically hear the thunder of your heart." He isn't touching me, but the heat of his body touches every inch of my back. A caress of flame and sinful darkness that I desperately ache to sink into.
"I'm not afraid."
"Mmm." The low rumble carves the way for fire to spread in my veins. He observes, "You're trembling."
Breath rattles in my lungs. "I'm nervous."
"Why?" He's so close. He could touch me. He could kiss me.
God, but I want him to kiss me. I want him to taste me and ravish me and keep me…
As though he can hear my thoughts, he curses low. It's an agonized, hardly restrained thing of nearly broken need that strikes a lash of violent hunger deep within me.
I swallow the moan that threatens to break free, admitting instead, "Because I feel the need to tell you things I've never told anyone else. Things I wouldn't dare tell another soul."
"Like?"
I laugh. It's an incredulous sound. "I told you I was crazy within minutes of meeting you, Hades. I told you I hear a voice in my head. "
"Mmm," he murmurs again. "And what do you feel the urge to tell me now, Persephone?"
"I—" I shake my head. "I can't. You won't look at me the same."
"The way I look at you could never change."
I scoff. "Yes, it could. I assure you."
His hands move to grip the counter, bracketing my body. He's still not touching me, but there is an air of dominance in this simple act that I've sensed from the man from the moment I met him. A dominance I've been unable to ignore.
Nerves erupt in my belly. I gasp a sharp inhale, the shards of it splintering in my lungs. Maybe it's this dominance that had me agreeing to the insanity of becoming his companion. Maybe it's the darkness I sense deep within him that calls to the cavernous pits of my hollow soul, where the echoing agony of a man I don't know has called for me all my life.
Maybe I really am crazy, hovering between reality and something fantastical that will send me into a spiral of insanity from which I will never recover.
His voice is deliciously rough, the only thing to touch me even though we stand so close, as he commands, "Tell me."
There is something in his command that has my lips parting, threatening to spill a truth I can't hide. My control has slipped, fractured by the magnitude of his power as the weight of his demand caresses me like I wish his touch would .
No, no. He is my boss. And he's so much older than me.
We wouldn't work. We wouldn't fit.
We're from two different times. He's lived life, while I've only just begun.
He urges, "Persephone."
I shudder. "It's his romance with Persephone. The way he took her, stole her." I think his breath catches. His fingers curl into the counter. I can hardly breathe at all. "It's wrong, Hades. I shouldn't—I know it's wrong. But I've always been so fascinated with his obsession of her, and how it drove him to claim her—even against her will. How he refused to let her go, manipulating and scheming in order to keep her for his own. I?—"
The heat of his big body warms the space between us. The rumble of his deep voice strokes me like a physical touch. I am helpless to refuse when he urges, "Go on."
Quieter, I admit, "I wonder about the way he made her fall for him. How he managed to possess her heart after stealing her body." My breath hitches, my body aching with sharp desire that spills wet need into my panties in response to his big body hovering over mine. "I've always fantasized about having that for myself. Finding a man who claims me, all of me. Who steals my choice and forces my love. Who invades my heart with the same force he invades my body, as I imagine Hades did with Persephone. I—" I shake my head and shutter my eyes as fire spills into my cheeks. "I think—I think I'm more than crazy, Hades. I think I'm sick."
"I think you remember."
"Wh—" My words falter as he pushes away. I am assaulted by the cold of the AC, my body mourning his heat. His closeness.
I'm little more than a wobbly stand of Jell-O, struck by the way he moves, as though entirely unaffected, to pull two plates from the cupboard. He serves the omelet I cooked, and somehow, we eat as though nothing happened at all.
But before I leave to meet my ride, Hades catches me around the neck to pull me close. He brushes lips seared in flame across my brow. "You are not crazy, Persephone."
I don't know why, but as I step into the elevator, my ravaged soul weeps and hot tears spill.
I've never been more confused in all my life.
More aroused.
More lost .