Chapter 2

Chapter

Two

P ersephone

Every ounce of painful discomfort is washed away by a flood of guilt at his words. The woman he’d loved—his partner—his reason—had died. She was dead.

His need for a companion suddenly makes so much sense. He’s not just a billionaire unable to find companionship that isn’t waiting for the perfect moment to milk him dry. He’s a man mourning the loss of the woman he’d loved. A woman he possibly still loved.

He’s a man looking to fill a void that can’t be filled—with me.

I want to cry.

“Hades.” My voice cracks, my grief for him echoing from the gaping chambers of my heart at the thought of his loss, and the reality that I can never fill the void she left behind. His efforts will be wasted. Still, I pray I can leave the wound she left within him stitched to some degree when I leave at summer’s end.

His voice is deep and filled with something that sounds like soft rage and danger. “It was a long time ago.”

I dip my eyes to my half-eaten breakfast. I can’t stomach another bite.

“I’m sorry.”

“As I said, it was a long time ago.”

“You’re not that old,” I scoff. “It can’t have been that long ago.”

Hades makes a noise and I look up to find that he’s moved closer. For once, I’m thankful for the island that stands between us. I don’t know that I could handle his touch right now, after his revelation.

My heart hurts. It hurts for him and it hurts for me.

It shouldn’t hurt for me.

My fingers knot in my lap under the counter. I hesitate, but ask, “Will you tell me about her?”

“What would you like to know?”

Everything. Even if it hurts.

Nothing. It will hurt too much.

I’m conflicted in the worst way.

“I’m not sure.” I consider. “What was your relationship with her like? ”

“Difficult.” Hades laughs.

I’m surprised. I need more. “How so?”

“At first, she didn’t like me much.”

I’m so confused. “Why not?”

“I was—” Hades pauses. He rolls his lips as he considers. “I was what some might call brutish.”

“You?” I raise a brow. “I don’t believe it. You haven’t been like that with me. Not once.”

His eyes hold mine. There’s something within them that calls a shiver from the depths of me. Something dark and dangerous and addictive. Something that says he can be very, very brutish. “I’ve done my best not to frighten you away.”

“Would you frighten me away? If you let yourself be—yourself?”

“Undoubtedly.”

I force a smile and a nervous laugh escapes. “Well, now I’m curious.”

“Careful,” he warns darkly. “I don’t refrain from temptation well.”

I swallow hard. The air has gone from heavy with ugly loss to thick with something entirely different. I don’t understand the way my body responds to this man.

I shift in my chair again, forcing myself to stay on track. “You said you shared her. Do you mean with others?” I clear my throat and force, “Sexually?”

“I do.” Hades nods. “She had relations outside of the relationship she had with me, and I did the same with other lovers of my own. Often, we would come together to share the same lover.” He smirks. “She was far more sexually liberal than people believe she was.”

“Oh.” I’m confused again. “You mean you slept with people together, as in threesomes?”

He nods. “Sometimes there were more.”

“More than three?” My pitch divulges my shock. I’m scandalized, and I’m uncomfortably intrigued.

Hades simply nods again. “Yes.”

“I—but you loved her?” My brain is trying to stretch around the concept of sharing someone one loves with another. It’s like an elastic band trying to fit over something far too big. It’s going to snap.

Hades dips his chin in answer. A simple affirmative he pairs with a rumble, “Deeply.”

“Then how could you share her?” I can’t escape the fact I’m doing the one thing I hate. I’m judging him. But I just— I don’t understand . My elastic band doesn’t fit around the concept he lived and loved by.

“It was what she wanted, and how I’d always been. We were sexual creatures. I am a sexual creature.”

I pull my coffee cup between my hands, desperate to hold onto something. Anything. I don’t feel grounded.

I murmur, “I don’t think we should continue doing what we’re—um—doing.”

I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so small in my life. So unsure and maybe even a little afraid .

“I disagree.” My eyes bounce to his at the rough threat that resides in the undercurrent of his seemingly composed words.

I stammer, “I’m—I’m not like that. I don’t have that experience. I’m not—I’ve never been sexual .”

“Again, I disagree. You are a highly sexual creature, Persephone.”

“I’m not.” I shake my head. I don’t know if I want to cry or laugh. I’m unnerved, and a little disappointed that I’m not all he believes me to be. “I’m really not.”

“You may never have explored before recently, but you are a sexual creature. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t respond to me as you do.” As though called to action by his words, my body tingles with hot awareness. His nostrils flare and he inhales even as his pitch drops to a low and husky note. “Even now, you’re hot with want, aren’t you?”

Red stings my cheeks. I croak, “Hades…”

“Tell me.” He demands, “Are you hot for me now, Persephone?”

“Y—yes.” I swallow hard. “But I don’t want—I can’t—I won’t be shared.”

An inferno flashes in his eyes before it’s gone. He prowls slowly around the island, catching me around the back of the neck and forcing my eyes to his with his big thumb under my jaw. “I think I would tear the flesh from the man who dared to touch you.” I shudder. His words shouldn’t affect me as they do—but they do . “I want all of you for my own. Every inch of your body, every thought that flutters through your mind, every desire you’re too shy to speak. I want it all.”

“Hades…”

“And you will give it all to me. You will not hold back.” His eyes pin mine. “Do you understand?”

“This isn’t real.”

“This is very real, my little goddess.”

I shake my head even as his grip tightens. “Hades—I’m leaving in a few months.”

His eyes search mine. “What if you didn’t?”

I gasp, working to shut down the hope that rears in my heart. “That’s— impossible .”

“Why?”

“Because…” I stammer. “I have to go home. I have responsibilities. School. A life.”

“Then it’s real until you leave.” He brushes his lips over my temple to growl low in my ear. “Say yes.”

“Hades—”

“Say it.”

I’m breathless. “Yes.”

He hums low in my ear and I shiver. “Now say you’re mine.”

I don’t hesitate this time. “I’m yours.”

“Only mine.”

The words fall as a whispered pant into the charged space between us. “Only yours.”

“Good girl.”