Chapter 30

Chapter

Thirty

H ades

Her eyes flutter closed, exhaustion sweeping her body as a third and powerful orgasm crashes through her body. I didn’t expect tonight. Didn’t expect the itch to return along my bones. For that itch to burn with a new and aching heat that threatened to incinerate me from within. I’m used to heat, but tonight, holding back from shoving inside her, from losing myself in the sweet warmth of her womb, that heat that burned like the river Phlegethon along my Gods’ bones had prickles of sweat beading on my flesh.

It drips now as I fight against the burn—the primitive urge to take her for my own before she is ready.

Before she loves me.

Before she knows the real me to even love me.

Lifting my hand to my mouth, I suck my fingers clean of the taste of her. Behind my shorts, my hard cock aches as it leaks seed, affected by the taste of her. So sweet, like nectar and honey drenched in the warmth of sunlight.

Pushing from between her legs, I take in the perfection of her body. Her smooth, creamy skin, and white blonde hair I know will stain ruby under the stretch of the Underworld. Her lithe limbs and elven-tipped ears.

I lift her body into my arms as my cock strains for her, desperate for the warmth of her core even as I feel I may burst into flames. Grinding my teeth, I position her in the bed to sleep. Unable to help myself, I drag my thumb over the swollen pink of her lips that she assaulted with blunt white teeth. Her leg falls to the side, and I drag my gaze down the length of her. My eyes land on her swollen pussy, still glistening with the wet of her spent arousal.

My cock jumps, and I deny him once again as I pull the blankets up over her to cover her nakedness. Then, needing to cool off, I storm from the bedroom to suck the night air into my lungs. Not even the cool wash of the moon can dull the heat. I hate to leave her, fear it, even—but I vow I won’t go far as I dive into the black waters.

The dogs are there to protect her, if need arises. In that there is some comfort as cold water rushes over my flesh. Still, it does little to dull the burn that sears my bones, or the now painful itch that pierces even deeper to the marrow within.

I wish I knew what this was, what it meant.

I crest the surface and instantly see my brother. His eyes are unmistakable in the dark, illuminating a blue bioluminescence that sees far too much.

“You found her,” he says by way of greeting.

I free a sound of displeasure as I recall a conversation, I had with Leuce. A conversation she admitted to having with Minthe, where Persephone confessed she thought she saw a merman with glowing blue eyes and opalescent hair. “You showed yourself to her.”

Poseidon smiles. “We were once great friends, her and I.”

I tense, because even as I knew Persephone often visited Poseidon where the sea met the Underworld, I never could gather the courage to ask after the exact terms of their relations. Now, I want to rip into him—to gut him like a fish that swim in his seas—if he even thinks of touching her.

“She is mine.”

Poseidon raises a brow. “She has always been yours, Hades.”

“She is not the same as she was. ”

“No, she isn’t, is she?” Poseidon asks, but he does it in a way that has me suspecting he knows things that he shouldn’t know about the woman who is meant to be my wife. The Goddess who is meant to stand as my Queen.

I swim closer, even knowing that a fight with Poseidon in his waters would be a losing battle for me. One I could never hope to win, even as, in all truth, neither of us would lose. For we’re both immortal, but in the seas, there is nowhere to contain a God’s immortal soul, even if one manages to strip him of his mortal form.

It is why Oceanus was so difficult to defeat, and I’d needed Poseidon’s help in order to contain him in his prison world first in Tartarus and now, unbeknownst to the other Gods, within the canvas that teased of a sea that would scorch his dry, cracking scales, if he dared submerge himself. An ocean of acid.

Minthe had thought I’d been offering the Titan a reprieve when I painted an ocean into his new prison, but no. After a world void of all water, under a stormy sky that never dared drop even a kernel of rain, I’d needed to expand on his torture.

To see that which you desperately crave, and know it will cause only excruciating pain—now that is the truest torment.

At the threat that burns in my eyes, Poseidon’s lips stretch into a grin. “You are jealous. This is new.”

I have not been close to Poseidon, ever since the moment he chose to align himself with my Queen over me. To try to sway her heart to crack wider for him than I could ever hope it would crack for me.

“I’ve always been jealous,” I admit.

His voice is hard, even as he says, “I know.”

I don’t allow my eyes to sever from his, even as the silver lash of his tail whips in the water below me. It is a beastly thing, threatening in a way I could never hope to be. At least not in the water.

“I never asked, brother, but I am asking now. What was your relationship with Persephone?”

Poseidon peers at me for a long time, the glint of his tail catching the light of the moon as it sweeps through the sea. “I will answer you, if you answer me this first: why did you share her? Why did you ever allow her to offer herself to others, encouraging her to share, and join in the,” his lip curls. “Activities, if it upset you? And I’m seeing now, that it did. Deeply.”

I consider telling him to fuck off. That my relationship with my wife was, and is, none of his business. But as my brother holds my gaze and waits with a patience lacking judgement for my answer, I realize that I’ve never admitted my reasons for being as I was with Persephone, to anyone else.

The sins of my past—the acts I submitted to as an unformed God—have been the torment to haunt me for centuries. Even free, I’ve been living in my own purgatory.

“I stole her body and her freedom.” The words feel like acid on my tongue. “I craved the gift of her heart. The gift of her body, freely given to me, as she gave it to all the others. I hoped that my giving her the freedom she obviously sought to choose her lovers for herself after I—after I raped her—that she would one day choose me. Only me. That she would one day love me. Exclusively. Completely. As I’ve loved her since the beginning.”

Poseidon blinks slowly, before he murmurs thoughtfully, “Tragic.”

“What?”

“You were the only one she ever loved, Hades,” he tells me with a confidence that has the fire burning along my bones in an instant. “Her heart only ever belonged, exclusively, to you.”

“I know she loved me. But not completely. Not the way I longed for her to love me. Absolutely. The way I loved—the way I love her.”

Poseidon sways in the water, his glowing eyes never leaving me as he considers. When he speaks, his voice is low with emotion. “I believed you took her for her beauty, ensnared by her innocence. It was my belief that once you believed you had her, like a toy to a spoiled child, you were no longer interested. I believed that you shared her, allowing others to indulge in her, because she was a token of pride for you, the Dark God of the Underworld. I believed that she meant little more to you than the Crown of Souls you wear upon judgement—a prop. ”

“She was my Queen!” My roar is swallowed by the sea as Poseidon swims a circle around me.

“Is it possible, Hades, that if I believed she meant so little to you—that she believed it, too?”

I’m not sure if it’s the fall of night or the chill in the sea, but a shiver grates along my too-hot bones. “I don’t understand.”

Poseidon’s eyes flutter closed and open again. There is something there in his gaze. Something that speaks of disappointment. “She will tell you when she is ready.”

“She does not remember her past.”

“She will. She is already remembering. It’s in pieces now, but she is smart. She has always been smart. It won’t be long before she begins putting those pieces together.” He smiles, a coy thing drenched in the glow of his eyes as his teeth sharpen into deadly points. “You have your spies, Hades. I have mine.”

“I thought you keep to the seas now, brother. Or are you shifting again?” Poseidon’s deadly smile stretches. I’d shiver, but I refuse to give him the satisfaction. When he doesn’t answer, I demand, “What was your relationship with my wife, brother?”

His smile finally falls. “She was my friend. Only ever my friend.”

His words ring with absolute honesty. Still, I ask, “You never had her?”

“Only her trust and a glimpse into an exquisitely beautiful, tragically abused mind.” His eyes drift to my yacht where it bobs in the water. If he wanted to, he could have his seas swallow it whole. He doesn’t allow his eyes to drift from the yacht as he tells me, “I loved her dearly. For a long time, I was jealous of you, even as I loathed you for the heart she so freely offered you. The heart you were too blinded by guilt to see that it bled in her outstretched hands as she begged silently for you to notice. To take.” He begins to lower into the water, leaving me with an ominous parting, “Don’t make the same mistake, brother. Open your eyes.”

And then he is gone, disappearing in a flash of silver to the ancient city of sunken land he rules far, far below.