Chapter 4

Chapter

Four

H ades

They’ve been working the Eleusis site for years, and had never come close to discovering the underground temple that was once a passage into the Underworld. Long since sealed, they will discover nothing more than a wide, ancient room deep below the earth. That’s if they are smart enough to listen to Persephone, and exhume the land that conceals the staircase she claims, accurately, exists.

A low click echoes in the penthouse. I turn from the wall of windows at the sound of her bare feet moving over tile, the low clack-clacking of dog nails not far behind.

Persephone appears, white blonde waves pulled messily into a high ponytail that sharpens her normally soft features. She’s wearing a pair of pink pajama shorts and matching top. Even from all the way across the room, I can see she’s not wearing a bra.

Hunger burns in my veins. I don’t move.

It takes a moment for her to spot me, but when she does the black of her pupils expands in the brilliant emerald of her irises.

I love how her body responds to me. The catch in her breath before it quickens when I am near. The scent of her need, hot and wet between her thighs. The flutter of her heart as it thunders in her chest. The flush of rose in her skin…

This is how she has responded to me since that first moment when I dared stand beside her in the room where I broadcast my art. I’d itched every second to steal her away to the Underworld—to her true home—with every minute since.

The God under my flesh demanded it, even. Yet I refrained with a strength I’m not sure I will possess much longer.

“How are you feeling?” I ask when her hands twist into a nervous knot at her belly. Jas whines, a sound that is somehow high and low at once.

“Surprisingly, exhausted.” She sucks her lip into her mouth, sinking her teeth into the corner to catch it there as she thinks. I watch the lovely little lines appear between her brows. She releases her lip. “What time is it?”

“Nearly two in the morning.”

Her eyes widen adorably. “I slept all day?”

And nearly all night. “I think you needed it.”

She scrubs her hands down her face, groaning. “I’m a mess.” Her eyes slide to the kitchen and her shoulders fall. “I didn’t make dinner.”

“You were unwell.”

“I’m a terrible chef and a worse companion.” Her eyes are big and wet when they find mine again. Inside my chest—something—my heart, perhaps, squeezes. The God, ancient and possessive over this tiny woman who holds the soul of his mate, rages. “I’m sorry, Hades.”

“Stop,” I command. I can’t hear more of this.

She flinches. When she blinks, a single glittering tear escapes from the prison of her lash to roll down her cheek.

I want to maim.

Softer, I beg, “Talk to me.”

“I don’t know—” Her voice shakes. As does her body. I begin to move closer to her, but stop when she holds up a hand and speaks again. “It has to be heatstroke. I wouldn’t have slept so long if it weren’t, but?—”

She slept so long because her mind was exhausted by fighting to open knowledge that The Lethe repressed so deep inside the darkest caverns of her soul.

I want to tell her everything. Tell her that she’s right. Instead, I urge, “But what?”

“But it just felt so real, Hades.” Her wet eyes slam into me. I think for a moment that they stop my very heart in my chest. “I was so afraid.”

“You are safe.” I cross the space between us this time, ignoring the hand she lifts to stop my advance. Pulling her into my arms, I absorb her tremble with arms that hold her tightly. It takes a while as three sets of anxious eyes watch before her trembling subsides.

“Thank you.” Her voice is so small.

Not for the first time, I want to get my hands on Demeter’s eternal soul so that I can torment it.

One day.

I pull back, but only slightly. When she tilts her head back to gaze up at me with those brilliantly green eyes, the shackles tighten around my soul.

My voice sounds rough and husky with emotion even to my own ears. “Would you like to join me for a swim? Or a soak in the hot tub?”

Her lips part and the knot between her brows forms. I think she’s going to reject me. I don’t want her to reject me. If she chooses to shut herself into her room again, shutting me out, I am liable to lose my very mind.

“It’s two in the morning. ”

“Are you tired?” I counter. I just want to spend time with her. Watch her. Steal a touch.

She blushes, giving me a small, somewhat shy shake of her head. Her pink tongue pokes out to wet her lips. “No.”

Restraining myself from the things I desperately want to do is getting incredibly difficult. Because when she licks her lips like that, I want to do a lot .

I do nothing but continue to hold her. I don’t steal that touch I’m desperate to steal. That taste of her mouth I ache to take. I study her face up close as I ask, “Then what’s stopping you?”

She peers up at me, her body still imprisoned in my arms. She is so deliciously warm, like the sun. Fucking Demeter and her deceptions.

She inhales a breath, her chest brushing against mine in the rise. Heat liquifies the marrow in my bones, traveling south.

She speaks. “Did you sleep at all tonight?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I was worried about you. I want to be,” I pause to consider my next words. “I wanted to be present if you needed me.”

“You need to sleep, too.”

Her eyes track my smirk. “I need less sleep than you think.”

She studies me. “Do you have insomnia?”

I almost tell her no. I don’t. I simply don’t require the kind of sleep her vulnerable human body needs. Instead of the truth, I give her another lie. All the while I curse Demeter and this place she’s put us in. This place of half-truths. “Yes.”

She pulls in another breath, wiggling free from my arms. Then she says, “Okay, then. Let’s go upstairs.”

That liquid heat in my marrow begins to simmer as I follow her onto the rooftop patio.