Chapter 5

Chapter

Five

P ersephone

When I left my room, the last place I expected to end up had been the rooftop patio with my boss.

Boss with benefits. I snicker at the thought and feel Hades’ eyes slide to me curiously.

I swing my legs over the side of the pool and cast my eyes to the sky. Starlight flickers in a deep ebony. Up here on Hades’ rooftop tower, I’ve never felt closer to the sky. Even in airplanes, flying through the clouds, the sensation I feel now, bathed in starlight is exclusive to Hades’ Tower. Or maybe it’s just the man himself. Maybe it’s the darkness that radiates from the core of him to cocoon me in woodsmoke and wicked decadency.

Or maybe I’m just obsessed with my boss.

Hades lifts a hand, the tip of his pointer finger not far from the little smile that plays at the corners of my mouth. “What’s that for?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar.”

My breath snags somewhere in my lungs. I look at him. Really look at him. Sometimes I think I could get lost in the shadows that dance in his eyes, burned by the flame he harbours deep within.

“You’re about the only person I don’t lie to, Hades.” I dip my chin, feeling exposed and vulnerable. “That sounds awful. I don’t mean it the way it came out.”

“How do you mean it?” There is never any judgement in Hades’ voice. At least not for me.

“I don’t try to lie. I don’t like lying. I hate it, actually.” I watch the water swirl as I kick my feet in the blue. “Sometimes lying just feels safer.”

Beside me in the water with his pants rolled to below his knees, Hades is still. Quietly, he asks, “Do you mean because of the voice?”

I flinch. He hasn’t brought up the voice since I started working for him. Sucking in a deep breath, I nod. “When I told the truth about the voice, I felt punished. Even after I pretended that it stopped, there were people in my life who never looked at me the same. People who looked at me like I was dangerous. Like I concealed something ugly inside me, just under the surface. Like that ugly thing was only ever a moment away from tearing through my flesh to destroy them.”

“They’re fools. All of them.”

I squint at him. “You really think that?”

“I do.”

“How?” I shake my head at a loss. “How can you know that I hear a voice in my head and not think what everyone else thinks? How can you not think I’m crazy? How can you not be afraid of me?”

Hades just looks at me. For a long while, nothing but silence beats between us. “You haven’t mentioned the voice. Do you still hear him?”

I frown, because I haven’t. “No. I haven’t heard him since the night I met you.”

Between us, the air is charged with my admission. I can’t help but study the man sitting next to me. I can’t help but wonder if he could somehow be the reason I’ve stopped hearing the voice. I wonder—could his presence in my life be blocking it? Could this man somehow be a buffer to my insanity?

He murmurs, “You’re thinking.”

My eyes snap to his. He sees more of me than anyone has ever bothered to see.

“How do you know?”

“I know you.”

I feel breathless again. Inside my chest, my heart is racing. But I say, “You don’t. ”

“I do, Persephone.” Hades shifts beside me. His arm brushes mine, and heat swarms my bloodstream. I don’t understand how I can feel so hot on the inside and still be covered head to toe in goosebumps. I shiver despite the inferno under my flesh and watch as his dark eyes drop to my chest, where I just know my nipples are visibly hard under the thin material of my tank top. “Will you tell me about it?”

My heart stutters. “Tell you about what?”

“What happened at the dig site?”

The heat I felt a moment ago leaves me in a rush of cold. Rubbing my hands over my arms, I cast my gaze to the water that glitters in the pool. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Tell me what you saw.”

“Apparently, I didn’t see anything.”

His voice is soft. “You don’t believe that.”

“I believe that I’m losing my mind, Hades.” My shoulders fall with my heart. I feel so impossibly fragile. I don’t want to be fragile. “That’s what I believe.”

“You’re not.”

“You can’t know that.” I’m getting frustrated. I’m getting frustrated with him, and with myself. With my stupid mind that works so differently from everyone else’s. With the fact I can’t find a moment of peace from the chaos that lives within me. Chaos no one else can see.

“Tell me what you saw.”

Pulling my bottom lip between my teeth, I shake my head. With a tiny scoff, barely heard over the sound of our legs swaying in the water, I say, “Everything was totally normal, until it wasn’t. I was digging next to Willa. We were talking—about nothing, really—and then I felt this tremble in the sand under my knees.” I shutter my eyes against the sky I’ve tipped my face toward, inhaling through my nose for a calm that never comes. “The earth started to—I don’t know, Hades—the earth started to just fall away. I know, logically, it’s impossible. In my mind, it was like a sink hole just gobbled up everything under me. It made this wide, steep set of stairs visible. There were so many stairs and it went so deep, I couldn’t see the end of the tunnel. It was just this yawning mouth of blackness—I—” I open my eyes to find Hades staring intently at me. Embarrassed heat scorches my flesh. Lower, I add, “I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so afraid. I felt like there was something waiting for me in those shadows. A monster.”

When Hades says nothing, I laugh. It’s tinny. I beg, “Say something.”

Quietly, he speaks. “I think you have a beautiful mind, Persephone.”

“If beautiful is fractured.”

“Perhaps,” he agrees, and I flinch.

He thinks my mind is fractured? Why does that hurt so much?

Done with this conversation, with feeling like a lunatic on the verge of losing every last marble of sanity, I stand at the pool’s edge. Hades’ head tips back and he watches as I fight with the indecision that plagues me before I think, what the hell , and lift my shirt over my head.

Next to go are my little pajama shorts. The moon paints my pale flesh silver a moment before I dive into the deep of the pool—completely naked.

As my body cuts through the water, my heart slams a drumbeat between my ears. It’s not like the man hasn’t seen me naked. I mean, he’s had his head between my legs. He’s made me come apart at the seams only to stitch me back up and do it all over again.

Still, I feel tender and exposed under the deep dark of his endless gaze. I feel dangerously fragile under the rough skin of hands I suspect are gentle only for me.

I feel breakable under the deadly whisper of his kiss.

And the fact is this is new to me, having a man in my life. I’ve never even had a boy.

Hades, for me, is my very first. He’s also a lot.

I break the surface of the water in time to see his big hands move to the buckle of his belt. He’s shirtless, and the hard tan skin moves over granite muscles that ripple beneath. His arms flex as he unfastens the belt, popping the button of his slacks.

My mouth goes dry and my throat feels tight as I bob in the water. In all the times he’s had me stripped bare, I’ve yet to see the man naked .

He pushes his pants from his hips to bare inch after inch of golden skin. He’s so muscular and big, I can’t help but think that he’s been built by muscle stacked on muscle, carved from stone. He’s beautiful. Every deep line, every dip and sharp curve. It’s all so beautiful, a sculpture of deadly art crafted into the body of a man and honed to utter perfection. He’s Godly…

I’m entirely struck by the thought as Hades lifts one large arm to swipe his hand through long dark waves. I can feel his eyes on me as I take in the body he’s finally bared to me—and the very large—sort of frightening appendage that hangs hard and veined between his legs.

Water hovers at my lips as I bob in the pool. The water is cool, but there is an uncomfortable heat burning under my skin that I can’t quite calm. I can’t seem to cool it—the blood that simmers.

I drag my eyes up the length of his carved torso to the wide expanse of his shoulders, the corded length of his neck, and over the hard square cut of his jaw. My heart skipping beats before pausing entirely when my gaze connects with the inferno of his eyes. I’m not close to him. In fact, I’m on the opposite side of the pool and the sky is an endless sea of starlit obsidian, but I swear that I see flames dancing in his eyes.

A low sound rumbles from the deep of his chest. A growl, perhaps. A warning, most definitely.

It sparks a quickening of fear-filled anticipation. I feel the urge to run from him, delighted by the fact I know he will hunt me, and catch me.

He dives as I dip under the water. I’m about to spin and swim, but the man is fast. Faster than I could have ever anticipated. He catches me around the back of my ankles. His big hands slide up over the backs of my legs and skim the swell of my butt before one thick arm slides around my waist. He pulls my body flush against his, his other hand continuing the travel up the length of my spine. His thick fingers spear my hair, and he holds us under the water as he brings his lips to mine.

Against my belly, I can feel the hardness of his arousal. My body responds in a way that steals my breath. My core clenches with a need so hard, it’s painful.

I whimper into his kiss, and he swallows the water-muffled sound before he spears my mouth with his tongue in much the same way I wish he would spear my body with his. I’ve never felt empty quite like I do right now. It’s as though I’m entirely hollow on the inside, crafted to be filled exclusively by this man.

My soul cracked open wide the night I met Hades, and it’s been waiting to pull him inside since. I sense this as fact, even though there is a part of me that clings to reality just enough to know it’s yet more proof of my ever-evolving insanity. Because I can’t be made for this man. I can’t have been crafted to belong eternally and exclusively to him .

It’s not possible.

Soul mates aren’t real.

It’s a fabrication of desire built entirely on foolish hope. The idea that one soul could be made for a single other.

And yet…

In my chest, my lungs burn. I’m not sure if it’s from the overload of feeling I feel for the man. Or if it has to do with the fact I’ve been starved of air. Either way, I am happy to die here in his kiss. In his arms.

As though sensing I am at the limits of my very vulnerable body, Hades gives one firm kick and we’re moving up through the water. We break the surface, our mouths still locked together. My hands move over his shoulders, arms circling his neck as I pull my body tighter against his. He growls a groan that sinks into the deep of me when I circle my legs around his waist, feeling the hot tip of his arousal sliding through the wet heat between my legs.

I can’t help myself as I rock my body down onto him, stroking the bud of need with his shaft even as he rocks his hips to meet the roll of my own.

“Persephone.” His arm around my waist tightens, pinning me into place against his hard, searing hot body.

I gasp into the night. “Please.”

He says something low in a language I don’t recognize. But I think it sounds like both a curse and a prayer .

My movement is restricted by the band of his arm, but I still manage a slight roll of my hips. I moan at the feel of his tip against my clit, desperate for it to move lower. Deeper. Inside .

I beg, “Hades…”

“Not tonight.” He sounds pained. “Not yet.”

I want to weep. I don’t understand.

“Why?”

He growls a sound that comes from so deep inside of him, it’s almost frightening. He’s on the edge, and I sense that I shouldn’t push him.

I just can’t seem to stop myself.

I roll my hips again, gasping when his hips jerk in response and he fits his tip at my entrance. A spike of heat prickles every inch of my skin. Something burns in my eyes as I stare into the inferno that blazes in his. And, yes, I know I’m mad. Utterly insane. Because this isn’t a play on words. There is a literal inferno ablaze in the deep of his dark eyes. I see it as clearly as I see the stars that wink in the sky.

He stiffens. If it weren’t for the sway of his feet keeping us afloat, we wouldn’t be moving at all.

I hold my breath as he sits with his tip notched, ready to plunge. He’s holding me so tight; I can’t possibly shift my hips right now. If he enters me, it will be because he wants to be there.

“Hades.” His name is a plea. I should be ashamed, but I’m not .

I’ve never been more ready for something in all my life.

“Not tonight.” He still doesn’t move.

I whimper. My core aches.

I ask again, “Why?”

The words fall from his lips as pained as any confession. “Because you don’t know me .”