Chapter 7

Chapter

Seven

H ades

She thinks she’s fallen for me. She doesn’t know what it means to fall. She’s too innocent. Too inexperienced. Her understanding of what it truly means to fall for another is skewed by this modern day living, where falling is easy, loving is simple, and leaving is expected.

But when one loves another, really loves another, it isn’t simply for a few months. There is never an expiration date on love.

Real love, true love, love between mates is something much of humanity today can’t comprehend. It is impossible to kill. Those who taste true love and know the touch of their mate never move on from the mourning of their loss.

No, she hasn’t fallen for me. Not yet. Not if she intends to leave me still come the end of the summer. But the taste of her desperate prayer, knowing that she believes she’s losing her heart to me—it gives me hope that sooner than later—she really will fall.

Until then, I will wait for her.

I’ve already waited for her for millennia.

I can’t lie and say that I’ve ever denied myself of that which I want, but as I walk the ramp into the shallow end of the pool, and the water slowly falls down to expose more and more of her body to me, I grit my teeth against the desire to take her. To push inside her and make her mine, ready or not. In love with me or not.

She shivers in my arms, tiny goosebumps rising on her skin before she wiggles closer. With her body tucked tight against my chest, her legs wrapped around my waist, I climb the ladder onto the patio. The moment her teeth start clapping, I pivot from the direction of the patio bed and move instead to the hot tub.

Her body relaxes against mine as soon as I sink inside the warm water. In the far distance, color is beginning to break through the night sky.

“Better?” I ask.

She nods, lifting her head from my chest. “Yes.” Her eyes find mine, searching for something she obviously doesn’t find.

I can’t stand the little lines of disappointment that furrow her brow. “What is it?”

“I don’t like the thought of not knowing you,” she admits quietly. “I don’t like that you’re holding back.”

Unable to help myself, I lean forward and press a kiss to her forehead. Her skin is so soft under my lips. So smooth under the rough expanse of my hands. “You are learning me still, Persephone. Perhaps not as quickly as you think you’d like, but I assure you this is for your own good.”

She narrows her eyes at me. When her nose wrinkles, I am forced to bite back a laugh. The woman is adorable.

She blurts, “Are you Greek Mafia?”

The laugh spills out of me abruptly. Yes, she’s most definitely adorable. “No, I am not Greek Mafia.”

She studies me, her nose scrunched in a look of uncertainty. “Are you sure?”

“I think I would know if I were in the Greek Mafia, little goddess.”

She wiggles on my lap, taunting my cock that has yet to give up the hope he’ll slide inside her tonight. My fingertips dig into her flesh, and I watch her lips part. Her breaths turn shallow and a flush rises to the surface of her skin before she shutters her eyes and shakes her head.

She pushes off my lap, and I let her .

My eyes track her as she puts distance between us, walking to the opposite side of the tub. The fall of her white-blonde waves nearly reaches the small of her back. My eyes drink in the beauty of her. The smooth lines of her back, narrow and lovely and delicate, before the flare of wide hips. I wet my own lips as my eyes settle on the intimate dip at the small of her back before the curve of her perfect ass.

Arriving at her destination, she turns and settles her lovely ass on the seat. Through the water, I can see her creamy skin. Temptation burns inside me to close the distance between us. To take all that she is.

I don’t move.

She cocks her head slightly to the side, lifting her little chin. “Do you have siblings?”

I clear my throat. “I do.”

She looks surprised. “How many?”

“More than I like.”

“Hades, I’m trying to know you.” Exasperation bleeds from her words. “Talk to me.”

“You won’t know me by learning of them. I am my own man, and I am not very close to my siblings.”

“Who are you close to?”

I flash her a devilish grin. “I’d like to be close to you.”

“Hades.” She lets a frustrated sound slip from between her lips. I swallow back my laugh.

“I am close to Leuce and Minthe.” I watch her carefully, not missing the curious furrow of her brows. “I have more close friends at my other home.”

“Where is that?”

“I will take you there,” I tell her. It’s a promise. “One day.”

“You will?”

Why does she sound surprised by that?

“I will.” I can’t take my eyes off her, but this conversation is edging on dangerous. She isn’t ready for all that I could share with her. She isn’t ready for the truth. “Will you feel well enough to accompany me to the gala this evening?”

Her eyes shift to the lightening sky, where feathers of tangerine seep from the maroon that bleeds from the ebony of a night not long enough. If there is something that makes me yearn for the Underworld, it is the scorch of the day. The bright exposure of the sun. I am a being that thrives under the throw of night, the scatter of stars.

She sighs a soul-deep sigh. “Are you sure you want me to go with you, Hades?”

“I am.”

She lifts a slim shoulder as she tugs her full bottom lip between her teeth. I am hit again with how delicate she is in her human body. How vulnerable. She’d been beautiful before, when her soul possessed the strong body of a goddess.

I never could have imagined that I would find her this lovely, this alluringly enchanting, with her eternal soul trapped within the defenceless body of a human. She looks remarkably similar, but I can’t ignore the reality that she is delicate. Fragile. Breakable . I admit I am lost to the possibility of how a creature such as her could hold the power I know she possesses within the casing of such a fragile form.

Yet I know it to be true. Her power.

I’ve seen the flare of it in the depths of her emerald eyes. I’ve tasted it in the deep of her kiss. It’s there, but hidden even from herself. She is unaware of the power she possesses. I’m not sure if that makes her more dangerous to the world around her—or to herself.

My eyes track her as she stands again, baring her lovely body to me. I feel like a predator in a cage, ravenous for the taste of her flesh so close and yet untouchable.

“I think I should try to sleep some more.” Her eyes drift over my face, and a sweet blush rushes into the pale of her skin. She asks softly, “Will you join me?”

I stand. The hunger in the deep of me feels as though it might shred me.

Pebbles rise on her skin as I hunt her from the other side of the tub. I am incapable of keeping my hands at my side as I near her. Incapable of this last restraint. Capturing her neck between my hands, I slide my thumbs under her jaw. With her face lifted to mine, I claim her mouth. It’s not a gentle kiss. It’s dominating. Hungry .

She opens to me. Surrendering to me. Taking me in.

She tastes like life.

I devour her sighs, kissing her deeper. Needing more than I can take. At the end of my willpower, I pull back.

And there it is. Shining in the depths of her emerald eyes is the light that feeds all life.

I know now with a certainty that cools the flame in my blood, Zeus was never her father. I don’t know how Demeter did it. I don’t know how she hid it for so long, but I know with a certainty that can’t be questioned, that the eternal soul this tiny woman possesses conceals a power long ago banished. A power I fought. A power I imprisoned. A power I still have imprisoned.

A power that could absorb us all—a power so bright and deadly.

A weapon they would all kill to possess, and if they failed, they would all fight to simply kill.

Impossible.