CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I T TOOK SEVERAL days for Hades to be able to come up for air after dealing with all the legality of the merger.

We signed off on the paperwork extremely late on the fourth day, and that was when he told me he had a surprise for me.

“I will take you out tomorrow,” he said.

“It’s not even Christmas yet,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “But I was thinking about what you said. We have not been on a date.”

The last few days had been strange for us. We had sex, but we had managed to talk quite a bit in between. And do work. I was right; we needed to fill in those gaps. And we were. Much more competently than I had expected us to.

We had breakfast together. Lunch. Dinner.

We moved in the rhythm of each other’s life. Rather than existing in stolen fragments of time.

It was that shot of intensity, but with everything in between.

I liked him. And that was an interesting thing. I had realized I loved him first. But it still felt very sharp.

A bit uneasy.

But I liked everything about him. Well, not all of his mercurial moods, not while they were happening, but I didn’t think that he would be him without them.

Because without them, he wouldn’t be intense. And I did love the intensity. Especially when it was all focused on me.

I liked the way he talked about business. I like the way it felt to sit next to him. I like him as much as I ever thought that I had hated him, and that was saying something.

But I had only ever been protecting myself. That much was clear.

I had only been able to make space for myself to love the company, because I thought that I had to succeed at that or everything else would fall apart. Or I wouldn’t matter. Or I would be my mother. I couldn’t see a middle ground. But that, in and of itself, was flawed thinking.

It didn’t let me be a whole person. And I really badly needed to figure out how to be a whole person.

I could love my job—I did love it. But I could also love myself.

I didn’t need to be subsumed.

Because I had lived with people who had become parodies of themselves, and that kept you from being what you needed to be for the children depending on you. I knew that well.

It also didn’t help a marriage. And my marriage to Hades meant a lot to me. So much.

I opened up the closet when it was time for us to get ready for dinner and gasped at what I saw.

There was a gold dress inside that glittered like all the Christmas decorations I had bought for the house.

It was so deliberate, it had to be intentional.

“Hades,” I breathed.

“I want badly to see you in that,” he said. He moved over to me, kissed my neck and wrapped his arm around me, his chest hot against my back. “More, though, I want to take it off of you.”

“That can be arranged,” I whispered. “Maybe we can make it like old times. Find a coat closet.”

He growled. “I’m done with coat closets. You’re mine. And I’m going to show the world that you’re mine. Then I’ll take you home to our bed, where I will stretch you out and feast on you like I have all the time in the world. Because I do.”

Nothing could have been sexier. But then, that was how he was. Nothing could be sexier than him.

We had to take a helicopter down the mountain, and I clung to him again as we did so, but this time I didn’t resent it, or him.

“Geneva,” I whispered, as the glittering city came into view.

“Good memories,” he said.

“Yes,” I whispered.

A car was there to pick us up after the helicopter landed on the edge of town, and whisked us to a glorious restaurant in an old palace. If people were staring at us, I didn’t care. Because for the first time, I was out in public with him.

For the first time...

Yes. There had been headlines and all kinds of things about our wedding, about our kissing. There had been a storm. But I had ignored it because I was with him. And when I was with him nothing else really mattered.

Now we were out together, making something new.

Something we had never experienced before.

It was amazing how much had changed in the past two months, but then, also how nothing had changed.

It was like the hard knot of my feelings that had lived in this deep place inside of me had been given room to grow and expand. So that I could finally see what they were trying to become all along.

It was always supposed to be love. For me, that was always what it was supposed to be.

I still couldn’t quite figure it out with him, though, and I didn’t want to disrupt what we were building.

I had to be patient. Though, patience had never been my particular strong suit.

I was, after all, the same person who had seduced Hades on my eighteenth birthday, because I hadn’t been able to wait another second.

But now I would have to wait. We had all the trust in the world in each other’s bodies. But the rest of it... We didn’t have practice with it. Not yet.

I was trying to figure out how to learn this. How to learn him.

How to get over the walls inside of him.

Or maybe it wasn’t walls so much as a series of locked doors and different rooms. Sometimes he let me into one room, but it closed off another. I could never access all of him all at once.

He had shared some things, but it always felt like it was being dragged from him. And there was more. I could feel it. He could be so remote, so hard. And yet he was so passionate too. I wanted to feel the passion. All of it. Always.

I wanted everything.

I let him order for us.

“I like it,” I said.

“What?”

“Letting you make decisions for me sometimes. I’m exhausted. From deciding everything all the time.” I looked at him. “What can I do for you?”

He raised his brows. “You already do it.”

He meant sex. And that was not particularly flattering or romantic, but I can understand how he meant it. Because for him, that was maybe when he was his most honest.

“I am always happy to accommodate,” I said.

But I determined that I was going to figure out a way to make moments in his life better. Not just naked moments.

I became aware after our plates were put in front of us that we were drawing a bit of attention.

I looked up at him and moved my eyes to the left, knowing his gaze would follow. And it did. There were two girls giggling and raising their phones, clearly taking video or photos of us.

“You know,” I said softly. “At one time, that would have been my worst nightmare.”

“Yes,” he said. “I know.”

“You know why, though. It was never because I was ashamed of you.”

“My ego is fairly healthy,” he said. “I don’t know that I was ever concerned that you were ashamed of me.”

There was something, though. A slight hollow note in his voice. Something that let me know he felt something. Even if he wasn’t going to fully articulate it.

I put my hand over his. His eyes dropped to that space on the table. And I felt his entire body relax. Not something I had ever felt it do.

Even after he had an orgasm he was breathing hard, all of his muscles strung tight. He didn’t even fully relax and sleep, but in that moment, I felt give. Beneath my fingertips. I saw it in the slope of his shoulders.

I was shocked by it. Maybe that was what he needed. For someone to touch him. For someone to care for him. He did a lot of caring for me, I realized. Yes, it was often in physical ways. But it was all very thoughtful. He never allowed me to be cold or hungry. He made sure to see to my comfort at all times. And that was something that seemed to go well beyond sex. Deeper into something else.

“I couldn’t figure out how to have everything,” I said. “I realized something when I was walking down the aisle toward you. I had lost. All of my intent was burned to the ground. I had nothing. I was going to be exposed to the world. And then I realized that I was free because of that. That I didn’t have to hide anymore. Try anymore.” I want that for you.

I left it wordless. Because I knew he wasn’t quite ready to be confronted with that in a way he couldn’t sidestep or deny. I didn’t know how I knew it. Perhaps it was knowing him .

He hadn’t hidden me for fear of his father being disappointed. He hadn’t hidden me because of what it might say about his gender. Or the position he occupied in his company and his ability to do his job.

He had initially hidden our relationship because he was afraid his father would beat him.

And I had to wonder how much of what he did was purely the response of a boy who had been hit when he should have been cared for.

It was almost impossible to say.

“I’m glad of it,” I said. “Because I was going to exhaust myself. There was just nowhere else for me to go.”

“Except I would’ve married someone else.”

I could pivot here. I could put my own shields back up. But then we would just be caught in the same circle we’d been trapped in already. I had to be the one to keep moving. To keep breaking through barrier after barrier. It felt like a risk. To expose myself like this. But I could feel myself getting stronger the more vulnerable I became.

Like I was becoming more myself as I tried to connect with him.

“Nothing about that would’ve been a relief,” I said. I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “I went to my mother, because if she knows one thing, it’s how to deal with heartbreak. That was what I felt, you know. I wasn’t just angry at you. I was... I was devastated.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said. He looked down at his plate. “Whatever you think about me, I want you to know that.”

He looked up again, and I saw that same sort of lost darkness there. “I believe you,” I said.

And I didn’t have anything else to say on the subject. Except that I believed him. For some reason, I thought that might be important. I knew that it was to me.

We talked about business until dessert. And then we talked about chocolate cake, because we both liked it. And considered it the pinnacle of dessert.

“That is one thing I have always resented,” he said.

“What is that?”

“The snobbery my fellow Europeans have for the sweetness and decadence of American food. I for one am a fan.”

“But you like dark chocolate,” I said. “Which is not historically the sweetest.”

“I like it at every point on the spectrum,” he said.

He smiled. And I felt something like joy resonate inside of me.

Afterward we left the restaurant and he put his coat over my shoulders. We held hands and walked down the streets, bathed in the streetlights. Even this was something we’d never done before. This simple act of walking and holding hands.

This ordinary togetherness that most couples tried out before they ever kissed. Certainly before they had ten years of torrid sex.

But not us. There had never been lightness for us. There had never been simplicity.

We had been trying to gorge ourselves. Trying our best to have every bite at a feast we were certain we had a limited time to experience.

And now forever stretched before us. Which meant we had the luxury of time.

I laughed.

“What?”

“You’re a billionaire,” I said.

“So are you,” he pointed out.

“Yes,” I said. “And it would be silly to say that our lives weren’t absolutely replete with luxury. But one thing we’ve never had the luxury of is time. So here we are.”

“Yes,” he said, his voice rough.

“We can walk down the street for the next four hours if we want to.”

“Well,” he said. “It’s possible there might be traffic that makes that difficult.”

“You know what I mean. We don’t have to worry about anyone finding out. No more going through back doors or staff entrances. No more fake names. No more hiding. We were so busy figuring out what all of this meant for the company, and then thinking about... Well, about the baby, that I didn’t really think about what it meant for us. I want to know you.” I turned to him, standing on the street, holding his hands as I had done at the altar on our wedding day. “Everything about you.”

His expression looked pained. “You say that as someone who does not know me. And the problem is once you do, you’ll never be able to go back to the bliss of your ignorance.”

“Doesn’t it ever get tiring,” I said. “Playing the part of King of the damned.”

“Does it ever get tiring, playing the part of persistent, bulletproof CEO?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s why it was a relief for you to pick my dinner. That’s why it has always been a relief, to find myself in your arms, to have you be in charge of making me feel good. Because I am tired. Because I needed a place to break down. To cry out. Because I needed to be able to be naked. To be able to be honest. And with you, I found that. Yes, it gets tiring. That’s why I’m asking you if it’s ever the same for you.”

“If it was ever an act, I have forgotten. Simply become who I am.”

“But you love chocolate,” I said. “And you kiss me like a dream.”

“Some girls dream of the devil,” he said, a regretful note in his voice. He put his fingertips beneath my chin, tilting my face up. “And some would say those dreams are untrustworthy.”

“But they’re the only dreams I have.”

I realized then that I would give up the company for him. I would give up anything he asked me to. He was more important than anything else, and the actions that I’d exhibited over the past ten years actually did suggest that. I had been willing to risk everything to be with him. I hadn’t been brave enough to actually set everything on fire, but I had not protected my position entirely.

I had been much more interested in protecting my connection with him.

That had been the most important thing. That had been the thing I really cared about.

It hurt me, knowing the same probably wasn’t true of him. And I knew a moment of deep shame. Was it inescapable, this softness inside of me? Was it a fault of my sex? That I had this latent desire to be his housewife somewhere inside of me.

No. That wasn’t the revelation I was having. It was only that if I had to lay out my priorities, right now, the top one would be this. Him. Our family. The life that we were building.

I no longer needed to impress my father. I no longer needed the press to write glowing things about me. I no longer needed to live as an act of defiance to my mother’s frailty.

I just wanted to live.

I just wanted to love him.

Of all the things that I had succeeded at, being loved had never been one of them.

It was what I wanted now. Really. Truly. More than anything.

But I didn’t say that yet either. Because I wasn’t quite sure how.

Because I didn’t quite know what to do.

Or maybe I just wasn’t quite ready to risk it.

I had risked the company, marrying him. He had agreed to a merger that kept me in an equal position, but he might not have. I had risked my reputation by marrying him. I didn’t care.

But I was not ready to risk him.

This was terrifying. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff, staring down into a void I couldn’t see the end of. Because what if?

What if he never loved me?

I couldn’t think that. But I had to take a moment. A breath. I had to proceed slowly.

Especially when I was not quite certain of my own feelings anyway. Well. I was certain of them. But I wasn’t sure of what to ask for. I wasn’t sure of how exactly to go about telling him.

I just needed some time. Some more time to turn it all over.

We went back to walking.

“Do you have any good memories of your childhood?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “My mother. She taught me how to ride horses. We used to go out early in the morning. Especially on summer days. We lived in Greece then. It was magnificent. We would ride through the olive groves and out to the sea. I didn’t know then that we were wealthy, or that I was going to inherit a major company. All I knew was that my mother loved me. And the world was beautiful. That is the happiest that I have ever been.”

I ached. I wanted him to be happy with me.

But at the same time, I was glad there had been some happiness for him. That he had known love in some capacity.

“Where is your mother now?”

He looked away from me. “Greece,” he said.

“You never visit her?”

“I do,” he said. “Our shared experience made a relationship difficult. My father made a relationship difficult. Also, I suspect her guilt made things hard.”

“That isn’t fair,” I said. “She made the choice that she felt she had to make, and I can’t be overly judgmental about it. I don’t know how terrifying your father was.”

“He was a dangerous man.”

“I believe you,” I said. “But now, in the fullness of time, at the end of all things, I don’t understand why she would allow that choice to drive a wedge between you.”

“Things are complicated. Much more so than I would like them to be. But...”

“You could talk to her. Tell her that you don’t want those years to stand between you. If your mother is your happiest memory, then...”

“What?” He paused midstride, and turned to look at me. “Are you an expert now in repairing fractured family bonds, Florence?”

I shook my head. “No. Though I did have to figure out how to maintain a relationship with both of my parents when they hated each other. When I wanted desperately to please them both, and no amount of loving my father would ever make my mother happy, while he was endlessly disapproving of my continued relationship with her. I don’t know about dangerous family dynamics. I admit that. But I do know about difficult ones. I had to forgive my father for the things he said to me because he was angry at my mother. I had to forgive my mother for being... For being something I couldn’t understand. The truth is, for a long time I was bitter at my mother for not changing. But my father never changed. It was only I found it easier to fit into the mold that he set out for me. If I had wanted to trip around Europe bagging rich men, my mother would have been a fantastic role model.” I laughed. “She’s strong, is the thing. I never saw it as strength when I was younger. I didn’t see how much work she did carving out a place for herself to live.”

He surprised me by laughing. “Many people might have taken that route, Florence. It does seem a bit easier than this endless road of perfectionism you’ve been walking.”

“But surely you understand that sometimes perfectionism is its own reward.”

“And its own hangman’s noose.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “But nothing is simple, is it?”

“No indeed,” he said.

“You should call your mother. Tell her she’s going to be a grandmother.”

“She’s already a grandmother,” he said.

For a moment, I struggled to understand that.

“What?”

He chuckled. “Not me. One of her stepsons. Also, she had other children. They are all fifteen years younger than me at least. She had another family. I’m glad for her. She found happiness. Less complicated happiness. I am a complicated joy for her. She loves me. I know that. But sometimes love does not look like being able to be there with someone every day.” His dark eyes burned then. “Sometimes love looks like giving someone space. Sometimes love hurts as much as it heals. Sometimes love is itself a sharpened blade.”

“I feel like I read somewhere—I don’t know, some little book—that love was patient and kind.”

“I wish it were so simple. I do. But my experience of it has not been simple. My mother and I are both tied to violent memories. We are that for each other. She has a husband who is good to her. She has children with him.”

“And you feel like a bruise.”

“Exactly that. An old wound that is pressed whenever she sees me.”

“It isn’t your fault.”

“Fault has nothing to do with it.” He leaned in and put his hand on my face. It was a surprisingly gentle gesture contrasted with the ferocity of his voice. “It does not matter who is responsible for pain, not when it lingers, not when the effects, the damage, carry on. You can be twisted through no fault of your own, and yet it does not change the result. Blood can poison you. And you are poisoned whether you consented to it or not. And love is not enough to change that.”

Somehow, just then, I did not feel like we were talking about his mother. But I couldn’t get a firm enough hold on what he might be talking about. It stirred inside of me, a strange beacon of hope that also felt hopeless. Because he was telling me he couldn’t love. Regardless of what changed in his life.

He was telling me what he couldn’t give me.

But at the same time, I felt like he was telling me he wished it could be different.

And one thing I couldn’t reconcile was the idea of hopelessness in this man. This man who was so determined, so successful. This man who rivaled me for success. How could he want something and not obtain it? How could he desire something to be different and not make the change.

It wasn’t him. It never had been, not for as long as I’d known him.

So even while a part of my soul flailed in hopelessness, another part felt like it had just had the sun shone upon it for the first time in ages.

He had bought a house with a view of Geneva.

I wanted that to mean something.

“What is your best memory?” he asked, as if the change in subject would shift the mood completely. Like he could control it with new words and a flick of his wrist. With a step onward.

I wanted to share with him, and that was why I let him change the subject.

“I’m lucky. There was a lot of happiness in my childhood. I remember going to work with my father and sitting on his desk. I loved the frenetic pace of the Edison offices. I loved the thrill of discovery. Of innovation. When we would get to go out on the cruise ships, take their maiden voyages, I was always so excited. I loved staying in a new hotel. Flying on the newest airplane. It was an exhilarating way to experience the world. Magical, in a way. My passion for this industry doesn’t just come from inheriting a company. It doesn’t simply come from the amount of money there is to be made. I really do believe in the beauty of it. I’m captivated by this world. By the universe.”

“Do you think that you’ll make a flight to space?”

“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “Because I want to see it. Everything that I do is about the drive to discover. I really do believe that as humans we will never fully understand each other, understand how to make our world better if we don’t see it. If we don’t see one another.”

“An interesting perspective to gain from the creation of luxury travel methods.”

“It isn’t all exclusive. We have the most affordable cruise options for the amenities of any other line. We have more flight options and more hotel package options at budget levels than any other large travel conglomerate. We also invest a large amount of money in different charities. Primarily education. Because I really do believe that learning and exploring are the keys to a person discovering all that they can be.”

“All because you sat on your father’s desk when you were a child?”

I blinked rapidly. “And because my mother took me to different places around Europe. Because I have citizenship both in the US and the UK. Because I was someone who lived in different worlds.”

“And you feel like you know yourself?”

“No,” I said. “I feel like I know aspects of myself. I definitely learned what my professional dreams were. I formed a lot of my core values from those experiences. I ignored what I wanted personally. I will admit that. I didn’t think that I could have it.”

I looked at him for a long time. I didn’t feel that my expression was terribly ambiguous.

“Why is that?”

“I felt like what I wanted was wrong. I didn’t feel like I could trust what I wanted. Because... The most damaging thing that my father told me was the thing he said about my mother. He made me feel like the things in me that might be feminine—that might relate to desire or romance or sex—were flawed. Like I couldn’t trust them. Obviously, finding myself attracted to you confirmed that.”

“Obviously,” he said, but there was a faint smile on his lips.

“I couldn’t see a way around it. I couldn’t figure out how to take all the passion that I felt for Edison, for wanting to be the CEO, for wanting to please my father, and also...”

“Live?”

I breathed out hard. “Yes. I guess I was more committed to figuring out how to create experiences for other people than I was committed to finding happiness in my own life. I convinced myself that professional ambition and personal goals were the same thing. But the end result of that was that I pretty much only had one thing to claim as a personal life.”

“Surely you don’t mean sex with me?”

“I do. You have been my closest friend for a long time.”

That stopped him again. He turned to me. “That is possibly the most desperately sad thing you’ve ever said.”

Except it wasn’t sardonic. He sounded as if he had been hit in the head.

“Why? If you think about it, it makes sense. Who else could have ever understood even part of what my life was like growing up.” My stomach crumpled. “Though, I didn’t know what you were going through. And I am sorry for that.”

“I didn’t want you to know. Because you were my escape.”

It was my turn to stop and look at him. “I thought I was your loss of control.”

“Don’t you understand,” he said, his voice rough. “That was an escape. It was the only place that I could...”

Be human. Be a man.

It was my turn to touch his face. I did it slowly, deliberately. My breath caught. I was on the edge of that cliff.

Could I jump?

His gaze pulled me into him. And I had no choice. “You have me all the time,” I said. “I promise you that.”

He looked like he wanted to say something, but couldn’t find the words. I had never seen Hades speechless. I was used to sparring with him. I wasn’t used to sincerity. I wasn’t used to connection.

Nothing about this was familiar. This was one of those intimacy gaps. And we were finding a way to fill it.

As best we could. I had to believe that he wanted it too, on some level. Or he would have simply strode off into the night without answering any of my questions. Without speaking to me at all.

But he didn’t. He stood there instead. He looked at me, like he wanted to say something, but couldn’t quite find the words.

“I arranged for us to stay in town tonight.”

I was surprised by that.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

I felt... I wasn’t sure. Because this was us, back in a hotel. Not in the place where I was trying to make a home for us. It made sense. Rather than taking a helicopter back up to the top of the mountain, he was giving us a place closer to go. He knew that I didn’t especially like the helicopter.

And yet, something about it felt like a step backward. Whether that made sense or not.

I didn’t say that, of course. Instead I took his hand and let him lead me on. We hadn’t been walking toward nothing. I thought we were. Just walking to walk. But no, he had been taking us to a hotel.

“You’re annoyed with me,” he said.

“Annoyed?”

“Yes. I can tell.”

“There’s a lot that I could say about how this transcends your typical ability to read other people’s emotions.”

“See?” He paused walking. “Annoyed. You were being very nice to me.”

“I thought... I don’t know. I thought we were taking a walk. It ended up being something more calculated.”

He frowned. “Is that what you think? That this was calculated? Nothing that I have done with you for the past ten years has ever been calculated. I wish to God that it were. That would be easier. If I could claim to you that I had control over this the entire time, then... If I had control of it the entire time—”

“I know. You would never touch me.”

“As you have said many times.”

Gripping my hand, he brought me down the sidewalk with him until we came to the front of the well-lit, lovely historic building with Swiss flags waving over the front.

“Lovely,” I said.

He always had great taste in hotels.

“You’re still annoyed with me,” he said.

“I’m not.”

“Do you not want me now?”

There was a strange light in his eyes. I frowned. “What makes you ask me that?”

“It would not be completely shocking. Perhaps it was the danger, the element of the forbidden that enticed you.”

Was Hades honestly feeling insecure? Thinking that I didn’t want him?

I stopped him, right there in front of the hotel doors. “I want you now and forever. More than I have ever wanted anyone or anything. Hades, I have never even kissed another man. Because I can’t begin to disentangle desire from you. I could never want you less.”

“But you wish that you could.”

“In the past, yes. I’ve wished that. Haven’t you wished the same?”

“No. Never. As I said, if I could have resisted you, I would have. But I have never wished it was different.”

Then he turned and walked through the revolving doors of the hotel, and I had to scurry after him.

“I have the key already.”

Of course he did. We moved far too quickly through the beautiful lobby, and it took me a moment to realize that I’d been here before.

This was our hotel. The one we had been together in that second time.

“You...”

This wasn’t an anonymous thing. It wasn’t to disentangle us from our history. From the reality of our feelings.

He was... It was borderline sentimental. I felt foolish. And I felt small. For having been petty only a moment ago.

As soon as the elevator doors closed behind us I leaned in, and I kissed him. As unhurried as the walk here had been. An expression of the shift that had taken place. Of who we were now.

Of who we had been then.

I could remember how impatient we were. I felt it now.

But it didn’t cut so deep.

Before I knew it, we were at the top floor. I was dizzy.

I looked up at him. At that familiar face. My lover. My husband. The only man that I had ever wanted. The only one I had ever loved.

I traced his lips with my fingertips. Because I felt like I could. Because I felt like we could have some softness, instead of that endless, driving storm.

It was still there. That storm. But it wasn’t all there was.

He led me to the room and unlocked the door. Took my hands and brought me into the center of the living room. He cradled my face in his hands and he kissed me.

Kissed me like he had nothing else to do. Ever.

Kissed me like it was the destination.

I had thought we didn’t kiss to simply kiss only recently. And yet that’s what this was. The luxury of a kiss.

I had never thought of them as being particularly luxurious. They were an aperitif, impatiently swallowed while waiting for the main event.

Not now.

I focused on the feel of him. Running my fingers through his dark hair. Touching his face. His cheekbones, down to the stubble that covered his jaw. Down his neck, to that muscled wall of his chest, his thundering heart.

It was amazing how this man could be familiar and a stranger all at once.

I supposed, in the way that he was mine, and not mine.

I couldn’t say why that thought hit me with quite so much force.

Hades had always been a man apart. Not just for me. From everyone. But I didn’t want that. Not anymore.

I unbuttoned his shirt slowly, moving my hands over his chest. Reveling in the feel of that coarse hair over firm muscle.

“We have all the time in the world,” I whispered.

The sound he made was more like a growl than a groan, his eyes electric on mine.

He reached around behind me, trying to get at the zipper on my dress, and I moved away. “Patience,” I said.

“I’m not patient,” he said.

“Because you’ve never had to be.” I wanted him naked. I wanted to see him. I wanted to have him. All of him. With the luxury of time. With all the love in my heart.

I pushed his shirt from his shoulders. I admired every tanned, toned inch of him.

I moved my hands to his belt.

His body was so familiar to me. So beloved.

And yet the thrill could never be gone.

The thrill in knowing that he was mine was endless.

The thrill in knowing that since I had touched him no other woman had put her hands on him was more than I could have ever imagined. Mine.

“Mine.” It was my turn to growl. My turn to grab hold of him. I gripped him tight, squeezing his arousal. I held on to his shoulder with my other hand, dug my nails into his skin there. He looked at me, his eyes hooded. I could feel that I was in danger. That he was only allowing this for a limited time. That he was lying in wait.

Hades.

Perhaps I had finally assimilated the underworld. Perhaps I had finally accepted that as long as he was in it, hell would be my home. Or just maybe...

Hope sparked in my chest.

What if we could be new? What if forever could make us into something different?

And the same all at once.

What if we could be us?

Whole and together and in love.

I loved him. I kissed his neck, openmouthed. He grunted and wrapped his arm around my waist, his large hand going to cup my rear. Then he claimed my mouth, hot and hard. The control was no longer mine. It was all right. I didn’t want it.

I surrendered. To whatever it was. To the depths of hell or the heights of heaven. I surrendered.

Because I knew myself. I was more than making my father proud. I was more than distinguishing myself from my mother. I was more than a good CEO. I was Florence. As I had been all along. And I was the woman that had captured his attention all those years ago, never to lose it.

So perhaps I was enough all along.

He stripped my dress from my body, my underwear. Took me down to the floor and lifted me up over him.

“Take me,” he said.

I tilted my hips and accepted him into my body. I let my head fall back, but only for a moment, because I couldn’t resist looking down into those deep, black eyes. As he filled me. As he made me wild with need.

As the storm began to rage inside of me. Because there would always be a storm.

Always. Because we would always be that. Even as we shifted and changed.

He drove me higher, faster than I had ever gone before. And when my orgasm crashed over me, he pulled my face down and kissed me, reversing our positions. So that he was over me, and I was pinned to the floor.

He kissed me. My neck, my breasts. He thrust into me, over and over again like he was making vows. This time with his body.

I saw something feral in his eyes. Wild. And if he had not been Hades Achelleos, I might have said it was fear. But he was never afraid.

Least of all of me.

When his release came for him, he resisted it. Put his hand between my thighs and stroked me, calling another climax from deep within me before he gave himself to his own.

And the storm raged on and on.

And as I came back to myself, back to my body, the truth loaded up between us. One that I couldn’t deny. One that I couldn’t hold back.

“Hades. I love you.”