Persephone stepped forward again and reached up to scratch his stomach, watching all three tongues hanging out of his three mouths. His serpentine tail smacked and shook the earth, his hind legs kicking in the air. She looked back to see Aidon crack a wide smile, showing his teeth. The expression looked foreign on him, and she guessed he didn’t smile like that very often— if ever.
“I think he likes you,” Aidon said. “He won’t even do that for me.”
Cerberus pricked up his ears. Persephone stepped back as he rolled away from them, then bounded across the garden, clearing the wall as if it weren't even there. Persephone heard him baying and barking. “What is he doing?”
“Cerberus helps me keep the world of the living separate from the world of the dead. He guards all of us.”
“Would he… is he guarding me?”
“Yes, but he would let you pass him. Mortals, living and dead, cannot,” he said as they made their way inside. He watched relief wash over her face.
Persephone followed him as they made their way back to her chambers, slowly learning the layout of the palace. The memory of him embracing her at the Lethe played out again in her mind. “Why did you stop?”
“Stop what?”
She sighed and looked down. “You could have… had me… on the banks of the Lethe when I lost my memory. I was willing. Why did you stop?”
Aidoneus opened the door to the amethyst room and took off his sandals before entering her antechamber. “I thought that would be obvious.”
“How so?”
“When I am with you, I want it to be with you as you are, and I want you to want me as well. I’ll not have you by way of deception. The girl who kissed and embraced me at the Lethe wasn’t you, Persephone. Or, rather, it was you before…”
“Before you abducted me,” she said, sitting down carefully on a chaise and removing her sandals. “Which begets my next question: why did you abduct me in the first place? You knew that I wanted you, that I was going to wait for you.”
“You were in danger. I had to act.”
“In danger of what?”
Aidon knew this would come. No matter how irrational Demeter had been, her daughter still loved her deeply. If he told Persephone what her mother was about to do, she would never believe him. “I can’t tell you.”
“Oh? Then I suppose you also can’t tell me why you said you wished there were more time, before we—”
“To save you I had to…” he stopped and took a long breath. “The threat to you would be ended only after we consummated our marriage.”
Persephone looked up at him skeptically, her brow wrinkled. “Aidon, at every turn you’ve asked me to trust you. How am I supposed to do that, exactly? You didn’t tell me your true name or reveal anything about yourself, when you very clearly knew all there was to know about me.”
“Persephone—”
“You took me from the world above, the only home I’ve ever known, and you can’t even tell me why.”
“Persephone, I promise you, all will be revealed in time.”
“Revealed in time…” she scoffed. “You wonder why I cannot trust you? This is why I had to ask you why you didn’t just take me at the banks of the Lethe when—”
“Because I love you!”
Persephone stared up at him in shock, his face echoing hers. He turned away, wide-eyed, trying to process the words he’d just said. She sat there, her skin prickling as she brought her arms around her body, feeling raw and exposed, remembering when she said those very words to him not an hour ago.
“Because I couldn’t do that to you,” he continued. “There was a reason and a purpose for everything that happened when I brought you here, and I know that it destroyed your trust in me. Believe me when I say that to save you, that was a price I was willing to pay. I— I don’t expect you to love me right away, Persephone. All I ask from you is for a chance to rebuild that trust.”
“You’re asking for a lot, Aidon,” she muttered under her breath.
“I know.”
“And even if I do come to trust you… or love you… it doesn’t change who we are. Who is to say that I’d want to live in this place… forever? Mortals pray to my mother and I for fertile fields. For life— not death. I don’t belong here.”
“Believe it or not, I felt the same way when I first arrived here.” Aidon stretched his hand out to her. “Come; I want to show you something.”
She curled her fingers around his and he helped her to her feet. They walked through the sweeping portico columns onto the terrace. Aidon stood behind her, his hand resting on her arm and a thumb rolling along the skin of her shoulder. She leaned toward him, almost dizzy as she took in the sweeping landscape. The palace sat on a rocky cliffside far above the gray plain. From her left, a vast river wound its way before the palace and continued outward, meeting an endless black sea. Thin mist hung over the still waters.
From her view on the terrace, the palace was far more massive than she could have guessed from the few rooms Aidoneus and Hecate had shown her. The polished black marble of the palace’s outer walls belied the wealth of colorful stone she had already seen inside. Its hundreds of rooms and terraces were connected by winding hallways and staircases between the levels. Several rooms and passageways were embedded in the cliff side, framed by columns carved out of the stone itself. The gardens and the flat plains surrounding the Lethe and Mnemosyne lay behind the palace, high above the river lands. Far below the terrace, a towering poplar tree grew, its shining golden boughs overhanging the entryway to the palace atrium.
“Did you build all this?” she said quietly.
“Yes, bit by bit. I had aeons to do so.”
The calm waters of the river shone a blue darker and richer than the sky in the world above. Suddenly, its color changed to a brilliant purple, fading to orange, lighting the land and the mists above in a soft glow. The river shone like a brilliant sunset, its light illuminating the crystal room behind them. Persephone’s eyes danced. She had never seen a sunset this beautiful in all her existence. Overwhelmed, she looked up at Aidon, who smiled back at her.
“That was my reaction the first time I saw the river change from day to night,” he said, running his hands along her shoulders and down her back.
“What makes it change color?”
“The River Styx has no bottom. Beyond that, we don’t know. The river is far older than you or I— older than Hecate, or Nyx, even. Hecate says it’s been here since Chaos gave the cosmos form from the void. It is the mother of all waters above and below the earth.”
Persephone stood mesmerized as the river shifted from orange to bright fuchsia. She felt Aidon’s hand stroking her back and leaned closer to him. “You didn’t feel like you belonged here… A strange thing to say since you rule over everything we’re looking at right now.”
“I didn’t choose to rule here. But I’ve come to believe that this place chose me. We drew lots. Your father received the skies and rulership over all, Poseidon the seas, and I received the Underworld.”
“But you were the eldest…”
“Yes. The lot I received embittered me for aeons, but I eventually grew to love this place. In retrospect, I don’t think Zeus’s position would have suited me. I was callous and short tempered in earlier days. And I’m afraid of what that would have turned into if I were ruling in his place.”
She turned to face him as the light faded from the river, turning it violet as night fell in the Underworld. “This is all very beautiful… but it’s not the same as the sky and fields of the living world. I worry that it will take aeons for me to fall in love with the Underworld, just as it did for you.”
“I’m fairly certain loneliness prolonged it for me,” he said, taking her hands in his. “I’d like to think I could help relieve that for you.”
She looked up into his eyes. “You couldn’t have been completely alone this whole time. I mean, the men of Olympus all have… companions…”
“I’m n
ot an Olympian. And I knew I would have you beside me one day,” he said.
“What about during the war?” she said quietly, moving closer to him.
Aidon brought his hands up to her shoulders and a vulnerable smile lit up his eyes. He shook his head slowly.
Persephone’s lips parted and she blinked in startled revelation, her body shuddering, pushing her closer to his. “So that means… when you and I were in Erebus…”
“Yes,” he whispered softly.
She returned to that moment and the look of shocked pleasure on his face as he trembled and struggled to remain still, trying to soothe and comfort her after their bodies joined. Persephone remembered his arm locked around her, supporting her. Her body drew instinctively closer to his and she lightly traced her finger around the edges of his face, brushing across the trimmed beard framing his jaw line.
Aidon kissed the edge of her hand just as he’d done in the dark of Erebus when she’d reached out for him. He cupped her face, and leaned down to meet her waiting lips. She deepened their kiss, first tasting his lips then mating their tongues. Her body melted against his, feeling him arch toward her. Persephone’s fingers raked down his back as he encircled her within his arms, pulling her ever closer. He felt his flesh awaken yet again, and sighed against her soft lips.
“Erebus was unforgettable for me,” he said hoarsely. “But that wasn’t what I wanted for our first time. I owed you so much more. So much more tenderness, so much more consideration…”
Persephone renewed their kiss as heat filled her body, her breath shuddering through her as he held her. Her knees shook and she felt her heels lift up to stand on tiptoe, getting closer to the heat from him that pulsed between them.
“Show me.”
“Show you…?” He drew away breathlessly to look at her face, her lips red from their kiss. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said timidly. “I’m sure.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
She leaned up to his ear, nervously. “I believe you, Aidon— I want to trust you. I want to try…”
“If you want me to stop at any time—” She put two fingers to his lips. He kissed them, then turned to capture her lips again in a kiss. He cradled her shoulders and held her up to him as her knees shook in nervousness and delight.
Aidon dropped down and scooped up the back of her knees with his other arm as Persephone folded her body against his chest. He quietly carried her from the balcony portico to the faintly lit amethyst antechamber, following the pathway of lamplight to her room. His eyes locked to hers in a smile as he walked through the ebony doors.
He thought back to just before dawn, when he had carried her sleeping body in this same way to this very room and laid her down on the bed. Aidoneus had spent several minutes carefully untangling the ruined braid that had held her hair through the journey, before unwrapping her from his cloak. Wiping her blood and his seed from her thighs with the edge of his cloak, he had cursed himself for hurting her. But despite his guilt, and exhausted by the journey from the living world, he had still felt himself harden painfully under his armor and tunic, her beautiful naked body spread out before him. Aidon had quickly covered her with the bedclothes and left the room, fighting his desire for her the entire way.
Persephone felt her foot pass gently by one of the gauzy panels draping from the ceiling to the bed— her bed— as Aidon raised a knee for leverage on the soft down mattress and placed Persephone in the center. She felt her body sink into the cool sheets.
Aidon closed the great ebony doors with an echoing thud and looked back at her, the room now theirs alone. He walked toward the center of the chamber and raised his hand above his head, looking at the surrounding lamplight. Slowly closing one finger after another, the lamps dimmed to flickers of orange dancing on the edges of low blue flames. Only a scattered handful of the small lamps held full light. Persephone shuddered at this subtle demonstration of his power, her eyes transfixed as he walked to the side of the bed and sat down.
Persephone stretched out her hand to him and he pressed her fingers to his lips. He kissed down the length of her bare arm and up to one of the fibulae holding the chiton onto her body. Aidon lay alongside her, propped up on one elbow as he moved his hand to the brooch and slid out its pin. He looked up into her eyes for approval and was met with lids half closed in passion and her parted lips. Unable to resist he kissed them again, pulling the jeweled pin away. Her hand danced over his shoulder and neck to the golden band containing his hair.
Tugging on it, she felt his hand come up to help her, pulling the thin torc away from his locks and letting it fall. Long curls of black hair fell freely down his back. Aidon took the three large rings off his left hand and carefully set them aside with the rest. Supporting her neck, he pulled at the ribbon holding her chignon and unwound her hair, spreading the dark russet waves on the pillow behind her.
Persephone watched his eyes dart down to her breast, now exposed by the missing fibula. His hungry gaze caused her to inhale sharply, and the nipple tightened to a point as he unconsciously licked his lips. His hand traced and molded her breast, a thumb circling inward. Aidon’s tongue darted out to taste the very tip, then sucked the puckered flesh into his mouth as Persephone moaned from deep in her throat and thrashed on the bed.
“Should I keep going?” he whispered against her breast.
She didn’t answer him aloud; she only nodded with her eyes shut. He smoothed a hand over her hot skin and the soft fabric until he reached the ribbon girdle that bound her chiton. The tie was easy to undo, but unwrapping it from around her was a little harder. She smiled at him as he fumbled with it, holding her at her lower back. He unwound it in each direction, then pulled it from under her and cast it over the edge of the bed.
His face scanned her body before he looked back at her and moved partially over her, that familiar heat pressing against her hip. His lips met hers in a long kiss as she moved her leg against him, causing him to groan into her mouth. Aidon pulled away the second fibula and set it aside. The chiton was now a long piece of unbound fabric, its shape held aloft by the curves of her body underneath. He sat up and unwound the shoulder of his himation, propping himself up to pull it from underneath where he lay, letting the heavy fabric fall softly to the floor.
Persephone stared down at sculpted calves that had spent aeons walking across stone floors, following their lines up to his thighs, and an unmistakable outline, hard and upright, concealed beneath his tunic and loincloth. Persephone’s breath hitched and she blushed and shuddered in anxious heat. Admiration and restlessness played across her face before moving closer to him. He took off his belt and removed the golden fibula pins that held the fabric in place at his shoulders. Aidon cast it to the floor, his loincloth all that remained.
She squirmed in pleasure at the sight of him and reached carefully toward his body. Aidon forced himself to stay still as her fingers landed lightly on his chest. She traced each rise and fall then curiously ran her ring finger around a flat nipple. Aidon inhaled sharply through his teeth. She shifted course, trailing her fingers down his stomach, mesmerized. A deep line arched from his waist to his groin over one hip and into the dark curls of hair that started in a thin line at his navel and thickened as they moved lower. The pronounced hip line met its match from the other side just below the straining cloth, all paths leading to…
“Not yet,” he said, picking up her wrist before her fingers drifted any lower. All his energy was focused on fighting the urge to throw the remainders of their clothes to the floor, wrap Persephone’s legs around his waist, and plunge into her. If she explored any further, it would end him.
Instead, he set her arm gently down at her side again and pulled slowly at the fabric still covering her. His lips touched her neck and she moved her hand up to his shoulder, gripping at his skin.
Aidon stopped. “Is this still what you want?”
“Yes…” She looked into his eyes.
Persephon
e helped him, raising her hips off the bed as he moved the fabric out from under her. She felt it scrape over her breast as more of her flesh was revealed to him. The newly exposed nipple puckered from the cool of the room and the heat of his touch. Aidon sat up and pushed the remains of Persephone’s chiton over the side of the bed before turning back to her.
He paused there, taking in the swell of her breasts from the underside, the curve of her stomach, the mound of gently curling dark pubic hair, her legs, her ankles, each individual toe. He reached behind him and untied his loincloth, then cast it away with the rest of their clothes. Aidon sighed in relief and heard her shift and hold her breath.
Persephone took in the full sight of him for the first time. In their dream, her view of his most intimate parts had been obscured by their bodies, and in Erebus, the darkness had covered him completely. When he took her, he had sheathed himself fully within her. She had only felt, not seen, him until now. His manhood jutted from his body as he sat up. She watched it fall against his stomach as he lay back down beside her, the weight of his engorged flesh tipping it toward the sheets. She felt her skin flush hot, and her breath grew short. It was no wonder the pain had been so great. She wondered how he could fully enter her again without it hurting.
“Are you alright?” Aidon startled her. He ran a hand down her shoulder, feeling her shake.
“It’s just—” She licked her dry lips. “I’m afraid it will hurt again.”
He cupped her face and kissed her forehead. “We can stop anytime you want. Say the word and I’ll stop right now.”
Persephone looked into his eyes, burning yet sincere as he stroked her cheek and sighed. He meant every word of what he said. “I don’t want to stop— not now. Not yet. But if I do… do you promise?”
“I promise.”
She leaned into Aidon and felt him press against her. He shuddered at the contact. His lips found hers again as they held each other skin on skin, their hands moving and exploring, running across each angle and curve.
Receiver of Many Page 11
