by Alisha Rai
Privately, he disagreed with her. Over the years his powers had grown in leaps and bounds. Though he didn’t keep extremely close tabs on all of the original six, he assumed theirs had as well.
Her loud sniff brought him back to the here and now. Panic crept up his throat. He needed to get away before she broke down. Run. “I’m going to… I should go do some work.”
She seemed to shrink. “Of course. I’m sorry for all of this.”
“It’s fine.”
“I know now that you had no say in any of this. I apologize for screeching at you earlier, and for accusing you of all sorts of horrible stuff.”
So few beings ever showed him gratitude, the emotion made him feel like he was breaking out in hives. “That’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.” She peered up at him, all earnest and sweet. “It’s kind of you to help me.”
He resisted the urge to claw at his skin. “No one’s ever accused me of being kind.”
“You’re letting me stay in your home.”
“I have no choice,” he reminded her brutally. “Zeus has prohibited me from sending you out, remember?”
“You could kill me.”
The words lay between them, heavy and stark. She rose from her seat and sauntered over to him. Her skin gleamed in the firelight, her eyes too smart as they searched his face. “Why didn’t you kill me, Hades?”
His hands clenched at his sides, a move that didn’t go unnoticed by her. Let her think he was trying to keep from wringing her neck, and not the truth—he was trying to keep from stroking that soft skin. “The option is still on the table.”
Her lips curved. “No, it’s not, or you would have done it already.”
Damn her. “Listen, female. Don’t go getting any kind of romanticized notions about me, got it?” He stalked closer, until they were nose to nose. Or nose to chest—he had to lean down to truly look her in the eyes.
Bigger, badder creatures than she had backed away when confronted with his gaze. Not her. She met it, confusing and angering and, hell yes, arousing him. “I’m not romanticizing anything. I’m simply thanking you for giving me sanctuary and apologizing for my shameful earlier behavior.”
“I could still kill you, you know.” He sounded like a whining, petulant child.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Her face was sober, but he knew he wasn’t imagining the laughter in her tone. “I promise I’ll keep out of your way while I’m here.”
“Good. You…do that.”
“I will.”
“Good.”
“You already said that.”
Hades stared at her, feeling stupid. He fucking hated to feel stupid. He also hated to not have the last word. “Just…stay. In your room.” He turned and stalked out of the room before he could make a greater fool of himself.
She didn’t stay.
For the next week, Persephone seemed to be everywhere and anywhere in his palace. A typical goddess might have lazed around in her luxurious room, but of course he got an industrious, bustling female. He learned from Bob, who she’d taken a liking to much to the disgust of Cerberus’s other two heads, that at home she often worked in her gardens from sunup ’til sundown.
Since his palace floated in the Underworld, he had no garden, but it didn’t take long for Persephone to scurry around his home as if she owned it. He couldn’t get away from her. He found her studying the books in his library, polishing silver in his dining room, leaving the baths looking wet and sultry from the heat. She always greeted him with a warm smile and tried to converse with him as if he were a normal god and not the terror of godlings everywhere. When she wasn’t around, her flowers and her scent filled the room.
Despite their close quarters, he did his best to avoid talking to her, which if he wasn’t mistaken only increased their run-ins and made her more determined to chatter at him. He responded with grunts and one-word sentences and stalked away as quickly as possible. Any more interaction and he feared he would rip her dress off and throw her to the ground. Or press her up against the wall. Or toss her on the table. Or…really, any flat surface was fair game.
His fingers literally itched when he was around her. Never had he felt so utterly driven to possess a female, one he was fully aware was off limits. Fuck her and then have her sobbing that it was rape? That might enhance his already fearsome reputation, but he wasn’t going to go around feeling like a bastard. No thanks.
So it was understandable why he found himself creeping like a criminal in his own home one morning. I should lock her up, he thought grimly as he stuck to the shadows of the hall, ears perked for the soft shuffle of feminine slippers or her lilting laugh as she chatted with Bob. He considered confining the goddess to her room about twelve times every day. Keep her in one place so he’d never have to see her beautiful face or smell those damn flowers that followed her everywhere or hear her laughter ringing through his stark, silent halls. It was still a possibility.
Liar.
Fine. Maybe it wasn’t.
He made it to his office and almost breathed a sigh of relief. That is until he opened the door and found her sitting in his chair—his chair—sorting through the papers on his desk. Her hair was dark and shiny, pinned up to reveal the nape of her neck, and she wore one of the many dresses he’d conjured into her closet. This one was black silk, a corset top that pushed her breasts up and over the rough lace neckline. He imagined her nipples peeking through that lace, and his body instantly hardened.
He was going to die of blue balls before Zeus got this female out of here. He should have materialized some nuns’ habits for her.
Pent-up lust and frustration had him snapping, “What the hell are you doing?”
He was gratified that she at least jumped. “Oh. Hello. Um, I was bored, so I thought I would try to help you by organizing some of your papers.”
His papers were organized. He had a system. A very complex, messy-to-everyone-else-but-understandable-only-to-him system. He stalked over, prepared to be irritated.
But then she looked at him. Which sounded all trite and sentimental in his head, but her look knocked the bluster out of him and made him want to fall to his knees in front of her—or, alternatively, have her on her knees in front of him. “I didn’t mean to make you mad. I thought I could be useful.”
And being useful was, for some reason, important to her. Resigned, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to blow up at her over the papers on his desk, now sorted in neat piles, probably alphabetized. “It’s fine,” he heard himself say. And though he choked on it a little, imagining the work in front of him, he lied, “Thanks. I appreciate your help.”
She beamed as she pushed back her chair and stood. “You’re welcome. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
He was fairly certain that “fellatio” was not the answer she was looking for. “No, not at the moment.”
“Um. Okay, then. I guess I’ll go back to my room and read for a while.” She leaned forward, and for a second he wondered if she was going to kiss him. Her face came closer, and her hair tickled his nose. But no, she leaned past him and picked up the heretofore unnoticed book on his desk. He could see it was one of the primers that godlings used to develop their powers.
Though he knew he should let her go, her nearness screwed with his brain cells because he found himself initiating conversation. “I see you’ve found something to read in my library.”
Her cheeks flushed a becoming shade of pink. “I know it’s a book for children, but I’m usually working too much when I’m home to have time to read. We don’t have a big library anyway.” Her tone was defensive.
“I’m not making fun of you.” He made a note to obtain some more primers and place them in the library in an easy-to-see place. He didn’t want to embarrass her by handing them to her. “Have you learned anything?”
“Yes. Look.” She caught her tongue between her teeth and took on a look of intense concentration. The door to the study slowly swung shut. She let
out a little whoop. “Did you see that? I could never do telekinesis at all before.”
Such a simple thing, yet she looked as proud as if she’d walked on water. He’d forgotten what it felt like to have pride in accomplishing something so minor. Her excitement was contagious, and he found himself smiling. “Well done.”
Her grin was rueful. “You probably think I’m silly.”
“Not at all. Everyone has to start somewhere.”
“I have a long way to go.”
The self-deprecation in her voice bothered him on some basic level he didn’t care to analyze. “You’ll get there.”
“I wish I could speed it up. I’d do anything to feel not so weak anymore.”
Walk away. Her vulnerability had him rooted to the spot, though. “You aren’t weak,” he blurted out. Not your business.
“What?”
“You aren’t weak.”
“You don’t know that.”
He shifted his weight. “I told you, I can see what’s inside. Granted, it works differently with other deities than it does with mortals—I can’t see your whole past—but I can see that you’re filled with power. And when you have power, when you can harness and use that power, you’re always strong, no matter what the power is over.”
Her little button nose crinkled. “I guess that’s my problem. No idea how to really do anything. Maybe my trip here had a greater purpose—time to study.”
Trip? She made it sound like the Underworld was a fancy spa. “Studying will only give you a theoretical understanding. You need to be properly trained.” Go away now. But she was talking to him! And looking at him without fear! “I could help you.” Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.
“You could…what?”
Oh, what the fuck. “You just need a little training, bit. I could, maybe, you know. Help. If you want.” Shut. Up. Because training meant that he’d be with her. Close to her. He wouldn’t be able to skulk about, hiding from her, and he wouldn’t be able to refuse to converse with her. Not when he was training her. He’d be confronted with her enticing curves at every opportunity.
“Surely you have a kingdom to run.”
“Yes. Souls to torture, flesh to flay. But I delegate really well.”
She gave no outward reaction to his flip words. “And what would you get out of this?”
Smart girl. No god ever did anything for free. It was hard-wired into them. By all rights, he should have been writhing in agony over this one-sided transaction.
Technically, though, he supposed training her did give a nice little eff you to all those spoiled pansies at Olympus. If he did his job properly, and if she was an apt pupil, she would be able to really ruin the plans of any gods who tried to put their hands on her. Wasn’t screwing with Olympians payment enough? “The satisfaction of a good deed?”
Her snort made him smile. “I swear, I demand nothing from you.”
“Not even sex?”
The words fell between them like shards of ice. “I do not bargain for fucking, lady,” he said softly.
His tone seemed to fluster her. “I wasn’t implying that you were. I…”
“Forget my offer.” He turned his back on her and stalked to the door. Goddamn it, when would he be able to get away from his damnable reputation?
“Wait. Damn it, Hades. What if I want to have sex with you?”
He stopped short and turned to face her. “What?”
Her cheeks were so red, he wondered if the blush hurt her. “I…I didn’t mean to blurt that out…”
“You want to fuck?”
“Well, no, not at the moment I don’t.” She glared at him. “Especially when you put it in such flowery language as that.”
“I’m not a flowery male. I’m simple. So you need to be simple back. Do you want to fuck?”
“I… Maybe.”
“I despise coyness.”
“I’m not trying to be coy,” she snapped. “I’m trying to figure out my own feelings, and I’m embarrassed by frank talk.”
“The other gods wouldn’t be.”
“I’m not like the other gods.”
Thank the heavens. Neither was he. Yet he couldn’t really blame her for having a suspicious attitude toward him, could he? The emotion was ingrained in every deity, even the atypical ones. “I don’t want you to have sex with me because you’re feeling grateful or some shit.”
She nibbled her lower lip. “It’s not that.”
Yet he couldn’t quite believe her. Females could be weird. Though his body screamed at him to take whatever sexual crumbs she offered, that wasn’t in his nature. He walked back over to her and held out his hand. “You want to be trained by me or not?”
She hesitated, but then took his hand. “I would be honored.”
He let his hand warm, refusing to let her go when she gasped. “I, Hades, Lord of the Underworld, vow to train you to the best of my abilities. I will ask nothing in return except that you learn as well as you can and use the powers as you deem best fitting.”
“How pretty.”
“Wait, I’m not finished. Any boons or favors you grant me will be of your own free will, because you truly desire me, and not because you feel motivated by anything other than lust or sexual need. I will make no overtures toward you until such a time.” He leaned closer, until they were nose to nose. “I think that takes care of both of our concerns, doesn’t it?”
“It’s sad we can’t trust each other.”
It was. “That’s the way it goes, bit.”
She huffed a small breath. “Fine. I agree to everything.” A small pulse of magic went through both of them until a black lock floated above their joined hands.
He released her earlier than he wanted to, mainly because the feel of her small fingers in his made him want to suck on them. “There. Done.” Pivoting on his heel, he walked back to the door.
“Hades.”
He hadn’t realized she was so close, that she’d followed him. He turned at the threshold of the door, looking down at her as she stood there. She was so short compared to him. He wanted to pick her up and put her in his pocket. “Yes?”
“When do we start?”
For a second, he wondered if she was talking about the sex or the training. No, it must be the training. “Tomorrow morning. Be in my gym as soon as you wake.”
“I’ll see you then.”
That was such a pleasant threat, he didn’t realize until he was in his bedroom that she’d essentially ushered him out of his own office.
Chapter Four
“Concentrate.”
She was starting to hate that word. “I am concentrating.”
“No, you aren’t.”
Persephone gritted her teeth as she stared at the souls Hades had flashed into his large workout room. They were working on her telekinesis ability, or what she had of it. At least the knife wasn’t wobbling too badly as it neared the apple sitting on the head of the trembling soul.
She’d protested when Hades had brought these three souls up from Tartarus for her target lesson. Until he’d turned to her and said, in a low voice, “They might feel pain, but they can’t be physically damaged.”
“That’s torture.”
His jaw had flexed. “When he was mortal, the one on the right skinned his wife and children. Alive. I won’t tell you what the other two have done or you’ll throw up.”
Persephone had discovered a previously unacknowledged streak of bloodthirsty revenge in her.
The knife pierced the apple, and Persephone let out a whoop. “I did it! Did you see that?”
“I did.” Hades tossed another knife in the air, and she instinctively used her mind to hold it in place. “Now do it again. Faster.”
Even he smiled when she shot it through the second apple so hard she was able to use the momentum to do a U-turn and hurl it through the third soul’s fruit.
“One more,” he said.
“But there’s no more—”
In a blink, he hurled a knife
again…this time directly at her.
Without consciously thinking, she raised her hands, and two thick streams of ivy shot out. One batted the knife aside as if it were a paper airplane, while the other wrapped around the rest of the knives in his hand. The vegetation was strong enough to jerk the blades out of his considerable grasp.
Her heart was pounding loud enough to wake the dead. “I can’t believe you threw a knife at me.”
“It was enchanted to miss,” the idiot said casually, as if she could have possibly known that. He scratched at his jaw. “I wanted to see what you would do. Your reaction was interesting. Never seen anyone do something like that before.”
The two of them looked at the weapons on the floor. The ivy rolled into a ball and disappeared.
“Is that good?” she asked.
“Of course. You always make your power your bitch, twist it to suit your needs. Well done.”
Hades didn’t praise much, so she hugged the words close. “Thank you.”
With a wave of his hand, the trembling souls disappeared. “On that note, let’s call it a day, shall we?”
“Already?”
“You’ve been at it for a while. I should probably check in on how my realm’s being run.”
“Souls to flay.”
“Only the ones who deserve it.” He gifted her with one of those slow, pulse-pounding smiles that made her entire stomach clench. She welcomed those smiles, had learned to appreciate their unusual appearance over the past couple of weeks of close contact. He might be scary, yes, but he was fair to a fault. He worked her hard, but she liked that. It meant that despite his chauvinistic smack talk, he didn’t see her as less of a deity because she was a female. The sexual attraction between them continued to flourish. Not because of anything he said or did. He only had to strut around bare-chested and look at her in a certain way, and her body became flushed. She knew he was similarly affected by his sudden gruffness when she ventured too close, but he had kept to his promise that he wouldn’t make any moves on her.
