Dark Desires (Dark Romance Boxed Set)

by Cerys du Lys

  “What do you miss?” Hecate inquired.

  “The sun.” Persephone looked up at the bright sky. It seemed impossible not to see the sun blazing there, or clouds drifting by. “I even miss the rain…”

  “There is no weather here,” Hecate admitted. “Just light turning to darkness and back again.”

  “I used to dream of Elysium.” Persephone twisted the strands of sweet grass she had picked into an intricate braid. “Magical forever springtime.”

  “Forbidden springtime?” Hecate raised an eyebrow in her direction.

  Persephone blushed. “Am I so transparent?”

  “Not as transparent as most of the folks around here.” Hecate laughed at her joke, nodding toward two shades passing by, holding hands. “But I’m a pretty good intuitive.”

  “It is magical.” Persephone’s eyes skipped over the expanse of meadow. “Amazing. It’s almost perfect. Almost. But there’s something that isn’t quite the same…”

  Hecate nodded. “I know. Being a twain-traveler, I come and go—here, up there, Mount Olympus. You name it, I’ve been there.”

  “Which do you like best?” Persephone stopped braiding, tilting her golden head toward the other goddess.

  “I don’t like to pick favorites.” Hecate winked, giving her a smile. “But I have to say…the Underworld has its charms.”

  “Like Aidon?” Persephone smiled dreamily.

  “He is charming.” Hecate laughed. “You like him, don’t you?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I do,” Hecate admitted with a sigh. “He is quite maligned and misunderstood, I think.”

  Persephone shrugged, remembering her own reaction to the God of the Underworld showing up in her meadow. “Perhaps.”

  “There is no other God I know who is as fair and just as Aidon.” Hecate pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her chin there. “I respect him a great deal.”

  “I do like him.” Persephone smiled, remembering the way he looked at her. “This has all happened so quickly…I’ve hardly had time to think about it.”

  “You just need some time to get used to us…” Hecate picked one of the violets, twirling the purple flower in her fingers. “To him.”

  “I guess so.” Persephone sighed, tossing her sweet grass braid on the ground. “Going home isn’t an option.”

  Hecate retrieved the twisted grass, weaving the violet’s stem into it. “But you miss it?”

  “Yes,” Persephone admitted, leaning her head back against the trunk of the tree and closing her eyes. “Although…I’m beginning to wonder…” Her voice trailed off and she sighed. Whenever she thought of home, she couldn’t help thinking of her mother. Athena and Artemis surely scoured the surrounding woods for her, and Demeter, she knew, would be beside herself. Still…

  She spoke the soft words mostly to herself. “Perhaps I miss it because that’s what I’m expected to do?”

  “But whose expectations are they?” Hecate’s response made Persephone jump and open her eyes again. The coupling shades rolled in the grass, and their laughter carried on the wind. She found herself thinking of Aidon.

  “My mother’s expectations, I suppose…” she answered finally. “When Aidon first brought me here, I was afraid. And then…”

  “Then?” Hecate prompted, nudging the goddess with her knee. “How do you really feel, Persephone? About Aidon? About the Underworld?”

  She turned her face up to the sky. There was no sun, and yet the warmth was inviting. It reminded her of the way Aidon looked at her—the heat of his gaze was like that—light and dark all at once. “I guess I’m not really sure.” Persephone looked over at Hecate and frowned at her own realization. “I don’t think I’ve ever had the opportunity to make up my own mind about much of anything.”

  Hecate smiled, brushing a strand of golden hair away from the goddess’ face. “Well, now you have your chance.”

  Persephone swallowed, looking down at the ground. For all she kept insisting to the world she wasn’t a child, she had certainly never done anything to prove otherwise. She glanced over at the dark-haired goddess, frowning. “Listen, I’m not keeping you from anything, am I?” She gestured to Hecate’s torch stuck into the ground by her side, the light dimmer here. “I really don’t need a babysitter.”

  Hecate gave her an understanding smile. “I actually do have things to do…” She stood, shaking grass out of her hair and picking up her torch. “Do you know your way back?”

  “I’ll be fine,” Persephone insisted, jutting her chin out. “I’m a big girl.”

  “Yes. You are.” Hecate leaned over and kissed the top of Persephone’s head. “If you need anything, just call me. I’ll pop right back.” With that, the goddess disappeared. One moment she was there, and the next she was simply gone.

  Persephone blinked at the space Hecate had vacated and muttered, “She wasn’t kidding.”

  Standing, she decided to go for a walk across the fields, toward a little path that showed just at the edge of the woods. The trees made it cooler as she made her way down the trail, and she heard the sound of running water. She followed it for a distance and came to a stream with a soft, grassy bank. This is just like home! Stunned at the resemblance, she suddenly remembered the man she had seen in the woods and flushed. She had been innocent then, a virgin still, fascinated by her own lust.

  Persephone stretched out on the grass, dipping just her feet into the cooling water of the stream. Her thoughts filled with Aidon. He had come for her, taken her, beaten her, bound her, ravished her… She knew she should be outraged, repulsed, even scandalized—but she wasn’t. Everything she had ever felt seemed like a “should” to her. Her mother would be disgraced, Athena and Artemis outraged and even sickened. But Persephone, the Goddess of Spring simply longed for more.

  I want him. The realization was sudden and sent a sweet jolt of sensation down to her core. The feeling she had for the man by the stream was no different than the feeling she had for Aidon! It was lust; that was all. The realization was a shameful relief. His hold over her was just pure animal desire, nothing more. She couldn’t be blamed for her own body’s response to him, could she?

  The memory of him entering her for the first time made her moan out loud. The press of his flesh into her compared to the cold, buzzing phallus Athena had used was the difference between the Underworld and Olympus. There was a fire, a dark heat, in the coming together of their flesh that the unyielding, implacable golden phallus couldn’t possibly simulate.

  Glancing around to make sure she was alone, Persephone’s hand drifted down to her sex. Her lips were already swollen, parting slightly in invitation to her fingers. She pressed one, then two, deep into that no-longer-virgin orifice, remembering the stiff length of him there. She wanted more and slipped in a third, but it still couldn’t approximate the thick feel of Aidon filling her. Sliding her fingers in and out, she used her thumb at the top of her cleft to rub her aching little omi.

  “Aidon,” she whispered, pumping her hand faster. Her nipples hardened in her excitement, the breeze over them felt almost like a tender kiss. The sensation sent delicious shivers down between her thighs. Her thumb strummed up and down, her fingers slipping in and out, and the soft, wet sensation on her breast sent her spiraling ever closer to her climax. She was too close to wonder about it, her hips arching skyward as she sent herself over the edge, imagining Aidon filling her again and again.

  It was only as she was coming back down to earth that she realized the gentle licking at her breast hadn’t stopped. Startled, Persephone opened her eyes and sat up with a gasp. There’s no one here… She was still alone by the stream, and yet when she touched her nipple, it was wet with a residue she knew was saliva. How?

  Glancing around, she frowned. “Aidon?” she whispered, and although it seemed impossible, she could feel him, sense him, somewhere near. She heard a deep chuckle, one she had become intimately familiar with, and suddenly Aidon materialized beside her, pulling his
golden helmet off his dark head.

  “Surprise.” He grinned, putting the helmet beside him on the grass and leaning in to kiss her. His lips moved, warm and soft, his mouth a gentle exploration. When they parted, she stared at him in wonder as he traced the line of her jaw with his finger. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are, touching yourself like that?”

  “It was you?” She touched the helmet between them.

  “The invisibility helmet comes in handy.” He grinned again and winked.

  “That’s not a nice trick.” She frowned at him, crossing her arms over her chest.

  He chuckled. “I’m not nice.”

  She squealed as he pulled her into his lap, wrapping her legs around his waist and squeezing her tight. His hold was so strong she struggled to breathe as she twisted in his grip. His hands grasped her behind, grinding her into him, and she could feel how hard he was under his loincloth. He found her lips again, giving her a hard, relentless kiss that left her dazed and dizzy when they parted.

  “Hecate says you’re just maligned and misunderstood,” Persephone murmured, meeting his eyes with a smile.

  Aidon shook his head. “Nah. Malevolent and maladjusted. That’s more me.” He grabbed her hair in his hands, tilting her head back and drizzling kisses down her throat. “Haven’t you heard the stories about Hades, the God of the Dead?”

  She moaned softly, tightening her legs around him. “Yes. They say you’re a beast, a brute…”

  “It’s true.” Aidon’s grip tensed in her hair as his tongue traced circles downward to her breasts. “Go on.”

  “You’re…” Her words trailed off as his tongue found her nipple and she arched it toward his mouth. “Oh…Aidon…they say you’re…a fiend…a monster…”

  “All true.” He rolled her onto her back, and she felt the heated length of his erection between her legs, separated only by the thin material, as he sucked her nipple deep into his mouth. Persephone squirmed under his weight, running her hands down his shoulders and arms. “What else?”

  “Oh!” Her gasp of surprise that his loincloth had somehow disappeared was swallowed by his kiss when their tongues met. He slid the head of his erection up and down between her swollen nether lips, making her moan and lift her hips to meet him.

  “What else do they say about me, Sephie?” He murmured the words into her ear as he sank slowly into her flesh, parting her with his thick length.

  “This is what I wanted.” She took all of him and wiggled up for more. “They say…you love sighs…”

  He met her eyes, thrusting slowly in and out now. “Yes.”

  “And tears.”

  He nodded, his eyes dark as he moved. “Yes.” He ground himself deep into her, grabbing her wrists and pinning them over her head. “Especially yours.”

  “Aidon!” she gasped as he took her, impaling her again and again. She was helpless to his lust as he bucked, crushing her with his weight. The delicious friction was undeniable, and she moaned and rocked with him, aching for more. “Aidon, please!”

  “Yes!” he growled into her ear. “Beg me.”

  “Please!” she moaned, digging her heels into the small of his back. “Don’t stop!”

  He groaned at her words, moving his hips in fast circles that sent her shuddering into her climax in no time. She twisted and quivered beneath him as he filled her—she could feel every hot pulse—with surge after surge of his thick, white seed.

  She welcomed his weight as he collapsed onto her, his breathing slowing in her ear. His heart still beat hard against hers, and she sighed when she felt him soften and slip out of her. She wiggled and felt the sticky mess he’d left slipping down toward the ground below.

  “See how evil I am?” he chuckled, rolling off her onto the grass.

  “You are both wicked and depraved.” She smiled up into the trees. “I think I like it.”

  “You think?” He snorted, rolling toward her and slipping his hand between her thighs to cover her mound. “Perhaps you need another example in order to make up your mind?”

  Persephone laughed, wiggling out from under his hand and wading into the stream. “You made me all dirty! Now I need a bath.” She sank down into the water up to her waist, piling her hair up onto her head. Aidon waded in after her, smiling as he pulled her against him and kissed her.

  “You drive me to distraction, Sephie.” He looked down at her, shaking his head. “I couldn’t help but follow you.”

  She blinked up at him. “Follow? How long have you been here?”

  “Since…” He shrugged, averting his gaze. “Let’s just say, I heard most of your conversation with Hecate.”

  “You are evil!” She beat his chest with her small fists. “Spying on us like that!”

  “I had to make sure you were behaving.” He caught her wrists, his laughing eyes suddenly turning serious. “Do you really miss your home?”

  Persephone sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “I know the Underworld is…different.” He kissed the top of her golden head. “But it isn’t just darkness. Look around you, goddess. This is springtime all year round, the embodiment of the joy of those mortals who lived a good life.” Persephone breathed deep, taking in her surroundings. He was right—it was beautiful. Just as beautiful as her own home. “There is balance in everything here. Mortals are rewarded or punished based on what they deserve. This is heaven and hell all at once. The Underworld is what you make of it.”

  “I know, Aidon. It’s just…” She lifted her eyes to his. “Maybe I just needed time to say goodbye?”

  He frowned, looking thoughtful. “To your mother?”

  “No!” Persephone’s eyes widened. “We both know she wouldn’t approve of…us. I’d rather her not know, I think.”

  Aidon nodded. “I understand.”

  “But…” She rested her head against his chest with sigh. “I am the Goddess of Spring, after all. I can’t help it. I miss my meadows, my fields, my streams.”

  He held her for a moment, the water rushing around their bare legs. Then he tilted her chin up to his. “Would you like to go visit?”

  Her eyes brightened. “Home?”

  He nodded. “No one could see you, but you could walk in your meadow and wade in your stream…say goodbye to your world.”

  “Yes, please.” She blinked back tears, a lump forming in her throat. Raising his hand, she kissed his palm, cradling it to her cheek. “Thank you, Aidon.”

  He just nodded, giving the sharp, distinctive whistle that would call Noire, the big black steed, to carry them out of the Underworld.

  * * * *

  Persephone adjusted the invisibility helmet on her head as she slid off Noire’s back onto the sweet, familiar grass of her home. Aidon had already dismounted and she took his hand. He started, looking down to where she should have been standing, were she visible to the naked eye.

  “That’s decidedly disconcerting.” He frowned, squeezing her hand.

  “It is, isn’t it?” She laughed. Her voice was audible, and she pulled him along through the field of wildflowers, where they left Noire grazing. “Look, Aidon, this is where you found me.”

  Persephone recognized the small clearing where she and the other goddesses had often rested in the heat of the sun. She remembered the necklace she had left there, and squatted down, running her hand through the grass where it had been. She wondered if her mother had found it. Or perhaps Athena or Artemis, coming by after the hunt? There was no sign of the locket on its gold chain.

  She stood, picking wildflowers and tucking them into her hair, humming to herself. The day was bright but slightly colder than it should have been, she noticed. Helios seemed to struggle to stay blazing in the sky, and dark clouds competed for space in the blue expanse above. Breathing deep, she smiled and took Aidon’s hand again.

  “Could you at least warn me?” he asked after giving a short yelp of surprise.

  She giggled. “That would be more than you gave me, wou
ldn’t it?” Squeezing his hand, she led him along, heading toward the path toward the stream.

  “I saw a woodsman bathing here the day you found me,” she confessed, sitting down by the stream and pulling him with her. Her invisibility seemed to give her the courage to say things she normally wouldn’t.

  Aidon raised his eyebrows. “Did you?”

  “He was…” She cleared her throat, glad her lack of visibility hid her blush. “Touching himself…down there.”

  “Was he?” Aidon glanced across the stream. “And you stayed to watch?”

  Persephone blushed and nodded before she remembered he couldn’t see her. “I was curious…about men.”

  He smirked. “And how did you feel after you watched him?”

  “More curious.” She grinned, remembering.

  “And have I satisfied your curiosity?”

  She looked up at him, studying his face. He couldn’t see her watching him, and she had the freedom to explore him with her eyes. His form fascinated her—the broad shoulders, his ridged, flat stomach, the thick muscles in his thighs. “I don’t know if my curiosity will ever be satisfied.”

  “For men?” he snorted.

  She shook her head. “For you.”

  His startled look made her smile and she stood, letting go of his hand.

  “Persephone?” he called, frowning. “Don’t wander off.”

  “I need to go get something.” She leaned down and kissed his cheek lightly. “I’ll be right back. Stay here.”

  He called to her, but she skipped down the path, around a bend to another small clearing. Here several trees grew, heavy with fruit, and she plucked two of her ripe favorites—the pomegranate. There was something about the flavor, the way sweet, ripe fruit enveloped the hard, bitter seeds. It was the combination of the bitter and sweet flavor she loved.