Nain held me, his body crushing me. He's not a polite lover, and he knows that's what I want. I want him crushing me, making me feel every single bit of him.
I want him out of control for me.
I smiled to myself as he leaned down for another kiss, his hips still pistoning hard, the pressure inside me rising so fast, so hard I was nearly dizzy with it.
But I wanted more. He'd never just do it, but I knew my husband needed to let off more than a bit of steam. He was on edge. Holding on to control, barely. The closer he got to losing control, the harder he took me, and the more excited it made me.
More, I thought.
I kissed and licked his chest, his throat, nibbling my way to the side of his neck, to that place I love where his neck meets the hard muscles of his shoulders.
I bit, hard, and I felt his desire go through the roof.
"Fuck," he growled. The next thing I knew, I was face-down on the bed and he was behind me, the coarse hair on his legs tickling the backs of my thighs as he spread me. "This what you wanted, Molly?" he asked as he entered me again, hard, deep.
"Yes," I cried, nearly breathless with the sensations running through my body. He held my hips in his big hands. That was all he needed, my permission to lose control, and he did. He started hammering into me from behind, filling me, and every thrust had me smothering screams of pleasure into my pillow. He pulled the pillow away, threw it aside.
"I want to hear you moan my name," he growled. And I did, crying out as I went over the edge. Soon, I was pressed flat to the bed again, trapped between his huge, hard body and the mattress, and he was out of his mind, thrusting into me, growling, his hands on my breasts, squeezing, pinching as he took me.
I cried out, muffling my screams against the mattress as I came, hard, and he kept going. I grabbed, desperately finding something to hold onto. I gripped the edge of our mattress as another wave of pleasure tore through me, everything in me clenching, everything I was belonging to him. His thoughts had taken on that tone, that more animalistic feel that he has when he's full demon. I could see from his hands (which were now gripping my upper arms, holding me right where he wanted me) that he'd let his demon loose completely. I knew it the second he flipped me over. He was bulkier, his body temperature even colder than usual, his thoughts full of animalistic lust.
Nain pressed into me, and I cried out, losing control again, and he ground against me and I felt his release. He shook with it, grinding himself harder and harder into my body, until, finally, he came back down.
He slumped, laying the full weight of his body on top of mine, still joined with me, my legs and wings spread wide to accommodate him as he pressed me into the mattress. I was still on my stomach, and I turned my face to the side. He rested his face against the side of my neck, and I nuzzled him, and he rubbed his face against mine.
I started dozing off, exhausted and aching from his attentions. Also, feeling more peaceful than I'd felt in a long time. Yeah, all of my problems were still out there, waiting for me. But this… what I had with Nain was hard to explain to anyone other than us. The way he loved me exactly the way I needed him to, the way I fed from him, his energy sustaining and strengthening me, his lust and rage giving me that little extra lift.
He was exhausting. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
"Do you want me to let you up?" he asked drowsily, his voice hoarse.
I practically purred beneath him. "No, don't go anywhere. I love this."
He nuzzled the side of my neck again, kissed a trail down to my shoulder. "I didn't intend to lose it like that," he said accusingly.
"I know," I said, gasping when he nipped the sensitive flesh at the side of my neck, almost exactly where I'd bitten him earlier. "But you needed it, and so did I."
He ran his hand up my body, trailing his fingertips from my shoulders, down my arms, and, finally, to my hands, where I still gripped the edge of our mattress. He twined his fingers with mine, and I looked at the matching bands on our left hands, shining just a little in the dark bedroom.
"I love you," he said, that low rumble.
I smiled sleepily. "I love you more."
"Not even possible, woman." He paused. "Don't keep shit from me anymore, baby. You need to know that I'm here, forever, no matter what. I'm not going anywhere unless you kick my ass out. I'm yours. We can fight. We can disagree. We can get pissed off at each other. You'll probably get pissed off a lot more at me than I do at you," he amended, and I smiled. "It doesn't matter. There isn't a thing in this world or any other that will make me love you less. I love you more every second. Whatever's going on with Nether, I trust your judgment. You know her better than anyone else. Just don't let her kill you. If it comes to that, promise me you'll end her first."
"I promise," I said.
I brought his hand to my mouth, kissed his knuckles, and dozed off, comforted in the way that only my mate knows how to comfort me. When Zoe started crying a while later, I started to get up. Nain kissed my shoulder and told me to go back to sleep. When he came back to bed, he loved me again, slowly, tenderly, whispering his love for me, kisses and caresses branding it across my flesh. We went over the edge together, and I knew, as much as I know anything, that I would never, ever have enough of him.
Chapter Ten
I waited outside the Netherwoods for my father. We were supposed to be patrolling together, looking for Nether or Hyperion or whoever the hell else we could find. He was still annoyed that I wouldn't set foot in the Nether, but I stuck to my guns, waiting just outside the tree line until he made an appearance.
"Really, Mollis, it's ridiculous," he said as soon as he came into view. "It's a place. Nothing more."
"Right. That's why you all gravitated to it like moths to a flame," I said.
He gave me an irritated scowl.
"And it's not the same, because Nether isn't there powering it," I added.
We rose into the air. "No, it's not the same," Hades said as we took off. "But it's close enough. It looks right. It even smells the same."
"And what are you doing about the souls?" Family business: people die, crows bring their souls to my dad, my dad passes judgment on how much and what type of punishment they need, then my mom and aunt make it happen. In the original Nether, the souls as well as anyone else my family had been punishing (usually demons) had resided in the Pit, and the worst of the worst had spent eternity in Tartarus. Both places had been powered by Nether (the being's) energy. Though from what Gaia had said, there was some sentient energy powering them too, which was why we had a new Nether. Life found a way.
"It's not perfect," he admitted. "West?" he asked and I nodded. We both tilted, turning that way. "Right now, we're using demons and the few Netherhounds I've managed to track down. I fear we've lost most of them, though."
"They stayed in the Nether, you mean?"
Hades nodded. "Right now it's working well enough. We'll have to figure out something eventually, but for now we're making our way through the backlog of souls that accumulated after Nyx destroyed the gateway."
"Do the souls generally give you much trouble? Do they try to escape and shit like that?" I asked.
He shrugged. "At first, they do. Once your mother and aunt start on them, they lose the will to even bother."
"Where are you guys staying? It's just forest, right?"
He gave me a look. "There is a palace. My presence there makes is so." I thought about that. I remembered his palace in the original Nether. He could change it at will, suiting his (and, usually, Persephone's) whims. "I am enjoying refining it, and your mother has excellent taste."
We flew in silence for a while, and I caught him watching me. "What?" I asked.
"You know you can always join the family business, Mollis. I know you feel at odds here."
"Mom has a big mouth," I muttered.
"And why do I have less right to know that than your mother does?" he asked, irritation tinging his emotions.
"You don't.
She doesn't either. I didn't tell her that."
"So she felt it, which means it's true," he said. "And you really need to get over being annoyed that you're not the only one who can read emotions now. Why do you have to be so closed off to everyone all the time?"
"I don't know, Dad. Why do you have to be so closed off all the time?" I shot back, glaring at him.
He didn't answer, and we flew on in silence, both of us trying to sense for any indication that Hyperion or Nether was around.
"My reasons are likely different from yours," Hades finally said.
"Right. Remember that I'm one of the few who can read your emotions, Dad. And as much as I hate to admit it, I'm just as black and withered inside as you are."
"Not as much as me. Give yourself a few thousand years and then we'll talk."
I shook my head, turned to look at him again. "How does it work?"
"How does what work?"
"How do you do the judging thing?"
He took a breath. "You've worked by your mother's side as a Fury. What is it like for you?"
"Mom would tell me what the person had done, and any instructions you'd given. And then the soul would come into the room, and I'd break into its mind. After a little work, I could see what they'd done. And more importantly, I could see what they feared, and that was what I used to punish them with."
He nodded. "It took work to see their crimes, though."
"Yeah. I had to break into their minds," I said.
"For me, I can't not see those things. I look at someone — mortal, immortal, shifter… whatever — and I see, in an instant, every single sin they've ever committed. I see everything."
"Ugh," I said, and he gave a snort of a laugh. "I mean, I feel dirty seeing some of the things I see. I can't imagine having to see it all the time." And then a thought struck me. "Wait. So you knew what Brennan was hiding from me."
He gave me a dark look. "My abilities are for the dead. I have no interest in interfering with the living."
"But you saw. That first day, when you showed up at the loft and bargained with me to have Asclepias save him… you knew that he was working for the government."
He shrugged.
I have never even considered lifting a hand in anger to my father (because that would be stupid, mostly) but I was seriously thinking about it then. "I'm your daughter. Do you know how much heartbreak you could have saved me?"
"Again, because you don't seem to get it: I have no interest in interfering in the day-to-day drama of the living, whether it's my child or not. I deal with enough dead assholes, I don't need to start poking my nose into the lives of the living. But in case it wasn't clear: I never especially cared for the shifter. Not for you, because he's not worthy. All right?"
I watched him. "So if I ask you if there's something Nain's hiding from me, or Brennan again, or E?"
He glared at me. "I will tell you what I've just told you twice already: I don't believe in affecting the lives of the living. I'm the Lord of the Dead. That's where my focus is."
"Yet here you are," I pointed out.
"Only because I like you, daughter."
I rolled my eyes, looked back down at the ground. This whole searching for Hyperion thing was starting to look like a lost cause. "Well, there's one way I'll never be like you, anyway," I said.
"Good," he answered. "The fact of the matter, Mollis, is that you'll always be lighter and better than me. I don't deny you take after me in more ways than I'd like. You are very much my daughter. But you have that streak of light that shines through everything else. Your mother has that. Don't lose it, because it's what makes you a hero and not a nightmare."
I didn't answer. I focused, sensed a power signature nearby, to our right. Belle Isle. "Something big," I said to Hades, and he nodded. I gestured toward Belle Isle, banked in that direction, and he followed me. The nearer I got to the island, the more clearly I could feel him. Smug satisfaction was the predominant emotion, and I glanced at my dad.
"Um. This is probably a trap," I said. "He feels happy."
He shrugged. "I don't expect to lose to him today. Not when we're both there facing off against him."
I shook my head. He was somewhere in the more wooded area of the island. There were roads that led through the woods, and these were less well-travelled than the rest of the island. People usually preferred to drive along the edges so they'd get views of the Detroit River.
I was not a fan of this part of the island. I'd saved a girl who'd been held captive in the woods for weeks, when I first started out. It was one of my first cases. There were four girls I'd been too late for, and I'd found them in this area as well. That was what had convinced me to take my lost girl searches seriously. I'd gotten lucky a few times early on. Cocky. I'd let those four girls slip through my fingers, and by the time I'd made my way out to the woods, they'd been murdered. It was one of the things I'd never forgive myself for. It was the thing that had turned my searches into something I made the center of my life.
I thought their names as I came in for a landing.
Of course, there were good things about the island, too. The first time Nain really flirted with me, we'd been on the beach. Of course, that was also the same conversation in which he'd told me I was like the demonic equivalent of a vampire, a mindflayer. We had no idea until later that owning that particular power was my birthright, or that the other mindflayers there had been stories about had been none other than my mother and her sisters.
"So he's pretty armored up, from what Heph said," I said, forcing my mind to stop swirling. "Any tips?"
"Hit him hard," Hades said, and I shook my head.
"Be ready to dodge him. He probably wants to kill you more than he wants to fight with me," I told him.
"I don't need to 'dodge him,' Mollis," he muttered, and I ignored him as we landed in a small clearing in the woods. "Does the demon put up with that nonsense? With you telling him what to do?"
"Oddly enough, I never have to tell him what to do. My husband is smart enough to know better, and he doesn't have quite the amount of sexist bullshit going on that you do. He knows damn well I'm stronger than him, and it doesn't bother him in the least."
"Well, isn't he just all evolved and sensible," Hades sneered.
"Keep it up and I'm gonna leave you here for Hyperion to destroy," I told him. "Stop being such a prick."
"He's an Olympian. What else do you expect?" a deep, rich voice asked.
We watched as the Titan emerged from the trees in front of us.
He was… freaking huge. My dad is tall, and Hyperion towered over him. While the Olympians tend to look disgustingly perfect, from what I'd seen of the Titans, they were unique, not as human-looking. Hyperion was gold. Or, at least his skin shone with a metallic gold color, and his armor was gleaming gold as well. Huge shield that was about as tall as I was: gold. Same for the sword, which was not really all that long, but sported blades on both ends. Blazing yellow eyes glowed from a face that was actually quite handsome if you were able to get past the alien look of him. Straight nose, thin lips, strong chin.
"This is a good prize," he said, pacing a little, eyes on us. "The Lord of the Dead and his abomination."
"God, I am so sick of people calling me that," I muttered.
"Apollo's death will be avenged, Titan," my dad said, and Hyperion laughed.
"Ah, little gods. It took all of you, together, to capture me. What hope do you have now? Pathetic pretenders. You've only seen the beginning of my plans for you." Then he laughed. "Of course, that's all the two of you will ever see. You forfeit your lives in coming here, your egos making you believe your minor powers stand a chance against the mighty Hyperion."
"God, I would have put him in Tartarus just for the fact that he never fucking stops talking," I said.
"Mollis, shut—" Hades began, just as Hyperion lunged at me and I barely got my sword arm up to block him.
Fuck, he was strong.
He drew back and struck a
gain, and I tried to slice his shoulder, where there was just a small gap in his armor. He brought his shield up and blocked it easily, laughing.
I was aware of my dad circling around, getting ready to strike.
Hyperion noticed it, too, surprising both of us by lunging toward him, striking hard with his sword and catching Hades' thigh. My dad barely reacted, letting out a small grunt, then raising his hands and sending a blast of insane power at Hyperion, hitting him solidly in the chest. It knocked him back, but he sprung back up with a snarl and advanced on Hades again.
"Stay back," Hades growled at me. "He wants to fight, let's go." He gestured for Hyperion to come at him, and he laughed.
"You asked for this," Hyperion told him, and then he rushed at Hades, his sword moving so fast it was a blur, his shield clanging hard against Hades' head not once, but twice, and I winced, stood tense and ready, trying to decide how far to let Hades take this macho bullshit.
To his credit, he did hold his own against Hyperion. I realized I was used to just seeing my dad in his "lord of the dead" role. When he was in that role, he really didn't have to do more than look at someone in a certain way, whether the person was immortal or not, and he was obeyed.
Of course, I know better from experience. It takes a whole lot of demonstrated punishment to get people to obey like that. I was just beginning to get that. And while it made me uncomfortable, it was preferable to having to kick ass all the time to get my way.
Yet here he was, fighting an obviously seasoned warrior, someone who could kill him, and he faced him with glee, ferocity in his face. He couldn't undo what Hyperion had done to my mother, but I could feel from him just how badly he wanted to give Hyperion some payback. And when he slashed out with the long black sword he'd drawn, and sliced across Hyperion's face, it took everything in me not to cheer. Hyperion howled in rage and the fight continued as blood dripped down his face and armor.
I stayed ready to jump, and soon enough, the moment came. Hades jumped back from a slash of Hyperion's blade, and he hit out with the shield. While Hades was ducking that, Hyperion stuck with the sword again, more quickly than seemed possible. I leapt at him, using all of my power to back me up, and knocked him back onto the ground. We rolled, shouting at one another. He had lost his shield in the impact, but he still held onto his sword. He grabbed my hair hard with one hand as we wrestled, and I bashed my head forward, heard that satisfying crunch of bone breaking.
Nether: Hidden Book Five Page 13
