by Eris Adderly
Her first goal had been to seek him out, but that had proven fruitless. She knew how to get to the bridge over the Phlegethôn, but that was some distance from his palace and she didn’t imagine him having any reason to be there. What she didn’t know was how to get almost anywhere else in his realm.
Of course, he had taken his time strolling with her through some of the more interesting parts of his domain, but more often their travels had taken them through the æther. Such means of movement left her with no sense of direction at all, not with her abilities suppressed and him the guiding will behind their journey.
For a time, she’d hovered on the smaller bridge where her unintentional summoning of Enodia had driven her into his arms. She’d stared out into the Great Cavern, her gaze going unfocused over the scattered paráthyra and the meandering red line of the River of Fire.
The Underworld answers to Underworld gods.
This realm had a dark, still sort of beauty to it, but Persephone was not an Underworld goddess. She belonged at the new green edge of Spring under a morning-bright sky, but the words kept singing along in her head, regardless. How had they gotten there?
In her resolve to either find Hades or find anything else of interest within his spare and silent palace, she’d quit the bridge for the tangle of hallways. At each crossing where there had been a choice, she’d turned left in an effort to remember her path back to his rooms, should she give up her pursuit.
Once she did give up her pursuit, however, the return was not so simple. Having found nothing and no one of value after what felt like more than an hour wandering corridors, trying doors, and surveying the sparse contents of otherwise empty rooms, Persephone doubled back only to find her path not matching up to the one she remembered taking in the first place.
Had there been a gallery she’d walked through that faced this side of the cavern? There had been stairs, yes, but so many? And with a landing in the middle?
She rubbed her forehead with a frustrated hand and made another right turn. This hallway was more rough-hewn than the last, and her mouth went into a thin line.
You’re probably getting further away from the heart of the palace with every step.
The only thing keeping her from the true heat of irritation with herself was the knowledge that no matter how turned around she got, the Lord of the Dead would be able to find her. And after the escalation of events over the last few days, she had little doubt he would come looking.
Some dim sense of familiarity began to tickle here at this outcropping of stone, at that pair of alcoves. Ahead, on the wall, there was something …
His sigil angled into view as she approached. Curves and lines spanned the stone in the same dull iron as that bident he wielded with such violent grace. Her fingers rose to the embedded glyph and traced along its edge. The shape brought to mind the sound of his name on her lips. An exhalation at first, a hiss at the end. She sampled it there in the hall.
“Hades.”
“Goddess.”
She gasped and whirled. There he stood, a pace away, the faintest hint of a smile on that mouth of his. Had she summoned him, as she might Hekate, just by saying his name? Impossible.
“How long?” she demanded.
“Moments,” he said, stepping forward. “I do enjoy hearing you speak my name.”
Persephone felt her cheeks go hot, but he was already crowding her against the wall, the iron symbol at her back. How did he continue to bring her, without a word, to that place of quavering heat in an instant?
“With what frequency”—he braced a hand on the stone beside her, black eyes on her mouth—“are you willing to tolerate my attentions?”
The space was all but gone between them, and the strange new calm in his words made her heart speed.
He’s wasting no time on preamble today, is he?
But this was different. There was no command. Only a question.
“Are you … are you asking me if …”
“If I have pushed you too far, and too often.”
Fates, not far enough.
“No,” she said as he leaned down, “and no.”
There was a kiss, and it was slow. Deliberate. Her palms drifted up to his chest. When they parted, more of his smile had returned, but it was calculating. She swallowed.
“I thought perhaps you sought darkness again,” he said, “to return to this place.”
“This place?” He still had her pressed to the stone, but she turned her head to the side glancing at the corridor walls.
“You don’t recognize it?”
Persephone shook her head and mischief flashed in his eyes. The stone at her back chose to be elsewhere.
He had to catch her at the waist to keep her from falling backward into the empty space. As soon as he was sure of her balance, Hades turned her by the shoulders to face a room that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Or, it had been there, closed away by a wall of basalt and the will of a god.
There was the platform and its array of cushions. The granite bench. The rugs, many of which were now conspicuously absent.
He stepped up behind her and circled her waist with a now familiar arm.
“In truth, my Lord, I did not seek this place at all,” she said. “I was quite lost.”
“But now I’ve found you.” The words fell at her ear, shadowed with meaning upon meaning.
“You have.”
Fingers trailed down her right arm and laced together with hers. She let her shoulders settle against his warmth.
“I did not want this,” he said, deceptively conversational. “When Aphrodite demanded I bring you to my realm?” She felt a little shake of his head. “I wanted nothing to do with it. Or you.”
His free hand slid up to cover the front of her throat while they faced the chamber where she’d spent her first three days in the Underworld.
“And then I sat here in this place,” he went on, “in the darkness, as I preferred it. With you. I heard your voice. I felt your fear, but little flower, I felt the first stirrings of your lust. And I knew.” She shifted against his chest, the press of his hips. “I knew,” he said, “I was wrong. That I wanted you very, very much.”
The last he punctuated with a roll of his firming erection at her backside. A comparable buzz of arousal was building between her thighs.
“I could lay you down, Persephone.” His voice had dropped an octave. It had her ready to turn and kneel. To shift his chiton and worship him with her mouth again. But Hades was not finished.
“Right there.” He allowed his smallest finger to make a tighter circle around her neck. “Those soft cushions? I could part your legs.” The second finger joined in the firmer grip. “I will make it as sweet as nectar, if that is what you want.”
The words were genuine but saccharine. Somehow, she couldn’t respond. It didn’t seem right. She shifted her weight, her touch coming to rest on his knuckles, just above her collarbone.
“Or”—his middle finger closed with the other two—“we could go elsewhere.” And finally the first finger, his hold on her throat complete. “If gentle and virtuous isn’t the sort of immortal you’re looking for, my love.”
And there he was. Fresh dew wept down the inside of her thigh. There was the dark god who’d helped her answer so many questions she’d had about herself. She couldn’t help the escape of a low noise of want, and it hummed against the fingers possessing her neck.
“Here?” he asked. “Or in my rooms?”
Her eyes flicked to the cushioned platform. She had awakened there, scared and confused, a lifetime of discovery ago. Memories of uncertainty lay on every surface. It was not the place for today.
“Your rooms.”
“Very well.”
The æther swallowed them whole.
*
Persephone could feel it. Whatever she’d agreed to with the choice of Hades’s rooms, it was beyond mere physical desire. There was something larger, more consequential at play.
There
was also an imbalance.
You have come on his cock, but have you looked him in the eye?
Never at the same time, it was true. Despite the show of extracting a promise of obedience from her, the Lord of the Dead had asked permission, in his own way, to take every new step on their path. But had he surrendered control even once?
Never.
And as much as she wanted every depraved thing he still might have to offer, he didn’t appear to be surrendering it now, either.
“Wider.” He rapped at her bare ankle with his sandaled foot.
Imbalance. Ask him. But not now.
Now she stood, bereft of her chiton, at the center of the open floor, well away from the Elaionapothos. She slid her feet farther apart on the stone. Hades tipped a fraction of a nod.
His steps took him in a slow circle, the tip of an idle nail carving out gooseflesh at her waist as he went. When he stood at her back, both hands rose to her ribcage and then slid up under her arms.
Wool brushed her shoulders as he leaned in with his next instruction.
“Arms up.”
They were such simple commands. Yet they made things inside her tighten. They brought that coveted new tingle of fear. Anything. He might do anything.
Persephone raised her arms. They were parallel to the floor and he moved his palms up, coaxing her elbows higher to show he’d meant her hands to be over her head. He brought her wrists together and held them aloft with circling fingers.
A rumbling sound from above tripped a snare of the familiar. She tilted her head back, curious, and her breath caught.
From the limestone ceiling overhead, a stalactite flowed to life. With that crackling liquid motion that defied all explanation, the stone descended in a queasy parody of a growing thing. Just like the bridge over the River of Fire, the bones of the Underworld came at his call.
You’ve come at his call a time or two, as well.
Hades stretched her arms up to meet the living rock. Higher. Higher. She stood on the balls of her feet.
“Be still for me.” And she was.
Fluid stone coursed around her wrists and trapped them together in place of his hand, hardening again as though it had never moved at all. Persephone flexed her hands. Twisted her arms against the restraint. It was solid like no other.
Imbalance.
He traced his palm over the taut muscles along her spine before stepping around to face her again.
“Villain.”
She meant it as both curse and jest, but it was hard not to sound breathy with her raised arms stretching her lungs.
Hades closed the distance between them and took her jaw between thumb and forefinger. “And?” He raised a challenging brow. “You love it.” The accompanying smile was cruel and everything she needed. It was the last thing she saw before he claimed a rough kiss.
Black eyes bored straight through to the truth of her when they parted from the kiss, and she knew her troubles had only begun. His hand withdrew from the folds of his chiton, coal-dark fingers curled into a fist.
“There is no jewel capable,” he said, “of refining the perfection you are.”
He turned his wrist and let go the trap of his fingers. Glittering on the open palm were three tiny golden bells, each was attached to … something. Hades took one up between his fingers.
“But they may serve to augment”—and here he came, whisper close again—“those states which have brought us to understand one another.”
Her lack of power had her pulse flying. He wasn’t making any sense.
“My Lord, I don’t—oh!”
Her eyes flew to the bite. The smallest of gold clamps latched onto pink flesh, and her left nipple thrilled under the intense, unabating pinch. One of the bells dangled from the source of her shock by a delicate chain, swinging against the lower curve of her breast.
“Pain,” he said when she looked up at him, open-mouthed. The clamp’s twin caught her other side and she let out a helpless yip. “Pleasure.”
The bells tinkled with the increased rise and fall of her chest.
“When you make those sounds for me, Goddess”—he tugged on both chains at once and she gasped—“your beauty becomes almost too much to bear.”
She could do nothing but watch him and suck in air. Twin blossoms of unavoidable sensation radiated from her nipples. It hurt, but there was something else.
And then she remembered the third bell.
Hades already sat on his heels. Her parted legs hid nothing. The kneeling god found what he wanted. She closed her eyes. Bit her lower lip.
Tiny jaws nipped into place and the Daughter of Olympos swore. The sensitive pearl at the peak of her sex cried out for relief, and there was none.
Persephone was on fire. Three condensed points of pressure funneled her awareness down to an intense focus. The pain subsided after a moment, but only until she realized she’d forgotten to take a breath.
He gave the dangling bell a flick as he stood, and the goddess rose even higher on her toes.
She met his eyes, both sure and not. Was he unpredictable? Or did she already know?
Without looking away, he slipped off his clothing and sandals. A naked foot pushed them out of the way, and the Lord of the Underworld stood bare and powerful, like the shameless god he was. Nothing marred his glory save the thin leather strap that had belted his chiton, now doubled in his fist.
She could not keep her mouth closed.
He stepped to close the gap. Drew the folded leather down between her breasts. Over her belly. She tried to repress a shiver and failed. The golden bells sounded at the movement.
“This is not a punishment,” he said. “Do you know why?”
She blinked wide eyes at him. A polarity of bitter delight and delicious torment throbbed in time with her pulse at each of the clamps he’d placed with such intent.
Here. This was the place to which she’d never believed she would come. His words from their first time atop the Elaionapothos haunted her, and Persephone did know.
This is not a punishment.
Part of her stood by in awe as the impossible words left her mouth.
“Because I’m going to ask you for it.”
She watched his chest expand now, as her admission quickened his need, but he said nothing. Did nothing.
Except raise a single brow.
He wants to hear it.
“Hades, I”—she swallowed, preparing to hear it, herself—“I want you to …”
Such patience as he waited for her to come to it.
“I want you to hurt me.”
His eyes closed for a moment, and she saw his jaw flex. Knuckles tightened around leather. He sealed it with a single, slow nod.
Fates, what have I done?
As Hades slipped around her, he laid the most dangerous words in a whisper at her ear: “Feel. Everything.”
The curve of the belt licked a slow caress between her legs. Her heart thudded away in her chest. He slid a palm in lazy, smoothing strokes over the backs of her thighs, her defenseless cheeks.
Then: nothing. Cool air on her skin. Silence in the room.
What is he do—
THWACK!
The leather snapped a line of nettles across her backside. She jerked forward on her toes with a yelp, and the infernal bells danced. His hand returned, the soothing motion a mockery where it burned across the path of the belt.
THWACK!
Persephone cried out again, but his hands were at her waist. She could feel the weight they supported as he knelt.
And then there was his mouth, following in place of the leather, smoldering over the signature of his cruelty. He stole a stray lick between her thighs, and she whimpered, unable to cope.
“Persephone.” A command.
“Hades?” Were those tears wetting the corners of her eyes?
“Beg.”
The word choked her, but not more than that thrice-damned voice of his. The one that vibrated through to her core and made
her into a senseless creature. She knew she would do it the moment it left his mouth.
Persephone leaned her head back, blinking. He would not see her weep. Not yet. Her eyes traveled the restraining column of stone down to the twinning of her captured wrists. He possessed her entirely now.
She could feel him rise to his feet again at her back.
“Beg for what you want, Goddess of Mine,” he said, “and I will give it to you.”
She did not know who she was anymore.
“Please.”
Silence stretched and there was nothing.
Not nothing.
She wanted it for herself. All of it.
“Please, Hades.” Her voice wavered. “I want to feel it. I want to hurt for you.”
There was a growl behind her and Persephone tensed, but no more than cool air kissed her flesh. And then she knew.
Your pleasure belongs to me now.
His purring words from yesterday were the truth of it. It was not about her, or what she wanted.
“My Lord, I am yours.” Did the stone under her feet move? Or had she gone mad? “My pain is yours. Please.”
“Yess. Mine.”
The god who would court her for a wife began to paint her backside with fire.
THWACK!
He striped her cheeks and thighs in a steady rhythm.
THWACK!
And she shook under his strokes. The bells jangled and her skin blazed with every pass of the belt, and Persephone called out with abandon in a place so deep in the Underworld no one could possibly hear her screams.
No one but him.
The rain of blows went on unceasing. Her suffering, however, did not. It reached a point of such infinite density that it simply was no more. And what came flooding in after to fill the void …
Her knees began to tremble. Her breath came hoarse.
The storm was at an end.
