by Eris Adderly
He cast the strap aside and moved in to press himself against her back. His skin was a hot brand on her welted flesh and she hissed in acceptance of such a claim. Her neck, shoulders, and outstretched upper arms knew the desperate scatter of new kisses.
“Persephone. So beautiful.” His words were close and rough against her ear. “You wear my marks so well. I—”
He drew her against him, hand on her belly. She could feel him dancing on some blade-sharp edge of thought and action. “I’m—I’m sorry.” Was there a catch in his voice? “I had to. I had to.”
Contrition? Now?
But why?
“Hades, I asked for it,” she said. “Did you not hear me beg?”
For a time, all he did was breathe, his face buried in the crook of her neck. Tension abated in his hold, but he made some low sound of warning. Of a beast, awakening to Spring.
“I did,” said Hades. “By the Fates, did I hear it.”
She sniffled, floating on the last of calm waters before a fall. Dark hands flowed over her curves, cupping her breasts, making the little bells dance on their chains. Fingers dipped between her legs from behind, spreading liquid want.
The blunt, warm head of his erection settled along her furrow, and Persephone sighed. This she knew, this was familiar. She widened her stance what little she could while on tiptoe, ready to sink into the comfort of filling strokes.
Hades moved into position. Began to push.
It wasn’t right.
“Mmm … lower.” She shifted guiding hips.
The softest huff of amusement prickled the back of her neck. “No, love.”
Her eyes came open. She squirmed in her bonds.
“My Lord.”
The stone hook from last night had been a slender thing, but Hades …
“Persephone.” The nudge became an insistent press, the slick of her need aiding him. “Are you mine?”
“Mmhm.” She nodded, brows furrowed together, anticipation stealing her words.
“Then let me in.”
Her breasts rose and fell, nipples at a dull throb as she made to relax.
His.
Hades pushed past her barrier.
Her mouth came open in an O of recognition.
He owned her.
The tight ring stretched wide. She was the eye of a needle through which someone was attempting to thread a rope.
There were soft words as he took his time. Whispered kisses and shushing while he worked himself inside. She stood on the tips of her toes, but there was no ease to be found. The Lord of the Dead claimed his ground by measures and Persephone knew every breath and pulse of their joining.
Eternity came and went before she felt the thatch of hair at her parted cheeks. She’d taken every bit of length he had to give.
There was a time of adjustment as he held them still. She could hear the rush of his hard-won restraint, steaming in and out through his nostrils. She wanted to let herself go; to attune to the way he filled her, but the brilliant ache was inescapable. No matter how long she stood there, trying to drain herself into a state of surrender while he waited, there was nothing for it. The way his cock held her open felt endlessly precarious, a lifetime teetering at the edge of a cliff.
He began to move, and it was slow. Excruciating.
The length of him drew all the way out, before he labored once more at pushing it home. New sensation threatened to drown her, and Persephone gasped for air.
His fingers dug into her hips and she felt the tight grip he had on his own reins. Everything was the opposite of comfortable; she wanted to writhe and shift. Her hands bound in stone. The unrelenting fullness wedged into her bottom. The hungry vacancy where his cock should have been. The wicked insistence of the clamps and cool air teasing the wet havoc between her legs.
Every sensation thrilled and clamored at once, and Persephone hovered in a giddy heightened awareness. His tentative movements were a path toward madness for them both.
This cannot be what he wants. To hold back?
No.
“Hades.”
“Mm?” Concentration curbed his words.
“I’m not a doll.”
He came out of it. “What?”
“You’re not going to break me.”
He stilled, pulsing within her, and set his forehead against the back of her neck. His warning came ground between teeth. “You do not understand what you ask.”
“I do.”
“You do not.”
“I do!” she said, jerking with the force of her protest. “I want what you have to give.”
The god was quiet, but she knew he listened.
“Give me your pain, Hades Clymenus. And I will hurt for you.”
His nails were carving half-moons into her skin. She decided to be more direct.
“Fuck me.”
Silence behind her, heated throbbing below.
“Hades!”
“Forgive me,” he whispered and drove himself home.
He was not gentle. He was not kind. He was the rough god she needed him to be.
His cock speared at her, unrepentant, and charcoal hands hauled her back at the hip. Her feet came off the ground.
Persephone called out his name again and again, arms stretched far overhead, to the furious tune of jangling bells. With each violent thrust, he shed another layer of remorse, and relief throbbed, just out of reach.
“Please! H-Hades!” The cry came choking out as she bounced on an erection hard as the stone imprisoning her hands.
And he knew. The dark god knew and had mercy.
He let her feet touch the floor.
With only the slightest pause in the urgent siege of his hips, he fumbled a hand around to the jouncing golden bell between her legs. The jaws of the clamp came open and he sent it tinkling across the floor. Stinging heat flowed into the vacancy left by pressure, and all sensation narrowed to a blue-white focus even as he resumed his assault.
And then Hades brought his fingers down to massage at her swollen nub.
It was too much.
He was everywhere, making her sing, making her hurt. She painted the chamber with feral sound and went flying over the edge.
Between cursing and shuddering, she could no more than ride the current. Her muscles flexed. Pulled taut. That immortal cock never ceased to punish and reward.
“Hades! Sýzygos! Yes!”
Whether it was the impact of the name or he was already there, Hades erupted with her.
He planted himself deep. Completion spilled inside her, pulse after hot pulse, to disastrous perfection. He remained, emptying it all in a scalding purge, his breath hissing in and out through his teeth.
They stood there, joined, filling their lungs in the silence. Perspiration beaded her brow and the small of her back and her mind floated in blessed emptiness.
The withdrawal came as a shock, slippery and wrong, luscious and horribly right. The stalactite retreated into itself, leaving her arms to fall at her sides. Hades caught her up in an instant, lowering them both to the floor where she could crumple against his chest, head lolling, extremities limp.
One at a time, he removed the two remaining clamps and their dangling bells and tossed them aside with the third. The blood returned to the aching tips with a vengeance, and his thumbs stroked to soothe, though that was a torture in itself. She wanted to swear, but the best she could manage was a raw groan.
The dark hands collected her now, massaging, petting, smoothing. Bringing damp hair away from her temples, returning feeling to her hands.
“Persephone.” He said her name like a vow. “Goddess.”
She turned her face and brushed his lips in a ghost of a kiss, his fine features blurred through the fringe of her drooping lashes.
“What do you need, love?”
Imbalance. Now you can ask.
“I want control,” she said, fighting the dreamy slur in her words.
“You what?” He, on the other hand, sounded q
uite sober.
Persephone shifted and wet her throat with a swallow. She needed at a grip on her faculties, or at least the appearance.
“I want to lead,” she said. “I want to choose how we play. See your face. When we come.”
Hades blinked at her and it was clear this was the very last request he’d expected to come out of her mouth. For a time, he only continued to cradle her against him, eyes distant, considering.
Perhaps you’ve crossed a line.
When he met her gaze again, she could see a walling off had taken place, though the lines of his face held no hint of anger.
“Fair enough, my little flower.” A single, dark-nailed finger trailed down over her breastbone. “You can take the lead tomorrow if you answer one question. A riddle, if you will.”
She watched. Waited. It could be another of his traps.
And which of his traps have you hated yet?
“Tell me one secret about myself,” he said, at last. “Something I’ve confessed to no one. Answer me that and the night is yours.”
*
Demeter’s hair stirred in the ever-shifting winds of Olympos, along with her simmering temper. The dome of the sky overhead was blue as the heart of flame, and Helios, who’d shared information she both wanted and didn’t, rode high overhead in his blinding chariot.
There were many immortal palaces on the slopes of the mount of legend, but it was toward the grandest, the topmost, the seat of the Sky Realm’s throne, that Demeter made her way.
She picked a path through manicured gardens and obscene fountains, excessive colonnades and grandiose fields of white marble. The Lord of the Skies had summoned her, but the goddess would arrive in her time, as did the seasons she governed.
How many of them came crying to you, Zeus? Did the Fair One pout when her pool of acolytes dwindled? Did Ares rage when his armies lost the strength to shift their spears?
She wore a frightening grin at the thought of the inevitable confrontation.
Her display of wrath had served its purpose: she had his attention. Helios had suggested she ‘discuss’ the matter, but to do so upon no foundation would have been pointless. The Lord of Lightnings did not, in her experience, listen to talk and reason. He respected only one thing: power.
She’d given him a reminder.
Her daughter would not languish away in the Underworld if there was anything Demeter had to say about it.
The halls of the palace of Zeus stood open to the sky with soaring white columns bounding the rectangular structure on all sides. The breeze caught the drape of her chiton and plastered the linen to her limbs as she mounted the last of the wide stairs to the throne room. When she reached the top, she swore to herself.
Faithless god.
There he was, seated on his throne, Hermes at his side, bending his immortal ear. None of the others were present, and the pair broke off their exchange mid-sentence at Demeter’s approach.
Zeus sat larger than life, as he always did, a bold orange chiton draped around his knees and his gilded crown of oak leaves resting atop the silver-white curls. Broad shoulders and muscled calves were a superfluous reminder of might, as he lounged against the throne of thrones.
Seven steps, each in a different type of stone, rose to the platform where he had placed his seat above all those of the other gods. Each of the Olympians—herself included—had a seat in this place, but none so grand as Lord Zeus. The golden likeness of an eagle, a gift from Hephaistos, sprouted from the right arm of the throne, an array of lightning bolts crafted from tin clutched in its talons; a symbol of the power wielded by the king of the gods.
I loved him for a time. And I was a fool.
“Lord of Thunder.” She made his name an insult and approached at an unhurried pace.
You will remain calm, or this will not work.
“Goddess of the Fruitful Earth,” he said. “You know why I’ve called you here. What is it you imagine you’re doing, Hôrêphoros?”
Bringer of the Seasons. She smirked as he twisted home his point.
“Well”—she strolled now to one side of the hall—“things have been taken from me of late. It is only right I should take back.”
He scowled and Hermes glanced between them both.
“Did you think I would not find out about Persephone?” she said, before leaning a shoulder against one of the columns. She crossed one ankle over the other and her arms over her chest.
“Our daughter is not a ‘thing’ which someone might take,” said Zeus. “She’s a goddess in her own right. You cannot keep her from a marriage.” He sat back, hands resting on the arms of his throne. His protective reaction was unexpected, but irrelevant.
“And you can sell her into one?”
She pushed away from the stone supporting her and advanced on the Lord of the Skies. Hermes shifted his weight from one leg to another, silent for once in the growing heat of their exchange.
“I sold no one, Demeter.” The bluest of eyes flashed a stormy warning. “I merely approved the suggestion of a courtship. All I receive in return is the slim possibility of a contented brother. Whatever he thinks of me, I do not wish him ill.”
“Ugh!” She wanted to tear her hair, but settled for the poison of sarcasm. “ ‘Your brother.’ I can’t imagine. You need to have her plucked from that pit of his and brought back to me, Basileus,” she said pointing a demanding finger, “and without any of your usual delays.”
“Demeter.” His tone was patient. Infuriating. “She’ll be with him a week tomorrow. Lord Hades has no tolerance for anyone or anything he deems unsuitable for his realm. I do not believe a potential consort would be different. That he hasn’t put her out of his domain entirely by now should tell you they’ve —”
“Filth!” she spat. “I won’t hear it! I refuse to even imagine what horrors that … that beast of a brother of yours has forced her to submit to down there.” Her arms were across her chest again in firm denial. Zeus only raised a silver brow.
“He’s your brother, too, Daughter of Kronos.” Thunder rumbled in the distance.
So much for calm.
They faced off in electric silence, anger arcing from eye to Olympian eye. Hermes attempted to look anywhere else, taking up a sudden and intense interest in the cleanliness of his fingernails.
Zeus ran a knuckle over the bridge of his nose, closing blue eyes in fatigue. She couldn’t help feeling the resentful thrill of achievement.
“Do you know how long it will take,” he said, “between my rain and Helios’s light before we can return the land to its bounty?” She made no reply, waiting. “Months, Demeter. It will be months at least.”
And now let him understand.
“It will be far longer than that, Gatherer of Clouds. Do you think I will allow the earth to be restored while Persephone is prisoner beneath it?” Her volume grew as she spoke. “Nothing will grow. The land will not yield a single kernel of nourishment while the lot of you conspire to deny me my daughter. This, I promise.”
When he drummed impatient fingers, she began to ascend the steps to his throne. “You think I’ve exhausted my ability at a day’s worth of famine?” she said. “The losses of today will seem like the buzzing of a gnat compared to the swarm of deprivation I will bring. The children of men will crumble to the Earth until there is not one beating heart left to worship at your altars.”
A flurry of reddened leaves flew in on the constant wind, a harbinger of the winter to come.
“Demeter, be reasonable,” he said. “What’s done is done. I cannot simply insist he give up his consort, it—”
“You WILL!” Her fury echoed across the hall and beyond its columns. “You will return her, Zeus, or I will undo us all, myself included.”
The Lord of the Skies sighed and leaned to press his fingers against the grim new line of his lips, his elbow resting on the arm of the throne. He gave a slow shake of his head.
“Hermes.”
The Messenger snapped to attenti
on, as though he hadn’t been a fly on the wall for their thorny exchange.
“My Lord?”
“You know your way into my brother’s kingdom. Go and explain to him”—his eyes never left Demeter—“that although he has been promised the opportunity to court an immortal wife”—he stabbed the word home—“and has no doubt already grown fond of her, that now he must give her up again to her worrying mother.” The god finished off his instructions with a note of disgust.
“I leave tonight, my Lord.”
Hermes bobbed a nod and, turning on a winged heel, all but fled from the hall of thrones, no doubt to gossip about what he’d just heard to every immortal ear along the way.
Good. Let them hear.
“Satisfied?” said Zeus.
“I will be,” Demeter said, “once Persephone is returned.”
*
VIII Submission
The ferry receded into the hanging mist with a haste not often found on the crawling waters of the Styx. Kharon poled the barge of the dead with an irritable vigor, back toward the outer shore where the mortal shades had been amassing at a concerning rate since Demeter had begun her assault on the good will of her fellow immortals.
Hades paced along the sandy bank, arms clasped behind his back, head down, frowning.
It will not be long now.
He’d been ready to return to Persephone, but after hearing the ferryman’s report, the Lord of the Dead needed some brief measure of solitude to gather his thoughts. His intentions.
How many more days like this would he have? Their number, limited, would fall away again to the drone of his routines. The predictability of his realm would return. Why was he clenching his teeth?
Why was he allowing the game to continue? There were ways. Torturing himself was unnecessary.
Because you, Polydegmon, are a beast of the lowest order.
And for that, he owed her. At least this once, all bargains aside.
He should have worshipped her. Any suitor in his right mind would have. The way she’d stretched from the descending stone, exquisite. Helpless.
