by Eris Adderly
“Shhh”—a finger was on his lips—“or I’ll have that fiendish tongue of yours held in check, as well.”
Could she? Was her mastery of the Oil already sufficient to form any sort of gag?
Her head bent low and his questions became irrelevant. Teeth were grazing his throat, pulling his earlobe. Her hands … her hands were everywhere, taunting and sliding, along with the damp heat of her sex.
He needed to touch her. To grab and to pull. To possess. But the Oil held him and he had to do without.
Lower and lower she moved, until she knelt between his legs, green eyes intent on his rearing cock.
Her teeth caught her lower lip, and she tilted her head to one side, studying. After several breaths where his ribs rose and fell, she seemed to come to some decision.
Knuckles drew down over the skin of his scrotum, and Hades did nothing to repress a groan. With her thumb and forefinger, she banded the base of his sack, pulling the heavy pair away from his body in a gentle stretch.
Persephone grew something of a smile at her own handiwork, just before lowering her head. Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t the rasp her tongue. His throat condensed on some guttural noise and his wrists pulled against the hold of the Elaionapothos. Even his hips strained in her direction, pleading.
She took her time, toying with the skin she’d made tight, that laving and squirming tongue centering all its attention on the sensitive jewels in her hand. But there was more for him to feel. Far more, and she had the advantage. The goddess who had him trapped in his own bed flicked those long, dark lashes up at him and grinned.
Her tongue slid the length of him, from base to raging tip.
It was an effort to hold his head up and watch, but watch he did. Not a force in the Underworld could tear his eyes away from this.
She drew his erection over her chin and along the front of her throat, all but painting herself with it. Down between her breasts it went, as she lifted her body, pressing bosom in all around him with her hands. The soft flesh surrounding his cock had Hades rocking, shameless, hips churning in a crude imitation of the genuine act. He needed it! Now!
She chuckled at his misery and slid back down to take him in her mouth.
Persephone moved over him, lips and tongue working at his pleasure in earnest this time, rather than teasing with hints and promises. Her hands stroked while she suckled, tactics changing as soon as they might become predictable. One moment she was fanning the flames with a skilled and sliding grip, the next she was swallowing him whole.
Tension built in his thighs, his groin. If she—Fates!—if she didn’t stop soon …
She rose to sit on her heels, lips pink and swollen from keeping him on the edge.
“Persephone.”
Did his desperation show on his face? What was she doing to him?
“I wouldn’t worry so hard, my captive lord.” She brought her knees over his hips, a hint of a smirk dimpling her cheek. Her feet pushed his thighs together as she sat astride him again. “I won’t make you suffer. At least not for too long.”
With no warning, she came up on her knees and had him in hand. Had him sliding along that wet furrow, anointing his hungry length with a slick promise to allow him to enter her temple.
The hammering in his chest threatened to be his end. She was going to … she was going to claim him.
He was marble hard, and willing beyond a doubt, but there was no question: Persephone was going to take him. No one had ever. Hades had always been the one to decide. To impose his will.
Here he was now, hands held fast within the Oil, flat on his back. The submissive side of this game was foreign. Disorienting. Persephone had accepted his commands with such relative ease, and having known him for a matter of days. The Lord of the Dead became still in the dawning of a newfound appreciation for her adaptability.
Poised now above him, ready to lower herself and douse the flames of his lust—or stoke them! He could have growled—Persephone caught his chin in her hand. Green eyes mirrored his desire; she withheld from herself, as well.
“Do you want it?”
“Of course, love.” He thrust upward, seeking. Was it not obvious? But she lifted her hips, denying relief.
“Beg.”
Her new smile exulted in the reversal.
You are the lord of a realm. You do not beg!
But madness. Madness loomed. To be without was to be less than whole. Was to burn and burn with no respite. What choice did he have?
“Persephone, please.”
“I think you can do better.”
She flirted her sex over the tip of his erection. On the day Aphrodite made her demands, he would have laughed, but now the move was all it took to break him.
“My goddess, let me love you!” He strained to reach her, begging with his body, as well. “I need it. I need you! Please, Sýzyg—unh!”
She sank onto him in approval, all the way to the hilt.
Worth it! Worth it, pride be damned!
Persephone ground against him to their mutual sounds of relief, stilling herself for the span of several lung-filling breaths after, while he flexed, excited and helpless in that wet clutch between her thighs.
Just when he thought he’d have to start pleading again, she ducked her hips and began to roll. It was slow like the growth of the cavern. Hot like the River of Fire. Exquisite.
It could not last.
She found a rhythm. Placed a steadying palm on his chest. Took what was hers.
Yes. Admit it is so.
She rode with startling zeal, seeking her own pleasure from his body. The pace of his breath increased, working to follow her rhythm. He grunted and pushed, his efforts beneath her the best he could give, but frustration grew on her face.
The goddess bent low to savage his mouth with a kiss, and Hades nearly betrayed them both with an early end. She was too much for him. Too good for him. He couldn’t take it.
But the torment didn’t last. Persephone drew back, brows furrowed, and came to a halt. Something in her eyes dissected him.
“This isn’t what I need,” she said at last.
Her hands slid to his wrists and pulled them, one at a time, out of the mire of the Elaionapothos.
“Oh, love.” Shock at his freedom lasted an eyeblink before he had his knees bent for leverage and his hands at her waist. Now he could make a worthy effort. He could please her.
“No.”
A stilling palm was on his cheek.
Persephone leaned down and began to slide from him, her weight taking her to one side. He caught her up in his arms, insides knotting against the idea she might abandon him now. Their faces were very close, and she met him with those eyes.
“I need you on top of me.”
Every last shred of him roared an affirmative. He rolled her beneath him, immortal blood singing in his veins, and plunged into his goddess with a growl.
The familiar position of power earned anew after such a trial made his head swim. Yes, yes, damn him, she’d asked to lead them today, but the sight of her spread below him, pulling him down as though this was her aim all along, had his inhibitions scattering like so much ash.
He tried. He tried to pace himself, to close his eyes. That perfect face was more than his endurance could bear.
Is that why you always take her from behind?
But how else would he hold onto the control she’d so astutely pointed out he needed?
“Hades!” She slapped him with his name, the wrong tone entirely. “What are you doing?”
His eyes flew open, exultation lost at what sounded like accusation. Green eyes flared in outrage and he stilled himself, the weight of his upper body held up on his arms.
“Persephone, what?”
Was he hurting her?
“Today was mine! You gave your word! Why this?” The words became sharp, but Hades was lost.
“Why what, my love?”
“My feet!”
He twisted his nec
k around to follow the line of her legs where they parted around his hips and saw her feet sunk ankle-deep into the Elaionapothos.
But I—
And then he knew.
Hades brought serious eyes back to hers.
“Persephone I’m not doing this.”
“What?”
“The only thing I want is you. And I have it.” She opened her mouth, but no words came. “It’s the Oil,” he said. “It answers to you.”
Tension coiled in his belly when he spoke his next thought aloud.
“Little flower … you want this. Don’t you.”
It wasn’t a question.
Something like lightning arced from her eyes to his and back again. Her pupils dilated, the thunder of comprehension rolling in the aftermath.
As deliberate as the passage of time, the Daughter of Olympos beneath him fanned her arms out to the sides and over her head. Her fingertips met above the pool of her hair. His lovely Persephone’s throat moved as she swallowed, her eyes demanding witness. The Elaionapothos swallowed her delicate fingers, accepting them inside, pinning her in place.
Hades had given her control and Persephone had chosen to surrender. To submit.
“You’re right,” she said, some new peace smoothing her features. “I do want this. I think I’ve always wanted this.” She tilted her hips in offering. “Take what you want, Hades. I belong to you now.”
The question of keeping her loomed, but yes. He had her.
Again and again, he had her.
Creation spun away from the two of them and they were all that moved and breathed on the deathless plane or any other. The god of endings and the goddess of beginnings closed the circle and were one. Hades took and Persephone gave, the maelstrom consuming itself.
In a far deeper corner of the Underworld, where power roiled sufficient to frighten gods and monsters alike, the Fates exchanged a final nod.
*
There had hardly been time to explore the orchards of the Underworld the day Hades had dealt with the trespasses of that mortal man, but Persephone wandered among them now.
Row after row of fruitful trees stood impossibly green and healthy in the light of the paráthyra. Her time in this realm was approaching a ripeness as well; she could feel it swelling in her limbs. The plucking would come in the form of decisions, but they were choices Persephone found herself ill-suited to make.
What was she doing here?
The reasons behind her arrival in the Unseen Realm Persephone understood. And the reasons she remained—as much her complete lack of resistance to the idea as it was the will of its lord—were plain, as well.
But what was she doing with Hades? Nekrodegmôn, Receiver of the Dead. Clymenus, Notorious. What was she doing languishing in the bed of a god who turned mortals mute with fear and made even most Olympians flinch?
A few fallen leaves and a sparse carpet of grass crunched under her sandals as Persephone walked through her troubles.
She had spent the last few days in an opium dream. Hypnos would be proud. Eight days of discovery, trepidation flowering into bliss. Was she becoming something new, or had all this been a part of her all along, so many seeds waiting for a rind to burst open and birth them upon fertile ground?
Persephone, Daughter of Olympos, would have recoiled at Hades’s touch; would have fought tooth and nail to retain every bit of the control she’d surrendered of her own will, just the previous night.
The Persephone who watched the Phlegethôn churn beneath her feet as she dangled in the grip of trust, however … That Persephone only knew hunger. She had tasted an equal, opposing force. Where Hades sought control, this new Persephone found an inexplicable readiness to submit.
She circled the fingers of her left hand around her right wrist, recalling the grip of the Oil her own desire had forged.
By the Fates, do I want to submit.
She turned down a row of citron trees with a grimace and kept her meandering pace.
What was she to do? Wallow in euphoria, here in the Underworld, forever?
Is that what you want? Forever? After eight days?
Her cheeks grew hot even at the idea. When had she grown so impetuous? Had so much time on her back made her heart and mind shift places? Or perhaps she was drunk on immortal seed and hadn’t abstained long enough to be sober.
Hades had spoken of marriage, of Zeus’s approval of a courtship, but why dangle an opportunity to leave the Underworld with Hermes if only she were to obey? How did he intend to have a marriage with his consort in another realm?
Or had it all been a ruse? The tale of his bargain with Aphrodite a lie, and Persephone, another forgotten toy to cast aside as her novelty expired.
His ‘consort’. Hekate’s words had dug in and burrowed deep. All while her body had been thrilling in a tangle of fear and lust, some portion of her more profound than flesh had been sampling the idea. Savoring and finding it not unpalatable at all. Neither god nor man had made her feel such things, not on any plane or in any age.
When the time came for her to leave, would she find herself persuading him to let her stay? Why was it so difficult to put a finger on what she wanted? What she ought to do.
She paused to reach for a nearly-ripe citron, the oblong rind pebbly under her fingers. It was alive, there was no doubt, but she could not feel its pulse the way she could have in her own realm. Sight and scent and touch would have to suffice for her here, as though she were a mortal. Persephone left the fruit on the branch and moved on, frowning.
The Lord of the Dead carried out his duties here in the Underworld, she had seen it herself. Who, then, would be responsible for such matters as only the Goddess of Growing Things could remedy? If she remained here below the earth, her abilities unable to touch any green living thing, what then? And what of the mortals? Did they not need food and shelter?
A marriage here would upset the Balance. It could not be done.
And there was another matter.
Her thumb fumbled with the back of the silver band. She had a ring to return, and cringed to think how long eight days on the deathless plane would have been for her dear and worthy friend. The passage of time was a tricky thing between the realms of gods and m—
“Persephone.”
She gasped and whirled.
Hades stood behind her, composed and somber while she swore and caught her breath.
“It is time,” he said as her heartbeat slowed. He held his arms clasped behind his back, his posture upright as though he were making some pronouncement in the Hall of Judgments. The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.
“Time for what?”
“I have word. Hermes comes for you tomorrow. I assume you still wish to go?” He spoke with a cold formality and she felt her brows coming down into a knot.
So. It was time. And she did need to go, but why did it feel like this? As though it were tainted somehow.
“Hades,” she said, “you must understand. The Unseen Realm requires oversight. You maintain an order here. I have my own responsibilities above. The mortals depend on my gifts as surely as they do yours. I cannot abandon them.”
He nodded, jaw set. “Then this is as it must be.” She had seen her father brew storms less ominous. “You will do one last thing for me before you leave.”
“Which is?” Their stances had become adversarial, and Persephone didn’t care for it.
Hades produced a hand full of something round and dusky pink, and held it out to her at arm’s length. She stepped toward him, squinting.
“A pomegranate?” She eyed him. “I don’t understand.”
“I want you to eat it. Before you go.”
“What does it matter if I eat a p—”
Oh.
To eat the fruit of her captor was to be bound to him forever.
He had a slow single nod for her moment of realization.
Betrayal, she found, tasted more like that under-ripe citron.
“Then what is the po
int, my Lord?” She stung him with the honorific and his eyes narrowed. “Why bother to let me leave at all? Why fashion some elaborate tether when you can just keep me prisoner here?”
How in the three realms had she thought there had ever been a choice?
“Because if Hermes is coming for you,” he said, gesturing with the fruit, “he does so at the command of Zeus. Unless I intend to start a war, I’ll have to give you up, at least for a time.”
Persephone gaped, and her arms folded over her breast. “So it was never my choice, was it? ‘Obey and leave one day’.” She looked him up and down, willing herself not to spit. “It was always your intention, yes? To force me? I trusted you, Polydegmon.”
Her reality skewed into wrongness, and a sickness churned in her gut.
“I did not always have this plan, Persephone. Not in the beginning. I—” The famous control slipped. “I cannot lose you!”
Too many emotions slapped at her at once. Hades seized her wrist and pushed the pomegranate into her hand, trapping her fingers around it beneath his grip.
“You’ve obeyed me all this time, Green One. Do it once again. Eat this cursed fruit and be done with it.” She tried to pull back from his grasp, but he held her and his voice was fierce. “You cannot deny what we shared last night—you know this is where you belong.”
The angry crescendo, the peal of finality in his words had her eyes welling. Persephone shook her head.
“How could you do this?” Her voice broke, dismay winning out over shame. “Will you force it down my throat?”
“One of us will see it past your lips.”
She was reeling. Reeling.
When your heart was free, you called him ‘sýzygos’.
“All those times you called me ‘love’?” The pathetic plea made her insides twist. “This is a courtship? This is how you treat the one you hoped to have as a wife?”
Whether her accusations stung or the villain had seen enough, he stepped back from the scene he’d wrought and left Persephone holding the pomegranate.
