He seemed blissfully unaware of the cause of her reaction and inspected her intently. “Demeter? Are you unwell?”
“I’m tired. I used too much of my power on my garden today. I was tired of waiting for the strawberries. I adore them with cream,” she babbled.
Cream. How trite such an obvious word would make her clench again, but it did. Demeter imagined all manner of creamy things, number one being his seed on her lips and breasts. Kissing her after, tasting himself on her and wanting more.
“Let me help you inside.” He reached out to touch her, but fell short of the mark. He manifested a pair of black leather gloves and then took her arm.
His touch—even blocked by the leather—thrummed with sexual energy. It coursed through her blood and made her ache for things she hadn’t wanted or needed. Demeter realized to her horror she was in danger of fainting.
She was hot everywhere, she couldn’t breathe, her skin was being torn with a thousand thorns and was hit in the face with another realization. This heat wasn’t only the attraction to Eros, her body was going through The Change. Her death was certainly imminent.
Double damn Persephone. Damn her.
Who was it she loved? It wasn’t Eros and it couldn’t be Hades. So who was it? She clenched her teeth against her new predicament, as if gnashing her own teeth to bits would help anything.
She swayed like a willow tree in the wind as she surrendered to her rage. Eros caught her as she fell. He hauled her up into his arms and as he did, his fingers brushed the edges of her breast. Her nipples tightened painfully, every inch of her wanting more of his touch. She couldn’t help but wonder at what it would feel like if he was touching her with his own flesh. Skin to skin.
The rage bubbled again. She didn’t want to be thinking of him, of sex. Demeter had to come up with a way to save her own life, not how to get the God of Love between her thighs.
He carried her with ease up the white temple steps and into her bedroom. “Demeter, this is more than using too much power on strawberries. In fact, you should be able to bring endless droves of strawberries to bloom with a kiss and a promise. What’s going on?”
Don’t look, she pleaded silently. Don’t look to see what’s inside. She decided to hide her duplicity with the truth. Demeter knew he wouldn’t betray her by telling anyone and he’d see the bright shine of the truth on her words so he wouldn’t look any deeper.
“My time is almost up.” She didn’t look up at him when she replied.
“What are you talking about?” He demanded and eased her gently onto her bed, but he didn’t let go of her. She found herself held against his chest as if she were something precious. The mendacity of the reality was like ash on her tongue.
“I have a life cycle. As will Persephone. I’m aging, this form is degrading and I’ll die.”
“Does anyone else know?”
“No,” she confessed.
“But you drink ambrosia,” he said as if that would negate all the facts in front of him.
“Yes, I do. It doesn’t change the fact that when my time is up, I’ll be dust. Just like the mortals.”
“Have you told Persephone?”
“No, and I forbid you to tell her. She’s been through enough.”
“Maybe she can help you, Demeter. My vision was clear you would have to trust or die. This doesn’t have to be the end for you,” he said in a measured tone.
“I think I’d rather die,” she replied.
So much honesty in one day made her stomach turn.
Suddenly, she felt awkward and old there in his arms. Like he was holding an old woman’s hand because there was no one else to do it.
“Go on, I’m fine. Why don’t you read some more poetry to Persephone? I’m sure she’d enjoy the company. There’s pomegranate cookies and lemonade in the kitchen. Leave an old goddess alone.”
He froze; she could feel the tension in his body. Demeter slapped at his arm. “I may be ancient, but I’m not stupid. Did you really think I didn’t know you were creeping through my hedges? I’m not angry either, so off with you.” She shooed him away.
Eros moved to do as she bid, but he pulled the green silk sheet up over her. “You’re not that much older than I am, Demeter. Only a few centuries. Maybe you feel it because you’re dying, but if you see a line there, it’s only because you drew it.”
She found she had nothing to say to that, not even when the tickle of butterflies in her stomach jumped as she realized he had been as affected as she’d been by their contact. Demeter watched him leave her bedroom and for the first time, she felt regret instead of rage. If only things were different. Demeter could have called him back; she could have had his mouth on her, his hands—all of the things she’d seen and knew she wanted unequivocally.
But they weren’t different and never would be. No matter what she wanted. Yes, if things were different, she could have loved her daughter. She could have been happy to bring bright life into the universe. She could have taken joy in her daughter’s beauty, her kindness, and basked in the love that was a mother’s by primal right. Demeter could have been warm inside and the power she used for green and growing things would have wrapped the world abundant life—the way things had been before Zeus had taken what he wanted.
She could have been in Eros’ arms, enjoying the act of the divine and the pleasure all of her visions promised. Demeter sighed, her mind unwilling to be still or quiet. During the most intense images, the one where she’d felt everything to the marrow of her bones, there was light too. It was as if her heart had been given the wings of an eagle to soar through endless sea of the skies, but she knew they weren’t eagle wings. They were those fashioned by Daedalus—doomed to melt when they came too close to the sun. When he was touching her, making her come with his hands and mouth, his body slamming into hers, he’d whispered: “I love you.”
For all that Demeter had learned in her long existence, she knew with those words lay the path to destruction. Even if things were different.
6
HERA
Hera was going straight to Tartarus—just like her mother had always warned her would happen. The titan had told her if she didn’t slow down, she’d go straight to Tartarus in an urn. Now, she was going, but it wasn’t in the threatened urn. It was in a purple velvet corset and leather pants tight enough to double as a contraceptive device.
She looked damned good if she did say so herself.
Purple was her new favorite color. Everything was purple from now on. No more white. White everywhere for millennia. Vomit. She’d had enough. Hera wanted bright, rich color and what better proclaimed her royalty than purple? She even had a new amethyst crown set in platinum. Hera was damned tired of gold too. It was boring.
The black gates of Tartarus loomed before her; hopeless and forbidding. They shot up out of the barren and desolate ground to reach high into the swirling blue-black depths of the underworld sky like dead briars in a long forgotten and rotted garden. Ebony roses bloomed along the bars, but Hera knew better than to touch them. They were poisonous, even to a goddess.
It was then she saw technology had even inserted itself down here amongst the ruined. There was a video screen and a keypad off to the left. Hera pushed the call button.
“Fuck off.” It was mumbled, so she couldn’t tell if it was Hades or not.
That wasn’t the welcome she’d expected. Perhaps she should have worn the white Grecian for her first visit—just to ease him in to things. She knew he’d been suffering, but Hera realized she may not have grasped the depth of his pain.
“Don’t be a dick, Hades.”
“My apologies, Hera. I didn’t realize it was you,” he said affably in a smooth baritone. “But I’m afraid I still have to ask you to kindly fuck off. Whatever Zeus wants, I’m not interested.”
“I’m not here for Zeus.” She realized he didn’t have the video screen on. Why install one if he wasn’t going to use it?
He didn’t say anything else b
ut the doors swung open and she stepped inside, careful to side-step the latest steaming pile Cerberus had so graciously left as a welcome mat. Gods, if she’d stepped in that thing, it would go up to her knee. Not in these boots, hell no.
That was when she heard it: the thundering of paws as large as she was as they crashed into the ground. Hera quickly drew herself up into her goddess form and braced for the three-headed mutt as it slammed into her, all three heads trying to lick her at once.
She zapped him with a bolt of energy that was not terribly unlike Zeus’ thunderbolts. The hellhound paused and sat. He waited patiently for his treat and the affection he knew would be forthcoming from her hand.
Hera scratched behind all of his ears twice before giving him a silent command to take her to Hades. She shrank back down to a mortal form and climbed up on his back and he bounded toward the dark iron castle in the distance.
She’d have to remember to come see he him more often. He got lonely, being the only one of his kind. Even with the three heads. Although, the Norse pantheon used to come for house parties and bring the Fenrir occasionally and they got along well.
Before Hades had freed Persephone.
What was the world coming to when the God of the Underworld went altruistic? Next thing a body knew, Zeus would be dressing up like the jolly fat man and handing out presents every Solstice. Hera shuddered.
No, steps had to be taken.
When they arrived at the iron castle, Hera was once again amazed at how darkly beautiful it was—it was like something out of a fairy tale. The Grimm brothers had it right the first time; with its jutting spires and wrought-iron parapets, arches covered with gargoyles and dragons.
She breathed a sigh as she took in the sight before she started up the stairs. This wasn’t the first instance she’d wondered if she’d chosen the wrong brother. Hera smoothed her hands down her corset and realized they were clammy. This would never do. She was grabbing her fate by the balls and she’d be damned if she’d do it with sweaty palms.
An unseen servant opened the door for her and quiet rustling of the dead guided her to a sitting area. It overlooked a molten and bubbling lake of red and gold lava. Dark curtains had been pulled aside to reveal a door out onto the balcony.
Hera saw Hades’ boots before the rest of him. He was reclined on an overstuffed black velvet lounger; his booted feet propped on a stone gargoyle that looked none too pleased at the indignity of being a footrest. It growled when it saw her.
Her eyes traveled up the length of him, dressed to the nines as a Victorian English gentleman. His riding pants were gray gorgon skin and they clung to him in a fashion that made her feel hot, even though the frigid underworld wind blasted over her exposed skin. His jacket was royal blue velvet and it made his shoulders appear impossibly broad. He held a bottle of Pomegranate Stolichnaya in his hands and he brought the bottle to the generous curve of his sensuous lips as the brisk wind blew his hair down into his eyes.
* * *
HE APPRAISED HER COLDLY, his irises burning with a light blue flame. Sweetest Elysium, how had Persephone been able to say no to him? Hera wanted to throw herself on her back right now; she felt like a turtle that’d been flipped by a semi and run over twice.
“What do you want, most honored wife of my bastard brother?” he drawled.
His voice slid down her spine like a caress and slipped between her thighs. If only the power of his voice could touch her in ways her husband hadn’t with his hands in centuries, what could the rest of him do? She shivered with anticipation.
Hera decided she might be out of her depth. Why hadn’t she noticed this about him before? She’d been too wrapped up in her own sorrow to notice. Damn Zeus, damn him twice for making her eternity miserable.
She reached out to take the vodka from his grasp and her fingers brushed his; the contact sent jolts of pleasure straight to her slit. Hera could imagine those hands doing all sorts of deliciously wicked things to her. How lame would it be if she answered that she only wanted him? Would he see it as a bold move, or would he mock her? Zeus didn’t want her anymore, so she wondered for a moment if maybe Hades wouldn’t either. Hera could hear Nyx in the back of her head telling her not to be stupid, he was a male. Of course he wanted her. She needed this liquid fortification as much as he thought he did.
“Your efforts to save me are misguided, sweetness.”
Hera paused; trying her damndest not to think about the way that simple endearment set her blood ablaze. “I’m not trying to save you, Hades. I know better.” Her eyes met his over the rim of the bottle and she took a drink, laving at the last drops on the lip of the container before handing it back to him.
He laughed: a bitter sound. “Ah, come down to party with the sinners and the lost? Abandon hope all ye who enter here?” He mocked her and brought the bottle to his lips again. Hera couldn’t help but remember her own lips had been there but a moment before.
“Something like that. Is there room for one more at your misery table? I’m tired of eating bitter ashes alone,” she confessed.
Hades stood and handed the bottle back to her. “No, Hera. I won’t let you slum down here in the dark. There are those down here who would hurt you. After all, you damned many of them. Have a good cry and run back up to Olympus and my sanctimonious brother.”
He still didn’t understand. “Who would hurt me, Hades? Won’t you protect what’s yours?” She couldn’t believe she’d said it, the look on his face said he couldn’t either. The shadows gathered around him and that made her even hotter for him. He was so powerful, so strong, but broken too, just like her.
“Mine? What fresh insanity is this? You told me no millennia ago, beautiful Hera. You wanted a crown of gold instead of a crown of thorns. What I can give you hasn’t changed, except where once I would have loved you, all that’s left is the endless dark.”
“Give me your darkness, Hades. All of it. Hard and fast. Spill it inside me and make me yours,” she said breathlessly.
He yanked her against him, slamming her into the broad and immovable wall of his chest. “What has my brother done now you would punish him so?”
She pushed her hands inside his jacket and up the planes of his back and shoulders. “Nothing he hasn’t done before. I made him the King of the Gods, Hades. He doesn’t deserve the title any longer. I want to take that away and give it to you.”
“I’ll be far worse than Zeus, lovely Hera. Whereas he gnaws at your heart one bite at a time, I’ll rip it out of your chest. My own heart is nothing but soot and ash. There will be no love from me. Nothing but me fucking you in the dark.”
She knew his words were meant to shake her, meant to make her fear, but they didn’t. She only wanted him more. Hera boldly propped her leg on the chaise behind them and she drew his hand past the laces of her leather leggings and into her wet heat.
“At least it’ll only hurt once.”
He pushed three fingers inside of her slick channel. “It’ll hurt more than once. Because when your heart is gone, the shadows burn. They’re just as hungry and needing as a heart ever was.” His other hand cupped her face, a gesture at odds with his words and the violent thrusts of his fingers inside of her.
“I don’t care, Hades. Do you want me to beg?” She turned her face in to his caress and stroked her tongue down the length of his forefinger. Pleasure shot through her when he closed his eyes against the lust she’d wrought in him. “How long has it been for you? How long did you deny yourself for Persephone?”
“Centuries,” he growled. Hades pushed another finger inside and she was stretched as fully as she’d ever been. When she thought she couldn’t stand any more, his thumb brushed her clitoris, he was in control again. “What if I said yes, that I wanted you to beg me? Beg for my unclean touch; the Master of the Dead to violate you in ways that will live in your nightmares, but make you come so hard you need it as much as you fear it.”
Her slit tightened at the promise, but she eased away from the ple
asure of his hands and slid down to her knees. Anything to make Zeus pay had become anything to get Hades to comply. She didn’t just want him now for the act of betraying her husband—she wanted him because her body sang with ecstasy at the slightest brush of skin on skin. She wanted him because he could give her all the things Zeus wouldn’t.
Hades had always burned with a single-minded intensity. He may not ever love her, but if he was fucking her, it would be only her. She looked up at him—met his gaze unflinchingly.
“Then I would beg, Master of the Dead and Lord of the Underworld. Violate me in any way you’ve ever dreamed, make me suffer for denying you, only touch me.” She unlaced the corset to give him an unobstructed view of her heavy breasts.
“Take it off,” he demanded.
She complied, bared herself to his gaze.
“And what of my brother, your husband?”
“What of him?” Hera lifted her chin in defiance.
“Will I be getting his leavings? When I sink into your heat, make you scream, will you be full of his seed?” Hades asked coldly.
He truly didn’t know. This knowledge that she would share with him made her look away. She could look him in the face and demand to be his lover, but she was ashamed to admit her husband didn’t want her any longer. “Zeus hasn’t touched me. Not since before you took Persephone.”
At his silence, a heavy weight fell over her and she realized with a dawning horror he didn’t want her either. Hera eased to her feet and clutched the edges of her corset together. She wouldn’t shatter here, not where he could see her. She’d said things; begged him to… and he didn’t want her. “I shouldn’t have come.”
Hades wouldn’t let her turn away; he caught her wrist behind her back and held her against him again. “No, you shouldn’t have come here, but it’s not because I don’t want you.”
“Then why else?” she demanded.
He tangled his other hand in her hair, twisted her newly colored locks between his fingers.
Ambrosia Lane 1-3: Saranna DeWylde Page 4
