Descent

by Natasha Knight

  She places her hand inside mine and I help her out of the tub. I wrap a towel around her, dry her. Back in the bedroom, she opens a dresser drawer and steps into a pair of black satin panties, then pulls an oversized sweater over her head.

  Her hair is damp. She goes into the bathroom and returns a moment later with it piled on top of her head in a bun.

  I pull on a pair of sweats I’d brought with me. I don’t bother with a shirt.

  “You brought an overnight bag?” she asks, eyeing the duffel on her bed.

  “It’s here or the club. I told you I don’t want anything getting in the way of you and me in bed.”

  “So, you’re moving in?”

  I cock my head to the side. “Unless you’re moving into the club. I thought you’d want to be close to Lizzie.”

  “Well, that was…considerate. Thank you.”

  I look at her, see how she looks at me. She doesn’t quite trust me, but I think she wants to. She’s still naïve.

  Out of her league, bastard.

  I take the bottle of sleeping pills I’d found and hold them up to her. “If I see you taking these or any other drug like this, you’re going to answer to me.”

  She reaches for the bottle, but I hold it out of reach.

  “They’re not drugs. They’re prescription sleeping pills,” she says.

  “Prescribed to Irina.”

  “I just didn’t have time to go to the doctor.”

  “I don’t care.” I walk into the bathroom and she follows.

  “What are you doing?” she asks when I take the cap off.

  “Getting rid of them.” I dump the remaining pills into the toilet.

  “They’re not mine!”

  I flush the toilet and turn to her. “Then you won’t mind.”

  “I really just couldn’t sleep. You said so yourself, I looked a wreck.”

  “You’re overwhelmed but that’s over.”

  “How is it over?”

  “Your father’s in a facility. Irina is gone. The house is sorted. You have a job.”

  “All for the low, low price of my body.”

  I grin, wrap an arm around the back of her neck and pull her to me. “Don’t forget your soul.”

  She looks at me like I’m crazy and maybe I am.

  I let her go and walk out into the bedroom. I check the fire, make sure the screen is in place then move to the door. “Is there food in the house? Storm’s too bad to go out.”

  “I think so.”

  “Let’s go downstairs.”

  I follow her down the hall. “Where’s your sister?”

  “Sleeping over at a friend’s house.”

  I turn on lights as we go, looking into the empty rooms until we get into the kitchen. It’s a very large kitchen with Portuguese tile floors, a long, thick wooden counter, high-end stainless-steel appliances and a breakfast bar.

  I open the refrigerator to see what she has. Not much but it’ll do. “Get me a whiskey and I’ll make you dinner.”

  She disappears into what I know is the study and returns a few minutes later with a bottle of whiskey. She pours me a glass and takes a seat, tucking her legs underneath her.

  I whisk eggs, add herbs and begin to make scrambled eggs.

  “I never imagined you as a cook.”

  I drink my whiskey, leaning against the counter and watching her.

  “It’s just eggs.”

  “Still.”

  I study her, the fact that she was a virgin still baffling, especially considering she was engaged to Jonas. But that in itself is baffling.

  “Why did you agree to marry Jonas? I mean, after that night.”

  That night.

  Halloween night five years ago.

  She knows the night I mean, too. I don’t have to spell it out. Instead, I sip my drink and wait for her to answer.

  “I don’t remember much of the party,” she says. “I’ve never felt so out of control and I’d only had one drink. I know that.”

  “My stepbrother—your one-time fiancé—drugged you. You still refuse to believe that?”

  “I remember when you came. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so grateful. So relieved.”

  I look through two cupboards before I find dishes and plate the scrambled eggs. I put one in front of her and stand across from her to eat mine.

  “Eat. Every bite,” I tell her, handing her a fork. “You realize what he would have done to you if I hadn’t shown up?”

  She nods without looking at me.

  “And yet, you accepted his proposal of marriage? Ares may be right. You have questionable taste and sense.”

  “He was different after Nora’s death. At least I thought he was.”

  “You protected him. The morning after, you protected him.”

  She looks up at me. “I wasn’t protecting him. I was protecting myself.”

  “From a would-be rapist you then agree to marry?”

  She puts her fork down, weaves her fingers into her hair and closes her eyes. “I made a mistake, okay? Can you please just drop it?”

  I narrow my eyes and study her. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  She looks quickly away. “Nothing. And besides…” she shifts her gaze back to mine. “I have another question.”

  “You ask but never answer.”

  “What we…What happened afterward, when you brought me home…I don’t know if it was real.”

  I arch my eyebrows.

  “I mean, did we…”

  I chew a forkful of eggs. “I cleaned you up after you puked. I then put you to bed.”

  “I was naked when I woke up.”

  “Because the rain soaked you. You were sixteen and I was twenty, Persephone. I didn’t touch you.”

  Liar.

  “The other night, you said you’d been in my panties.”

  “I wouldn’t fuck an almost unconscious girl. Never mind a minor.” I finish my plate and reach for the bottle of whisky. “What about what Jonas did? Wasn’t that enough for you?”

  She pushes the eggs around.

  “Eat,” I tell her.

  She does and once she’s finished, I collect our dishes and put them in the sink.

  “Your back, Hayden.”

  I don’t move. I let her take it in. Take in the consequence of hate.

  When I turn around her eyes are still wide. I walk around the counter, standing so close to her I can smell her, a faint vanilla and something else, something soft and sensual at once. I pick up my whiskey and finish it.

  “Your father did that to you. He was beating you while we were right here. Just steps away.”

  “You grew up in an ivory castle, sweetheart.”

  “Did he beat Jonas too?”

  I feel my eyes narrow when I hear the way she asks it. Feel a hot rage bubble up inside me.

  “Jonas. Always Jonas for you, isn’t it?” I grip her jaw and I know from the look on her face, from the sound she makes that I’m hurting her, but I don’t care. “You’d better get over that fast. You’re mine and I don’t want to hear his name from your mouth again. Understand that, Persephone.”

  She tugs free of my grip and slides off the chair. “I’m not anyone’s, Hayden. You understand that.”

  12

  Persephone

  It’s dark when I open my eyes. I’m alone. I wonder where he slept. If he slept.

  The fire has died down to a glow, but the room feels warmer than it has in a long time.

  I sit up, pick up my phone and check the time. Three o’clock.

  Getting up, I pull on the sweater from earlier.

  Outside, I hear snowplows already at work. I hug my arms to myself and walk out of my bedroom to look for him.

  The house is quiet as I go down the stairs. It’s dark down here too and for a moment, I wonder if he’s gone. But a glance out the front window tells me his Range Rover is still parked outside. When I turn back into the house, I see the light underneath the study door.

  I wa
lk quietly toward it, the carpet-less floor cold on my bare feet. I put my hand on the doorknob but before I turn it, I hear him.

  “I want to know the link between Benedetti and Abbot, and I figure you’re the man to call.”

  Benedetti? The name is vaguely familiar.

  He’s silent, and I assume the person he’s on the phone with is speaking.

  “Then call in a fucking favor.” Silence. “Yeah, I’ll owe you one, brother.”

  Brother? Ares. No way he’d be talking to Jonas.

  I turn the doorknob, open the door.

  Hayden looks completely unfazed at my entrance, not at all like I expect. It’s certainly not the look of a man caught red-handed where he shouldn’t be, sitting behind my father’s desk with my father’s papers spread out before him.

  His gaze sweeps over me. “I’ll talk to you later,” he says into the phone and sets it on the desk.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I ask. I walk inside, close the door behind me and approach the desk to get a look at the sheets he has strewn about.

  He sits back, picks up his glass of whiskey.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” he asks casually.

  I study the first sheet, pick up another. Financial reports from both my father’s campaign and Abbot Enterprises. “I asked you a question,” I say.

  He raises his eyebrows.

  “Why are you in here? In my father’s private study? Looking through his private things?”

  “The company will be mine in a few days’ time. All these private things will be mine.”

  “I haven’t signed anything yet.”

  “You will.”

  “Who do you want information on?”

  He finishes his drink, stands.

  I swallow because he’s still shirtless and his sweats are hanging so low on his hips, I can see the trail of dark hair disappearing inside and the memory of what we did, of him inside me, makes my belly flutter. I feel myself flush with heat as I look at him there.

  “A man named Dominic Benedetti. A business associate of your father’s.”

  It’s huge. How can it be so big?

  “Eyes up here, sweetheart.”

  My gaze snaps up to his and I’m embarrassed at his smirk. He knew exactly what had distracted me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Italian mafia. Ring a bell?”

  “Mafia?”

  “He made some very generous donations to your father’s campaign a few months back.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “A local mob boss donating to your father’s campaign doesn’t make sense?”

  I remember overhearing my father a few days before the accident. Remember him arguing heatedly with someone.

  “Persephone?”

  I shake my head. “No. Of course not. I mean…my father didn’t deal with crooks.”

  “No? Even though the proof is in the papers you’re holding?”

  “I already told you he wouldn’t do that.”

  He reaches to take the papers from me. “Well, if you don’t know about it, I guess that’s one thing he did right not involving his children in his dirtier dealings.”

  “He didn’t have dirty dealings,” I say, tugging the pages back.

  “No, of course he didn’t. Everything was on the up-and-up. He was a nice man, isn’t that what you told me?”

  “Don’t talk about him in the past tense.”

  He walks around the desk and I find myself backing up a step. This time, he takes my wrist and forces the pages from me. He puts them on the desk and slides his thumb into my palm.

  “You shouldn’t be in here,” I manage.

  “I hope you weren’t eavesdropping. You can understand I wouldn’t like that.”

  “You’re in my house. In my father’s study.”

  “My house. My study. Don’t do it again.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “I’m telling you how it is and how it will be going forward.”

  “Informing me of my new reality. I’m very aware, thank you.”

  “I’m not sure you are. But you will be, when we’re done,” he says.

  He pulls me to him, switching his grip so he has both of my wrists at my back in one of his hands as he weaves the other into my hair.

  “Stop.”

  I tug to get free, but he doesn’t give.

  He leans his face down, and for a moment, I think he’s going to kiss me, and I think I might bite him if he does.

  But he doesn’t kiss me. Instead, he takes a deep, purposeful breath in, brushing his cheek against mine. The rough hair on his jaw sends a shiver along my spine.

  “I like my smell on you.”

  With a sharp tug, I’m pressed up to him, his other hand flat against my back and I feel him, feel his hardness at my belly.

  “And I like being inside you.”

  “Let go.”

  “I smell you, too, Persephone,” he whispers, not letting me go but sliding his hand down to my ass and squeezing it. “I smell how wet you are.”

  “I’m not,” it’s a lie and it fades quickly when he slips two fingers into the crotch of my panties. “I hate you.”

  “You and I both know that’s not true. Now,” he says, turning me sharply and, with one swipe of his arm, clearing the desk before he pushes me down over it. He pins me with a hand splayed out at my lower back and all I can do is grip the edges of the desk. I crane my neck to look back, to watch him as he pushes my panties down and, with his other hand cups a cheek and opens me.

  The way he has his hand on me forces my back to arch, pushing my ass up. He drags his gaze to mine and grins.

  “Let me go,” I try, wriggling to get free.

  “You’re dripping, sweetheart,” he says in that rumble, that rattle against his chest.

  I look away, unable to hold his gaze. And when he slides his fingers along my folds, I hear my own gasp. But it’s when he trails one wet finger up to my asshole that I’m undone.

  “You liked my finger in your ass earlier.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You came.” I can hear his grin.

  He pushes in and I whimper, tensing every muscle and I don’t move, don’t breathe. I can’t.

  “Your asshole is even tighter than your cunt.”

  I can’t speak. My hands are flat on the desk and I’m staring at the wall. I can feel the evidence of my arousal streak down my inner thigh as he pushes his finger in and out and in and out.

  “Mmmm.” It’s that rattle again and then something warm and wet is on me, on my thigh. I look back to find it’s his tongue. He’s licking that smear of moisture up to its source.

  “Please.” Please what? What am I asking for? Begging for?

  He’s moved his hand from my lower back, but he doesn’t need to keep me pinned, not when he’s hooked his finger in my ass. I crane my neck to look at him, find him watching me. I see him drop his sweats.

  I draw a sharp breath in and close my eyes when he begins his slow stretch of my pussy, his thick cock sliding into the wet passage, pushing through any resistance and when he slides his other hand between my legs and takes my clit between two fingers, I come.

  It’s pathetic. He hasn’t even begun to fuck me yet, not like I know he will. I’m coming and I can’t hide the fact. I know he feels me as my walls squeeze around both his finger and his cock. When he begins to move, when he begins to fuck me, really fuck me, he’s rough and hard and I come again.

  His breath is ragged, and I open my eyes and turn to watch him. He’s looking down at himself as he fucks me and seeing him like this, it sends me into another abyss of pleasure, one more orgasm when I think I can’t take anymore.

  When my knees buckle, he holds me up, thickening inside me as he thrusts one final time and I watch him come. Watch him fill me up and all I can manage is an exhale. His name on my breath.

  “Hades.”

  It’s so soft I don’t even think he hears it and
I know as I take his seed that I am finished. That I was always ever finished with him.

  Hades.

  He was my savior once.

  Twice.

  Now he’s become my tormentor.

  And I don’t ever want him to let me go.

  13

  Persephone

  I wake to someone humming softly.

  Blinking against the bright light, I open my eyes and see a woman I don’t recognize opening the curtains.

  I rub my eyes, opening them again, but she’s still right there.

  She turns to me as I sit up, being reminded instantly of how my night ended. Well, how my morning began.

  I tug the blanket up as I realize I’m naked.

  “Good morning, Miss,” the woman says.

  “Who are you?” I ask, looking on the other side of the bed, finding it empty. The only evidence that Hayden slept here the dent in the pillow.

  “My name is Anna. Mr. Montgomery sent me.” As she says this, she pours coffee from a silver carafe and brings it to me.

  “I’m sorry, who sent you?” I ask, taking the coffee as there’s nowhere for her to put it since the majority of my furniture is gone.

  “I work for Mr. Montgomery. Would you like breakfast brought up or will you dine downstairs?”

  “What?” I give a shake of my head, blink but find her still standing here and the coffee in my hands still steaming.

  “Breakfast—”

  “No, that’s not…I’m sorry, but what are you doing here?” We let our staff go weeks ago.

  “Oh, anything you need.” She checks her watch. “You are expected at Mr. Montgomery’s office soon. He chose some clothes for you.”

  “Pardon?” He chose clothes for me? I look at the dress hanging on the closet door, the matching pumps. “Unbelievable.”

  “The car will be here in an hour,” she says, checking her watch.

  “What time is it?” I turn to pick up my phone but almost spill the coffee as I reach for it on the floor.

  “Quarter past ten in the morning.”

  “That late.” I push the blanket off to get up but remember my state of undress and stop.

  She politely busies herself picking up my discarded clothes. I grab Hayden’s shirt which is still on the foot of the bed, putting it on. I smell him on it and hate that I’m inclined to inhale deeply.