But I had struggled to get out of bed for a week. Sure, my schedule might’ve made it so I was never going to be up at dawn, but I had always jumped out of bed, excited for the day, in love with life.
Until this week. I’d wanted to hide in my sheets and never come out. Or at least hibernate under them until I wasn’t reminded of what happened every time I passed a reflective surface. Every time I moved a little too fast or reached too high for a glass, my healing ribs reminded me that they were still broken.
It reminded me of a feeling I’d done a good job of shutting out over the years. The feeling of being violated, of my body no longer being my own.
But that feeling dissipated with Hades standing in front of me. It didn’t completely disappear, of course. He wasn’t a wizard, but the weight on my chest lightened by about three hundred pounds.
I held my breath at the silence between us. At the electricity crackling between us. I’d had a lot of free time over the past week, considering I couldn’t work, couldn’t film and I could only spend so much time on the stock market. I was lucky that I had a month’s worth of videos filmed in advance, in case of emergency. Not that I’d expected that emergency to be a black eye and four stitches in my cheek.
Hades lifted his hand up to my face, and for a moment, I thought he was going to touch my bruised face. I even leaned into it, despite recently thinking that I wouldn’t want a man to touch me for a long time.
But he just hovered his palm in the air for a few moments then brought it back to his side, as if he’d thought better of it. His eyes were glaciers, his jaw granite.
“I, um, so...” How exactly did I ask him whether he had successfully found and killed my ex? That was something that I’d found I was actually able to completely avoid thinking about. Don’t ask me how I’d managed that since it was a pretty fucking big deal, but I did.
Until Hades stood in my living room, towering over me, drowning out the late afternoon sunlight with his very presence.
“Did you, have you...”
“Found him?” he finished for me.
I pursed my lips, unable to speak, so instead, I nodded.
“No.” The single word burst from his lips with fury.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding, my entire body relaxing.
“You’re relieved,” he observed. His tone was flat, his expression still taut. There was no judgement in his tone, nothing at all.
I looked to my bright pink toes then back up at those ice chip eyes. “I guess I am,” I admitted. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want him to get off easy. Not in the slightest. But I want to get off easy.” I paused, thinking of the effort it took me to get out of bed this morning. “Or as easy as I can in this situation. I guess I’m not ready for his death to be on my conscience.”
His jaw ticced. “It’s not going to be on your conscience, Freya. It’s going to be on mine.” His words were firm. As if he were speaking them into law.
I sighed, thinking about how this was not going to be a conversation I was going to win and how I really did not want to argue with Hades right now. Not when he was finally back. I wanted him here, right here, for as long as I could have him.
“I was just about to make dinner.” I gestured to the kitchen. “Um, I hate to eat alone and like to cook with company. Sirius is a terrible conversationalist and really only hangs out for the scraps.” I spoke quickly in a weird tone because I was very nervous. “So do you want to maybe have dinner with me?” I couldn’t help fidgeting as I asked. “I’ve got beer. And wine. And tequila. And ESPN, at least I think I do. Surely there’s some kind of fight or game or manly kind of event on there.”
I was babbling I needed to stop babbling.
“I’ll stay,” Hades said after a long moment, eyes never leaving mine.
“Awesome,” I sighed. “I’ll just...” I pointed to the kitchen. He followed me there, instead of going to the couch to watch something manly.
He followed me to the kitchen, leaned against the island instead of perching on a bar stool, then took the beer I gave him.
“You can sit,” I offered.
He shook his head. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
I gaped at him, and my stomach flipped. What I wanted him to do was lift me up onto this counter and eat my pussy. But I couldn’t say that.