“For what, specifically?” she asked. There were several things he might be apologizing for in her mind—Minthe’s unannounced visit (if he knew about it), the way he’d treated her the morning after La Rose, the contract. Hades smirked, but the humor didn’t touch his gaze—no, his gaze burned.
The King of the Underworld reached out and touched her face, drawing a finger across her cheek. “Last time we saw each other, I was unfair to you.”
He had stripped her bare and teased her in the most vicious way, and when he had left her, she felt embarrassed and angry and abandoned. She didn’t want him to see any of that in her eyes, so she looked away and said, “We were unfair to each other.”
When she managed to look at him again, he was studying her.
“You like your life in the mortal realm?”
“Yes.” At his question, she put distance between them, swimming backwards, but Hades followed, slow and calculated. “I like my life. I have an apartment and friends and an internship. I’m going to graduate from university soon.”
And she would get to stay if she kept Hades and the contract a secret.
“But you are Divine.”
“I have never lived as such and you know it.”
Again, he studied her, quiet for a moment. Then, “You have no desire to understand what it is to be a goddess?”
“No,” she lied. The claws of that long-ago dream still had a hold of her, and the more she visited the Underworld, the more her heart ached for it. She’d spent her childhood feeling inadequate, surrounded by her mother’s magic. When she’d come to New Athens, she’d finally found something she was good at—school and writing and research, but once again she found herself in the same situation as before—different god, different realm.
“I think you’re lying,” he said.
“You don’t know me.” She stopped moving and glared at him, angry that he saw right through her. Hades was now toe-to-toe with her, looking down, eyes like coals.
“I know you.” He trailed his fingers over her collarbone and moved so that he was behind her. “I know the way your breath hitches when I touch you. I know how your skin flushes when you’re thinking about me. I know there is something beneath this pretty facade.”
Hades fingers continued their feather-light caress over Persephone’s skin. His words weren’t far behind, whispering along the path of heat he left. He kissed her shoulder.
“There is rage. There is passion. There is darkness.”
He paused a moment and let his tongue swirl against her neck. Her breath caught in her throat so hard, she thought she might choke.
“And I want to taste it.”
His arm came around her waist and her back met his chest. The arch of her body fit against him perfectly. His arousal pressed into her, and she wondered what it would feel like to have that flesh inside her.
“Hades,” she breathed.
“Let me show you what it is to hold power in your hands,” he said. “Let me coax the darkness from you—I will help you shape it.”
Yes, she thought. Yes.
Hades head rested in the crook of her neck as his hand brushed along her stomach and lower. When he cupped her sex, she gasped, arching against him.
“Hades, I’ve never—”
“Let me be your first,” he said—begged—and his voice rumbled in her chest.
She couldn’t speak, but she took a few breaths and then nodded.
He answered by brushing his fingers through her curls, then grazing his thumb against that sensitive nub at the apex of her core. She inhaled sharply and then held her breath as he toyed with her there, stroking and circling.
“Breathe,” he said.
And she did—as much as she could, anyway, until his fingers sank into her flesh. Persephone threw her head back, crying out as Hades groaned, his teeth grazing her shoulder.
“You’re so wet.” His mouth was warm against her skin.