She might have fucking died.
I’d hope Zeus’s men would have stepped in at that point, but I have no faith when it comes to Zeus. He’s just as likely to let her run herself to death to punish her for the act of fleeing him as he is to sweep in and haul her back to his side.
“Why didn’t you call a cab when you left the event?” I don’t intend to voice the question, but it lands in the space between us all the same.
“I wanted to think, and I do that better on the move.” She shifts a little as I spread Neosporin on the worst of the wounds. “I had a lot to think about last night.”
“Stupid.”
She tenses. “It’s not stupid. By the time I realized that I was being pursued, I was being herded to the river, and then it just…” Persephone lifts a hand and lets it fall. “I couldn’t go back. I won’t go back.”
I should let it stand at that, but I can’t seem to keep my mouth shut around this woman. “Hurting yourself when they cross you doesn’t do a damn thing to them. If anything, it’s what they want. You treat your body like it’s the enemy; it makes you too weak to fight them.”
Persephone huffs out a breath. “You act like I’m committing self-harm or something. Yes, sometimes I put my body’s needs on the back burner because of stress or dealing with all the various bullshit being one of Demeter’s daughters entails, but I’m not doing it to hurt myself.”
Once I’m satisfied that I’ve got the ointment on every cut, I begin the process of wrapping her feet in bandages again. “You only get one body, and you’re a shitty custodian of yours.”
“You’re taking a tiny injury really personally.”
Maybe I am, but the way she insists on downplaying the danger she was in aggravates me in the extreme. It means she’s done it before, often enough for it to be barely worth mentioning. It means she’ll do it again if given half a chance. “If you can’t be trusted to take care of your body, then I’m going to do it for you.”
The silence stretches on so long that I finally look up to find her staring at me with her mouth in a perfect O. She finally gives herself a shake. “It’s a nice thought, I suppose, but hardly necessary. I might have agreed to sex—and happily—but I did not agree to you signing on as the world’s crankiest babysitter. Are you planning on feeding me by spoon, too?” She laughs brightly. “Don’t be absurd.”
Her dismissal rankles more than it has a right to. Not because she’s attempting to deny me. No, there’s something brittle beneath her feigned amusement. Has anyone ever truly taken care of Persephone? It’s not my business. I should get up and leave the room and leave her until the required public scenes.
To do anything else invites the kind of ruin a man like me might not recover from.
Chapter 10
Persephone
When Hades said he intends to take care of me, I didn’t believe him. Why would I? I’m a grown woman and more than capable of taking care of myself, no matter what he seems to think. If he wasn’t so incredibly pushy, I might even be able to admit how dangerous the night we met was for my health. I hadn’t meant to ignore the cold and the pain, but by the time I realized it was an issue, I didn’t have any other choice but pushing forward. I might even reassure him that though I sometimes forget to eat or other small things like that, I don’t make a habit of putting myself in the way of actual harm.
But Hades is being pushy, and as much as part of me enjoys it in a kind of baffled sort of way, the rest of me can’t help but push back.
He rises slowly to his feet, towering over me, and my body tenses in anticipation. Even with the irritating conversation, my earlier orgasm was…beyond words. He claimed my pleasure as his due, and it took him approximately thirty seconds to figure out how to wind me up and set me off. If he can do that with his fingers alone, what can he accomplish with the rest of his body?
More selfishly, I want to touch and taste him. I want to get beneath the fancy black suit and see everything this man has to offer. I haven’t craved someone so intensely since… I can’t remember when. Maybe Maria, the woman I met in a little hole-in-the-wall bar just outside the upper warehouse district a few years ago. She turned my world upside down in the best way possible and we still text sometimes, though our time together was never meant to be more than a fling.
Am I destined to have connections with people I’m only meant to be with for a short time?
The thought depresses me, so I put it away and reach for Hades. He catches my hands before I can touch him and shakes his head slowly. “You seem to be under the mistaken impression that you can simply reach out and take whatever you desire.”
“No reason not to take it when it’s what we both want.”
He drops my hands and takes a step back. “Get some sleep. We have a lot of work to do tomorrow.”
It’s only when he reaches the door that I
