He answers with his mouth, but not with words. Hades lowers his head and kisses my pussy. A long, lingering caress that drives all the questions from my mind. They’ll hold. Right now, the only rule is pleasure and he’s dealing it out in spades. He guides one of my legs up and over the arm of the chair, spreading me wide for him.
Each lick and kiss is like he’s memorizing me. He’s not intent on my orgasm, that much is clear even as desire sings through my blood. He might be going down on me, but Hades does it like it’s purely for his pleasure. Somehow, that makes the entire experience that much hotter.
And then I look up.
It’s no exaggeration to say that every eye in the room is on us. People have stopped doing whatever they were up to before Hades and I started our own little show. Their lust drips over me, driving my own higher. Power and need twine through me as I meet one set of eyes after another, as I see jealousy and want there.
Some of them want to be me.
Some of them want to be the one kneeling at my feet.
Denying them feels like nothing else I’ve ever experienced before. We were right to stick to the shadows, to not put ourselves on display in the light. This is so much better, spinning a fantasy of forbidden fruit that everyone in the room is able to see but not touch.
Everyone except for Hades.
He sucks my clit into his mouth, working it with his tongue. It’s so shocking after his light touches and teasing licks that it bows my back and draws a cry from my lips. The tension in the room ratchets up several notches, but I’m not looking at our audience any longer. No, only Hades holds my attention. I run my fingers through his hair and dig in, holding him to me.
He growls against my skin, and it feels so wicked, I can barely stand it. “Make me come,” I whisper.
For a second, I think he might pull back, remind me that no matter how equal we are, he is the one in charge right now. He doesn’t. He…obeys.
Hades wedges a finger and then two inside me, twisting his wrist as he searches for the spot that will turn all my joints liquid even as he traces my clit in steady circles with the tip of his tongue. Where before he built my pleasure in steady waves, lapping at my control, now he spins a tsunami of desire that I have no hope of fighting.
I never intended to fight it.
I come with his name on my lips, the sound of it seeming to sing to every corner of the room. Even as he gentles his touches and coaxes me back into my body, I’m shaken by the feeling that nothing will ever be the same again. We’ve crossed a point of no return that neither of us recognized. There’s no going back now. I’m not sure I want to, even if the road remained open.
Hades finally shifts my dress back into place and rises. At first glance, he seems perfectly composed…at least until I get to his eyes. They’re wild with the same need surging beneath my skin. This wasn’t enough. It barely took the edge off.
He holds out his hand.
I stare at it for the space of a heartbeat. It seems such a simple gesture, but even as shaken as I am, I know better. He’s not demanding. He’s requesting. Putting us on equal ground. The thing I don’t understand is why.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. I slip my hand into his and let him tug me to my feet. He turns to face the rest of the room, all of whom have stopped pretending to do anything but stare at us. It feels…strange, but not necessarily in a bad way. They’re waiting on our whim, and they’ll wait as long as we demand.
Is this what power feels like?
Hades seems to stare down each and every person present. “Be sure, when you go running back to your high-rises and glamorous lives in the upper city, that you’re telling the full truth of what happened here tonight. She’s mine.” His hand tightens ever so briefly around mine. “And I’m hers.”
This wasn’t part of the plan. I’m not exactly sure there was a plan going into tonight, not after I got cold feet. But Hades isn’t declaring me his the same way he has been since the beginning of this, the way designed to provoke Zeus.
He’s declaring it mutual.
It’s something we spoke of privately, but doing it like this is something else altogether. I don’t know what it means. Because I don’t know what it means, I can only fight to keep my expression under control as Hades turns us toward the exit and we leave the room. The door barely closes behind me when I murmur, “Not holding court tonight?”
“Fuck them.” He barely sounds like himself. “They’re only here for the gossip, and I’m not in the mood to play villain.” He moves down the hall toward the stairs, nearly dragging me behind him. “They don’t see me. No one fucking sees me but you.”
My heart lodges itself in my throat. “What?”
But he doesn’t speak again until we enter his bedroom suite and he slams the door behind him. I’ve never seen him like this. Angry, yes. Even a little panicked. But this? I don’t know what this is. “Hades, what’s wrong?”
“I swore I wouldn’t do this.” He drags his hands through his hair. “What we have isn’t simple, but it’s the most honest I’ve been with another person for as long as I can remember. That means something, Persephone. Even if it doesn’t mean something to you, it does
