I still don’t understand, but I at least have an answer to this. “It means something to me, too.”
That calms him a little. He drops onto the couch and exhales roughly. “Give me a minute. This isn’t your fault. It’s shit in my head. I just… I need a minute.”
But I don’t want to give him a minute. I want to understand what’s upset him. I want to fix it. He’s given me so much over the last few weeks, more than I can begin to categorize. I can’t stand by and let him hurt while I twiddle my thumbs. So I do the only thing I can think of.
I walk to him and sink to my knees in front of him. When he just watches me, I wedge myself between his thighs until he’s forced to either push me back or make way. He spreads his legs with another of those heartbreaking sighs. “You already sucked my cock once tonight, little siren.”
“That’s not what this is.” If I thought for a second it would help, I’d have him in my mouth and gladly. Sex won’t fix this, though. Of that I’m sure.
Instead, I press myself to his torso and wrap my arms around him as best I can. He goes so still I might think he was holding his breath if I couldn’t feel his chest rise and fall against my face. Slowly, oh so slowly, he wraps his arms around me, gently at first and then hugging me tightly to him.
“It’s going to hurt when you leave.”
He speaks so softly, I barely register the words. When they hit, it’s with the force of a nuclear explosion.
I had suspected he cared, of course. Hades might be fearsome in so many ways, but he’s too honest to be able to lie with his body. He touches me like I mean something to him. He’s drawn back the curtain on bits of the lower city, showing me things he cares about, letting me in. Even if I haven’t allowed myself to contemplate the implications of that too closely, I’ve noticed. Of course I’ve noticed.
I care too.
“Hades—”
“I meant what I said before. I won’t ask you to stay. I know that’s not possible.” He releases a long breath.
I bite my tongue before I can say anything else. He’s right—it’s not possible for me to stay—but that doesn’t change the fact that I meant what I said earlier tonight. If we were different people, this place would be home and this man would be mine.
“Three months felt like an eternity when I agreed to this.”
A soft laugh slips free, muffled against his shirt. “It doesn’t feel like an eternity now.” Just under two months left and it feels like a blip in time. Look away too long and it will slip past, leaving the distance between us growing.
I’ll never see Hades again.
Somehow, with everything going on, that never occurred to me. That I might miss this man. That it will feel like tearing out a part of myself to walk away. Silly, foolish thoughts. It’s only been a few weeks. Maybe one of my other sisters would fall so hard for a partner in that time, but that’s not me. I understood the boundaries of this when I fought so hard to get Hades to agree to the deal. It was only for show, only because we had no other choice.
He wouldn’t have chosen me if I hadn’t been Zeus’s before I was his.
He wouldn’t have even looked at me twice, a woman who’s the epitome of everything about the upper city that he hates. A walking sunbeam, a fake persona that I project to get people to do what I want.
I lean back and try for another laugh. It comes out broken, closer to a sob. “I…” What am I supposed to say? Nothing will change the course we’re on. A path shared for a short time while his need for revenge and my desire for freedom overlap.
It was never meant to last forever.
It should fill me with relief to know that Hades won’t ask me to stay, that he won’t muddy the waters around us with things neither of us should want. It doesn’t. Instead, a strange desperation claws its way through my body, up and up and up, until it spills from my lips. “Kiss me.”
He only hesitates for the briefest of moments, as if to memorize my features before he closes the minuscule distance between us and takes my mouth. Hades kisses me roughly, with none of the tender care he’s displayed time and time again. Good. I don’t want his tenderness. I want the memory of him woven into the fabric of my very soul.
He pushes to his feet and yanks me up with him, barely breaking the kiss. We use rough hands to drag off each other’s clothes, ripping my dress when the fabric doesn’t move fast enough, sending buttons flying from his shirt. I’m still kicking free when he walks me backward through the room to his bed.
“I can’t wait.”
I’m already nodding. I don’t need the slow seduction right now. I just need him. “Hurry.”
He lifts me and I wrap my legs around his waist. The smallest adjustment and his cock is pushing into me, Hades’s hands on my ass controlling my descent onto his length. Fast, fast, too fast. I don’t care. I writhe, trying to get closer. We haven’t stopped kissing, can’t get enough. Who needs to breathe when I have Hades? He’s my very air.
The thought should scare me. Maybe it will when I’ve had some time to think about this. Right now, all I have is need.
He lifts me and lowers me, using his strength to fuck me where he stands. It’s enough to make me light-headed. I pull my mouth from his long enough to say, “More. Harder.”
I expect him to take me to the bed. Instead, he turns and moves to the dresser to set me on it. Hades
