A Touch of Malice (Hades x Persephone #3)(73)

“There is something dark that lives inside me,” he said. “You have seen it. You recognize it now, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“It wants you in ways that would scare you.”

Was he telling this to scare her? Because it had the opposite effect, sending a thrilled shiver down her spine.

“Tell me.”

“That part of me wants you praying for my cock. Writhing beneath me as I pound into you. Begging for my come to fill you.”

Persephone kept her hands pressed into the wall, her nails scraping at the rock behind her. She stared up at him through her lashes, feeling both shy and daring.

“How do you prefer to receive prayer, my lord?”

“On your knees,” he said.

She watched him as she knelt, level with his erection. Hades gathered her hair into one hand, twining it around his fists until her scalp pricked with pain.

“Suck me,” he ordered, and she obeyed.

Taking him into her mouth, lavishing his crown with her tongue, sucking the tip until she tasted his come. Hades groaned, his hand tightening in her hair, bringing tears to her eyes, but she continued, wanting to play with the darkness surfacing in the bite of his hold. When he started to thrust into her mouth, all she could do was receive, a vessel for his pleasure. Both his hands cupped her head, his muscles bulged, his breath ragged. She thought he would come, but he withdrew suddenly, dragging her to her feet roughly, molding his mouth to hers. She widened her stance as he guided his cock between her legs, teasing her opening, slick with need for him.

“Hades—” Her voice came out strangled—a plea he answered by gripping her hips and slamming into her. While he leveraged her against the wall, another hand came to rest upon her neck, his face pressed against her own as he moved. Each thrust drew a desperate moan from her throat, her fingers bit into his shoulders, scraping down his skin. Hades’ mouth returned to hers, tongue tasting, teeth scraping. He kissed and moved with a ferocity she hadn’t felt before and it drew filthy words and sounds from her mouth she’d never said or heard before.

“I want to feel your release,” she said, arching her back, her shoulder blades cutting into the rock. “I want your come inside me,” her breath caught in her throat.

“I want to feel it drip down my thighs,” her heels dug into his ass.

“I want to be so full of you, I only taste you for days,” her mouth closed over his earlobe and she sucked hard.

As she spoke, Hades continued to thrust, his mouth moved to her neck where he sucked her skin and bit her hard. She cried out at the sweet sting, as the vibration of her first orgasm began to rock through her—it continued, not peaking, just lasted on and on until her whole body shook, and when Hades groaned, offering a feral growl, she felt the heat of his release inside her.

They stayed plastered against one another for a while, until Hades peeled himself away and lifted her into his arms, teleporting to the bedroom where he laid her down upon the bed. She expected him to stretch out beside her, but instead, he knelt between her legs and kissed up her thighs until his mouth covered her clit, his tongue sweetly devouring her swollen skin.

“Hades,” she whispered his name again and again. Her hands dove into his hair and then fell into the sheets beneath her, twisting as another climax tore through her, and when she came down from the high, Hades finally rested beside her.

Exhausted, she fell into a deep sleep.

Later she woke, finding Hades asleep beside her. He lay on his stomach, his fingers threaded through hers. He looked peaceful, the tendrils of darkness that had clung to him hours earlier, banished by slumber. She watched him for a while and then disentangled herself from his grasp, pulling on a robe, and slipping outside. She leaned against the balcony rail, watching the night. It was peaceful here, untouched by her mother’s destruction.

And it felt wrong to be here, wrong to feel so happy when such chaos reigned.

“Why do you frown?” Hades asked.

His voice startled her, and she turned to find him in the doorway, his naked body wreathed in light from the bedroom. Heat blossomed low in her belly as her eyes fell to his erect flesh and she thought of how he had looked at her in the grotto, the erotic words he’d spoken, the restraint he’d broken.

She swallowed and shook the thoughts from her head.

“You know we cannot stay here,” Persephone said. “Not with what we left behind.”

“One more night,” Hades said—pleaded.

“What if that’s too late?”

Hades did not speak. He left his place in the doorway and came to her, cupping her face, eyes searching.

“Can I not convince you to stay here?” he asked. “You would be safe, and I would return to you every free moment.”

Her hands closed over his forearms.

“Hades,” she whispered. “You know I won’t. What kind of queen would I be if I abandoned my people?”

His lips tilted upward, but his gaze was sad. “You are Queen of the Dead, not Queen of the Living.”

“The living eventually become ours, Hades. What good are we if we desert them in life?”

Hades sighed and rested his forehead against hers.

“I wish that you were as selfish as me,” he said.

“You are not selfish,” she said. “You would leave me here to help them, remember?”