“We both know it’s for the best.”
“I’m beginning to think you don’t know anything,” he said, stalking toward her. “I’m beginning to understand that you don’t even think for yourself.”
How had they gotten here? Where was the woman who had grown confident among his people? The woman who had waited for him, naked, in his office? The woman who had made a home in his heart?
“How dare you—”
“How dare I what, Persephone? Call out your bullshit? You act so powerless, but you’ve never made a damn decision for yourself. Will you let your mother determine who you fuck now?”
“Shut up!”
“Tell me what you want.” He cornered her, pinning her against the edge of the pool.
She didn’t look at him.
“Tell me!” Hades commanded.
“Fuck you!”
She was fierce, and her eyes were alight. She leveraged herself against him, legs around his waist. She kissed him hard, and he took every bit of it. He held her in place, hands spanning her back and bottom. He sat her on the edge of the pool, intending to go down on her, to taste her anger and her desire raging between her legs, but she clawed at him.
“No, I want your cock inside me,” she said. “Now.”
He obliged, practically jumping out of the pool. She pushed him on his back, wrapped her hand around his sex, and guided him inside her, filling herself full of him until her bottom touched his balls. He groaned, hands digging into her skin.
“Move fucking faster,” he commanded. They were both angry and goading the other, and inside, Hades felt his magic rising. It was calling to hers, the darkness teasing the light.
“Shut up,” she snapped, glaring down at him.
Hades responded by squeezing her breasts, rising to suck her nipples. Persephone moaned, and held him to her, legs tightening around his waist. He could barely catch his breath, but he encouraged her. He would lose his mind to her.
“Yes,” he hissed. “Use me. Harder. Faster.”
He came with a roar and covered her mouth with his, but the ecstasy was short-lived as she pushed him away and stood, leaving him sitting on the cold marble. She gathered her belongings and hurried up the stairs. Hades followed after her.
“Persephone!”
As she walked, she pulled on her clothes. He hurried to catch up with her, exposed in the hallway outside the baths.
“Fuck!”
When he reached her, he grabbed her arm and pulled her into the throne room. He shut the door, and pushed her into it, caging her with his arms. She pushed against his chest, but he didn’t budge.
“I want to know why!” she demanded, her voice was thick with tears, and Hades hated that he had caused this pain. Hated that he was the reason she was broken, but he sensed something else inside her, something powerful waking the angrier she became. “Was I an easy target? Did you look at my soul and see someone who was desperate for love, for worship? Did you choose me because you knew I couldn’t fulfill the terms of your bargain?
“It wasn’t like that.”
It was something so completely different. If he could only explain, but he didn’t want to start with the Fates because even though they had woven her into his future, he would have still wanted her. When he looked at her, he saw her power, he saw her compassion, he saw his queen.
“Then tell me what it was!”
“Yes, Aphrodite and I have a contract, but the bargain I struck with you had nothing to do with it. I offered you terms based on what I saw in your soul—a woman caged by her own mind.” He knew what he said next would piss her off, but she needed to hear it. “You are the one who called the contract impossible, but you are powerful, Persephone.”
“Do not mock me.”
“I would never.”
She snarled, “Liar.”
There were few things he hated more than that word.
“I am many things, but a liar I am not.”
“Not a liar then, but a self-admitted deceiver.”
“I have only ever given you answers,” he said, growing angrier by the second. “I have helped you reclaim your power, and yet you haven’t used it. I have given you a way to walk out from underneath your mother, and yet you will not claim it.”
“How? What did you do to help me?”
“I worshipped you!” he snapped. “I gave you what your mother withheld—worshippers.”
If Demeter had introduced Persephone to society upon her birth, her powers would have blossomed, she would have had alters built and temples erected in her name, she would have risen in the ranks, surpassing Olympians in popularity. Of that, he was certain.