I have to catch my breath.
I can’t breathe, looking at him. Seeing him like that. He would be so furious if he knew I was watching. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe we’re past that now.
We have to be past that now.
After my shower I choose a dress the color of red wine and pad through the halls of the mountain. There are more halls than I thought. More rooms blasted out of stone. Twice I catch Oliver following me, peeking around corners, but he doesn’t come close. Good. What am I going to do, other than float around like a ghost caught in purgatory? That’s what I am, until he wakes up. Or doesn’t. I don’t know how anyone survives this again and again. My heart is ready to wrench itself out of my ribs and run away.
There are plans to make. Of course there are. I just can’t make them until I know what’s going to happen. Not very queen-like of me. I should be able to figure it out with the information at hand, and yet.
And yet there is the ocean.
I stop at the end of a hallway, a long hallway I never knew existed, and look back into an octagonal room that’s mostly windows. It looks out onto the ocean. There is water here.
A laugh bursts out of me. The ocean. Of course, the ocean. I never thought about it because I only ever thought about the mountain. Who would bother to think past Hades? Turns out he’s hiding the sea back here, and I could have gone years without knowing. I go in and sit on one of the window seats. It’s not like him, this room. It’s strange. Maybe it was for someone else. A sad jealousy flickers across the back of my mind and disappears. I only just found out that Hades likes flowers. Maybe he likes the ocean, too. Or maybe he just wants to keep watch. That would make more sense.
A towering stack of clouds loom above the water, and I trace the outline of it with my fingertip. “A storm’s coming in.”
“Yes.”
The voice behind me shocks me out of the numb terror I’ve felt since the moment Zeus walked onto the factory floor, knocking me out of the window seat. I catch myself with one palm.
Hades leans against the doorframe in fresh clothes, his hair still wet from a shower. Purple bruises decorate his skin but he’s standing, he’s awake, his eyes have a thin line of blue. “You’re—” A sob interrupts me and the numb shell hardening around my heart cracks open. Relief so powerful it bruises me.
He’s across the room in a heartbeat, lifting me up onto the window seat, and Hades drinks me in with a breath that reaches its hands inside my chest and wraps fists around my heart. And then his mouth is on mine, ravaging, biting, taking.
“We can’t, we can’t.” His hands push up my dress and find panties, yanking them unceremoniously aside. “No, we can’t.”
“I’ve decided otherwise.” There’s a rough edge to his voice. “I’ve decided that you’ll come for me. Now.”
The door’s open, anyone could walk in, we’re in a room full of windows. “Shouldn’t you—? You were hurt.” I try to insist but he’s bigger and stronger and when I push at his shoulder he does not go anywhere. “You could have died. You could have died.” Another wave of tears comes and I swallow them all before they can break free.
“He’s still out there,” I wail. “We have to do something about it, we can’t be—we can’t get distracted by—” The argument falls apart beneath his thick fingers, stroking me in a heated place that I honestly thought might never be touched again. I’m already wet. So wet. I’ve missed this with a physical ache for all this time, knowing it was selfish to want. So selfish.
His hand slips up around my jaw, squeezing tight, and he forces my head back so he can kiss down my neck. The fingers push in, filling me. “Are you going to argue with me, or are you going to submit?” A pause. “I can always make you, if that’s what it takes.”
“Can you?” I sound stupid, panicked. “Because I thought—I was worried that—”
He turns me over his lap, the dress sliding up to my shoulders, a hand on my throat and the other between my legs. He delivers a stinging slap there and then presses his palm across the ache so I can’t fight him. I can’t fight him.
“Tell me,” he says casually, the way he might if we were sitting across from each other at his desk and not in a room open to the world. “Do you need another reminder?”
“No.” And I don’t, I don’t. He works three fingers into me and drives them deep, finding the place that makes my hips rock across his knees. He twists them, toying with me, hissing his approval. It’s been too long and every touch feels new and raw and right.
It feels like reassurance.
If he can do this, then he’s not hurt as badly as I thought. Or at least he’s not going to die from it. He’s not dead. He’s not going to die. Not today, not in this minute.
He hauls me up from his lap and swipes his thumbs over my cheekbones, eyes on mine, eyes that don’t miss anything. “You were so afraid.”
I thought I had stopped crying. I was wrong. About that, and about everything else. Because a part of me had prepared for the fallout of his death. I was waiting for it to arrive and it didn’t. The empty space fills back in but I crave more of him.
A smile curves up one corner of his mouth, a split in the skin moving with it. It’s started to heal over the last few days. I think. I don’t know for sure because I saw him half-dead, and this man is anything but dead. The color is back in his cheeks and he smells like soap and crisp cologne, like none of him was ever cut or bleeding. I trace the path of the cut with a fingertip and he holds his breath. It still hurts then, just not enough to let go of me.
Enough to turn around and put my palms up on the glass. This way, all I can see is water. Water for miles, water for days. A turbulent ocean rising up into a black stormcloud. The fabric of my dress tenses across my shoulders and tears, and then Hades palms are running down over my sides, my hips, my thighs. He yanks my hips back from the window so I’m bent for him the way he likes. It’s instantly difficult, this position, instantly making my legs shake with the tension and the release. What’s the worst that happens? I fall and he catches me? Fine.
Panties. Bra. Everything, discarded like torn paper. A soft kiss on the bare skin of my shoulder. Another on my shoulder blade. Each one is a tiny firework with trails of smoke that move down my back like droplets of water and settle between my legs. There’s another flutter of cloth and the clink of a belt and then Hades's body is braced around mine, fingers testing the width of my wrists and settling over mine.
And then.
The reality of him.
Between my legs, thick and hard and insistent. He pushes in, shoves in several inches, and it’s like we’ve never done this before. On instinct I try to struggle away from him, not because I want to get away but because I want him to stop me.
And he does, a hand leaving my wrist and spreading out low on my belly, pinning me against him so he can take more of me. He makes a low humming sound, sheer satisfaction. I wriggle down onto him. It’s so hot, a real heat, a filthy wetness. It’s so bad of me to want him like this. To need him like this. It’s so wrong. I’m wrong. I don’t care. Pleasure is a knife, a blade, and I need it to be tempered with...something else.