Even if I didn’t understand why, I knew I had to resist. “The power to maintain this realm is mine alone. You have only the dominion that I allow.”
The ground swayed beneath my feet, even as he remained still and unmoving. My body betrayed me as his hands shifted down my form, so close to touching that the lack leaves a deep yearning in its wake. I didn't have to imagine how good those hands would feel on my bare skin, how easily he could bring me the most terrible pleasure and the most enticing pain.
I wanted to succumb. I wanted to drown under his will, the force of it like a wave crashing onto the shore. But I knew that the moment I did, I would be lost forever.
"Submit, or all that you love will be destroyed."
Pieces of the world fell down around me until all I could see was creeping darkness and the cruel gleam of his eyes. The land beneath my feet fractured and broke, like my hold on reality. Frigid air froze my vocal cords as if even the universe itself begged me not to speak the final words.
He tried one last time, speaking with entreaty even as his lip curled with threat. "Let me rule you, and everything I have will be yours."
I forced myself to speak through the physical pain and a similar feeling in my soul.
“No man is my master. I belong to no one.”
“I belong to no one,” Adonis repeated the line, his tone musing. “I’m with the tension up until this point, but this line I don’t get. A few pages before, the girl acts like she’s obsessed with this dude. Now, she doesn’t want to belong to him? I don’t get it.”
I made a note on my script without bothering to look up at him on the stage. I was sitting in the first row of the theater while he chewed up the lines. “We’re not changing it if that’s what you’re asking.”
“And she’s supposed to be an orphan girl, where is the inheriting a kingdom stuff coming from?”
With endless patience, I regarded my closest friend with a droll smile. “Are you gunning for a writing credit or something? Because not everything needs to be analyzed with a fine-tooth comb.”
“I’m just saying that this is a really interesting take on the myth of Hades. Everybody knows he rules the underworld, but you don’t really hear about him having a queen.” He tossed the script with a rakish smile. “This is your first production. I just want to make sure everything is perfect.”
I regarded him with a droll expression, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. Just because the guy is my best friend doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize when I’m being managed. Just because he meant well, didn’t mean that I wasn’t occasionally driven crazy by his micro-managing.
Adonis looked like the type of guy who should be huddled up on the side of a football field shouting plays at the other meatheads, not dramatically reciting Shakespeare on the stage. He had broad shoulders and towered over me at over six feet tall. Built like an athlete, he was lean and muscled in all the right places. When he smiled, it felt like being warmed by sunshine, his eyes bluer than a clear sky with hair so golden it shone underneath the stage lights.
Pretty much the textbook definition of the all-American boy. Girls threw themselves at him wherever he went, but he never seemed to stay in a relationship for very long and acted all sheepish whenever I asked him what happened with the last one he dated.
That had to be what started our friendship in the first place. I was the first girl he ever met who didn’t seem to care about his good looks. I noticed it, of course, but it was like noticing a beautiful painting hanging in the museum. You look, but it never occurs to you to touch because it’s not something to own.
And I would never tell him that the more I got to know him, the more I wanted to touch, even though my attraction had little to do with how gorgeous he was on the outside. It was the inside that really set him apart, even though nobody else seemed to see it. But even if he were interested, which I doubted, trying to date would ruin what we have. His romantic relationships never ended well.
“It’s crazy how much overlap there is in your head between perfection and whatever you happen to be doing.”
Bringing his hands to his chest, Adonis dramatically fell to his knees. “Forgive me, lovely and fair Persephone. I meant no offense.”
“Then say your lines and quit it with the commentary.” I giggled, then lurched out of the way when he lunged for me. But I wasn’t fast enough to stop him from grabbing me around the waist and swinging me around until I felt dizzy. “Put me down! We only have the stage for an hour.”
“So sorry, doll. I find your gripping performance too fascinating to keep my head on my shoulders.”
He liked to tease me, but the compliment was real. If it weren’t for Adonis’s encouragement, I never would have decided to let this play be performed.
I’d spent years trying to forget the crazy things I would see when I closed my eyes. But I finally realized that the only way to get the images out of my head was to put them somewhere else, as words on paper or paint splashed angrily across canvas.
People probably thought the weird girl who was always the last one to leave the art studio at night and the first one to arrive in the morning just had a crazy work ethic. But really, I was compelled to produce, and when the studio closed down for the night, I’d stay up until dawn writing in my room. I’d initially been an art major as an undergraduate then switched to the drama program when I discovered they had a screenwriting and producing track for graduate students.
It was Adonis who had pressured me into producing this play, based partly on my own imaginings but also on the book I’d read over and over again at least a thousand times.
Lament of the Underworld.
Although, it was both fascinating and appalling to watch Adonis transform into the terrible ruler of the dead, dark elves, and all other manner of creatures inhabiting the underworld. He was all light, and the character was all darkness, but his acting skills were more than enough to pull it off.
From the stage, Adonis smiled down at me in a way that made me feel warm and comforted, like sliding under the covers between soft sheets.
“Will you just quit with the armchair directing and say your lines.” I pointed at his mark on the stage floor and gestured for him to start again. “You are not offer-only, buddy. Someone else might get this part if you don’t start taking it seriously.”
As if I would ever in a million years want someone else playing that role. Screw that. But Adonis doesn’t need to know he’s been the only one I envisioned as the star from the very beginning.
“Oh, please. I’m the best thing that ever happened to this theater department.”
I rolled my eyes, fighting off a smile. “At least the size of its collective ego.”
“Bitch.”
“No talent hack.”
“You wound me.” He knew damn well I would never give the part to someone else, but made a show of rushing to get back into place. “Just don’t spank me. You know, since you’re the master and all.”
My lip quirked, but I forced myself not to laugh. “Spankings have to be earned. Now, start from the top of page twenty.”
Adonis launched into character as the magical and maniacal Hades with gusto. His claims about being the best weren’t just bravado, the man could act. This play was only going to be performed at a student showcase, but he treated it like we were weeks away from going on Broadway.