Hades kneels down in front of me, and even kneeling, he is absolutely in control.
“Punishment,” he says, and as if I’ve been a naughty schoolgirl, as if I’ve been intentionally obtuse, “can take many forms.” He wraps two fingers around my ankle and lifts my foot off the ground, exposing the tender arch. “I could punish you here.” He draws a finger down the center, the spot so sensitive I throw my head back against the wall and squeeze my eyes closed. Then the quick swipe of a fingertip on the tops of my feet. “Or here.” What kind of horrible things does this man have up his sleeve? Is there no limit? No, whispers that voice. There is no limit. He drops my foot and runs two hands hard up the backs of my legs then squeezes the backs of my thighs. “Here, until they’re crisscrossed with stripes from my belt.” His belt. I might not survive this, not even one single day. His hands go upward, and he’s testing the curve of my ass. “And here. This is what you were thinking of. I’m sure of it. A spanking. But you know, Persephone, there are far more interesting punishments.”
I’m speechless, lips parted, struggling to take a breath. Heat, heat, heat between my legs, running up between my breasts. Hades thrusts his hands up beneath my dress but over my tank to my chest, taking one breast in his hand. He studies it like he watched my face before, with complete concentration.
“Tits are an excellent thing to punish too. The sounds….” He makes a noise of satisfaction. “You’ll see. But more than that…”
There can’t be more. There can’t be more, because I’ll die. I’ll turn to dust in his hand and float away on the non-existent breeze in the elevator. He would love that, wouldn’t he? Or would he hate it? I can’t tell anymore, and the only thing that matters now in all the earth is the way he’s touching me, roughly, squeezing, pinching. Why does it feel good? Why do I want to lift my hands from the railing, not to push him away but to pull him closer? What the hell is wrong with me? It’s all so, so wrong.
Then he slips his hand down, over my panties—the same panties he palmed last night—and brushes his knuckles over a part of me that throbs in a desperate, aching way. He doesn’t stay there. He reaches back behind me, takes two handfuls of my ass, and spreads. He’s not even truly touching me. A thin layer of fabric is keeping him from touching me. It’s keeping his hands off my skin, and it’s not enough at the same time. It would be better if he took them off. But oh, God, it would be so mortifying. I would never be able to stand it. I would never live through that.
One of his fingers goes to a place so private I whimper, knocking my head back against the wall. Anything to release the pressure. He pushes his finger in harder.
“Here.”
I’m babbling something, god knows what, the words meaningless. Hades pays no attention to them. He slots his hand between my legs, exactly where it was last night. He doesn’t have to force my thighs open. He’s already arranged me how he wants me, and I didn’t notice. He scrambles my brain. He does something to me that’s worse, somehow, than killing me would have been. My mother was wrong. She was wrong.
“And here.”
All the sound and breath in the elevator goes still. Letting go of the railing isn’t an option—it hasn’t been on the table since he told me to keep my hands there—but he’s holding me up with his hand between my legs. It’s awful, it’s wonderful, and it’s going to tear me to pieces. Seconds tick by in the silence. He’s waiting for something. I pick my head up from the wall and look down at him, my face burning.
“You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t do that.”
He has the most beautiful, serious expression. Hades is a judge handing down a sentence, paternal in a way and vaguely concerned. I’ve taken you through this as simply as possible, his eyes say. Are you still not following?
“I would. Know it in your heart, Persephone. I would.”
Hades stands up, brushing his hands together like he’s done dirty work. The moment snaps apart. I bend forward, bare feet hot and then cold on the elevator floor. He turns and presses one palm to a panel on the wall that glows. The elevator drops, my stomach rises, and we rise into what has to be Hades’ private space.
11
Persephone
The elevator comes to a smooth stop and the doors slide open. I swallow back a surge of fear. The way time passes is distorted by standing so close to Hades, so I have no idea how long we’ve been going up. We could be on the top of the mountain, for all I know. Outside the doors, the hallway drops into shadow. Anything could be waiting in those shadows. Is he going to lock me up in a cage? That empty train car comes back to me in full force. He would do that. He’d shut me behind a solid rock door with nothing but my clothes and keep me there, the weight of the mountain crushing me bit by bit until there’s nothing left.
He steps out into the hall. Conor moves first, going directly to his side. Hades looks back. His face in profile, even wearing an expression of impatience, is so beautiful it takes my breath away.
“Let go of the fucking railing. Don’t be tedious about this. It wastes my time.”
I’m trying to be good, I want to say, but I don’t. It disgusts me, trying to be good. Who have I become? Less than a day away from home and I’m already scrambling and scraping to please him. I have to stop. I can’t stop. I can never, ever stop.
I follow him out and try to keep myself calm by going over the details. There’s no jail, no cells. It’s not a prison, like the ones I’ve read about in my books. Prisons don’t have walls carved like this, with the same gold streaks I saw before. This floor—this wing?—has no echoing rotunda. The ceilings are high enough that Hades looks at home. This place was made for him, as custom as his suits. I steal a glance behind us. The hall disappears into darkness in either direction.
He sighs.
I snap my head around, expecting to see him glaring at me, but he’s standing with his eyes closed, hands in his pockets. It lasts for less than a heartbeat. Conor nudges him below the knees, almost like he’s coaxing him to go somewhere. Hades opens his eyes, frowns at me, and moves down the hall, Conor at his feet. I’m not even as good as his dog.
“Keep up.”
What was that I saw? Relief at coming home? Hades is a man who should be as comfortable here as he is anywhere else. There’s nothing that could possibly touch him, out there in the world or here at home. Does he like being at home? Need it, like regular people do? It doesn’t seem possible.
And yet.
We pass four doorways, and the gloom lifts at the end of the hall, where a double door is set into the end. We’re almost there when I can’t force my feet to go another step. Hades stops and scowls at me.
“I told you to keep up.”
“Just tell me what’s going to happen,” I plead.
He rolls his eyes. “When I said I’d make you beg, I didn’t mean over every obnoxious thought that goes through your mind. I thought that was understood.”
Anticipation and anxiety twist together at the center of my chest, filling up all the space where air is supposed to be.
“I can’t stand it,” I say breathlessly. “I need to know what’s coming. I need it.”