“I don’t want anything from you. I want everything.” Hades presses one thick finger to my lips, keeping me silent. My breath superheats in my lungs. I have a chestful of mortification. He’s right, that little voice taunts. He’s right, and you know it. “Mmm…no. I misspoke. It’s not about wanting. It’s about taking. I’m going to take everything.” He’s studying my lips. “Not many men would let you buy something as valuable as a life without upfront payment. Lucky for you, I have a sense of honor. Turn around.”
The air rushes out of my lungs. “What?” He makes me say it against his finger.
Hades leans in. “Turn around.”
A montage of terrible things stampedes through my mind. Now? Here? On the steps of a train car? It’s too much, too soon, and at the same time, I’m seized with a desire so powerful the hairs on my arms stand up. The anticipation is always the worst part. I’ve learned that enough times, living with my mother. If he’d start, if he’d do what he’s going to do, I could exhale.
But I can’t, because I’m frozen here on the steps, his eyes concealed by the thickening night, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s this—you don’t turn your back on the monster in the room. I won’t turn my back on the dog, which looks ready to attack. It reminds me of Hades. They’re too similar. Too big and terrifying.
Hades drops his hand.
“You’re slow to obey, I see. That won’t be a problem for very long.”
“I….” There’s nothing I can say to that. He looks like he could stand at the bottom of the stairs forever and never get tired. There’s no choice but to do what he says. In fact, I agreed to it—I did. I made a deal. I said anything. Whatever Hades is planning now is part of anything. Why, why, why was I so careless?
Would Decker have done the same for me?
It dawns slowly. Maybe he did do the same for me. Maybe he was trying to put himself on the line, trying to distract Hades, and that’s what I interrupted. Decker was not dead when they took him away. There’s still hope he’s alive now.
But I saw Hades’ hands around his neck. I saw the casual way he stood. It wasn’t an effort for him, killing Decker. It would have been easy. It would have been nothing.
I’m the only thing standing in the way of that now.
I don’t know where they’ve taken Decker, but tonight is proof it doesn’t matter. My mother was right. Hades will find him and kill him, and that will be the end of the game. I owe him. A full-body shudder moves through me. I have to do this, and I have to do it now.
“T-turn around and do what?”
Another slow smile, the hint of a laugh. I hold my breath, the air around me pressing in on my head and on my heart and on the sick desire knotting in my belly.
“It’s not obvious?” Hades puts his fingers beneath my chin and moves my head back and forth, watching, watching. “I liked it when you lied before, even while you pressed those thighs together and pretended you didn’t feel it. But don’t lie to me now. I’ll know, and then you’ll have to pay the price.”
“It’s not obvious,” I blurt, I beg. “What do you want me to do?”
“Turn around,” he says again. “And get on the fucking train.”
6
Persephone
The outside of the train car gave nothing away, its shell the same black, sleek exterior as the other cars. I edge into Hades’ private car sideways, breath shallow. I don’t want to turn all the way around. If I take my eyes off him, God knows what he’ll become. He’s already the worst thing I could imagine.
It’s not his looks that make my knees weak, though he’s the most stunning man I’ve seen. It’s how he had Decker—strong, capable Decker—in midair without so much as breaking a sweat. Or maybe it is his looks. I don’t know anymore. My brain is nothing. My brain is the breeze in the leaves—leaves I might never see again.
Hades steps into the car behind me, his frame filling the door. For an instant, I think he might not make it through. Then he angles his shoulders, the movement graceful and controlled, and I have to scoot out of the way so he can rise to his full height behind me.
I don’t mean to stare, but in the warm, golden light of the train car, I have no other choice.
Hades is exactly as tall and broad as he was outside, only more so now that we’re in an enclosed space. My mind can’t put all the pieces of him together at once. I wasn’t wrong about the way the light reacts to him. He wears a rich charcoal suit as dark as a black hole. There’s not a hint of shine to it, like the suit jacket I found at the back of my mother’s closet once upon a time. At boarding school, I picked up enough fashion knowledge to know this is no off-the-rack garment. It was made for him.
And the body underneath the suit…
Flawless. I press my thighs together again at the sight of him. Decker has a rough-and-tumble attractiveness, some muscles bigger than others, nothing quite matching up. But Luther Hades looks like he was born to wear expensive suits as much as he was born to throw me over his shoulder. Everything about him is symmetrical. Perfect. The suit slides over hard biceps, and I bet if I pulled his shirt out of his pants and looked underneath…
I bet….
Oh, God, I can’t even think of it. I swallow hard. All the books I’ve read are fantasies. In real life, men as evil as Hades don’t have to have an outward mark to tell you they’re the devil. Hades certainly doesn’t. This is a man, I think wildly. This is a god. I try to bat the thought away, but it’s foundational and true. I gave up my life for Decker, but I never once felt lightheaded at the sight of him.
A jagged tear appears in my mind. Everything about Hades’ clothes and his train car is supposed to be about refinement. But all I can feel is the violence coiled underneath all that fine fabric. His clothes don’t hide it. They enhance it. He could kill wearing the most expensive piece of clothing I’ve ever seen.
Hades snaps his fingers in front of my eyes.
I blink up at him, breath stopping again at the sight of his face. His face. His body is one thing, but his face—I’ve never seen any man so cruelly beautiful.
Even with his eyes.
Black. They’re black. Too black, for a man with sandy hair that catches the golden light in its short glossy strands. Wait. Not black. A thin line of blue, pale blue, like chips out of the springtime sky. Not enough to push back the darkness at the center. Who has eyes like this?
Hades tracks the movements of my eyes over his sharp cheekbones and cut jaw.
“Ah, so you do like what you see.” His lips curve upward in something between a sneer and a smile. “I didn’t tell you to stare. I told you to get on the train.”
“No, I….” Yes. I do like what I see. I can’t help it. He’s beautiful, and his clothes are beautiful, and this train car is everything I was hoping for out there in the woods, back when I was still a fool. “It’s hard to look away.”
Behind him, the door slides shut. He slaps a palm to the wall beside him. It glows, then fades away, and the train starts moving. My balance is off on my unsteady knees, and I fall sideways, unceremonious, one palm thrown out to stop my fall.