Descent Read online

  She grips my shoulders when I pull her forward, opening her wider. Her nipples turn into hard points, every muscle taut, the pink lips of her pussy obediently open as if waiting just for me.

  Persephone.

  My Persephone.

  I bow my head, inhaling her scent. “You’re beautiful.” I kiss her belly, kiss her breast, her mouth.

  With her hands on me, she turns my face to hers. “I lied.”

  I wait.

  “You do scare me.”

  I reach up, wipe a tear. I don’t know what to say. So instead, I guide her to lie on her back as I kneel between her open legs and push them up, bending her knees so I can see all of her.

  I’m hard. So fucking hard. I’m going to fuck her. I’m going to bury my dick deep inside her and mark her, but I have to take care. I need to be careful with her.

  I bring my mouth to her, lick her clit, circling it, sliding my tongue over the length of her to her asshole, circling that too.

  “Hades,” she gasps.

  “Persephone,” I reply, my voice hoarse. I come back to her clit, take it into my mouth.

  “Oh, god.”

  I grip her cheeks and pull them wide. I eat her pussy like it’s a meal, like I’m a condemned man and it’s my final meal. Maybe I am condemned. Maybe I always was with her because she tastes even better than I remember. Fuck, fuck me, because I’ve wanted this for so long. I’ve wanted her for so fucking long. Only her. Every other woman has been a poor substitute for her.

  Sliding my thumb to her asshole, I suck her clit hard. I want her to come. I need her to come. Now. Right now. On my tongue.

  “Hades!” Her hands are fists in my hair and her thighs lock around my head. When I push my thumb into that tight little hole, she comes so hard, she’s bucking with it. Her pussy is so wet, it’s dripping. I eat her up, devour her and if I don’t get inside her soon, I’m going to blow in my pants.

  When her body goes limp, I draw back, look at her. She blinks her sleepy eyes and watches me as I straighten, strip off the rest of my clothes and stand over her. I give her a minute to process what’s coming. Process how many inches she’ll take.

  She draws back a little, panicked when she meets my eyes again.

  “I don’t think I can—”

  “Birth control,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Birth control. Are you protected?”

  “What?” Her eyes are on my cock.

  I lean down, cup her face. “Focus. Birth control. I don’t have a condom and I need to fuck you. Right now. Do I need to fuck your ass?”

  “My…what?” She shakes her head. “I’m on the pill. I…”

  “That’s good.” I nudge her knees wide and place one of mine between them. I fist my cock. “Keep your legs spread wide. I want to see your wet little cunt.”

  I smear precum with my thumb and wipe it across her mouth.

  She licks her lips but I’m not sure it’s conscious. Seeing her do it makes me harder.

  I rub the length of my dick through her wet folds, watching her face as I do, as I stimulate her still sensitive clit.

  “You’re wet for me. That’s good. It’ll be easier for you,” I tell her, taking one leg and bending it backward, opening her wide and bringing my cock to her entrance.

  “Hades, I…I’m not ready.”

  “Sweetheart.” I stretch her tight pussy with the head of my cock. “You’ll never be ready to take me.”

  “You’re too big!” She tries to squirm away.

  I grab her wrists, spread her arms to either side and push in a little farther.

  “It’s going to hurt,” she says.

  “Yes, it is. And I’m sorry about that.” I kiss her mouth and taste those sweet lips, thinking I could kiss her forever. “But then it’s going to feel so fucking good, too.” I weave my fingers with hers, releasing her other hand to cup the top of her head. She brings that hand to my shoulder, her nails already digging into my back.

  I slide deeper into her and she’s so fucking tight.

  “Relax,” I tell her, kissing her again. “I’m going to make you come again. Relax and open. It’ll be easier.”

  She closes her eyes, nods, tries to free her hand from mine.

  I shift her other arm to my back.

  “Open your eyes, sweetheart.”

  She shakes her head.

  “Open them. Look at me.”

  She does and she whimpers when I move a little, feeling her barrier. Virgin. Like she was saving herself for me all along.

  My Persephone. My doomed bride.

  “Hurt me, Persephone. Hurt me like I’m going to hurt you. Dig your nails into me and bleed me.”

  She draws her nails down my back, the pain makes me harder and I let out a moan.

  “Good. Good girl. Whatever you do, don’t stop looking at me, okay?” I ask her and she nods. We’re so close right now, we’re so fucking close and I know I’m going to hurt her now. I have to.

  And I lied a minute ago. Some part of me wants to.

  When I draw back, she braces herself, fingernails embedded in my back, and when I thrust, she cries out. I feel the rush of blood, warm and wet. Fuck I’m inside her, I’m all the way inside her and for a minute, I can’t think, can’t do anything but feel.

  Feel her.

  Her.

  Her tight cunt squeezes my dick, blood wet and warm and staining me.

  “You’re mine,” I say, drawing back and thrusting deep. “You were always mine. Always.”

  I fuck her hard, I can’t hold back. I feel her move beneath me and hear her whimpers. When I come, I come so fucking hard, I can’t see straight. All I can do is feel and know that I’m filling her up. Marking her. Staining her.

  10

  Persephone

  I can’t move when he stills. I’m still trapped beneath him, his elbows on either side of my face caging me in, one giant hand cupping the top of my head.

  He looks at me, and I watch his green-gold eyes refocus on mine. He touches my cheek, kisses my forehead.

  His words ring in my ears.

  “You’re mine. You were always mine. Always.”

  He’s right. He and I, there’s something between us, a strange, almost unnatural bond. Whatever it is, it keeps drawing us together for better or worse.

  Mostly worse.

  He slides out of me, a wet warmth spilling onto my thighs. Even that hurts. I’m sore, raw. He’s too big.

  “All right?” he asks, shifting more of his weight off me. I didn’t realize I was struggling to breathe until I can do so freely again. “Persephone?”

  I blink. He’s waiting for an answer. What the fuck is wrong with me that I can’t seem to answer?

  He grins, slides down my body. “You need to come again.” And as he says it, he ducks his face down and he has my clit in his mouth again. Fuck. Oh my god. Fuck.

  “Hades.” I’m bloody. A mess. I grip the hair on his head. “Don’t.”

  He takes hold of my wrists and tugs my hands off without taking his mouth from my clit. It takes me all of three seconds to come again, to come like I did before.

  But even as I’m coning, I feel the loss of him inside me. It’s the strangest thing but I want him inside me and on top of me, his weight smothering me.

  I want it now, while I’m raw and coming on his tongue. This feeling, it’s intense pleasure and unbearable pain together, the pain inside me, inside my heart, my belly.

  The pleasure.

  Fuck, the absolute ecstasy.

  I close my eyes and give myself over to it because I can’t do anything else. He won’t allow it.

  I let myself go and just let him hold me. I lose myself in orgasm. I’m so far gone, I don’t even realize he’s back on top of me again, wiping my face. He’s wiping tears from my eyes because I’m crying, and I don’t even know it.

  “It won’t always hurt,” he says.

  But it will. Doesn’t he know? With us, it will always hurt.

/>   He gets up off the bed, going into the bathroom. I hear water run. He’s filling the tub.

  There’s no way I’m getting into another ice bath.

  Before I can get out of the bed, though, he’s back. He’s holding a damp washcloth. I shift my gaze to the stained sheets, my stained thighs.

  “Stay, Persephone.”

  He doesn’t give me a choice as he’s already on the bed, one big hand pushing me to lie back down as he sets the damp cloth between my legs.

  I wince, looking down and watching how gentle he is now.

  “I’m going to stain you.”

  His words again. But it was me who stained him.

  His stain, though, it will go deeper than blood on the sheets.

  “Are you all right?” he asks again after he’s cleaned between my legs.

  I nod, wince when I try to sit up but push through the pain. Where is my voice? Why can’t I speak?

  A moment later, he stands and, before I can protest, he lifts me into his arms.

  “I don’t want an ice bath,” I start, animated now at the prospect. I push against his chest but he’s immovable, bigger and stronger than I remember him being five years ago. “Please, Hades!”

  “You’re not getting an ice bath. Stop struggling.”

  Inside the bathroom, he tests the water then gently lowers me into the almost full tub.

  “Okay?” he asks.

  I nod. It’s warm and I’m shivering with cold.

  “Good. I’ll be right back.”

  But when he turns, I gasp.

  He stops instantly as if he didn’t realize it himself.

  I can’t speak. I can’t form words.

  He turns his head a little, just enough to see me.

  And all I can do is take in the crisscrossed scars there. The divots of missing skin deep and old.

  “My father was an asshole,” he says when I finally meet his eyes.

  Without another word, he walks out of the room and I’m left with that vision of his back. I remember our first meeting, the bruised jaw.

  His father did that to him?

  I hear the bedroom door open and close and wonder what he’s doing. I draw my knees up, hug them in the warm water. I let my mind wander to what just happened. How it happened.

  For a moment, I wonder if I’d said I wasn’t on the pill if he would have fucked me in the ass. I quickly push the thought aside. It’s both arousing and scary as hell to think of him having me like that. I haven’t seen many men naked, but I’m not a complete novice even if I am a virgin. None have been close to as big as Hayden Montgomery.

  I hear him again and I realize what he’s doing. He’s building a fire in the bedroom fireplace.

  He’s back in the bathroom a moment later. He washes his hands, eyes on me in the mirror as he does. He then walks to the bathtub. When I drag my gaze from the monster hanging between his legs up to his face, I realize he means to get in with me.

  “Hayden, I—”

  But he’s behind me and pulling me to him, cradling me between his legs.

  “Why are you still a virgin?” he asks, holding me to him until I stop fighting to pull away.

  “You’re not wasting any time.”

  “You were engaged to Jonas. Why didn’t you fuck? He didn’t expect you to fuck?”

  Does he feel me stiffen at the mention of his stepbrother?

  “Why did you do it?” he asks, and I don’t follow this new question.

  “Do what?”

  “Accept his proposal? You knew what he was. You had to know after Halloween.”

  I did. Or I should have. “I didn’t marry him.” It’s a stupid defense.

  “But you were going to.”

  “Look, I don’t want to talk about him, okay? Off limits. What we’re doing, this crazy thing,” I shake my head. “It’s physical. That’s all. You don’t get anything else.”

  “That’s not all and you know it.”

  “Hayden, please—”

  “And I’ll get everything I want. But fine. For now. What do you want to talk about?”

  I turn to look back at him. “Why did you do that to me today? With your brother. You knew he was coming. You knew he’d find us.”

  “Because you insisted.”

  “You know I wouldn’t have if I’d known.”

  “Then next time, trust me.”

  Trust him?

  “Let’s move to a different topic. You don’t want to talk about Jonas, I don’t want to talk about Ares.”

  “Fine. Where have you been these last five years?”

  He grins, lifts me like I weigh nothing and turns me around. The tub is big enough for two, but water still splashes out onto the floor. He looks at my face and the way he looks at me, it’s different than anyone else. Like he’s seeing inside me.

  “I told you I’d hurt you,” he says.

  I don’t want to talk about the sex, not until I’ve had time to process. “So, you’re not going to answer that question either?”

  “Here and there. Nowhere special.”

  “I saw you, you know?”

  “Saw me?”

  “At Nora’s funeral.”

  At the mention of her name, a sadness clouds his eyes. A sadness I know he’s trying to hide. It’s the same sadness I saw that first day I met him out on the street with the broken doll.

  But then his jaw tightens, and he shuts down. I feel it like someone opened a window and let in a sudden chill.

  “Did you,” he says. It’s a comment, not a question.

  “Why were you hiding?” I ask.

  “I wasn’t hiding.”

  “You were.”

  Time stretches as silence grows heavy in the room. “Nora was good,” he says. “She shouldn’t have died like that.”

  I look down, suddenly feeling like I’m intruding, like I shouldn’t see him like this.

  I nod my head. “I still miss her.”

  Silence.

  “We had this crazy idea we’d be best friends forever. That we’d live here like this forever. We were young and pretty naïve.”

  Silence still.

  I chance a glance up to find his eyes locked on me. The hardness inside them has me leaning away from him. I wonder if he knows more about her suicide than he lets on, but he can’t. He can’t know that. I only learned the truth a few months ago myself.

  “We used to tell each other everything. I thought so, at least,” I add. If she’d told me, I wonder if it would have made a difference. If I could have helped her.

  “You never really know someone, not what’s really inside their head.”

  I think about what he says and look down into the water. “Nora and me, I thought we were different.” It’s quiet for a long moment and when I look back up at him, he’s still studying me. “But I was wrong.”

  “I was living in the building my grandfather left me,” he says, changing the subject.

  “I knew he left it to you, but I thought it was uninhabitable.”

  “It was condemned. But I had no place to go.”

  “You were right here all those years?”

  “Most of the time.”

  “I never saw you.”

  “It’s not a part of town you’d have any business in.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you leave home? Because of…your back?”

  “That was before. When I was a kid. I still have the belt he used.”

  I reach out, touch his face.

  He takes my hand. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Persephone. I gave as good as I got.”

  “You were a child.”

  “I knew my grandfather was leaving me the building but that wasn’t all. He was changing his will. He was going to cut my father out. Leave everything to Ares and me. I overheard him arguing with my dad that Halloween night.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I don’t know the reason. I just know he was pissed with my father. But then he di
ed in that fire before he could change anything. I guess the building he’d already arranged for, but the rest still went to my dad and he cut me off financially. I had a little money and a lot of hate. I lived off of both. I built my own empire. I turned the building around. Bought another. Then another.”

  “I don’t understand. He was your father.”

  “He took a belt to us, Ares and me. He was a drunk for most of our childhood. Until he met Carry, strangely enough. I guess he loved her more than he loved either of us.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I am who I am today partly because of how I grew up and I’m not unhappy.”

  “Are you happy, though?”

  He stops, like the question catches him off guard. “I think it’s naïve to expect to be happy as an adult, Persephone.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  He shrugs a shoulder.

  “Do you still have a lot of hate?” I ask him.

  He studies me, grins. He stands and water glides off him. He truly does look like a Greek God standing over me and it makes my insides quiver.

  “I don’t allow hate to rule me. I take justice into my own hands and punish those who deserve to be punished. I simply level the scales.”

  “Do I deserve to be punished?”

  He steps out of the tub and grabs a towel, wrapping it around his hips. He stands there, eyes narrowed, looking at me so intently it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

  “She loved him, too, you know,” he says instead of answering my question. “Persephone loved Hades.”

  I’m taken back to our first meeting at the club. When he’d told me why Hades had taken Persephone and I’d told him Hades had loved her.

  He holds out his hand, palm up, and I look at it and wonder at the dichotomy of this. He is my enemy. He will trample me because I will be caught underfoot.

  Hades loved Persephone. And he’s right. She loved him, too.

  But his love, it condemned her. It could only take. It could only ever make her dark. She wasn’t the same even in the time she spent in the light.

  Because once you let darkness love you, it won’t ever let you go.

  And you won’t want it to.

  11

  Hayden