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“Divine.”

She turned in the small space he had given her and gathered some of the batter onto her finger.

“Taste,” she implored.

Hades took her hand to lick at the batter, and then he closed his mouth over her finger and sucked hard and slow, holding her gaze until he was finished. The way she watched him made him groan, and his hips settled against hers, his gaze dropping to her mouth.

“Exquisite,” he said, his voice quiet. “But I have tasted divinity and there is nothing sweeter.”

He was trying to decide how to continue what they had started at Sybil’s when she turned away from him abruptly. She returned the spatula to the bowl and picked up the brownies. He took a step back as she shifted to the oven. He could feel and see the heat as she opened the door. It seemed to melt the very air.

“Where were you?” she asked as she slid them onto a rack.

“I had business,” he said, which he realized was not the best reply, especially when she slammed the oven door.

She turned to him, her gaze more of a glare. “Business? At this hour?”

His business was always at this hour, which was anywhere from the middle of the night to early morning.

“I make bargains with monsters, Persephone,” he said. “And you, apparently, bake.”

She did not like his answer because she did not come to him like he wanted. He thought of how he’d left her in the limo, desperate and wanting. Perhaps he was stupid to hope that when he came home, she would be waiting to rekindle that same wild desire.

Or perhaps she’d taken care of herself and did not need him, but she did not seem so much sated as she was tired.

“You couldn’t sleep?”

“I didn’t try,” she said.

Hades frowned and then nodded to the bottle on the counter. “Is that my whiskey?”

Hades wasn’t sure why she needed to look—she waswell aware of what he was pointing out—but when she did not look at him again, he felt like perhaps it was an excuse to avoid him altogether.

“Was,” she answered, and he moved closer, coaxing her gaze to return to his and pressing his mouth to hers. She tasted like chocolate and whiskey, and it truly wasdivine. Her hands fisted into his jacket, and she pulled him closer, sealing their bodies together.

“I ache for you,” he growled against her mouth. He let his hands smooth down her back to her ass, squeezing her with one and moving the other between them to tease her hot center. Her breath caught in her throat, and he knew she was already wet for him. Perhaps her desire had not ceased since he’d left, and when he entered her body, she would be drenched and dripping.

Fuck.

His cock tightened at the thought, and he felt like his whole head was going to explode.

He continued to kiss her while he touched her, and though he’d have liked to lift her onto the counter then and taste her, he also recognized that the way this had begun was in the aftermath of that fucking game, and he needed to make a few things clear before they continued.

He moved his hand from between her legs and instead rolled his hips into hers.

“Let’s play a game.”

“I think I am done with games for the night,” she said.

“Just one,” he said—urged, really.

He kissed along her jaw and then reached for the batter-covered spatula she’d used earlier.

She looked at it and then at him.

“Never have I ever,” he murmured as he smoothed the batter over her chest.

Persephone shivered against him. “Hades—”