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“Shh,” he said, and when she pressed her lips together in firm frustration, he touched the spatula to her mouth. When she started to lick at it, he pressed it against her lips as if it were a finger to hush her. “Stop. That’s for me.”

She held his gaze, and he felt her uncertainty and her curiosity. Her lips parted and she waited.

He continued. “Never have I ever wanted anyone but you.”

“Never?” she questioned. He didn’t think she even realized how skeptical she sounded. “Even before you knew I existed?”

“Yes.”

His answer sounded more like a hiss as it slipped between his teeth, but he was closing the distance between them, drawing his tongue over her mouth, sucking her bottom lip between his teeth. She tasted so good, so sweet, so right.

He let his body rest against hers as she found purchase against the counter, his lips teasing along her jaw as he whispered truths against her skin.

“Before you, I only knew loneliness, even in a room full of people—it was an ache, sharp and cold and constant, and I was desperate to fill it.”

“And now?” The question was almost a demand, as if she did not care about before anymore, just now, just this moment.

Hades smiled as he continued his exploration of her body, making his way to her chest.

“Now I ache to fill you,” he said and licked the batter he’d used to mark her skin. His hands moved to cup her breasts, and he teased her nipples, which strained against the silky fabric of her gown. She took that as an invitation to try to undress him, but he wanted control because he still had questions.

He let his hands fall to her ass again, and he lifted her onto the edge of the counter, spreading her legs wide as he stepped between them.

“Tell me about tonight.”

It wasn’t a question, and his hands smoothed over her thighs, beneath the hem of her dress. Persephone squirmed beneath his touch. He imagined if he were not wedged between her thighs, she would have them closed and rubbing together just to create some kind of friction to ease her suffering.

“I don’t want to talk about tonight,” she said in a breathy moan.

She reached for his hand and drew him closer to her entrance, and while he would not give her exactly what she wanted just yet, he would take pleasure in teasing her until she answered his questions.

He circled a finger along her opening, around her clit, but he did not touch it, though he could feel it straining and swollen.

“I do,” he said. “You were upset.”

Persephone didn’t look at him. Her eyes were closed, her brows furrowed in concentration even as she admitted, “I feel…stupid.”

Well, that was something at least, even if he did not like that she felt that way.

“Never,” he said as he slipped an arm around hershoulders, his finger dipping into her sweet heat. “Tell me.”

Her fingers dug into his biceps.

“I was jealous that you had shared so much with so many before me, and I know you cannot help it and that you have lived so long…but I…”

Her breath caught in her throat and her legs tightened around him as he continued to use his fingers and thumb to pleasure her, but it did not matter. He did not need to hear any more.

He leaned closer to her, his mouth hovering over hers. “I’d have had you from the beginning,” he said. “But the Fates are cruel.”

“I was only given to punish,” she said.

Those words were like a knife to his chest. She was referring to the fact that while the Fates had granted Demeter’s wish to have a child, it had come with one consequence—her life would be intertwined with Hades’s, one of the gods Demeter hated most.

As much as it seemed to be an insecurity for her, it also was for him.

Still, he refused to think too long on it—to consider that just as their futures had been woven, they could also be unraveled.

“No,” he soothed. “You are pleasure.Mypleasure.”