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I switch to her other foot and am awarded with a new moan of pleasure that lights a match in the magma of my blood.

“What inspired dinner tonight?” I ask, doing all I can do to take my mind off the pain of the loss we will soon suffer, stilling the urge the God under my skin has to strike a deal for her soul.

“I just—” she sighs heavily. “I just wanted to go back.”

“Back?”

“To when it was simple.” Her smile is sheepish. “Just you and me. Man and woman. Normal.”

“We have never been normal, Persephone.”

She narrows her eyes on me. “You know what I mean.”

“We have always been us, even when you didn’t know who you were. Who we were together.”

“I know, but—I guess I just wanted to go back to the basics. I wanted to remember what it felt like to just be a woman falling in love with a man.”

Inside my chest, my heart burns. I ask softly, slowly, “Are you falling out of love with me, little goddess?”

“God, no.” There is only truth ringing in the words that sink deep inside the God I harbor.

She pulls her feet from my lap, straightening in her chair. Her gown is a lovely shade of lilac that only makes the deep red of her hair appear richer. She pushes the fall of waves over hershoulder as she wiggles to the edge of the chair, her eyes never leaving mine.

“I’m in love with you, Hades. I’m all the way in love with you.” She reaches for my hands, and I curl them around hers. “I just want it to sometimes be just me and you. No one else.” There’s a bloom of color rising into her cheeks when her eyes cut to the side. “I want time to know you, because I don’t, not fully. Not the way I want to know you.”

“Persephone,” I begin, but she stands.

I watch, unable to take my eyes off her as she shimmies closer. Her hands hike the soft material of her dress up to expose shapely legs my body instantly responds to. Inside my veins, the magma flows hotter. Faster.

She lifts one knee to slide it around my waist, pulling the other up until she’s straddling my lap. My hands respond with her nearness, settling on the curve of her hips.

Her eyes, so lovely, fix on mine. “I feel like the future is so ominous.” Her hands drift up the column of my neck to cup my face. “But I want to dream with you, Hades.”

My fingertips pulse against her hips. She scoots closer until I can feel the warmth of her sex against the swollen shaft of my cock.

Her breath, sugar sweet, drifts over my lips. “I want to look into the future with you and dream about us. About the love we will always share. I want to flirt and tease and fall more and more in love with you every day. I never want to fall out of love with you. I never want to stop feeling all the things that I feel for you.” Her lips touch mine now. It’s not quite a kiss, and still my blood surges through my veins. “I just want you. I want to know, in the end when all is said and done, that it’s still going to be me and you.”

“It’ll always be us, little goddess,” I promise her. “Always.”

Emotion rattles her breath. “I love you.”

“I’ve always loved you, Persephone. I will always love you.” I kiss her now, claiming her lips and tasting her soul.

My hands drift over gauze until I find the hot skin of her thighs. I push under the material of her dress, palming her naked ass. She never returned the panties I tore off her before I fucked her on the counter.

Even now I can smell the seed I spilled inside her mixing with the scent of new arousal. It only turns me on more.

I growl into the kiss, nipping at her swollen bottom lip.

She whimpers a sound that nearly strips me of control.

“I need to be inside you,” I say against her throat when she throws her head back on a sigh.

“Yes.” Her hands sink into my hair as I kiss a burning trail down her chest, tugging at the material that covers her breast with my teeth before I pull her into my mouth. Her moan is music.

I am so in love with this woman. She is the family I’ve never had and always longed for. The soul who was always meant to stand against the test of time with mine. She is my mate, my other half. It matters not the terror we will face, for we will face it together always.

I move to her other breast and suck. Her cry is sharp and decadent and so fucking sweet.