I cradle her head in my hands, marveling at how delicate she is. How fragile and yet how strong. Her soul is iron encased in velvet.

Somehow, she is the one who will save us all.

I pray. I'm not even sure who or what I pray to, but I pray that in the end, she will not be forced to sacrifice all of herself forall of life.

Her full lips, stained a decadent deep red, part. She whispers a shaky whisper that strokes my very soul. “Kiss me.”

Who am I to deny?

I have spent my life as a God, but she somehow strips me down until I am only man. Bent to her beautiful will.

Lowering my head, I cover her mouth with my own. She sighs a sigh I am helpless not to swallow, and the warmth of it curls around my soul.

She is kindling to the everlasting fire that burns inside me, feeding the realm we both love so deeply. I lift her into my arms and water splashes between our bodies as she locks her legs around my waist. Her arms tighten around my shoulders and myhead tips back as she deepens the kiss, taking from me all that she desires. All that she needs.

All that she demands.

I want to be her everything, as she is mine.

Words climb from the depths of my being to pour past my lips into her. “I love you, little goddess. I am so in love with you, I cannot imagine—cannot fathom a life in which you do not exist. If I lost you again, I’m not sure I would have the strength to carry the realm. To carrymyself.” I kiss her again. “If I lost you, I fear I would allow the flames of Tartarus engulf me from the inside. Engulf everything, because living without you is no life. I have done it, for centuries, and I know this to be true.”

Her hands move to cup my face. Her lovely eyes search mine. There is a little frown between her brow that drives a blade of emotion between my ribs. I’ve displeased her, and I do not like to displease her.

“Don’t think of losing me. You’ll never lose me.”

“I’ve already lost you once.” I am so desperate to keep her here with me, safe, even though I know she will leave. She will travel to Olympus where I cannot go. Where I cannot protect her.

She shakes her head. “No. I wasn’t gone. I wasn’t lost. I was traveling a path I needed to travel so that I could become who I am today. So that I could love you and you could love mefreely. So that the binds of our past could no longer hold us locked in the prison of torment we called love.”

“I’ve always loved you.”

“It was a prison.” There’s a sheen in her eyes now that threatens to spill over. “It was a prison we were both trapped in, and when I died, we were set free. We were set free from everything Demeter and Zeus did to us. Free to truly love and be loved the way we were always intended to love.”

Never, not once, have I looked at the tragedy of our past through this lens.

“You are so beautiful.” My eyes roam over her, but I’m speaking of more than her external beauty. I marvel at the wonder of her exquisite mind. The softness in which her thoughts take form. “I am so in love with you.”

Persephone touches her lips to mine. They are so soft against my much rougher lips. She is so small in my arms, and yet there is immeasurable strength living inside her.

She doesn’t pull away from my kiss. “I love you, Hades. All the dark and wonderful parts of you.”

She deepens the kiss, opening to me and stroking her tongue against mine. That fire that lives inside me, present both in man and beast, floods every inch of me. It leaches from my flesh to invade hers and she moans, always so eager for my flame. So untouched by the harm it bestows to every other soul.

When her hips rock into mine, searching for a connection only I can give her, another surge of blood rushes to the already hard, already engorged piece of me that was crafted to fit exclusively inside her. The piece that was intended to connect two as one.

Breath shudders from my lungs as need hums under my skin, rippling, alive. I kiss a path from her lips, down the line of her jaw, to her neck.

Her head falls back, and her body lowers just enough to graze my sensitive tip with the swell of her ass. I jerk my hips, stroking my needy tip in the crack of her ass. She moans and the scent of her arousal nearly steals my control.

I watch as she shoves her hands between our bodies, angling her hips so her core is in line with my tip. Then I watch as the hard length of me sinks inside her.

Sofucking beautiful.Sofucking perfect.

She moans. The sound of it is music that feeds the ravenous hunger for her that yawns in my soul. Pleasure grips me and my control slips, as I pull out and sink inside her tight warmth once again.

Gathering her in my arms, chest to chest, I kiss her as I rock a rhythm of love that has survived centuries into her body. She takes every thrust, meeting me in this place of blissful insanity that only true lovers can know. There is clarity in this insanity, hope that all will work out as it should. That all we have sacrificed and all we will sacrifice will be worth it in the end. That in the end, true good will win. That in the end, the world—Gods and humanity alike—will see through the forgery of good to the evil that lurks beneath. That love will prevail.

I bow my face into the nook of her neck, sealing a sob against her smooth flesh as I thrust long and slow into her body. I lose myself tonight inside her. I let myself, for the first time in as long as I can remember, shed every ounce of armor I cling to. I let myself be vulnerable with her, because with my very heart and soul wrapped up in her, I’ve never been more vulnerable. Not even in the belly of the monster who sired me.