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“Hypnos,” she repeats, soft and slow. “Connected us?”

“You haven’t been sleeping, have you?”

Her eyes narrow, and I can’t entirely fight the smile that hitches my lips as she demands, “How do you know I’ve not been sleeping?”

“Because I’ve been trying to connect with you in your dreams for weeks.”

She sighs, falling back against the pillows. I follow, crawling up her body on the bed so that I can continue to look down into her face.

Hell, but I’ve missed her face.

The last couple weeks have been torture. I don’t know how I survived without her for centuries.

“Olympus isn’t a nice place, Hades. It’s—there is evil lurking within all the light.” She shivers, and a low growl climbs my throat in response. Her eyes snap to mine when the sound crawls between us.

I can no longer resist tasting her, and I’m thankful that when I cover her mouth with my own, she opens for me as she always opens for me.

And she tastes as she always tastes. Sweet with those floral undertones that drive me wild.

The sound of her moan shoots blood straight to my cock. When she lifts her hands to grip me around my neck, tugging me closer, I’m helpless against the groan I bury into the soft skin of her throat. We may be dreaming, but this feels entirely real and so, so fucking good.

“Hades.” The sound of my name on her lips now, after the days and days of torture—it’s almost more than I can bear. “Oh, God.”

“Yes, little goddess.” I nip at her skin, reveling in the little gasp that freefalls from her lips into the space between us. “I’m your God.”

“Yes,” she vows. “Only you. Only ever you for as long as I live.”

“You will live for eternity,” I promise. My hands hook the hem of her night dress and I push it up and over her head, baring her to me.

Her flesh is more tanned than it is when she is home in the Underworld, her hair golden, her eyes a brighter, lighter green as she looks up at me with kiss swollen lips a softer shade of rose than the darker stain of night-kissed red that paints her lips under the glow of everlasting night.

Still, she is no less lovely.

“I could look at you for the rest of eternity,” I rasp, emotion threatening to seal my throat. “These last weeks—it’s like I’m walking around with no air. The beat of my heart is dull, an echo of the life I feel when you are home with me.” My lips drift over hers, whisper soft. “I do not wish to live, to suffer the burn of breathing, without you.”

Her fingertips sink into my hair. She holds my face between her hands, her eyes capturing my own. I could drown in their pools of endless green if it meant I would forever be surrounded by her loving warmth.

“I love you, Hades.” Her words are a vow I entomb in the deepest depths of my heart. “I’ve always loved you. I will always love you.”

The swell of emotion, like the surging wave of an uncontrolled sea, takes me by surprise. Never in my life have I been so swiftly cut to the quick by an overload of affection for anyone. Not even for her. It’s new, this overwhelm. This complete sensation of absolute need to be one with her.

“I need to be inside you.” The words rush to fall between us. “I need?—”

“Me too.” She spreads her legs around me, her hands no longer in my hair but pushing at the pants I wear. My cock springs free, instantly finding the slick wet of her sweet heat.

I sink inside in one quick thrust, rooting myself deep inside her and reveling in the little cry she lets loose.

I groan at the feel of her, taking her lips in a deep kiss as I stay buried, unmoving inside her. She is heaven. Being inside her, above her, around her, with her—is heaven.

I’m pulled back from the brink of bliss when her body rocks with a sharp sob that splits from the deep of her. My head notches up and my eyes search hers in the seconds before she pulls me to her, sealing us together chest to chest as she buries her face in the crook of my throat. Another sharp sob, her body tightening around and beneath mine.

“Little goddess?”

“I just miss you so much,” she gasps. “I want—I wish this was real.”

“This is real.” I press a kiss into her golden hair, swallowing the burning ache for the red. “I’m here with you right now.”

“In my dream,” she cries. “You’re here in my dream, but all I want is to be home with you.”