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He shifts to settle between my thighs. A breath later and his cock is filling me in the most perfect way possible. He pins me to the bed with his hips, his weight not allowing for any movement. I cling to him, even as I try to fight for more space to slide along his length. The pleasure and pressure and pain is almost too much. “I need…”

“I’ll always find a way to give you what you need, love. You know that.” His low voice is pure sin in the darkness. It doesn’t matter that we’re having what appears to be vanilla sex. It’s never vanilla with me and Hades. Not really. Not when every touch chains me to him more thoroughly, every word marks me as his.

Just when I’m sure I can’t stand it any longer, that I’ll start to beg and plead, he begins to move. He’s cruel in his gentleness, cruel in showing me how things could be if we were different people. If we hadn’t made the same choices to get to this place. I can’t breathe past needing him. He locks his grip around my wrists and pins them to the bed on either side of my head, and I could weep over the need to touch him. “Hades, please.”

He bites my bottom lip, and then I’m coming, fighting against his hold, fighting to take him in deeper, to hold him closer. It’s a lost cause. It always has been. For once, Hades doesn’t try to prolong things, he follows me over the edge, sharing this with me. He gentles his kisses and moves us back to our previous position—him on his back with me tucked against him. His hold around me tightens, as if maybe he needed this just as much as I did, but the moment passes too quickly for me to be sure. After ten years, this man shouldn’t be such an enigma to me. Maybe he always was. Maybe I just thought I knew him with the rash arrogance of youth, and time proved me wrong. I’m honestly not sure anymore.

He smooths my hair back. “It’s you and me, Meg. Forever.”

Threat or declaration of love? I don’t know. I’ve never known. I look into his dark eyes, and in this moment I can truly believe that this man loves me above all others. That it would hurt him beyond measure to lose me. That he would raze this city to the ground if it meant my happiness was on the line.

Then he blinks and I can actually see him retreating. Sorrow rises, a drowning wave that I have no defense against. I tuck my face against his chest, and he lets me hide this from him tonight, just like he always has in the past. Some truths are too difficult to bear. I close my eyes and let the relative safety of Hades’s presence around me lull me into sleep.

When I wake, I’m alone.

Just like always.

Chapter 13

Hades

Things are going according to plan.

I should be delighted beyond measure. Victory. Revenge. It all lies just over the horizon. This is the moment I’ve wanted ever since that bastard in Olympus declared my sentence all those years ago. Exile. A punishment I may have admired if it weren’t leveled against me. Worse than the sweet oblivion of death. The moment you stop breathing, your heart ceases to beat… that’s the moment you’re beyond pain. Exile means to live with the agony of knowing you can never go home, that the people who you cared about the most continue to live on without you.

To know how replaceable you truly are.

If that was his only sin, I might have been willing to let it go. Not easily, but I know better than to waste time and resources chasing an old grudge. But no, exile wasn’t enough for \Zeus. He had to take everything from me.

I aim to return the favor.

I unbutton my suit jacket and sit behind my desk. The last few hours have left me tired, but certain business is best conducted before dawn. This call is one of them. I pick up the phone and dial from memory. Some knowledge never leaves us. It rings for several long moments before a man answers. “It better be good to be calling me at this hour.”

That tone reaches through time and space. For a moment, I’m that foolish twenty-year-old man-child who believes I’m immortal and that nothing bad could ever happen to me because I have power. I didn’t know what power was then, not in any meaningful way. “Hello, Zeus.”

The man who once proclaimed we were close enough to be brothers, even if no blood connected us, inhales sharply. That little sound pleases me greatly. I’ve managed to surprise him, which is a coup all its own. He finally says, “Hades. Have to say, you’re the last person I expected to hear from. Surprised to find you’re still alive.”