Page 10 of Duke of the Underworld (Regency Gods #2)

CHAPTER 10

“ I beg your pardon?”

Her husband’s voice was deadly calm and it made Persephone realize that she had perhaps miscalculated just the tiniest bit in all this.

She’d planned to come to Underworld, calmly state her argument on the girls’ behalf, apologize for her unkind words, and return home with everything—well, if not fixed, then certainly on its way to being mended.

Crucially, however, she had forgotten one important detail.

And that was that something about her husband apparently made Persephone absolutely lose her mind.

There was no other explanation for why she’d challenged him.

And yet, when he gave her an opportunity to recant, she did not take it. Instead, some headstrong creature lurking inside her made her raise her chin even higher, defiance in every inch.

“What,” she asked crisply, “will you do if I don’t obey you in this matter?” And then, because she recalled the effect it had had on him the day prior, she very purposefully added, “my lord.”

There was something deeply and profoundly wrong with her.

Because she should have been afraid at the flash of dark promise in his eyes…but she most decidedly was not .

No, the feeling that coursed through her was something different entirely.

And it wasn’t as though her husband was helping her fix whatever mental failing had befallen her, not when his response was to seize her mouth in a searing, all-consuming kiss.

When he pulled back, she was breathless and, since he didn’t go far, she found that she couldn’t regain her breath, not in the slightest.

“You really do not want to challenge me on this, Persephone,” he warned.

She really did, though. She really, really did.

“You know,” she commented, telling herself that it didn’t much matter that she was all but panting, “I still did not hear an answer to my question. You cannot just go around kissing people to avoid their—mmph!”

The last of her words was lost when he did, in fact, just kiss her to avoid her questions.

This was, intriguingly, both rude and precisely what Persephone had hoped would happen. She didn’t think she’d ever faced that intersection of events before.

He pulled back again.

“Don’t try me, Persephone,” he warned.

Surely he had to know what he was doing, didn’t he?

This time, she held her tongue, interested to see what he would do next. She waited until he got this satisfied look on his face, a kind of smugness that she strangely wanted to kiss directly off his features, then, in a flurry of movement, darted beneath his arm so that she was free from the chair.

She didn’t have a destination in mind as she all but flung herself away from him. They were, after all, in a closed office, and it wasn’t as though she wanted to go back down to the gaming floor, with all those rowdy, unknown men. She didn’t even actually want to get away.

What she actually wanted was precisely what happened, though she hadn’t known she wanted it until it happened.

He grabbed her about the waist, then tumbled them both bodily onto the settee in one corner of the room. This brought him flush against her—no, atop her, just enough that she could feel all of him, but not enough that his bulk crushed her.

And not enough that she couldn’t squirm beneath him.

“Persephone,” he growled.

She squirmed some more.

When he fell upon her this time, she was ready for it, prepared to open for him immediately. Her groan melded with his as their tongues tangled, hot and slick and wet. Persephone wondered that she didn’t feel shyer or more reserved—surely she ought to; this experience was still so novel—but instead something inside her urged her to go further, to push harder, to see just how mad she could drive him.

“Persephone,” he said again, this time against her mouth, when she tried to use her arms to free herself—or, rather, when she used her arms to pretend that she was actually trying to free herself.

He responded, much to her satisfaction, by grasping both of her wrists in one of his hands and pinning them above her head, using the leverage this gave him to peer down at her sternly.

Oh, dear. That sternness… affected her.

“You say my name an awful lot,” she said.

His dark eyes flashed. “And you’ve never said my name at all.”

This startled her briefly out of the flirtatious persona that had overtaken her.

“Haven’t I?”

Ah, well, apparently her startlement had been very brief, because here she was, back to tormenting him.

He leaned more heavily against her. It was delicious .

“You have not,” he said.

He pressed a kiss to her jaw, to her neck, then to where her decolletage where it swelled rather suggestively above her bodice. The dress she wore was several Seasons old, and she’d had come into her figure in the intervening years, plus their current supine position had gravity working against her. Her heaving breaths weren’t precisely helping matters, either. One good tug at her neckline and her breasts would pop free.

A few more kisses along the place where fabric met flesh and her husband realized this, too. He tugged at the lacy edge—with his teeth —and the bodice gave up its battle.

The duke—oh, blast it all, Hugh, Hugh ; now that she knew he wanted her to speak his name, she couldn’t help but think it, even if she planned to remain stubborn about saying it—grazed just the tip of his nose across the soft curve of her.

“Say it, Persephone,” he urged. His breath coasted across her nipple, which tightened in response.

“I cannot, my lord,” she told him.

She didn’t know how they’d gotten to this point, but they were clearly in some sort of battle of wits. He wanted her to give in, and this newly discovered utterly mulish part of her positively refused to do so.

She would not yield.

Not unless he made her yield.

It was a strange desire, as she had spent too much of her life being forced to follow others’ rules. She’d had no power against her father’s gambling, no way to protect herself or her mother as things got worse and worse.

Yet, this desire to fight back against him, to tease and tempt and torment—it was not necessarily about gaining such power back for herself. And it was not about Hugh proving that he had power—he was a duke, for goodness’ sake, and practically a giant to boot!

It was more that she wanted to see him use that power—use it against her, she supposed, though it wasn’t precisely that.

She had no reason to call it trust, not when she knew so little of him.

But it felt an awful lot like trust.

After all, she didn’t feel the tiniest bit unsafe when he glowered down at her. She felt thrilled .

“I warned you about trying to manage me, Persephone,” he said lowly.

“You did,” she agreed, smiling back up at him.

“Do as I bid before you regret it.”

Oh, how very much she wanted to regret it.

So she batted her lashes at him. It was an awkward angle for doing so, with the way she had to look down her body to see him, and she was not experienced in such blatant flirtation.

It seemed to work, in any case, for his gaze grew even darker.

“I’m sorry, my lord,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “But I will not.”

A flash in his eyes and then?—

His mouth closed over the tip of her breast.

She cried out at the heady, drugging sensation as his tongue traced the tip of that tightly furled bud, as he sucked harshly against her before pulling his mouth free.

“Tell me you will stay away from the club, Persephone,” he ordered. “Use my name.”

He was clearly affected by…by whatever this was between them. His voice was harsh and his breaths came heavy.

But Persephone could still talk, so she could still resist.

“I find myself terribly confused by the conflicting orders, my lord,” she told him.

He snarled at her—actually snarled— and released her wrists. For a moment, Persephone feared that she’d pushed him too far, but then she felt a breath of cool air against her heated limbs as he brusquely shoved her skirts up around her waist.

She should have been embarrassed. Not only was he staring at her nakedness, at her secret places, but her stockings were a disgrace, as well, all sad ribbons and think silk that was worn to practically nothing in places.

But Hugh wasn’t looking at her as though she was the impoverished chit upon whom he’d thrown away his name.

He was looking at her like she was a feast, and he a man dying of hunger.

She could not have moved to cover herself even if she’d tried.

His fingers were warm and a bit rough as they trailed along the skin on the inside of her thighs, starting first just above her knee than moving higher and higher. The touch left blazes of heat in their wake.

“Persephone.” His tone had a slightly mocking lilt to it, one that Persephone found mesmerizing as he stroked back and forth, each pass coming closer and closer to the center of her, which blazed with heat.

She felt strangely slippery there, too, and this was another thing that surely ought to have mortified her, but too much of her focus was on this tense game between them.

“Persephone.” Another movement, this time on the outer part of her core, a gentle brush that lit her nerves alight and made her ache for more. “Give me what I want.”

She wanted to, wanted to give him whatever he desired, so long as he would keep touching her like that—and yet, she could not give in.

She was beyond words now, but she shook her head stubbornly.

He sighed. She would forever rue missing the look on his face as he gave into this little bit of theatricality, but she had her eyes squeezed shut, her fists clenched tight. The effort of staying where he’d put her was making her body practically shake and yet she refused to give him the satisfaction of doing anything else.

“Look at you,” he said, marveling. “So warm and so wet. You must be aching. Tell me, are you aching for me yet?”

She whimpered. She was aching. How did he know?

He made it all the worse by applying his fingers more firmly to her center. A little more pressure and then one thick finger slid inside her. She gasped and bucked against the novel sensation, which was strange and a little uncomfortable but mostly so, so good. He pressed his free hand against her lower belly to hold her in place, and somehow that increased her pleasure tenfold. She writhed against the place where he pressed into her.

“Do you need more, sweet girl?” he asked, the gentle words at odds with his harsh, biting tone.

“Please,” she managed to gasp.

When she pried her eyes open briefly, she saw the wicked grin that spread across his face. He was winning and he knew it. She tried to be sorrier about it and failed.

She still intended to put up a fight.

Slowly, achingly slowly, he started to move his finger in and out of her, the discomfort fading at the near frictionless motion.

“Please what, Persephone?” he asked. She heard a rasping motion, cloth against cloth, but she couldn’t look again, not when she’d pressed a hand over her eyes—when had she done that? She felt as though it might be the only thing keeping her head from exploding right off the top of her body.

She did, in fact, nearly explode off the settee when she felt something slick slide against a sensitive spot at the apex of her thighs.

The sound of movement had been her husband sinking to his knees. He was on his knees before her.

And he was using his mouth to pleasure her.

The sight alone made Persephone fear that she was dying, and there was ever so much more to contend with than the mere vision of him, broad and dark between her splayed thighs.

Somehow, thought, the sight was the least of it, for she seemed to be feeling every sensation that one could feel, all of it pleasurable.

The wet caress of his mouth against her.

The sliding of his fingers, two of them now.

Even the textured brocade against her overheated skin left her at sea, floundering, desperate to feel more.

She was floating, positively floating, ready to crest an impossibly high wave?—

And Hugh froze, his motions stopping at once, his mouth moving away from her.

“No!” She meant for it to be a demand, or at least a plea, but it came out more a sob.

“Say you won’t risk your safety again, Persephone,” he ordered her, punctuating this with one quick pump of his fingers, not enough to send her crashing down, but enough to tantalize her with the promise of it. “Use my name.”

There was no resisting him, and with the recognition of that unassailable truth came the permission to give in, a crushing relief, a consuming joy.

She was giving in, not because he’d demanded it, but because he’d earned it.

“I won’t risk my safety again,” she sobbed. “I promise, Hugh, I promise.”

“Good girl,” he praised her and she moaned as the mere words sent a tremor through her.

He nipped her thigh once, hard enough to leave a mark, the pain somehow adding to all the other feelings battering at her sensibility. Then he put his mouth back to her apex, licking, laving, sucking. The roughness of his beard was a counterpoint to the soft, strong heat of his tongue, the contrast fracturing her attention as she tried to feel everything at once. His fingers kept moving, harder, faster, crooking until they hit a particularly wonderful spot?—

And Persephone fell, crashing off the top of the wave, tumbling, tumbling as her body seized upon him, as her blood rushed through her like fire.

“Hugh,” she heard herself saying, the words like a prayer. “Hugh, Hugh.”

She worried that whatever he had done to her could not be undone.

She hoped beyond hope that he would do it again.