Page 26 of Unleash Hades (Ungoverned Spaces #5)

Hugo

I knew a little of her story. I observed it on these cameras, and put many of the pieces together.

To have her confirm it was something else. It stopped being a hypothesis, and became reality. It became true.

My insides roiled with a quiet fire, and every time a tear fell from her chin, darkening the floor beneath us, it stoked that flame a little more.

“How can I help, ma petite granate ?” I used the name that had never escaped my head.

She blinked, a small smile tugging at one corner of her lip. “Your little pomegranate?”

“The fruit that brought Persephone down to the Underworld,” he smiled. “To her Hades.”

In all the time that I had watched her, I had rarely ever seen her smile if her boys were not in the area. Would I be one of the few who could bring that expressive glow from her sullen features?

“It sounds quite appropriate, actually.” She swiped her hand across her cheeks, spreading the warm, glistening tears over her skin. “The legend is quite tragic.”

“It’s only a tragedy if it ends badly.” I pushed her hands from her face, replacing them with my own, cupping her cheeks and running my calloused thumbs over her skin. “I think it’s quite happy. She stays with him through winter, and gets to have her summer in the sun. She can have it all.”

She had changed in ten years. Her cheeks weren’t as full.

There were lines on the corner of her mouth.

The bags were heavy and darker beneath her brown eyes, and they wrinkled in the corners from squinting too long in the hot sun.

A few white streaks marked her ringlet curls, adding a shimmering depth that hadn’t been there before.

She grew more beautiful by the day. Another day survived. Another moment endured.

Another day that she was mine.

“This will not end badly.” I made the vow to her, to the Gods, if there were any, and to myself. “We have suffered enough, don’t you think?”

She laughed, as another tear fell. How many had she kept back in all this time?

“It feels wrong to laugh,” she said, her voice weak, even as she smirked.

I placed a finger under her chin and lifted her head so that she looked at me.

“It’s not wrong to see you smile.” I ran my thumb under her lower lip.

I wanted to do so much more. I wanted to be impatient, and take her now, when she was willing, and sweet in my hands. But that would only ruin my appetite. These little moments were the aperitifs to the meal I would gorge myself on soon…

There’s no greater appetizer than hunger. And I was starving.

“What do you want, Cali?” I finally asked, needing to hear the words. The words that would remove the constraints that chained me into inaction. The thing that paralyzed me from doing more - from taking that Dick down.

I needed her to give me the signal so that I could knock down the dominos I had carefully laid out, piece by piece, into an intricate pattern that would fall over Dick Davenport’s grave.

“I…” Her voice was a whisper, as she walked her fingers up my shirt buttons, one at a time, until it reached my collar. “I want to know what you thought when you watched me.”

“Watched you… when?” I asked. “I’ve watched you on television, doing your broadcasts. I’ve seen you behind a desk in the studio. I’ve seen you at dinner–”

“When I’m in my room,” she said quickly, her fingers curling around my collar, gripping on like I would slip away.

“I’ve watched you brush your hair, put on makeup, read a book…”

“Damnit, Hugo, you know what I’m asking.”

“No, I don’t.”

I did.

But I wanted her to say it.

She swallowed, before her brave golden eyes looked up at me with a fire that I hadn’t seen in a long time. Not since I was in the desert in my Legionnaire uniform, shepherding an annoying journalist around.

“What did you think when you watched me touch myself?”

There it was. The real question.

“I thought about your scent, and your taste.” My tongue grew heavy in my mouth, as I shuddered at the intensity of memories, even as the real thing stood before me.

“I thought about how my senses would ignite, if I was in that room, watching you, and tasting your arousal in the air. I imagined my mouth on your wet cunt…”

“Stop.” She blushed, flattening her hand on my chest, and pushing me away just a millimeter or two, as if that was too much for her.

I stilled. The air grew thick with tension as her tongue darted out to wet her lower lip.

“We shouldn’t.” She blinked, but her hand fisted again, curling around my shirt as if she was ready to rip it open. She wanted me. I wanted her. It was natural, and carnal. It was dark, and depraved.

And it was absolutely right.

“Why not?”

“I’m a married woman.” She said it like a question, not a statement.

“You were married when I took you in my barracks and fucked you into silence in my room.”

She smiled, though she tried to frown it away.

“The shipping container you called a room,” she whispered, her hands relaxing as she played with my top fastened button.

“I remember you against the wall, beside my FAMAS.” My French Army issued rifle had been hung by a strap, dangling beside her bare shoulder.

“You had something else. Another rifle. What was it?”

“An AK-47,” I reminded her. “A bit of an… illegal war trophy.”

Another weapon I had kept neatly nailed against my wall.

“What else was on those walls?” She closed her eyes, as if trying to picture it all.

“My uniforms,” I said, remembering how the green camouflage had undulated and slammed against the wall as I pounded my cock into her.

“The wall was more comfortable than the bed,” she whispered. “I remember you said that.”

“It was true. I slept on a piece of wood, with a sleeping bag, and a rolled-up jacket for a pillow.”

“Nothing but the best for France’s Legionnaires, no?” I hated that she still spoke English.

I knew why she didn’t speak her mother tongue. It all had to do with the man who would die by my bullet or my blade. Or better yet, by the brass knuckles I kept like a good luck charm in my pocket.

“It was more luxury than I needed,” she said, her eyes moving down to my throat, then to the hair on my chest that peaked over the button-down.

“Still… we shouldn’t,” she said, rounding back on the topic we had spoken around.

“ Pourquoi ?” Why?

“Because I have children.”

“Who are grown now.”

“Because…” She swallowed again. “Because it will change everything.”

“Is that so bad?” My words came out harsher than I meant, but I was desperate for her to call on me. I needed her to ask me for help. She had to tell me that she needed her life to change so that I could make it happen.

“Yes,” she said, helplessly, and my heart sank. “Also, no.” My heart lifted again, hanging on her every word. She was toying with what little emotions I had. “I’m scared it could be worse.”

“I’ve seen what he’s done to you,” I choked out, trying to get her to see reason. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes, cheri ,” I whispered. “I watched it.”

She tilted her head. “You watched… what?”

“Two years ago, on April Fifth. I watched while he…”

Her mouth opened and closed, her eyes grew distant, just as I had watched them grow distant on that day as well.

Didn’t she see that there was nothing worse than that? Nothing worse than what she experienced on April Fifth, the day that made me plan for that bastard’s demise.

“Oh,” she said, her voice flat. It was more calm than it should have been, and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what she was thinking. There was no way that the passionate lover that I had would be so calm about… about what he did to her. “You saw that.”

She may as well have been talking about unexpected weather.