HADES Page 11

  Benjamin tamps down a smile. He’s aware that Tess doesn’t exactly approve of how much money he spends on his little girl. But she’s his only daughter, and he missed the first twelve years of Daphne’s life. Not spoiling her wasn’t an option in his mind.

  “Is that why you’re here to talk to me?” he asks. “You’re upset about Daphne’s allowance?”

  “Yes, I am upset about that amount of money being given to a teenager on a weekly basis,” Tess answers stiffly. Then she sighs. “But that’s not what I’m here to talk with you about. I, uh…I need your help.”

  Everything inside of Benjamin stills.

  Tess.

  Tess is at his door, saying she needs his help.

  It takes him a few choked-up tries to talk, but eventually he manages, “Anything…I’ll help you with anything you need. Come on up.”

  CHAPTER 14

  STEPHANIE

  I’m in a garden surrounded by the fragrant smell of roses when I hear a rustle. The garden was designed to walk around in during the day with the bright sun shining overhead. It’s almost two AM, with only thin slivers of light from the house’s security lights to relieve the otherwise complete and utter darkness.

  My rapidly beating heart jerks to a terrified stop. There’s a chance that rustle came from her. My would-be savior. But there’s an even bigger likelihood it came from him.

  I hold my breath.

  Then a shadow too small to be him appears in front of me.

  “Stephanie, are you out here?” it whispers. “It’s me. Amira!”

  My chest fills with sweet relief. But then a pounding sound makes me jump. And someone far away demands to know, “Persy! Persy! Where are you?"

  I awake with a start in a place I don’t remember.

  But I immediately recognize the voice beyond the closed bedroom door calling out, “Persy! Where are you? I know you’re in my house!”

  Galen?

  I sit up in bed, and that’s when I register the scene in front of me. Not my usual morning view of floor-to-ceiling glass but old-fashion bay windows with a little ledge to sit on and everything. And it’s not a lake on the other side of the glass but an entire bayou.

  It all comes back to me in an instant.

  The huge fight with Galen, followed by the all-night drive to get to this boyhood home in Louisiana. I had considered taking him to the Tessier Ball, then bringing him here for our anniversary. I’d gotten as far as printing out directions before dismissing it because I didn’t want to drag him down to Louisiana in the middle of the workweek.

  Instead, I decided to scale down my big gesture to recreating a romantic evening at home—one I’d hoped would end with us having sex the way I wanted. The way my body sensed we had before, even if my mind couldn’t remember the details.

  I tried to reason myself out of being upset at how he responded to my attempt to dress the same shockingly sexy way I had for our first Tessier Ball. And I thought not making a big fuss about him forgetting our anniversary was me being generous with a big helping of sweet wife on top.

  But when I saw him in the shower, I was done being reasonable. Generous could go to hell. The obstinance I couldn’t remember acquiring suddenly took charge and told me what to do.

  And that was how I ended up driving down here to his stilted house on the bayou by myself and falling in an exhausted heap into the first bed I came across.

  The plan was to stay down here for a few days, give him a chance to miss me, and maybe, just maybe, give in to my demands as opposed to taking care of himself in the shower.

  But, apparently, he'd found me.

  Feeling a little like Goldilocks, I climb out of bed just as he comes crashing through the door like a bear.

  My heart catches at the sight of him.

  He’s still dressed in the suit he was wearing last night when he came home to our surprise anniversary dinner, and his usual gelled-back pompadour is a crazed mess. He must not have gotten to his shower shave. His face is stubbled over with beard shadow. And his eyes are bloodshot in the same way they were when I woke up to find him beside my hospital bed.

  But now, instead of looking worried, his face is a thundercloud, and his silver eyes glitter with murderous intent.

  “Where is he?”

  I look from side to side. “Where is who?”

  “Your ex-boyfriend,” he bites out.

  At first, I’m totally confused. I almost ask, “What ex-boyfriend?”

  But then I remember the text I sent before surrendering to exhaustion. The one designed for maximum pettiness.

  Embarrassment creeps up my spine.

  “Where is he?” Galen stomps over to the closet and yanks open the door, looking for the ex I claimed to have brought here to his boyhood home.

  Okay, hindsight being 20/20, with a few hours of sleep on top, sending that text might not have been my wisest move.

  “Galen…” I start to say.

  “I’m going to kill him.” Galen drops down to his knees to search under the bed. “I’m going to tear that beer bitch limb from limb.”

  Oh God, can this situation get any crazier? Regrets begin to pile up like a multi-car crash on I-70 during a blizzard.

  “Galen, there’s nobody but me here,” I insist. “I swear to you!”

  He jumps to his feet and glares at me. “Then why did you say you brought your ex-boyfriend here? To my fucking house?”

  I swallow nervously.

  He’s never…he’s never cursed at me before.

  And I can tell this isn’t a subject Galen’s just going to let go of, like, “Okay, honey. If you say there’s nobody here, I trust you. Let’s just go home and forget about this argument like you forgot all about those nine years.”

  I wish. But no…

  Giving in with a sigh, I walk over to the large Birkin bag I tossed on top of one of the chairs standing in front of the bay window. More guilt assails me when I remember he got me this bag for Christmas, and I made him a crocheted gift. Even worse, I’d used his generous gift to transport something he would not like down to his special place on the bayou.

  “I found him in all those boxes the movers dropped off when you had them pack up my apartment.…”

  I reach into the Birkin, and instead of revealing the man I’d led Galen to believe I would actually bring to his boyhood home, I pull out a huge rubber phallus…with a suction cup attached.

  “Apparently, I liked my sex toys embarrassingly large, and, ah, able to stick to flat surfaces,” I try to joke.

  Galen looks at the dildo. Then at me. His silver eyes flash. And the next thing I know, he’s snatched the sex toy from my hand, and he’s turning one of the bay window’s hand cranks until it opens just enough for him to…

  I gasp when he sends the sex toy that must have kept me company during our years apart flying. It turns over a few times—cock hood over suction cup balls—before the bayou swallows it up. And that’s the last I ever see of that toy again.

  “Hey!” I protest. “I paid a lot of money for that toy…I think. I’m pretty sure it vibrated—”

  Galen pushes me onto the bed without warning. “What did you think you were doing, making me believe you had another man in here with you?”

  I’m too shocked to answer. He has me on my knees with the side of my face pressed into the mattress and my butt in the air. His hand is at the back of my neck, and he’s not choking me, but his arm is a steel bar. I can’t move. Can’t press myself up.

  The cocktail dress has flipped up, and I’m deeply aware that I didn’t bother with panties before storming out of the house last night. My sex is totally exposed in broad daylight.

  “Is this what you wanted, you spoiled little brat?” a dark and ominous version of Galen’s voice asks above me.

  There comes an unzipping sound, then a piece of stone presses into the back of my sex. It’s his cock, I realize. Too hard, too big to fit.

  Yet, my folds clench, wanting him inside.

&n
bsp; “Look at you, dripping all over it.” His voice is a cruel scientist, reporting the biological facts. “You don’t care how bad you scared me. That you had me busting up in here, ready to kill. You want me unhinged. You want me to punish you with this big cock.”

  Oh God, he was accusing me of such terrible things. So why was it turning me on so much?

  “I wasn’t,” I whine. “I didn’t think you’d take me seriously. Come down here….I didn’t think you’d do it.”

  “No, you knew I’d take you seriously.” His voice is little more than a low growl. “You didn’t think I’d find you. But I always find you. Always.”

  His words scare me. But they thrill me even more. I feel myself become helplessly slick, even as I defend my actions. “I was just upset. I didn’t think it would come to this.”

  Galen makes a disbelieving grunt. “If that’s the case, if you didn’t know exactly how you were torturing your poor husband, wait for me to cool down,” he answers. “Stay still. Don’t move until I come to my senses.”

  It’s like he’s some kind of teacher-predator. Holding me down to eat me alive and advising me on how to escape him at the same time.

  At first, I still in the classic way of the prey who knows not moving is her only chance of survival. But then a thought reappears in my head. A terrible, ugly thought I shouldn’t have had back then or now.

  Galen Fairgood could ruin me. With just a few words.

  But I don’t want to escape that fate. I want him to ruin me. I want this predator to eat me alive.

  “What are you doing?” he says when I reach back and grab ahold of the cock he’s threatening me with. “Merde, what are you doing?”

  He’s so thick, so hard, but I take him in my hand and tuck the dripping tip into my narrow tunnel with an aching moan.

  “Don’t do this,” he growls. "Don’t do this unless you want me to lose my mind.”

  “Please, please…” I beg. But this is not like when he’s sexing me with his mouth and fingers. I’m not shamelessly wanton. Sick shame fills my belly as I grind myself into his hood. Because I can’t stop. I want this so bad. “Plea—”

  I don’t get the chance to finish uttering my third please because suddenly there are no more choices to be made.

  He’s on top of me like a partially clothed animal, shoving himself into me with a mean grunt.

  The sound that comes out of my mouth…Not a gasp. Not a scream. It’s some kind of animal cry filled with both pain and relief. He so big inside of me, touching every wall. I claw at the sheets and flail underneath him. Trying to get away. Trying to spread my legs for more.

  “That’s right, take this dick, rich girl,” he says, his voice rough in my ear. “This is what you wanted from me, what you couldn’t ever get from anybody but me. Say it. Say yes so I can fuck you into this bed the way you want.”

  My body spikes and squirms at his cruel command, and my pussy spasms around his thick staff in anticipation. How can something so dirty feel so good?

  “Yes,” I agree as best I can with his crushing weight on top of me. “Yes, this is what I want. Please, take me, Galen. Please!”

  He downshifts on top of me, somehow filling me with even more of his cock. Then he’s giving me what I want with great heaves of his god-like body. Faster and faster until a slapping sound fills the room.

  It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. But somehow, I know it in my bones.

  We’ve been here before, and we’re finally here again.

  He conquers me with his weight, his heavy, slapping strokes flattening me into the mattress as he relentlessly plows into my sex. Planting, I realize in some dim corner of my brain. He’s preparing my body to take his seed.

  That thought sends me over a sharp cliff edge I didn’t see coming, wrenching me abruptly into an orgasm I’m not prepared for mentally or physically.

  Something white hot explodes inside of me—melting me, blinding me, destroying me with its light.

  I can only move one arm in this position, and I use it to touch my beautiful husband, the feral animal on top of me. To cup the back of his neck and hug him with my hand as I whisper, “Thank you!”

  “Don’t thank me,” he growls. “Don’t—”

  A tortured sound leaves him. Like he’s frustrated and enraged, mad at me and himself. But mostly me.

  Then I’m filled with jets of warm cum. So much cum.

  “Oh, oh….” The nasty deluge, coupled with the continued pressure against my sensitive clit, makes my body start spasming again. I’m coming a second time. And when I begin to float back down from my second orgasm, he fills me with another load.

  How? What?

  My confused, overstimulated body doesn’t know what to do. And the next thing I know, a third orgasm is overwhelming me.

  I go somewhere else for a while, someplace where there’s no sight, sound, or language.

  Only white-hot, intense pleasure bursting inside of me.

  And when I come back, he’s still pumping into me, still hard, even though my sex is covered in his cum because he’s already released two monster deluges inside of me.

  “This is what you do to me,” he’s mumbling into my neck. “This is why I tried to hold back…three years…you destroyed me when you left...can’t stop…hate you…hate myself.”

  He’s barely comprehensible, and he’s so far gone, I’m not even sure he can hear me. But I cry out, “I’m sorry! Please, I’m so sorry for leaving you! Please don’t hate me because I love you. So much, Galen. I love you so much!”

  My apology gets through to him. He stops pumping as abruptly as he began.

  “Ma belle,” he rasps out. “What have I done?”

  He pulls out of the slick mess he’s made of my sex and collapses beside me.

  “I’m sorry.” He no longer sounds angry. Just confused. And disappointed. “I was trying…I thought I could be different this time….I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  Every inch of my body is sore and tender. And my mother always cautioned me against sounding what she termed “too Black.” But the frank tone my culture is known for shows up in high effect when I answer him, “Don’t be sorry, baby. Man, that was amazing. You rocked my world. Mon beau for real.”

  I reach over to take his large hand in both of mine. It shakes inside of my clasp, like he is in shell shock. And I can’t say I don’t understand exactly how he feels.

  “Was it always like that?” I ask, my voice full of wonder and awe. “Sex between us?”

  He’s quiet for so long, I begin to wonder if maybe he’s too upset to answer. But then he says, “Every time was different. When you gave me your virginity, I was careful with you. I didn’t want to hurt you. So, sometimes it was sweet and quiet. But sometimes it was an explosion. It was never just one thing.”

  “I, um…” I have to push past a whole lot of upbringing to confess, “I like how you took me. It made me feel wanted, yet weirdly secure. I’m not upset. Like, at all.”

  “You should be upset.” His voice comes out hard and tight, and he pulls his hand out of mine.

  He’s still there, but I can already feel the distance forming between us.

  I don’t want to widen the rift, but I have to ask, “Why did you call me by that other name earlier.”

  He visibly stiffens. “What name?”

  “Persy,” I answer. “Was that some pet name or something? What does it stand for?”

  His eyes fill with horror. Then he clenches his jaw. “I shouldn’t have done that. Let myself lose control.”

  “Galen—” I start to say.

  He gets up from the bed—before I can figure out how to make him feel better about the incredible sex we just had—and practically slams into the bathroom.

  Leaving me behind to feel weirdly guilty for making him lose control.

  But there’s also something else happening inside of me. Pride.

  We had sex. Wild, penetrative, weirdly erotic, unprotected S.E.X.


  I could be pregnant. And if I’m pregnant, there’s no way he’ll keep withholding the kind of lovemaking I want. The kind of sex we used to have in between all the other kinds of sex I can’t remember—but somehow know I’ll like.

  As good as I try to be, maybe, deep down inside, I really am a spoiled little brat.

  Despite my guilt, my lips curl into a cunning smile.

  If it turns out we really did make a baby today, this could solve all our problems.

  Everything is going to be okay.

  CHAPTER 15

  GALEN

  Everything is not okay.

  A few weeks later, the morning before they’re scheduled to have dinner with Desmond Keane and his wife Lena, Hades and Persy get in yet another fight about his refusal to have the kind of sex she wants. And pointing out that his losing control at the bayou house was a mistake only makes it worse.

  “I’m glad the only time you decided not to treat me like an invalid was a mistake,” she says, her eyes flashing with hurt. “What are we going to do if I don’t get my next period, then? Are you going to make me get an abortion because you don’t think I’m capable of mothering a child?”

  Of course, he wouldn’t do that. And that she would accuse him of such a thing cut him like a knife.

  She takes it back almost immediately after saying it. They apologize to each other, and he reiterates how much he loves her—that all he wants to do is give her pleasure. That he’s willing to sacrifice his own sexual needs as long as it takes for her to regain her memories.

  But that’s no longer enough after what passed at the bayou house. This version of Stephanie seems to be done with settling for his hands and mouth.

  “I love you too, and I’m grateful you’ve been so patient with me,” she says, cupping his face. “But the fact is, I might never get my memories back. So, I’m going to pick up a pregnancy test after I get off work, and if it’s positive, we’ll still have dinner with the Keanes. But after that, we’re going to have a long, long talk about changing our current dynamic. Okay?”