HADES Read online

  Still, that begged the question, “If you knew where I was this whole time, why didn’t you come get me before now and drag me back down to Louisiana?”

  “Because…” To my surprise, Hades swallowed, and he actually looked nervous, as he confessed, “Six months wasn’t that long of a time to uncover your location, but it was long enough for me to think about all the things I’d done to you…and what you said about how ma mère would’ve hated what I’d become. That sat on my soul. And by the time I tracked you down, I realized I didn’t have any right to show my face here. Not yet. Because I wasn’t the man you deserved. Becoming Galen Fairgood took some time. And I was still working out all the details. But then Vampire called, letting me know he tracked you down too—due to a Polaroid some cousin of his found of you and me. From Des-E’s birthday party. Remember that?”

  Of course, I remembered that. It was the one memento I had from our three years together. And for some reason, even after everything he’d done, I hadn’t been able to throw it away.

  “You didn’t throw it away,” he said as if reading my thoughts. “And that made me think…hope…that meant you hadn’t thrown me away. That if I promised to be better this time, to treat you like treasure and never hurt you again that maybe we could…”

  He set the white bag he’d kept a hold of when I roundhouse him on the table. Now that I was closer, I could see the logo for Adler’s, a fine jewelry store on Canal Street in New Orleans.

  It was the kind of place husbands went to get gifts for both their mistresses and their wives when they found out about each other. But if Hades thought a nice necklace or some earrings would make me forget everything that happened between us, he had to be out of his mind.

  But instead of a large necklace case, he brought out three ring boxes.

  And my heart nearly stopped beating when he opened each one up to reveal three stunning wedding rings.

  “Choose whichever one you want,” Hades said. “It doesn’t matter. I wanted them to symbolize a possible future for us. One where you have choices and as much freedom as you desire. And I know I can’t magically change the past or wipe the slate clean. That’s impossible. But you kept that Polaroid, and I’m hoping there’s still a chance we can create a new future together. One filled with love and a respectable job and eventually children if you want to grace me with them.”

  I…I couldn’t figure out what to say. And I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t figure out what to say. I mean, this was the man who terrorized me, who shot my father in cold blood in front of me. Of course, I couldn’t say yes to his outrageous three-wedding-ring proposal, get married to him like I was still a romance-stricken sixteen-year-old girl, and act like those three terrible years never happened.

  Of course, I couldn’t do that.

  So why wasn’t I able to open my mouth and tell him no?

  I abruptly stood. “I…I have to go.”

  Hades stood too.

  “Ma belle,” he started to say, even though I was dressed in my new standard uniform of sweat shorts and a hoodie.

  “You said I was free to go after I heard you out. If you’re serious about this…” I waved a hand at the three rings still sitting between our plates of uneaten food on the table. “Then don’t pressure me for an answer. Let me think. For once, give me room and let me think.”

  Hades had swapped out his motorcycle jacket for a suit. But he hadn’t changed that much.

  I could almost see his inner gator fighting not to bite down and keep me there with him.

  But in the end, he told me “I’m staying at the Benton Columbus until the house I had built for us is done. Come find me there when you’re ready.”

  When I was ready, not if. Don’t think I didn’t notice that he was assuming I’d actually go for this. That he’d built a house for us, apparently—all because of one silly Polaroid.

  A Polaroid he should have never found out about in the first place.

  Call it transference, when I got on my bike and left the diner, instead of going to my place to pack my things and run even if Hades vowed he’d find me, I headed straight over to Benjamin Brady Keane’s condominium.

  Almost a year later I find myself on the foyer steps in the house Hades built for us, waiting for him to get home from his Sunday jog.

  “Ma belle, what are you doing here?”

  His expression is somehow awe-filled and wary all at once. As if I’m the beautiful alligator. Not him.

  “I remembered. I remembered everything,” I answer, rising to my feet with the backpack I just grabbed from upstairs. The same one I was carrying the night of my accident. “Why didn't you tell me what really happened? You know, the part where you actually asked me to marry you? For real not pretend?”

  He rubs a hand over the back of his neck and winces. “I didn’t think letting you know I had showed up out of the blue to propose the same night you got into your accident would have helped matters any.”

  “No, they probably wouldn’t have,” I agree, thinking back to how confused I was the evening of his huge confession. “And maybe….”

  I look down, then back up at him. “Maybe this was for the best.”

  The hope I dashed when I left him behind in Iowa flares back into his silver gaze, even as he asks, “What do you mean?”

  “You know, my therapist and I talked a lot about your cousin Woods before he cleared me to move on with my life,” I told Hades, fingering the backpack’s strap. “That story was so important to me. But now that I’ve gotten my download, I can’t help but wonder if maybe your cousin didn’t want to remember his repellant past. Maybe somewhere deep down inside of him, he knew if he did it would mess everything up.”

  Back when he was a crimelord, Hades tended to have a smooth answer for most things. But tonight he actually stutters when he asks, “Wha—what are you trying to tell me? I don’t—I don’t understand.”

  “No, of course, you don’t.” I come the rest of the way down the stairs and close a little bit more of the distance between us. “Because I didn’t understand, even when I had all my memories. That’s been bothering me, you know. That I lost such a specific amount time. Lucas and my father’s death—basically all the stuff that wouldn’t have allowed me to have a relationship with the dream guy I met by that pool.”

  He looks even more confused now, and it’s my turn to give him an apologetic wince. “Anyway, I thought I hadn’t left myself any clues about the status of our relationship. But as it turned out, I did. I just didn’t know where to look.

  I pull my old crocheting business notebook out of the backpack and turn it to the very last page as I explain, “I barely paid attention to this notebook. I thought it was just a bunch of numbers from some crocheting business I didn’t understand why I’d started in the first place. But after I remembered everything, I came back here and found this right where I left it. I wrote this letter to you in a coffeeshop right after I chewed Benjamin out about going through my things. It’s my response to your proposal. And I was headed toward your hotel to drop it off. Here, read it.”

  Hades takes the notebook from me with a confused frown and starts reading out loud. “Dear Hades, Yes…”

  His voice catches with emotion, and he has to swallow before he’s able to complete the first line of my letter. “Yes, I will marry you. Under the following conditions.”

  He knits his eyebrow as he reads the rest in an increasingly bemused tone. “One: we date for at least a year to make sure you’re not still a total fucking psycho. Two: You never hurt, kidnap, or threaten me or anyone I love again—even if they don’t deserve my love like my father didn’t. Three: I get to punish you however I see fit. If these terms are agreeable to you, sign below and return this very informal but legally-binding contract to me at my apartment. I’d put my address on here too, but you’re a legit stalker, so we both know you’ve already figured out where I live.”

  The last line is sort of funny but Hades doesn’t laugh.

&nbs
p; "I chose you that night,” I softly explain into his silence. “I chose you. Just like I chose you when I was in that hospital bed. Then and now, I want to make it work.”

  Hades says nothing. He only stands there, reading and re-reading my handwritten contract-letter. For so long, I begin to shift uncomfortably.

  Should I not have made assumptions about how he’d respond to this letter? Is he cursing me for all I put him through in Iowa when my much-delayed memory download would have saved us a lot of grief? Is this contract something he had way too much pride to agree to, no matter what he said about wanting to make things up to me?

  He answers all my questions with a sudden ear-splitting grin. “Hot damn, ma belle! Hand me a pen!”

  Luckily, I just so happened to have one of those in my backpack as well.

  CHAPTER 30

  HADES

  Just a few days later, Hades rues the day he agreed to a contract with that fou diablesse. His Nanan Cherise warned him heartily against this when he was under her care—both signing contracts and taking up with devil women too dazzling to be true.

  Had he really signed Stephanie’s contract without a moment of hesitation? If only he’d truly understood. At the time he had come to the conclusion that love wasn’t something to be denied or used as a weapon against his enemy. It could and would be his salvation he decided with a few jaunty strokes of the pen she produced from her backpack.

  Connerie…

  He was such a fool.

  “It’s up again….” a voice said in the dark.

  Non, non, non! Hades bit down on his back teeth to keep from cursing out loud. It was the middle of the night. Maybe if he lay there quietly, she wouldn’t bother to—

  A lamp next to their bed flips on before he can finish that hopeful thought, revealing Stephanie in all her naked she-devil glory.

  This did not aid him in his mental quest to quell the flesh below his waist, which was currently “up again”—standing at full attention like a monument dedicated to the beauty who somehow seemed to sense whenever he was aroused.

  “Poor baby….” She crawls between his legs. They, like his arms, have been tied with ropes to hooks lodged underneath the bed.

  “Here, let me help you with that,” she says, her voice sweet as beignet sugar.

  More connerie.

  This punishment he agreed to had been going on for days at this point with only bathroom and meal breaks in between.

  She isn’t going to help him. She’ll only make the problem worse.

  He lets out an agonized bellow when she takes him in her warm cave of a mouth, and his back arches off the bed. Why, in God’s name, did something so damn mean have to feel so damn good? Stephanie had never given any man a blow job a few days ago, but now she’s become somewhat of a studied expert, flicking her tongue under the underside of his hood while she massages the seam of his scrotum with her thumb.

  He promised himself two days ago that he’d keep his eyes closed when she did this. That he would maintain some pride and wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of being watched while she tortured him.

  But it’s the middle of the night, and his self-control is basically a swamp boat sputtering on fumes.

  He takes the risk of looking down his body at her.

  And as soon as she sees him watching her slide those pretty lips up and down his straining cock, she abandons his scrotum massage for the much more visually stimulating action of her fisting him with one hand. And her other hand…

  Stephanie damn him.

  She’s using it on her own pussy. Rubbing at her sensitive clit, she’s making herself moan in a way that sends pulsing vibrations up his dick.

  Righteous indignation sparks in his chest. He never stroked himself off while he was attending to her. He wants to rant at her for her cruelty, but it wouldn’t make any difference. He’s found out the hard, extremely unsatisfying way over the last few days that his beauty is much meaner than she appears.

  If he complains about her treatment of him, she’ll only laugh and ask him several rhetorical questions about how it feels to be the one being tortured now.

  In any case, his choice to look down at her cost him. His cock starts to spasm, and that makes her immediately release him from her mouth. Cool air replaces her warm mouth. And the now all too familiar sensation of getting blocked off from pleasure right before he’s about to go over the cliff’s edge rips through him.

  If that’s not bad enough, she rises to her knees, her hand still working between her own legs while she looks him directly in the eye. “You’re done. But I’m not.”

  This cruel, cruel diablesse.

  He also promised himself he wouldn’t beg anymore. How many times had he already offered her anything, anything she wanted to just keep going.

  But the words slip out before his pride can block them. “Don’t, cher bebe. You’re tearing me apart. I can’t take the sight of you doing that—not again! Merde!”

  He chokes out the last cuss when his cock shoots off without warning, spitting cum at just the sight of her.

  But this isn’t like a normal release. No relief follows it, just a few little pitiful sparks of something that could be pleasure if his arms and legs weren’t fucking tied down. After his cock’s done with its crying spell, it remains painfully erect. And it pulses dangerously. Like a volcano that’s been kept from erupting for days—way too many days of edging.

  Hades groans with frustration and bangs his head against the back of the bed.

  The love of his life laughs, actually laughs…before she falls down to one hand and finds her own pleasure with several breathy moans.

  This can’t be enough for her either. He aches to give her pleasure way greater than anything she could do with her own hand.

  But he’s aware that her acting like she prefers this dynamic is part of the punishment. When she retreats to her side of the bed with a happy sigh, it’s meant to make him feel helpless and useless—just a fraction of what he made her feel over her three years of captivity.

  He’s stopped calling her Persy over the last few days. Even inside his mind.

  A ding sounds, and Stephanie scoops up her phone instead of turning off the light. Like the device is way more interesting than the man she’s got tied up in bed.

  “Hey, it’s a message from Lukas!” she says. “He says he’s circling back around on the meeting I had with Melinka Hale, the Executive Director of Weiss Fox Cares.”

  Hades grinds his teeth. That beer bitch got her number somehow and is circling back around? More like circling like a vulture. Don’t react. Don’t react.

  “He said he talked to Melinka Hale and the rest of the Weiss Fox Cares team, and they’re all in for our “2050 Tiny Houses by 2050” project. Isn’t that nice of him?”

  His blood begins to boil. Don’t react. Don’t react.

  “I should send him a gift,” Stephanie says. “Something better than our usual partner basket.”

  She actually sits all the way up and swings her feet over the side of the bed. “You know what, I’m going to my office and look up some ideas for—”

  There are no more inner commands given not to react. No conscious decision made at all.

  Just the ripping sound of the ropes’ hooks tearing away from where she anchored them beneath the bed.

  And then she’s on her back, and Hades is on top of her in an instant.

  “You’ve been punishing me 24/7 for days—not hours—days,” he rasps, his voice the coarsest grade of sandpaper. “And you think you get to leave me here while you go look up presents for your beer bitch ex?”

  Stephanie should be scared. His big body is thundering with rage.

  But she just smirks and says, “There he is. I wondered when you would show back up. Hi, Hades.”

  This fou diablesse….

  He stares at her for a hot second.

  Then he circles her throat with his hand and punches his hips forward.

  There isn’t any talking
after that. No more games or teasing. Just the sound of their slapping bodies as he beast fucks her into the bed.

  Persy shows back up, too. Her moans get louder and louder until another orgasm—a much stronger, ego-repairing orgasm—crests over her.

  Hades captures her lips as she scream-sobs into his mouth with her pussy contracting around his dick—handily proving his point about her hand not being as satisfying as his cock.

  But he doesn’t get much of a chance to feel smug. Her sweet cunt’s gripping him so tight, it sends him into a frenzy.

  And the next thing he knows, he’s yelling too, babbling in French about how much he fucking loves her. How he’ll never stop loving her even if she leaves him a million times. How he’ll spend the rest of his life making sure she always happily chooses him.

  That night Stephanie performs the pregnancy test and they both wait on the result in the bathroom together.

  Which turns out to be a bad idea for Stephanie. She was murmuring some kind of nonsense about them getting back to their normally scheduled lives now that his punishment was done while she peed on the stick.

  But when those two pink lines come up almost immediately, they don’t even make it out of the bathroom. Hades is on her in an instant, kissing her and lifting her up to the bathroom counter and refilling her with his cock.

  “Forget our jobs, ma belle,” he tells her as he takes her hard against the sink. “We’re taking tomorrow off too, and maybe a couple more days after that. You saved me from myself. And I got a lot of merci beaucoup planned for you.”

  She’s not his prisoner anymore, but she immediately gives in with a wry chuckle. Then a long moan when he loves her into another orgasm.

  Who knows what’s going on with

  the original Hades and Persephone

  these days?

  * * *

  But this one?