A Game of Retribution (Hades Saga #2)

Hades’s brows slammed down over his eyes, and Hermes’s next two words had him out of his seat.

“It’s Persephone.”

He did not need to say anything more, and they were teleporting, appearing before a curtained lounge with white couches. The air was thick with a suffocating white smoke that flashed bright with colors as music roared around them. Hades knew this club. It was the Seven Muses, and it was owned by Apollo, who sat on one of the couches, looking bored while Persephone lay on the one opposite at an odd angle, as if she’d collapsed there. Her eyes were closed and she wore nothing but mesh and gold leaves.

While he liked the dress, he would have preferred being the sole person to

have seen her in it. She needed a gods-damned blanket, but the best he could do now was call up his glamour to conceal the booth.

Hades ground his teeth. This had to be part of her fucking bargain with Apollo.

“What happened?” he demanded.

“What does it look like?” Apollo asked. “She drank too much.”

Hades glared at the god, who was perfectly sober. Persephone had not had years to build up a tolerance to alcohol like the rest of them. She could still get drunk, though unlike mortals, her body could recover far faster.

“I tried to get her to leave after she threw up the first time,” said Zofie.

“But she refused.”

As he stared down at Persephone, she opened her eyes. She did not seem to realize where she was and her brows furrowed.

“There you are, Sephy,” Hermes said, sitting near her head. “You had us worried.”

She kept staring at him, and Hades wasn’t sure she heard the god at all.

Finally, she glanced up at him and asked, “Why did you call him? He hates me.”

Hates me? Hades’s whole body recoiled at those words. When had he given the impression that he hated her? He’d gone to her work hours ago to beg her to hear him out about the Leuce situation. He took a breath, reminding himself that she was, in fact, incapacitated at the moment.

Though the words still ate at him.

Instead of denying her statement, Hermes said, “Blame Zofie.”

Hades gazed at the god questioningly, but if he had to guess, since Zofie was the aegis, she’d insisted that Hermes get help. He felt a bit of relief that the Amazon had accompanied them. Likely Persephone would have continued to lie here under the scrutiny of the club otherwise.

He lowered to his knee beside her. “Can you stand? I’d rather not carry you out of this place.”

Once more, she frowned. A touch of hurt bled into her eyes before anger pushed her into a seated position. He tried to hand her a glass of water Zofie had pushed into his hands, but she refused it, mouth tight.

“If you don’t want to be seen with me, why don’t you teleport?”

Obviously, she had forgotten how jarring teleportation could be. “If I teleport, you might throw up. I’ve been told you’ve already done that once tonight.”

Hades got to his feet as she rose and swayed. He caught her around the waist. For a moment, she sunk into him, and he welcomed the way she let her head rest on his chest, but when his arm tightened around her, she pushed against him.

A wave of frustration made Hades feel heated. He wasn’t doing a very good job of schooling his features either. He felt the coldness of his gaze in his core.

“Let’s go,” she said and turned from him, holding her head high as she made a path out of the club.

Hades cast a spiteful glance at Apollo, Hermes, and Zofie before following her.

Antoni waited, opening the door as soon as he saw them emerge from the club, and despite their obvious dark moods, he smiled.

“My lady.”

“Antoni,” she said with a crisp nod, which was far from her usually warm reception of anyone who wasn’t Hades at this point. He watched as she bent and crawled into the back of the Lexus on her hands and knees. Thank fuck he had continued to cloak them in glamour so that the world hadn’t seen her ass.

Once the door was closed, they were locked inside with their anger, a tension that built and made him feel electric. Usually, he’d work through this physically, but there was a long list of reasons he couldn’t do that this time, among them that Persephone was not sober. It didn’t stop him from fantasizing, though, which was both satisfying and torturous.

He considered what he would do first, which likely would be pressing his mouth to hers and drawing her thighs apart. He would slide his fingers along her core, then sink into her silken heat. They would both moan because of how long it had been since they had become lost in each other.

And after she was spent by his hand, he would draw her into his lap, take out his cock, and help her ride him until he came inside her so hard, she could taste it in the back of her throat, and even in that aftermath, he would lay her down and put his mouth on her clit and revel in how she tasted like him.

He shifted in his seat, his cock hard with these thoughts. There was a certain relief that came when they arrived at Nevernight, knowing he would soon be out of this suffocating cabin where their emotions were too high and too heavy. Persephone must have thought the same thing, because she was out the door before Antoni could open it. Hades followed as quickly as he could, but not before she fell on the hard cement sidewalk.

“My lady!”

“I’m fine,” she said as the cyclops offered a hand to help her to her feet, though as she shifted to sit, they both saw what a mess her knee was. It was more than a scratch; the skin was broken and blood welled in large bubbles, sliding down her leg.

She stared at it and frowned, then looked up at them. “It’s okay. I don’t even feel it.”

She tried to stand twice, during which Antoni moved behind her just in case she started to fall. When it was clear she wasn’t going to get up on her own, she took a breath.

“You know, I think I’ll just sit here for a little while.”

This was getting ridiculous. Hades realized she didn’t really want his touch, but he wasn’t going to wait outside while she sobered up, especially

while she was bleeding, so he gathered her into his arms and carried her into Nevernight, nodding to Mekonnen, who had come outside to hold the door open for them.

He took her downstairs into the empty club, having closed nearly three hours ago. Persephone had definitely been out later than usual. He headed behind the bar and sat her down before lifting her onto the counter. Then he reached for a glass and filled it with water.

“What are you doing?”

He pushed the glass into her hands. “Drink.”

To his relief, she obeyed, which left him to focus on cleaning her knee. He felt far less frantic about this wound—it was nothing like witnessing her body perforated by thorns. Still, that thought did not help him here, because it reminded him of how much danger she was in even from herself.

He removed his jacket and filled another glass with water to use on her injury. He would have used his magic to heal her, but it had to be clean first, so he set to work, folding a cloth to go under her leg before cleaning away the grime. Once he was finished and the area was dry, he healed it. There was a strange relief that came with seeing her whole.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He had not heard those words in a long time. He took a step back until he could lean against the opposite counter, drawing his arms over his chest. He stared at her in her leaves and her lace. She was beyond stunning, and as much as he liked the outfit, there was a part of him that wanted to rage that so many had witnessed her in it before him.

“Are you punishing me?”

She frowned. “What?”

“This,” he said. “The clothes, Apollo, the drinking?”

She looked down at the dress and back up at him. “You don’t like my clothes?”

That is not what I said, he thought as he stared at her. Then he noted the defiant set to her mouth as she pushed off the counter and reached for the hem of her dress.

Hades stiffened…everywhere. “What are you doing?”

“Taking off the dress,” she said.

“I can see that,” he said, eyes narrowing, though he tried not to smile.

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