“You like this?” he asks.
When I don’t answer, he tugs on my hair.
“I asked you a question. I want to be clear you’re not getting the wrong idea.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Do you like my hands on your pussy?” he asks, his tone harsh. “If you’re my whore, I want to know.”
That word makes me flinch. “Hades—”
“Say it. Tell me.” He tugs harder.
“Yes.”
“Do better than that. Tell me what you like.”
“Why are you doing this?”
He draws his hand out of my panties and brings his fingers to my mouth, wipes them across my lips, my face, then opens his belt, undoes his pants and fists his cock with the hand that’s still wet with me.
I watch him stroke himself, long and slow, precum beading the smooth head of his hard cock.
He rises to his feet and I look up at him, feeling the slight pressure on my skull as he keeps my face tilted upward.
“You’re not getting the wrong idea, are you, Persephone?”
“What?”
“Don’t stop looking at me,” he says as he guides his cock into my mouth. “I want to watch you take me when I fuck your face.”
He moves me over him, taking his time, and I do as he says, I keep my eyes on his as he pushes in deeper and deeper. I push against his thighs, but he doesn’t stop and it’s getting harder to keep my eyes on his as he begins to move faster, deeper, cutting off my oxygen as he penetrates my throat.
I shove against his thighs, try to turn my head to get some air.
“You have to learn how to suck my cock if you’re my whore,” he says, tugging hard once. “That’s what you said, isn’t it? That you’re my whore?”
“Hades,” I choke out.
“Take it,” he commands, thrusting. “Take it, Persephone.”
I push against him as his grip tightens and with his other hand, he grabs hold of the edge of the desk and leans over me and I don’t hear him when he speaks, I don’t hear his words as he fucks my face and there’s nothing gentle about this fucking. Nothing tender in his touch.
Tears blur my vision as he nears the end, his cock growing impossibly thicker as I feel that jerk, that twitch before he stills. He makes a sound from deep inside his chest and I feel him empty down my throat, reflex working to swallow all he’s giving me and just when I think I’m going to pass out from lack of oxygen, he pulls out, dropping into his seat. He hugs me to him, my face pressed to his lap.
I listen to his shortened breath and I wipe my tears as I let him hold me like this. Because I need this, need to pretend I’m not what I said I was. Need to pretend I’m more. Just for a few minutes. I need to feel his strength, his dominance. I need to feel him hold me.
But then he abruptly pushes the chair back, releasing me so I drop to my hands.
I look up at him.
He watches me as he stands, looming over me with a look on his face that’s cruel. That’s not my Hades, the man who stayed up to watch me sleep last night. To make sure I was okay.
He tucks himself back into his pants, eyes cold and unreadable.
“Get cleaned up and get out. My driver will take you to see your father and then you’ll go home where you’ll stay until I need your services again.”
He walks away, and I watch him go, watch him walk to the elevator and punch in the code. When the doors open, he turns to me, holding them open. He raises his eyebrows.
I get to my feet, zip up my jeans. I’m unsteady as I walk around his desk and pick up my clutch from last night. I get to the elevator and stop.
“Hayden, I didn’t—”
“I have a busy day.”
I swallow back my hurt and when he reaches up, I think he’s going to hug me or something, but he just wipes his thumb over the corner of my mouth, cleaning off what I couldn’t swallow.
That single act humiliates and hurts more than his words.
I bow my head, unable to look at him. Not wanting him to see me like this. Because it’s my own fault. I deserve this. You reap what you sow, and I sowed distrust.
25
Hayden
I knew today would be a shitty day before it started. This day always is. What just happened with Persephone makes it shittier, but that’s my fault. I guess I’d somehow gotten my hopes up with her.
Anyway, how did I expect this to go? She’s not in my bed by choice. She’s there because she has to be. And maybe she was right to remind me of it. Because maybe I was the one getting the wrong fucking idea.
A glance at the shopping bag in the passenger seat of the SUV has my mind shifting gears to Nora. I start the engine and pull out of my parking spot.
There was no suicide note, but the coroner still ruled her death a suicide. She’d swallowed enough sleeping pills to put a horse out and just to be sure, she’d slit her wrists. I wonder if the pills had started their work or if she felt any pain.
The last time I’d seen her was that Halloween, just days before she did it. That night was a line of demarcation in all our lives.
Nora and I weren’t blood. My father adopted her when she was nine. I loved her, though. Right away. I had an idea what she’d come from. I’d woken her up from nightmares that seemed to stalk her nightly and every time, she’d just smile and hug me and refuse to tell me a word of what haunted her.
The memory tightens my chest. My dad may have been shitty to me but I’m sure it was nothing to what she’d been through. Not if I remember the terror in her eyes on those nights.
When Persephone moved in next door, they instantly became friends.
I wonder if Persephone remembers today is Nora’s birthday.
As I approach the building that houses my father’s office, I force thoughts of Nora out of my mind. There’s time to think about her. To remember her. Right now, though, I need to talk to my father.
I park and climb out, looking up at the high-rise in the posh neighborhood. It’s one of his own buildings and he’s mortgaged to his eyeballs, a fact he doesn’t know I know. I wonder if he could sell the plot of land the Montgomery ruin stands on, he would.
His hands are tied, though.
That house has been the seat of the Montgomery family for generations. If he tries to sell it, he loses it and, as first-born, it becomes mine. But if he holds onto it, when he dies, he can leave it to whichever of us he wants. I’m guessing that’ll be Jonas who isn’t even a Montgomery by blood.
I’m sure my grandfather will flip in his grave when that day comes.
I enter the building, half-expecting to be turned away. I wouldn’t be surprised if my father banned me from entering the premises. I push the button to call the elevator and take off my gloves as I wait for it to descend. In a few minutes, I’m riding up to the twenty-second floor.
There, the receptionist greets me, quickly hiding her surprise at seeing me there. I smile and bypass her to walk through the office, aware of the silence that descends as people recognize me, the whispers that follow in my wake.
My father’s secretary is on her feet and around the desk before I get to his door. The receptionist must have notified her.
“Hayden. What a surprise. How are you?” she asks awkwardly.