The Eighth House: Hades & Persephone by Eris Adderly

VI SERVICE

Slow down. Slow down. Slow down.

Did his chest heave visibly as the æther gave them up into his private rooms again? Hades hadn’t even bothered to stand. Persephone still sat on his thigh, and he’d willed himself to arrive sitting, the resting Elaionapothos taking the place of his throne.

He needed to gain control of himself, but how with his senses drowning in green? The shift in venue hadn’t given the goddess pause any more than it had him. Alone with her at last in the Great Hall, he’d fought down a fever and lost. The heat of her mouth on his told him it was catching.

Kissing! He could have laughed if he wasn’t busy trying to devour her whole. A goddess of the upper realms, squirming in his lap, delicate fingers at the side of his face, lapping up kisses from Hades Nekrodegmôn with abandon. Had Aphrodite promised any such impossibility in the first place, he would have banished her from his halls on the spot.

The Fair One had been cautious enough to make only the vague prediction that Persephone would be ‘quite suited’ to his ‘proclivities’. He’d been so dismissive.

He had to make a fist in her hair to break the thrall of their kiss. Green eyes stayed trained on him, her lips swollen and parted. His free hand cupped around the knee she bent closest to him, lewd fingers dipping in suggestion into the press between the back of her thigh and calf.

“Shall we play a different game?”

She nodded, eyes locked on his.

Selfish. She confesses her woes and you bend them to suit your own ends?

But he would go mad as Dionysos if he waited. Perhaps the effects of the blood union lingered, to have him wrestling with impulse this way. It didn’t matter.

He stood, bringing her to her feet with him.

The goddess’s waiting posture spoke her apprehensions. What would he demand of her today? Would he stoke her fears again? Challenge the limits of her trust?

No. His needs were baser today. The hunt still sang in his veins. He’d shown that mortal a mercy on the shores of the Styx, a beast that had caught but not killed. A call to claim victory hung unanswered.

Persephone could fill this void for him.

In rapid succession, he yanked one fibula after the other from the shoulders of her chiton. “You won’t be needing this.” Red linen rippled to the floor and she did not hide herself.

She stood there, challenging him with the nudity he’d wrought, tension in her stance, as though she might leap at his next word.

“The rest,” he said, eyes flicking down to the sandal straps binding her calves.

The goddess sank to a knee and pulled loose leather lacing, refusing to surrender her hold on his eyes as she did it.

She knew.

Perhaps not all of it, but enough. She saw his barely checked restraint, the way his gaze raked her curves while she knelt and he stood. While she was vulnerable and he was not.

Aren’t you?

As she rose to her now bare feet, he twitched a nod to the Elaionapothos. “Up here.”

A series of deft movements saw her kneeling atop the black gloss of the platform, petal pale flesh in the most perfect contrast to the dark surface. She sat on her heels, palms atop her thighs, and waited.

No objections. No questions.

No idea how the blood rushed in his veins at this new, ready obedience. He’d announced no detail of his intentions, but the candid lines of her mouth, her shoulders, told him she would accept whatever he gave.

And he would give.

Hades came to stand at the edge of the platform.

“Closer.”

A few shuffling movements on her knees and she did as he bade.

“More.”

She came as near as the Oil’s resting edge would allow, the wool of his chiton grazing the tops of her thighs. With both hands, he gathered the mass of her hair and piled it atop her head. “Hold this.”

Her fingers laced in under his to secure the flowing burden, and Hades bit the inside of his cheek. Arms poised above her head, breasts raised and presented, throat exposed: she was going to destroy him, and it would be his own doing.

He removed the iron ring and called forth his bident. Its tines touched the ground at his side and a sound like falling sand whispered into the silence.

Persephone’s chest rose and fell at the sight of a glittering black flow rising with a purpose along the weapon’s haft. When it reached a suitable height, Hades drew the material off into the air.

To her credit, the goddess held her position fast and didn’t balk when the black ribbon followed his gestures to settle around the stem of her neck. Her breath was audible, however, when she felt it solidify into the form he intended.

He drew the malleable fruit of his realm through deliberate fingers, the essence hardening as he went. The line swung in a satisfying clatter while he spent a last gesture forming another of his desires into stone.

The finished implement lay in his hand. Like the collar circling her throat, and the black chain spanning the distance, an obsidian hook a handspan wide gleamed at her from his palm. Hades smiled.

“Is that not fine?”

Her eyes moved along the chain to where it disappeared out of sight beneath her chin. To watch understanding slacken her jaw made his cock stir.

“You can let go your hair.”

Olympian fingers descended to the ring of Underworld stone. She made a tentative exploration for a closure, but there was none to find.

“You will have freedom at my pleasure,” he said, gathering more of the chain back into his grip.

“Do you expect me to run?” Her question came at a gentle tease. “Or am I being punished for speaking to that mortal?”

Hades doubled the chain around his fist. Hauled her to her knees.

“I expect you to submit,” he said, “because that is my pleasure, as well.”

Green eyes searched his and he jerked the goddess closer, still, earning a quiet gasp.

“You will stand for me.” He fed her the words.

“You will kneel for me.” And she swallowed them down.

“You will beg for me,” he said, “and you will begin now.” He lowered his fist and her collar with it.

“Hands and knees.”

And so she went.

Her movements were smooth, accepting of his commands. In a breath, she was on all fours, the curve of her spine presenting that perfect immortal shape to such advantage that Hades wanted to dismantle her piece by piece and absorb every mote of what she was into himself.

Instead, and with deliberate care, he followed her down, sitting on his heels beside the Elaionapothos to look his goddess in the eye.

“Because I trust your obedience so much,” he said, holding the hook up to illustrate between them, “I will leave this here and not sunk into the Oil to hold you in place.”

Her eyes followed the movement of his hand as far as she could as he reached over her shoulders to lay the hook and its wicked promise flat in the center of her back.

“And Persephone”—he stood, trailing a fingertip along her throat, under her chin—“if this were a punishment? You would know it.”

Her gaze followed his ascent, waiting. The bident he’d been leaning on collapsed back to its ring form at his will, and Hades slipped it onto a finger. He brushed a thumb over her lower lip.

“Do not move.”

The goddess did not.

The Oil gave under his weight just enough to prevent discomfort as he mounted the platform behind her. His demands had exposed her secrets and there was no stopping the call of her flesh, at least not at first.

Round cheeks filled his palms. He kneaded, indulging, and she hissed through her teeth when he spread her to add to the lewd display. Every impulse cried out for him to cover her—now! To rut her like a beast and own her screams, whatever form they took.

It will please you for mere moments. What will it buy you in the end?

His higher thoughts ran true, fighting to be heard as they were with the storm of want battering him from all sides.

Later.

As a parting promise to himself, he stung her bottom with a slap. Persephone gasped, but did not turn her head to look back at him. A subtle mark blushed onto her skin, and there was no possibility he would not need to produce more of the same.

More, and darker. Heavier. She will make such sounds for you.

But not today.

Not yet.

Hades dipped experimental fingers between her thighs, his touch the lightest mist. He watched her toes curl in, the soles of her feet crinkling at the sensation. She was hot. Slick. Not a single gamble he’d taken had done anything to cool her.

He ducked down low, ready to stoke the fires of her want some more.

At the first long lap of his tongue, Persephone moaned. The sound came straight from her very bones, and the Lord of the Dead went hard as the obsidian around her throat to hear it.

He would consume her.

The goddess dropped her head between her shoulders as Hades set to work. With every slip of his tongue, every pull of his lips, he could hear the soft labor of her breath. And the taste of her!

Karporphoros. Bringer of Fruit. Her epithet served here, as well. Persephone was a sweet glory, glossing his chin, fogging his senses.

Lips, tongue, and teeth; he brought them both to torment. Wet flesh and the scent of her arousal were close on all sides, and Hades burrowed deep, unable to find the limits of his fervor.

He paused to breathe, to draw away and look upon all that was lovely and pink, swollen under his efforts. The goddess felt the lack and leaned her weight back onto her knees, tilting her hips, spreading for him. Pleading.

Every hidden place she has will beg for you.

Hades lowered his attention to something new and earned a raw noise of surprise from Persephone. Puckered flesh quivered under the rasp of his tongue, and he would remind her again that here, with him, no one could forbid her anything.

The goddess writhed on his mouth. Whimpered as he explored, as he tested the give of that tight ring. Would she surrender this to him, as well? How deep? How deep could he take her into those places that darkened his dreams?

Not today. You have not seen all you wish to see.

He reached and found the chain where it lay along her back, sliding it through his fingers until he held the hook again.

The weight in his hand returned a measure of his focus. He hefted the obsidian hook and traced it between her shoulder blades. Down the curve of her spine while he teased her with his tongue.

The black stone slid along the cleft between her cheeks and he drew himself away to make space for it. When the cool, blunt tip settled against the first entrance it found, the goddess exhaled. Hades introduced the smooth curve with a subtle pressure, his immortal blood boiling as he worked it inside, watching it sink past her defenses.

Only when the hook came to rest, snug in her tightest channel, did he sit back to admire his handiwork. The black chain glittered like a scorpion’s tail, taut between the obsidian that claimed her ass and circled her throat. Whenever she moved, the collar would tug at the chain, and the chain would tug at the curving stone shaft.

Her breathing had already grown short, and Hades couldn’t resist the call of torment.

He brought up an experimental thumb and drew it over the sensitive pearl between her lips, exposed now in her arousal. She cried out and he did it again. And again. Her lust leaked out over his knuckles, and if he continued in this way, Hades knew she would have her release.

And he would not allow it. Not today. Today she would know want. She would teeter on the edge for him, and if she could withstand this …

Hades abandoned his position. Her sides heaved as the platform shifted under his weight, the movements of his departure.

She twisted to watch his return to the edge of the Oil, still on her hands and knees, cheeks now beautifully flushed.

She hasn’t moved. She obeys you still.

“What’s wrong?”

“Not a single thing.” He drew the tip of a nail down over the bridge of her nose, her parted lips. “Your pleasure belongs to me now, Daughter of Olympos. You will have it when I allow.”

The tilt of her brows at this, the way pupils dilated in spring green eyes and her back bowed in defeat, gave him understanding, hate, and love, all at once. Persephone was a chorus singing the hymns of his every need.

Then take what you need. She will give it.

With a tug and flourish of his free hand, he had his chiton over his head, baring himself as the wool fell to the floor.

His cock stood out from his body, marble hard and looming level with her kneeling line of sight. She watched it bob, and caught her lower lip in her teeth.

“Persephone.”

She surged forward and he disappeared into her mouth.

Hades swore.

The goddess brought fingers to circle him at the root, and began to feed herself with a will. She’d warned him of her adventures among the cities of men, but now her experience became plain.

You didn’t even have to ask her.

She worked him with an angry mouth, a vent to her frustrations. It was a backward means of retaliation for the way he’d left her, but the goddess aimed to see him just as helpless under the yoke of sensation.

With her hand, she stroked and pulled. With her open mouth, she bobbed over his length. The heavy crown popped back and forth over a taut lip. Her tongue danced along the sensitive ridge of flesh that descended from the plump head.

When he shifted his weight to steady himself, her grip held him fast. She made her lips into a tight entrance, and made a show of pushing him through it with all the speed of a sunset. His eyes rolled back and she drew him out and did it again, knowing full well the picture she painted.

It was only when she aimed him upward with a slick fist and bent to take the loose skin of his scrotum into her mouth, pulling in one of his testicles after it, that he came close to losing control.

Keep your wits, immortal. You can have it soon, but not just yet.

Hades leaned over her body and the full press of his cock had her stilling her motions, breathing just to accommodate the depth. His hands traced her spine on both sides of the chain until he reached the hook and took hold. When he began to help the polished stone in and out, a new, wet mewling welled around the flesh filling her mouth.

He wanted to throw his head back as she sucked, as she writhed in the trap he’d set, but he forced himself not to let go. Not yet.

Look at her. Look what she has become for you.

Persephone worshipped at his altar, submitted to his whims. A low noise in her throat vibrated up over his cock, just as a flicker of movement caught his eye. The surface of the Elaionapothos moved in a ripple.

As he watched, the Oil began to lap over calves, the backs of her knees. As she swallowed his length, the black gloss of it spiraled in twin ribbons, climbing her parted thighs. There was only one possible destination, but it made no sense.

The Oil formed to his desires, and Hades had left her quivering on the cusp by specific intent.

Yet their first time in this room … The frenzied growth, the formation of stone.

Impossible.

But was it?

The Elaionapothos arrived from both sides to cover her other wet mouth.

Consort of my Lord.

Hekate’s words returned, heavy with portent.

His realm could respond to the whims of another, but only if …

A deep thrum arose within the Oil—he could feel it against his shins. If Hades was not mistaken, the Elaionapothos had risen at her desire to flutter against her most sensitive flesh.

He was too astonished to deny her now.

She screamed around his cock as her body found the shining path. A hand rose to his flexing backside and he felt her urging him further into her mouth. When he saw what she wanted, there was no hesitation.

Hades plunged to the back of her throat and laced his fingers through her hair. His hips snapped in a fury and he rode, reckless, parting that jaw, increasing the pitch of her urgent sounds.

Persephone knelt before the Lord of the Dead, yielding at every entrance to the stone of his realm, the demands of his flesh. When the rabid cries began to sing out around his plunging girth, he knew he would have mere moments.

He slammed home and the breach sent her eyes wide. The goddess sputtered and wailed and Hades lost himself with a roar.

She swallowed him down, throat working in greed, her own sounds primal as she came.

Even as they shuddered and drew their first breaths in the aftermath, Hades knew his games were at an end.

It was too perfect. Too right.

He had never gone looking for this.

A match? After all this time? And if such a thing could be true, there was only one question.

What was he prepared to do about it?

✧

For the first time that day, Persephone did not insist on accompanying the Lord of the Underworld. Somewhere in the haze that followed the events atop the Elaionapothos, where they’d lain, entwined and exhausted, he’d murmured something about the rest of his duties and risen to depart.

Her limbs were too limp, her thoughts drunken and sliding. She made no objection.

The silence of his chamber cooled her. Distilled the chaos between her ears. She lay on the platform still, purchasing new ideas with each slowing heartbeat.

Her choice to give, to serve and please with intention, had torn open a rift. Like that bident of his, ripping the æther, it had revealed another realm. The possibilities were vast.

There was a release she’d never imagined in riding the current of another’s want. His want.

You will beg for me.

And oh, those things for which she might beg. He’d only hinted at a few. The crack of his hand over her backside. That hook, burrowing as she took his cock. They were but a taste. A summer storm on the horizon, roiling with the dark potential of all she could surrender, still.

The question had become not how much would he take from her, but rather, how much could she give.

Your pleasure belongs to me, now.

His words had unlocked a new understanding, but that didn’t explain the Elaionapothos. He wanted her unsatisfied, hungering on the brink after the wicked efforts of his tongue. She’d recognized his game and accepted it; rolled on a sea of exquisite suffering, just as intended.

Why change his mind and will the Oil to work for her release? When it had come to circle her thighs, to overwhelm the thirst for completion between them …

But had he? Changed his mind?

The Oil responds to his desires first, he said so himself.

And if it hadn’t? If the only other possibility were true … what could that mean?

As sleep folded her back into its arms, a sibilant voice sang a threefold song, laying open the gateway to dreams.

The Underworld ansswerss to Underworld gods.

Aren’t you home? Aren’t you home?

Aren’t you

aren’t you

aren’t you home?

✧

Hades returned to the goddess in his chamber some hours later, only to find Persephone sprawled across the surface of the Elaionapothos. The ambient light was as dim as he’d left it, and the tide of sleep had rolled her down to the depths.

She lay on her side, top leg bent at the knee, the crimson fabric of her chiton draped over her as a blanket. Her breathing was deep and regular, but at his approach, she stirred. Made some tiny noise of … what was that? Frustration?

He made himself still. Any sound might disturb her and, in this moment, Hades would see her unguarded again, just as she’d been after her fall into his domain.

How long did he stand there in that silent trance? Long enough to lose awareness of the boundaries of the space around him, the stalagmites receding to the edge of his perception, the ceiling and floor fading back to mere shades of reality. He and his goddess were alone in the heart of the Unseen Realm. They were the only two who needed to be.

Then, her hips shifted. She exhaled a murmur, unintelligible over the Oil.

She dreams.

Intrigue seized him and he padded closer, rolling his steps in a bid for silence. He leaned low, ready to catch the next sound she made.

There was nothing, but he waited.

Waited. He—

Lids fluttered. Her breath hitched.

Fates! He could tear his hair. What did she see, on the other side of sleep?

Hypnos could tell him. The Bringer of Dreams saw as much in his own intangible domain as Helios did of the skies.

And you will what? Summon him here? To this room?

He ground his teeth as reason thwarted his wants. No. The complications expanded with each successive immortal to become aware of the Elaionapothos. Aphrodite had been trouble enough. And Persephone …

The goddess made a soft sound, and he bit the inside of his lip. Her hand dusted along the curve of a hip.

“Hadesss …”

His nails gouged his palms at the unconscious slur of his name.

“… please I wnn …”

Her grip on him coiled tighter.

By the three realms! Wake her! Wake her now and make her yours!

Perfect lips parted and exhaled. Dark brows furrowed and delicate fingers clutched at something that wasn’t there.

“… need … love me …”

Love me.

His vision swam and a black fire roared to life on some other plane of endings and beginnings.

He wanted to destroy worlds. To burn it all. Burn until the æther itself became ash. The feeling was too, too …

The Lord of the Dead backed away from the dreaming answer to his many, many questions.

Persephone slept and he needed to be anywhere else. Where control of the self failed, regret would soon follow, and he could not trust himself in the violent grip of such impossibility.

For ages, there had been certainty, and now there was none.

The memory of Aphrodite’s smile mocked him, pomegranate flashing between her fingers.

A more permanent way …

He drew out his bident, snarling in the silence.

You will not.

Tore open a jagged rift.

But the vows. The vows! She will never …

And fled into the æther.