Page 356 of The First Taste
But her melodic voice, at just that soft timbre… that makes it hard to keep moving away from her.
Persephone looks me in the eye, moving her hand ever so slowly until her fingers touch the back of my arm. She waits, perhaps checking to see if I am going to cry out or lose my cool. But when I simply don’t react, I can feel the heat of her fingers tracing an arc across my back.
I have the sudden, violent urge to physically make her stop. To whirl, grab her hand, bend her fingers back until she cries out in pain.
But I don’t. I’m not my father.
I just stand here, my hand clenching into fists, my eyes sinking closed.
Persephone's voice is hesitant. Shaky, even.
“How did you get these scars, Hades?”
I weigh my options. Lie? Tell the truth? Something in between?
A minute passes while I wrestle with what to tell her. Finally, I just tell her what I am able to.
“I was a child,” I say, my voice gone to gravel. “Dinnae ask me for more.”
I feel the warmth of her hand dip to my lower back. Spreading her fingers, she trails her touch up my spine. “This is okay, right?”
I shiver. My thoughts are a tangled snare of dark, unnamed emotions. I can’t formulate any words. So, I just nod stiffly.
To be touched like this… Persephone's delicate fingers trace the lines of my scars as they arc across my flesh, back and forth. Almost no one has seen my scars since I was a kid.
To have this woman bear witness, to have her touch my back and ask me gentle questions about how they came to be…
It is both pleasurable to an extreme degree and at the same time deeply humiliating. My body almost hums at her innocent touch. But in the very next thought, I want to kill her for taking such liberties with me.
That doesn’t stop me from leaning into her touch. The sensation of her fingers touching the skin of my back… even the girls I fuck don’t touch me like this. I never take my shirt off, doing the deed quickly and in dark places where my wearing a shirt doesn’t really matter at all.
Persephone brings her other hand up, rubbing away a knot of tension just beneath my right shoulder blade. The sensation switches from heavenly to painful, then from overwhelming to eyes-rolling-up-in-my-skull blissful.
I can’t get enough.
Her touch is killing me.
I must have more of it.
Finally, when I can’t bear another second of her touch, I lurch away from her.
“Enough,” I grit out. “Get away from me, lass.”
“Hades—” She clings to my arm.
I rear up, whirling to face her. I get close to her face, my entire body trembling, my chest heaving. “Dinnae,” I grit out, a single word of warning.
Persephone's mouth opens, poised to say something. My gazes slides down as if drawn by sheer magnetism, fixing on her pink lips. I pull my shirt up onto my shoulders, provoked by her very presence.
It’s only the work of a second to spear my hand in the back of her hair. My fingers pull her head back, my mouth descending to press against hers. Her lips are tense, and she makes a tiny sound of shock. The second I brush her mouth, I know that there is no going back.
The honeyed heat of Persephone’s lips. The crisp, wet slide of the tip of my tongue against hers. The scent of her in my nose, floral, clean and delicate.
The unintended noise I make in the back of my throat, halfway between a growl and a purr.
But the most shocking part is the fact that, after a moment of utter surprise, she kisses me back. Her hands curl in the darkness of my shirt as she tugs mecloser.
I love her reaction every bit as much as I am disgusted by the whole interaction. I allow myself a few seconds of bliss, working my tongue and lips against hers, breathing her in.
