Page 382 of The First Taste
He’s thinking about what I said. Imagining what kind of chaos could’ve broken out if the stranger had pulled out a weapon.
“It was pure luck.” I slip my hand around his elbow, tugging him in the direction of the warehouse. “Now come on. You are bleeding like crazy. Let me get the glass out and try to wrap the hand up.”
He gives me the tiniest shrug, letting me pull him along. I tug my black sweatshirt off, wrapping it around his hand.
If Hades notices, he doesn’t say anything. He’s definitely on a different planet than me, sorting through his thoughts silently.
We trudge back to the warehouse in silence. He doesn’t say anything as I spread out his hand on the table or douse it with a gallon of rubbing alcohol, purloined from my piles of art supplies.
He grits his teeth as I use a pair of long handled tweezers to remove the glass from the car’s window. It isn’t until I am wrapping his hand in strips of a shredded black sweater that I have the nerve to ask.
I crinkle my face, peering up at him. “Why do you always have to jump in?”
He looks at me, as if I’ve grown another head or something. “What?”
“When there is a seemingly violent man and a seemingly scared woman, you need to separate them. You play the white knight. It’s clear that you’re ready to pound the guy into the ground.” I swallow, scrunching up my nose. “My question is, why? What makes you do that?”
His gaze flits to me, his green eyes all but on fire. “Maybe I just hate bullies.”
“Hades…” I stare at him, tying the last strip of cloth over his injured hand. “You have a lot of qualities that… could be… desirable.” I flush but I refuse to drop his gaze. “But that… that willingness to be violent? To jump in, to mix it up, knowing that there is going to be physical danger?”
I stop, pushing out my cheek with my tongue. Hades’ gaze burns into my face.
“Yeah?” he asks quietly.
I suck in a breath. “It’s not reassuring. I don’t feel safe around you, knowing that you are going to fight every single guy who so much as looks at you wrong. So…” I shrug a shoulder. “Maybe think about that before the next time you almost beat the tar out of some guy.”
He stands up, knocking his stool back and glaring at me. “Dinnae be such a fucking coward.”
Then he turns on his heel and stalks out of the warehouse. I sigh and start cleaning up the bloody bits of cotton left from my first aid, shaking my head.
Persephone
Hades is gone for too long. Half a day, almost. I spent the interim fumbling with wax seals and applying contact paper to make up the unstamped pages of three American passports. When he comes back in at the end of a long day, I’m just turning off my work lamps.
He rolls the big door open, and I turn toward the sound, my jaw tensing and my eyes narrowing on his face. Hades heads in the direction of his bed, as if nothing happened.
“Where have you been?” I ask, my tone sounding exasperated.
He stops for a second, clenching his fists before he turns back toward me. “I have a whole business, Persephone. I know that ye haven’t seen me working that much, but I can assure ye that is just because ye have been so needy. The business still needs tending. That’s the only way that I can have plans in place for every contingency.”
Crossing my arms, I pace over to him. His dark hair is shoved back from his face, his button up rumpled. Not only that, but he looks tired.
I try to sound reasonable as I take him to task.
“You can’t leave me here for so long. What if Constantine found me, somehow? It would take you a whole day to notice. I don’t feel safe in this place by myself.”
His mouth turns down at the corners but he just shrugs a shoulder. “We are well hidden here. I have no reason to suspect that anyone might know where we are.”
I want to strangle him because I feel like he’s not even listening to what I’m saying. Stepping closer, I lift my chin. “I could’ve been abducted this morning. And you wouldn’t even know I was gone until now. For all you know, I could’ve been taken out of the country by now!”
I’m not expecting Hades to grab me around the waist with so much force that it makes me tremble. He hauls me up against the wall of his body, his lips twisting bitterly.
“That won’t happen,” he growls. “No one is going to take ye from me, Penny.”
A bubble of humorless laughter leaves my lips, unbidden. “You can’t control everything! The fact that you think?— “
Hades kisses me then, hard and punishing, stealing the very breath from my lungs. My whole body stiffens against him at first. I pound a fist against his chest as he bends me back, his tongue sweeping my mouth, his fingers finding their way into my hair. My heart pounds.
