Teased by Darkness (Bound to Hades Book 2), page 2
“Who does this look like to you?”
Cleo stepped up behind him. “That’s goddamned Hades.”
In the bright light shining through the windows, the burns on his wrists from where they had been bound by rope were clearly visible. He wasn’t imagining the ache in his body that was left over from what he had been put through. “It was real. All of it. Seph was never crazy, not for even a minute.”
“Don’t say that,” she groaned. “My brain isn’t capable of comprehending this right now. I think I’d rather just be crazy.”
“Me too.” Adonis picked up a small sculpture off the desk, it was heavy and carved from stone. He could just make out a man’s body taking shape from what looked like what was meant to be a door.
There were clues everywhere in the room, recognizable figures and places that he now knew were so much more than the product of Seph’s imagination. He understood that somewhere buried here was the key to finding their way back to her.
His voice was resolute, despite the flash of fear. “We have to get her back.”
Cleo just looked at him. “Even assuming that I believe all that shit really happened, which I’m still only about halfway on board with, we were lucky to escape with our lives. You can’t be serious about trying to go back. We’re not wizards, here. Hades will murder us and giggle while he does it.”
Even if it had only been a dream, he’d finally come to understand that his interaction with Seph had reflected real-world desires. They had seen into each other’s hearts and designed a shared world that fulfilled them both. He would make that vision of their future real or die trying. As he looked down at the marks on his wrists, growing more painful as he viewed the welts in the dawn sunlight creeping through the windows.
“Hades can suck my dick.” Adonis picked up a book that sat on the corner of the desk. Lament of the Underworld. Its leather binding was soft under his hands as if it had been read a thousand times. “We have to assume that Seph tapped into something, visions or memories, whatever you want to call it. She created stories and artwork, all of it centered on this guy and his world. Something in here holds the key to getting back there and rescuing her. You don’t have to help me. Feel free to skip off to class and pretend none of this ever happened. But I care too much not to try.”
She glared at him. “You think I don’t care? Screw you. Yeah, the free rent is nice, but I’m here with Seph because I want to be. Who do you think makes sure that she doesn’t spend all day drawing or writing and then forget to eat. It’s me who counts out pills every day and watches her for signs of trouble. I’m her friend, and the last thing I want is to see her get hurt, whether you want to believe that or not.”
He couldn’t reconcile that with any of the interactions that he’d ever witnessed. But had he really been paying that much attention? “Every time I’ve seen you together, you act like Seph is a total pain in your ass. Or you’re trying to get under her skin, like when you flirt with me.”
Cleo gave him a look that made it clear just how much of an idiot she thought he was being. “Without me pushing her, Seph never would have left the house. Do you have any idea how many times she would get anxious or self-conscious and cancel plans with you until I goaded her into following through? Yeah, I let her think that I was into you. I figured trying to make her jealous was the best way to light a fire under her ass. And it worked, didn’t it?”
Girls usually threw themselves at him, it was something he’d gotten so used to that he barely paid any attention to it. Adonis understood the effect that his looks had on women, and more than a few men. He had the kind of face that made people catch their breath or hesitate on the street for a second glance.
He planned to make the most of it, good looks certainly made a career in entertainment easier, but it was hard not to be a little cynical. People paid attention because he had a pretty face, not because they actually gave a shit about him. Not that he expected anyone to feel badly for him, but being good-looking put a wall up between him and other people because he could never really trust their motives. That was what drew him to Seph in the first place, she seemed to like him in spite of the way he looked, not because of it.
And Cleo had always seemed like just another one of the giggly girls. The ones who sat next to him in class so they could pretend they needed to borrow a pencil or always found an excuse to squeeze his arm or touch his shoulder. Yeah, the attention was sometimes nice, but it made him feel like an object instead of a person.
It wasn’t an ego thing, he was just surprised. “So when you were practically crawling into my lap at the Taphouse, that was just for Seph’s benefit?”
“I hope that doesn’t hurt your feelings too much. I mean, you’re a nice guy and all,” she replied pertly, smiling a little at the look on his face. “The all-American boy type doesn’t do anything for me. But you get extra points for finding all of her strangeness endearing, instead of talking shit like most people do. She smiles more when you’re around, so who am I to judge.”
Something in the way she said it made him pause. “You care about her. Like really care.”
Cleo shrugged, looking suddenly embarrassed. “Seph thinks I’m mostly here for the money, and it’s better that way. She can be honest with me because she thinks she understands my motives. If I acted like I just wanted to be her friend, she wouldn’t trust it. That girl sees dark shadows everywhere she looks.”
“I can see why.” His gaze caught again on the brooding portrait of Hades. The painted eyes seemed to rest on his face, all cold arrogance and dangerous seduction. “Especially if she’s had this asshole dogging her steps for her whole life.”
Picking up a nearby sketchbook, Cleo thumbed through it before making a face at a particularly disturbing image of a demonic creature being eaten alive by its brethren. She tossed the sketchbook aside and then wrapped her arms around herself, fighting off a chill. “Do you really think Seph is some secretly a goddess? It’s like a dark fairy tale.”
But this fairytale didn’t have a Prince Charming, just an evil King who wanted to consume the innocent princess, body and soul.
“I don’t know what to think,” he admitted. “But nothing sounds crazy to me right now. You could tell me little green aliens are invading Earth, and, right now, I’d believe it.”
Cleo sighed. “I’m going to make some coffee. It’s going to take all day just to catalogue this stuff, and I feel like I got no sleep last night.”
His reply was grim. “That’s because you didn’t.”
That was something he’d very much come to understand about the Underworld. There, dreams were a reality. They might have woken up in their beds, but that didn’t mean either of them got a wink of actual sleep.
But before either of them could make another move, the sound of the front door banging open echoed through the apartment. A surge of hope rushed through him as Adonis jumped to his feet. Perhaps it had all been a shared psychotic dream. Seph had just run out for an early breakfast and would come back in demanding to know why he was rifling through her shit. She would look at him like he was crazy when he came bursting out of her room, and he wouldn’t even care about trying to explain.
Then he would wrap his arms around her and never let her go again.
At the threshold, Adonis came to a stop so abrupt that Cleo smashed into his back.
A woman he had never seen before stood in the open front door of the apartment, eyes narrowed as she took him in. The only word he could think of to describe her was handsome. The woman seemed older, putting off an air of sophistication, but her face was completely unlined. She stood tall enough to look down at him, even though he was just over six feet in height, with long coal-black hair that hung like a curtain around her. Lips painted a dark red thinned into a narrow line against skin paler than freshly fallen snow.
Morticia Addams could eat her heart out.
Cleo jumped out from behind him. “Diana—”
But the woman only slashed her hand through the air in a quelling motion, her angry gaze taking both of them in.
“Where the hell is my daughter?”
Chapter Two
When other girls dreamed that they were princesses, it usually meant they needed to grow up.
For me, it meant that I was having nightmares again.
Except this time, the nightmare didn’t end when I woke up alone and in darkness.
Dark silky sheets moved under my skin as I shifted on what had to be a massive bed, large enough to put even my king at home to shame. My fingers closed on the pillow that was thick and full of down. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the black walls shimmered slightly like they were made of cut obsidian. Everything in the room was painted in colors of darkness, blacks and dark grays with not even a hint of a contrasting color.
I lifted the edge of the silk sheet and held it up in a bit of moonlight coming through a high window. It was only then that I realized I was completely naked.
With a shriek, I gathered a handful of bedding in my arms and pressed it against my chest. It smelled like him, a curious mix of coffee and vanilla, with just a hint of musk.
This had to be Hades’s bedroom.
Being naked and alone in a strange place was definitely bad, but naked and almost anything else was probably worse. The real question was what I was going to do once I’d gathered the courage to leave the bed. I squinted around the room, trying to see into its dark corners, but there was no sign of the dress I’d been wearing.
What the hell had happened to me?
I remembered saying yes to Hades, agreeing to stay in the Underworld and be his queen. He had picked me up in his arms and carried me away, but I couldn’t remember anything else after that. When he wrapped me up in his arms, it had done something to me. A strange weakness had swept over me until I could barely lift my head from his shoulder.
It hadn’t taken that many more steps before I passed out.
Of course, that did nothing to explain how the hell I ended up naked in his bed.
My legs shifted experimentally under the covers as I tried to decide if I was sore or felt any wetness between my thighs. I wanted to believe that even Hades wouldn’t stoop to violating my unconscious body, but it was probably safer to assume he was capable of anything.
But nothing about my body seemed out of the ordinary, aside from the fact that I was naked.
My hands skimmed over the sheets next to me, stretching almost flat to reach the far side of the bed. It was cold to the touch without even the indent of another person’s body. If anyone had lain there next to me overnight, then they had to have left hours ago, or more. But I couldn’t fight the impression that I had slept here alone.
I hated that I felt the smallest stab of disappointment at that thought.
Hades was beautiful. He might even be the most gorgeous man that I’d ever laid eyes on. Although his beauty was almost too much, too alien, for me to believe it was real. Everything about him seemed specifically designed to draw the eye and keep it there. His hair was the color of blinding sunlight, almost white until you saw impossible colors dancing in the corners of your eyes when you looked too long at it. His sun-kissed skin, as if a single drop of gold had been added to the mix before the gods painted his face, seemed impossibly smooth to the touch.
But it was what lay inside him, behind the gorgeous exterior, that made me recoil at the thought of letting him anywhere near my body. His beauty hid something evil and dark that lurked behind the silvery blue of his eyes like a shark hiding just under the surface of the ocean. I needed to remember that the next time that looking at him stole my breath.
Or while I was naked in his damn bed.
I didn’t have long to think about that for too long because I heard footsteps just outside the door. The sound of rusty hinges screeching open sent me burrowing deeper under the sheets to hide. My shaking hands pulled the sheets up to my neck as the door slowly opened.
I couldn’t face Hades in a position this vulnerable.
But he wasn’t the one who appeared in the doorway, illuminated in the flickering light of the candles lining the hall beyond. A daemon servant entered the room and slammed the door shut behind him with a loud bang, arms heavy with a serving tray full of foods I had no interest in eating.
It watched me with intense fascination, not even looking away as it set the tray down on a nearby table. A human wouldn’t have stared at the naked girl in the bed, but daemons were far from human.
A shiver of fear rolled up my spine.
“Breakfast,” the thing said with a sibilant hiss as a snake-like tongue flicked from between its cracked lips. Its scaly skin reminded me of a desert reptile and the sharp teeth in its mouth were a touch too reminiscent of fangs for my comfort. I wanted the thing as far away from me as possible.
“Thank you,” I said through a painfully dry throat, hugging the sheets tighter to my body. “You can go.”
But the daemon only inched closer, its tongue flicking out again when it reached the end of the long bed. I remembered reading somewhere that snakes tasted the air with their tongues because they lacked a nasal cavity. I really hoped tasting me wasn’t what the daemon was trying to do.
Because it looked at me like it would have preferred it to be me on the breakfast menu, not whatever had been laid out on the tray. It watched me like I was food.
“My name is Crag…you should remember it.”
“Um, thanks for breakfast. Please shut the door when you leave because I need to get dressed.” I strove for politeness through the terror. No need to mention the fact that my clothes had disappeared, and I had no idea where to find more. “I’m sure Hades will come looking for me soon.”
Crag clearly wasn’t going to take the hint. “All us below stairs was wondering why Hades would leave such a pretty piece of meat unattended, as if he wants something to take a bite.”
I pressed back against the headboard, drawing my knees to my chest. Despite my body language, I did my best to keep the fear out of my voice. If I stayed in the bed, then I was completely defenseless. But leaving it to reach for something I could use as a weapon would mean facing down a daemon without any protection outside of my own skin. Neither of those were particularly good options. “You need to leave. Now.”
Crag sidled closer. Spittle glinted on his chin, just below the razor-sharp fangs that were now fully visible as his mouth split open in a dangerous grin. “And yet, here you is. All alone.”
“Except she isn’t.”
Hades’s voice rolled over me with a wave of sparkling heat. Hearing it was like entering an overheated sauna, searing hot for a flashing moment before it faded into welcoming warmth. I didn’t even think to question how he’d entered the room without me hearing the door open. Instead, relief rushed through me as he strode into the room. For the first time, I was legitimately happy to see him.
Which only made me wonder if he had set this up for exactly that reason.
But at least he had never acted like he wanted to bite pieces off me. Not yet, anyway.
“That will be all, Crag,” he said to the daemon, voice low and threatening. “And if I see you in the queen’s rooms again, you’ll have a hundred years of falling down one of my chasms to think about the errors of your ways.”
The daemon bowed low as he backed out of the room, but I caught the angry glare he didn’t bother to hide when Hades’s back was turned, as if he had to make an effort not to attack. I couldn’t help but wonder how many more things there were that I needed to fear in the Underworld.
When the door slammed shut, my gaze flew back to Hades who stood just a touch too close, his knees pressing into the side of the bed as he stared down at me. My feelings made absolutely no sense. It was crazy to be both this attracted, and this repulsed at the same time. Both my mind and my body were in total conflict and neither really knew what it wanted.
I only had a moment to wonder if he was going to touch me, and decide how I would respond if he did.
A mocking smile played at the corner of Hades’s lips, as if he saw my inner turmoil and it amused him. When he took a small step back, I could finally breathe normally again.
“You’ve been asleep for almost three days,” he murmured, answering the unspoken question in my wide-eyed gaze. “I had begun to wonder if you would wake at all.”
Everyone knew the fairy tales about magical slumber. But Snow White and Sleeping Beauty had gallant princes to kiss them gently awake. I didn’t have to guess to know that, if given the option, Hades would have chosen a less PG-rated way of bringing me back to life.
“What happened?”
His gaze coasted over my body. The sheets still covered me, but they were too thin to hide the curve of my hip or the shallow dip between my thighs. I felt my face heat as his attention lingered there before returning to my face. “I touched you.”
The widening smirk he wore was meant to make me think of dark, seductive things. He wanted me to draw my own conclusions about what happened between us while I was passed out, but then hesitate to press him for more details out of embarrassment. Except Hades was one of the great gods, deception was written into every expression on his face and in all the things he neglected to say.
I shifted to bring my legs closer to my body and wrapped my arms around my knees, hiding as much of myself as I could while he watched in obvious amusement. “Touched me how?”
The tips of his fingers stroked the silken sheets as if he imagined it was my flesh under his hand. “Are you wondering if I slowly stripped the clothing from your body, my hands tracing every dip and curve as I laid you back in my bed? Perhaps my hands roamed even further, exploring the hidden places that would bring you the most pleasure, if you’d been aware enough to experience it.”
Desire clenched the muscles low in my belly. I fought to hide my body’s reaction to his words, forcing deep breaths in and out through my mouth. Even as his words faded into the charged silence, I felt their weight in all the places that he clearly wanted me to think he had touched. A shock of awareness tingled between my thighs and I knew if I pushed my hand down there that I would be slick with arousal.
