The Death King Read online

  My eyes shot open. Her small hand was clasped tight to my neck, squeezing harder and harder. And even as she moved, she grinned and held up her other hand.

  “I don’t know why I know this, but I know this.” And when I looked and saw a carrot in her hand, I shook my head and croaked. I’d never mentioned that to her, never told her anything about the wicked and naughty things we’d done together.

  And before I knew what she was about she’d flipped us over, so that now I was on top and she on the bottom.

  But then I forgot all about that when she did to me as she’d always done before, and I was a beast, not just a god, but the darkness that could kill with a mere snap of my fingers. She squeezed the air from my lungs as she rubbed herself all over me and shoved that bloody, stupid carrot deep into parts of me no other person would ever dare go.

  My fires burned out of control, but it could not harm her or the beauty of the world we’d fashioned. I did not need breath to make her come. All I needed was to shove down just as she shoved up, and she fractured.

  She exploded into a shower of rain that poured over my body like acid. I roared, experiencing the singularly most powerful orgasm of my entire existence.

  I was spent. Everything ached. I was gasping for breath, and I could not believe that we’d done as we’d done.

  Calypso had never been that violent, that brutal, in her sexual onslaught over me. Mouth hanging open as I gasped for air, I ran my fingers through the water that lay beside me, feeling the stir of her beautiful soul, and wondered if maybe it wasn’t just Calypso that I wanted now.

  Thalassa had brought out an animal in me I’d never known before, and I wanted so much more of that.

  “Priestess,” I rumbled through lips that felt numb, a windpipe that still ached, and a body deliciously sore. “Come back to me.”

  And she did. Without a fight, she returned to me. Her waters pulled together, and my body tingled with the electric rush of it.

  Her head lay on my stomach, her arms were spread out beside her, dangling half on and half off the oyster bed as she, too, sucked in air like a bellows.

  “Mmm,” I murmured, feeling so bloody content and boneless that I was sure I’d never be able to walk again.

  Her ear was pressed to the flat of my stomach, and one of her hands played with my skin, making me burn. But my cock was flaccid now. She’d wrung every last ounce of energy, stamina, and soul right out of me.

  “I’m spent,” I admitted ruefully, even as I ran my fingers through the silky curls of her gorgeous sea-mint-colored mane.

  It was always a surprise who she’d look like from one moment to the next—Thalassa or Calypso. But it was all part of her appeal for me, the excitement of the unknown with her.

  She giggled. “It’s the oddest thing, Reaper, but I swear I can hear your heart beating through your stomach. It’s like this wonderful bump, bump, bump sound that makes my toes curl and…” She giggled.

  My blood suddenly felt too warm for my body, and I curled to a slight sitting position, wincing a little when I moved. The woman had used me thoroughly, and only now could I feel just how violent our mating had been, but I couldn’t move. I was enchanted by the breathy sounds of her laughter.

  Her eyes danced, and my fire was no longer in there, but she was looking at me like I was her whole world again. A sudden sheen of tears blinded my eyes, making her gorgeous visage too blurry for me to see.

  I scrubbed at my face.

  “I’m a silly creature, aren’t I?” she asked softly, tenderly.

  I sniffed, trying in vain to hide my emotions. But they were on display, and when she finally saw them, she crawled up my body, kissing me along the way, making my skin burn from her touch.

  “Don’t, Reaper. Don’t do that. You’ll end me,” she whispered heatedly, and I trembled so hard.

  So damn hard.

  I had her back. I had my female back.

  And like a dam bursting wide open, I cried silently as the realization that she was well and truly back hit me like a fist to my chest.

  She held me as I did, saying nothing but three words softly over and over again.

  “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

  12

  Thalassa

  I lay with Hades in the waters that cradled us, reveling in the play of the sun’s warmth and his hands gliding up and down my body. I’d held him for hours, letting him get it all out, knowing how much he need the catharsis of release, not just physically, but spiritually.

  “Do you regret what we’ve done?” he asked into the heavy silence that had descended between us some hours later. But the silence hadn’t been oppressive as much as calm and peaceful.

  I rolled onto my side, propping my chin on the palm of my hand as I slowly and heatedly memorized the strong planes of his gorgeous body.

  “Should I?”

  He shrugged, grinning at me and causing his eyes to sparkle like polished gems hidden beneath the dark curls of his hair. “You would have before, I think. You were a virgin goddess, after all, a trait you all seem to value so frighteningly above all else.”

  “Is that so?” I asked, finding it hard not to swirl my fingers over the graceful lines of his pectorals.

  He’d awakened a ravenous beast in me, one I’d never known existed before. I liked flesh. His, anyways. Liked its hard, steely strength and its smooth silky heat covering mine, making me feel oddly small and vulnerable in a way I didn’t believe I’d ever have liked before.

  I wet my lips, and his delectable mouth, which had just wreaked havoc on my senses, curled up most wickedly. Oh yes, I enjoyed his body very much.

  “Mmm,” he said with a nod as he shaded his eyes with one hand. Apollo had bathed Hades in a ring of a light, making him glow golden. Apollo had always had a thing for Hades, not that I could blame him. By far, Hades was the most glorious of all the pantheon, a dark and ravenous beast who took delight in the strange and unusual, just as I did. But where Apollo was ashamed of his desires for the death god, I was not.

  If I were Apollo, I’d always keep the spotlight on Hades.

  “Athena has as much as said that, should any male dare to consider defiling her, she’d—”

  I scowled, not wishing to hear him utter the name of any female but mine while we lay together. Only ever mine.

  Refusing to think any more about right or wrong, or should or shouldn’t, I rolled onto his body. I took the dominant position, shutting him up instantly.

  The wave within me had been strangely silent, but now I could feel it awakening again, and I wondered if it had not given me a gift—the time to learn, truly learn, that the male I called mine was truly a magnificent beast of strength and wonder.

  “Thalassa,” he hissed as I began rubbing my unbearably wet center over his now-rising cock. We’d made love so many times that I was raw and aching, but still I wanted him with a desperation that bordered on madness.

  “Will I never not want you?” I mumbled, tossing my head back as I rubbed myself off on him, feeling that spiraling tingle rush through me all over again. Now that I knew what it was, I couldn’t wait to experience more of it.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, mewling like a contented kitten as the heat and wanting converged into a thing of beautiful madness inside me. I was lazy as I rubbed myself off, willing to take my time, to drag it out for as long as I possibly could.

  “Oh, goddess,” he hissed. “Goddess.” He whispered the word like a reverent prayer. A prayer to me.

  My soul trembled within me, stirring me, moving me and clarifying things for me that I couldn’t quite focus on yet.

  “Gods, I love your body,” I whispered, feeling drunk on lust.

  “Then look at me, beautiful,” he murmured tenderly, voice a husky drawl that made me feel bathed in fire. My skin sparked like a faceted diamond.

  I looked at him, only to see him looking right back at me. Intently. Heatedly. Animalistically. His breathing was rapid, and his gorgeous olive-toned ski
n was flushing with blood again, making him appear molten bronze instead of the gold he’d once been. When I was high on godhood, I burned bronze, and now he did too. Had we somehow merged ourselves?

  Was that even possible?

  But honestly, the answer didn’t even matter to me anymore. I was done overthinking what Hades was and wasn’t to me, only that he was mine. All mine. Only ever mine.

  I cried out. I hadn’t even slid down his thick, gorgeous cock yet, and already I was close, so damn bloody close.

  “I never knew,” I murmured heatedly. “I never knew it could be like this.”

  “It has always been so for us, my priestess. Only you. Only ever you,” he growled and then sat up, startling me and making me gasp as he clutched at my biceps with the preternatural strength of a god.

  He took my moment of distraction to full advantage and slid his tongue and his cock deep inside of me. His tongue was silky, hot, and demanding. I gave him mine without thought or question, yielding to him in every way, completely lost to him. Lost to myself. As my pending orgasm spiraled higher and higher, I knew this one would be so powerful that I’d obliterate if he didn’t catch me. I would become a million particles of life, scattered to the winds, unable to gather myself again for the gods only knew how long. The last one had felt like it had killed me, and each time, it only got better. More intense.

  “I never knew, my Death. I never knew,” I whispered drunkenly into his mouth, and his answer was a deep-throated chuckle.

  All around us, life bloomed, everything so altered from the empty forest it had once been. We’d created our own world, our home.

  The wave in my head was fuller, growing wider and deeper. But I was no longer certain I wanted to give it dominion over me.

  I could treasure Hades just as she’d once done. I could be his mate in every way. I could be good for him. His perfect other half. I did not want to share him. Not even with another version of myself. I was too bloody greedy for that. I wanted him, and I wanted him only for me.

  So I shoved back at that wave, pushed it hard with my will. It burned, and it raged, growing furious and angry, but I was furious and angry too. It was my turn now. He was mine. All mine.

  “Then let me show you, forever. For always. Trust me again. I want you, Thalassa. No matter who you are, or who you will be, it will only ever be you that I want, need, and cannot do without. Tell me you feel the same. Tell me that you need me as I need you, tell me that—”

  “Well, isn’t this touching?”

  A male voice, full of hubris and smug laughter, cut through our mating. “I come to see why my waters have decided to stop obeying me, and this is what I find—a porpoise and a skeleton screwing. Lovely.”

  My eyes grew wide, my stomach trembled, and a rage like I’d never known boiled through me. I recognized that voice instantly.

  The voice of the male god, Poseidon, my very own offspring who fancied himself the actual ruler of the seas.

  I didn’t stop to think what I was doing. I whirled on him and caused the waters that Hades and I had created together to rise and heed their mother’s call.

  Poseidon didn’t have the sense to leave be and swim away. But I was angry. Angry in that same kind of way I’d been ever since my reawakening into this new world full of people who I no longer knew or cared about.

  “Thalassa, no!”

  I heard Hades’s cry, but it was too late. I’d lifted Poseidon into the air on a powerful pillar of rushing water, keeping him suspended in it as I aimed a spear of it right at his heart.

  He was in god form, and his tentacle legs twitched and curled spasmodically. The ridiculous triton that he always carried around with him because it was the only way he could actually force the water to obey him, went spiraling down, down, down into the depths of the deepest, blackest parts of my newest seas.

  His face was handsome, but cold. Cruel. His eyes as blue as sea glass, his mouth thin but well-suited to his masculine features. Gold-encrusted crustaceans dropped from the crown of his head, skittering across the water and swimming toward me.

  His eyes were wide, his jaw slack, as though in shock that I’d so easily unmanned him.

  “Hello, son,” I hissed, and my waters trembled and began to heat up.

  I grinned, and he swallowed hard, maybe realizing for the first time that, though he’d dubbed himself the god of the seas, I was the mother of all water.

  Because he wore his god form, I decided to wear mine. It was more alien than human, with slanted pitch-black eyes, ebony tentacles for hair, skin slightly tinted the green of sea foam, and with a form and shape so perfectly built it that would even put Aphrodite to shame.

  As I saw the light of awareness began to take root in him, as I tasted the sweet ambrosia of his fear tickle the back of my tongue, and as I thought of all the vanity, hatred, and arrogance of those debased gods who liked to delude themselves and mortals into believing they were the pinnacle of all that was good and right, I swelled with fury and seething, nasty, hatred.

  My hands curled into tight fists, and a grin as wickedly sharp as a sickle blade curved my full lips into something cruel and almost twisted.

  I’d wanted to make those high and mighty gods pay for what they’d done to us elementals, for daring to forget about us, for daring to believe that they were in anyway our equal.

  Here it was now, my chance to take it back, to kill him and take my rightful place as the true mistress of the deep. To make the prayers all mine. To force the puny, pathetic gods of Olympus to see me for the great and awesome power that I truly was.

  “You’ve forgotten,” I said, voice silky and deadly. “You've all forgotten who I really am. But no more. No more. I will end you. You and all your siblings. I will take back what is ours, mine and my sisters’.”

  “Thalassa.” The voice was not Poseidon’s, but Hades’. It was deep, sure, calm as the deepest waters I called home.

  I trembled, remembering all we’d done. All I’d allowed him to do. All that I’d wanted him to do. And all that I now felt for him. My love. My lover. My world. The wave in my head grew warm, and it didn’t use power against me as I’d used against it just a while ago. But I felt its power rippling in larger and larger waves. I released a tiny puff of air.

  I blinked, fighting the drugging lure of my Death as he tried to reason with the monster that was me.

  “Don’t try to stop me, Hades. He has it coming. They all do.”

  And because I’d given Hades the gift of water the moment I’d taken him into my body, he walked next to me and stood beside me as an equal, unafraid of the sheer and mighty power that I was and that I wielded.

  Poseidon gasped, trying to squirm out of my invisible grip, but the harder he tried, the tighter the knots of water grew around him. I felt the crushing of his ribs vibrate back at me, heard the small, quick gasps of air he was forced to take, and saw how his eyes bulged and grew wide from the pressure bearing down on him from all sides.

  I felt nothing. No shame. No twinge of doubt. He deserved to die. They all did. They’d screwed everything up. And I was ashamed of them all, save for my Death. The Olympians had acted like babies and ruled the heavens with a sadistic iron fist. I could do better. My sisters and I could do far better than these brats we were forced to call our own.

  My nostrils flared as the scent of patchouli and darkness enveloped me in a heady fog bank. It was the smell of him. My lover. My only lover.

  The only male I’d ever known, in this life or the previous one.

  I closed my eyes. They weren’t all monsters.

  “You say we’ve all forgotten,” Hades began in that throaty whiskey drawl of his that never failed to elicit a violent reaction in me. “But not all of us have. I remember. I will always remember who you are. You are power. You are beauty. You are fierce. And you’re all mine, as I have always been all yours.”

  I trembled, as did the watery cage in which I’d suspended Poseidon. He gurgled, and I scowled, clenching my fi
ngers and moving the prison in on him just a little bit more. His flesh was wavering, turning soft and pliant, becoming the very water I’d once fashioned him from.

  If I let Hades keep talking, I would break. I knew I would.

  Knowing my eyes glowed like heated magma beneath the crust of my lake beds, I twirled on him and shook my head. “I am all-powerful. I am the water. The life. I could kill you.”

  The words were clipped. Hard. But they shook, too, because I knew I could never do that to him. Not now. To everyone else, sure. But not him, not ever him.

  His face was impassive, but his eyes burned with tenderness that I’d never expected to see. His smile was beautiful and full of warmth and love. My knees shook, the monster in me burned, but the man who had become my entire world was burning brighter.

  I’d thought I’d beaten the monster that was Thalassa, thought I’d controlled that vengeful, wrathful side of me. But I could see now that I hadn’t. Only with Hades did I find my calm, my peace. But let another intrude on the sanctity that was us, and I was once more the creature of darkness and fury. I dug my fingers in deeper.

  Poseidon gasped, writhing like a fish on a hook, and my lip curled in disgust. I hated him.

  Hades stepped toward me and reached for my face. I knew I shouldn't let him touch me because every time he did, I forgot myself all over again. Forgot the anger, the pain, and the destruction. But even though I had plenty of time to side step him, I didn’t. I was like a deer frozen in the glow of a bioluminescent barbell as death literally bore down on me.

  He framed my jaw in his massively large hands, and I swayed, pulled to him like iron shavings toward a magnet, against reason, against my will, or any kind of rational thought. I only knew that if I didn’t feel his touch again, I might literally wither and perish. Whatever dregs of humanity remained in me were tethered to this man, and if I walked away now, I would be abandoning any possibility or hope of ever exploring this… this inexplicable thing we had between us.

  “You wish praise?” he whispered and leaned in toward my face, forcing me to close my eyes as I felt the sweetness of his breath play over my mouth. “Then I will praise you every chance I get.”