Read That Fatal Kiss for Free Online Page B

I suppose.” A smile played about his lips. “You’re beautiful when you’re angry.” He opened his massive arms wide. “Come, sit on my lap.”
    Persephone’s response to that was to let her mouth drop open in sheer amazement. She made no move to obey but instead shrank away from him, until she could feel the cold wall against her back.
    Hades lowered his arms but kept them extended. “You look at me as if I had taken leave of my senses. How endearing.” All traces of humor left him. “But I have given you a command which you have no choice but to obey.”
    The goddess instead put more space between them, hastening to a spot near the door. Very aware of his eyes upon her, she said, “While I may have to accept you as my spouse, I do not have to accept ill-treatment.”
    “Persephone,” he said, his tone deceptively civil. “You must accept whatever treatment I mete out to you.”
    “That is where you are mistaken,” said Persephone, walking over to a cushioned chair and gracefully sinking into it, as though she hadn’t a care in the world.
    Lips tightening, Hades rose to his feet and got to work on the upper half of his robes. His eyes fixed on hers as he spoke. “You may thank the Fates for my continued patience for I will humor you—just how am I mistaken?” The god’s brawny arms flexed as he folded the material in half, set it down, and laid his hands on his waist.
    The goddess gulped as the light from the many oil lamps played lovingly along his hard, chiseled torso. And once again, Persephone turned her face away as she felt a telltale heat flood her cheeks. The intensity of her reaction to his physical presence astounded her; she had never been so vitally aware of any male before. She forced herself to concentrate. “You are mistaken in thinking I am powerless against you.”
    “You mean to tell me you are not?”
    “I don’t know why Hermes says you are a simpleton! You seem capable of grasping the basic concepts.”
    An awful silence followed that remark. Hades eyed Persephone without emotion, then began making his way to her. “Have a care, Persephone.”
    Persephone leapt to her feet and flew to the other side of the room, crying, “So you mean to force yourself upon me?” Seeing that her words stayed Hades’ movement, Persephone went on, “You said earlier that you wanted me for a wife. Surely a wife merits some consideration, deserves better than to be violated by her own…husband.”
    A muscle twitched in Hades’ cheek. “A true wife enters her husband’s embrace willingly.”
    “A true husband exerts himself to ensure her willingness,” she countered. “ Your exertion extends to conspiring with my father to abduct me and little else. Your only concern was for your pleasure, not mine.”
    “And yet, rather than take my pleasure, as is my right, I withstand your barbs,” he said softly.
    “Your right? What of mine?” Persephone asked. “I have the right to determine who, from among all my acquaintance, would devote himself to our mutual joy.”
    Hades gave a low laugh. “First, females’ rights are bestowed upon them by their fathers and then their husbands—or not at all. And second, being wholly unacquainted with me—”
    “Being wholly unacquainted with you,” she interrupted, “I have no reason to believe you have any care for my happiness, nor can I trust a being so little in control of himself that he takes what is not freely offered him.”
    “Freely offered or not, it is mine now, you are mine,” Hades said, eyes gleaming in the glare of the lamplight.
    “And that’s all I am to you, is it? A possession?” Persephone shot back, the heat of righteous wrath flaming within her. “A thing to be ravished and dominated? Do you not see me, Hades? Do you not know who I am, what I am? I am no lowly creature, made for your amusement, but a daughter of Zeus—I am one of your own kind! Have you no respect for me as a fellow Immortal?”
    “Enough,” Hades