His fingers touched mine.
“For me, it always will be,” he said, proving he’d understood what I’d meant.
He pulled me into his arms. I closed my eyes before my stomach twisted again, and I acknowledged what I’d already guessed.
Hades would never stop wanting Persephone.
CHAPTERSIX
As soon asthe nausea subsided, I lifted my head and looked up at Hades.
“I want to make another deal.”
His brows lifted in surprise, and he released me.
“How very unhuman of you,” he said as he sat on his throne and patted his knee. “Come. Tell me your demands.”
I shook my head and crossed my arms.
“You want to touch me freely, right? Well, I want you to stop referring to me as Persephone in any way. I’m not a goddess. I don’t know goddess things. My name is Ashlyn, and I want you to use it.”
He leaned forward in his seat.
“In exchange for calling you Ashlyn, I can touch you at will?”
Several contracts flared to life on his skin.
“May I read those before I answer?” I asked.
“You may.” He sat back again, his lips curving slightly, and I wanted to roll my eyes at the unspoken invitation to crawl into his lap again. Two could play his game.
“I may, what?” I asked, arching a brow.
His smile broadened.
“You may read whatever contracts you wish, my Ashlyn.”
My middle heated at the sound of my name, and I began to second-guess the wisdom of my demand.
He doesn’t want you, Ashlyn, I reminded myself. He wants her. You know this.
Right. I did. I’d thought having him use my name would help keep him grounded in the reality that I wasn’t Persephone. But now, I wondered if hearing my name when he gave me his heated looks would mess with my reality.
No, it was a start in the right direction. No matter how much it might mess with my head, it would mess with his too. Persephone wouldn’t sit in his lap. She wouldn’t let him touch her again after signing so many contracts to get rid of it. He would start doubting who I was eventually. I just needed to keep doing very un-Persephone-like things.
So, I slid into his lap and looped an arm around his neck while I leaned close to read the script on his chest.
First, it had been no touching her intimate parts. Then, her face and hair. Finally, not even her hands. I’d already given him back the freedom to touch her hands. Or rather, my hands. But maybe it would mean more to him if the contract was gone.
I read over what Hades had traded those rights for. The intimate touching had reduced the time between payments by two days. The face and hair had been for a make-out session until she found her pleasure at his touch. I tried not to think about what that meant. And giving up touching even her hand had been to end a hunger strike.
“You won’t remove this one, will you?” I asked, circling a fingertip around the contract that reduced his payment time by two days.
“No.”
“I think you should. You said yourself that she never paid up on time anyway. So what good do those two days do you when you could have been touching her instead?”
I looked up at him, expecting anger or hunger but seeing neither.
