To want peace.
And the truth was?
If anyone tried to take this from me…
I’d burn the world to the ground.
Chapter 25
Seph
Sunlight streamed through the gaps in the curtains, casting soft golden streaks across the room. I lay curled against Hades, my head on his chest, the steady rhythm of his breathing grounding me in a way that made no sense—and yet felt right.
The storm had passed.
Outside, the world was quiet. Inside, it felt like time had stopped altogether. My heart still beat too fast, caught in the afterglow of everything we’d done, everything we’d become last night.
Everything had changed.
He stirred beneath me, muscles shifting under my cheek, and I felt the weight of his gaze before I opened my eyes.
He was watching me.
There was something almost reverent in the way his eyes traced my face—fierce intensity dulled by morning light, but still burning underneath. I could feel it, even in the silence: the push and pull inside him. The war between tenderness and something far more primal.
Slowly, he lifted a hand and brushed a damp lock of hair from my forehead. His touch was careful, dragging down along my cheekbone, then lower to rest at the curve of my shoulder. A shiver rolled through me, subtle and uncontrollable.
I sighed softly, half-asleep still, and leaned into him without thinking. My body remembered him before my mind did.
“Seph,” he whispered, and the sound of my name in his voice—rough, low, his—shattered whatever illusion of calm had wrapped around us.
I opened my eyes.
He was already so close.
Too close.
His stare pinned me in place, unreadable but filled with something I didn’t dare name. Possession. Hunger. Worship. All of it.
I barely had time to breathe before he moved.
One second, I was basking in the stillness. The next, he was on top of me—pinning me to the sheets, his hands on either side of my head, his body caging mine in heat and tension.
“I’m not done with you yet,” he growled into my ear, his voice thick with need.
The words punched the air from my lungs.
And then he kissed me—claimed me—again, and everything we’d built last night ignited all over. There was no hesitation. No space. Just heat and skin and the crashing realization that whatever this was, we weren’t escaping it.
We weren’t supposed to.
I wrapped my legs around his waist and let the desire swallow me whole.
Because when Hades touched me like that, everything else disappeared.
And I didn’t want it back.
He slid into me, and it was like breathing for the first time after being underwater too long—sharp, jarring, essential.
