average human’s Reviews > Visions > Status Update

For the first time today, my stomach actually grumbles.
“Bloody cow with slabs of fried belly, grass, and fermented breastmilk.” She winks at me as she hands me the bag. “And some seasoned tortured potatoes just the way you like them.”
“I do love tortured potatoes.” I open the bag and inhale the aroma of fried everything.
“And for you, our knight in fire armor.” Dairy hands the bag over. “Fried chicken sandwich with a pickle.”
“Why do I get the normal food?” Greyson pops open his bag and pulls out his tortured potatoes.
“Because she needs to think she hunted and fought for her food.” Daisy says it as a joke, but it hits differently today.
“Daisy.” I tap a fry against my lips. “Why did you say that?”
“You don’t see it, do you?” Folding her arms, she leans against the window, a slight breeze blowing her dark brown hair around. “You’re special, Nes. You may not see it, and if you do, you may deny it or not understand it. But it’s there inside you. From the moment I met you, I knew you were special. Not in a preppy princess kind of way, but in a way that has you biting into a still beating heart with blood dripping down your face while you smile at the rainbow in the distance.”
“That makes me sound like I need a padded room.”
“Or maybe as though you’re a mad scientist, and only you know that the red liquid in that beaker is actually from the human hanging in the freezer.”
“How is this supposed to help me, Daisy?”
“Because maybe that beaker is a healing potion. All I know is you’re destined for greatness. Bloody, battle weary greatness.” Leaning back on her heels, she taps the hood of the car. “Don’t worry, I’ll be right beside you to bathe in the blood.”
“As a nymph, that disturbs me greatly.” Shouldn’t she prefer to swim in a crystalline pond or something?
“It should.” Her dark eyes flare with a vengeance that makes me shiver. “Take her home, Greyson, she smells like rotting hoagies.”
I lost the ability to smell myself hours ago, but I still shove my nose into my armpit as Greyson pulls away. “I can’t smell me.”
He grumbles around a handful of fries.
“Greyson, do I smell that bad?”
Another grumble.
“If I stink, it’s your job to inform me.” Elliot, feeling my distress, burps a plume of smoke, and it’s the cutest thing ever. Giving up on trying to scent out my stink, I give him a fry. “Do you think he will have wings?”
“I have no idea. I didn’t even know they existed until a few hours ago. He doesn’t like that.” Greyson’s right, Elliot spits the fry at me, and I swear he blows a raspberry in the process.
Opening up my burger, I toss a piece of red meat at him, which he gobbles right up. “Good boy!” I praise him, then muse, “What do I feed him?”
“Maybe we should hunt down a few crickets.” Greyson pulls up beside the firehouse, parking in an alley where an iron ladder leads to his apartment.
Butterflies explode in my stomach as I look at his front door where a little wreath hangs. I bet the inside is clean, clutter free, and reminiscent of a Martha Stewart magazine—prettier than anything I could have ever put together.
“We can sit here and eat for a little, but you do smell.” He says it with such a straight face, I can’t help but laugh.
“Lead the way, my salamander.”
He raises a light brow at me, wearing a crooked smirk on his face. “Salamander?” he mouths.
“You know, like the elementals.”
“Oh, I know what you’re talking about, Nes.” He pushes open the car door, leaving his bag of food on the console between us, and jogs around to my side.
Why is he such a gentleman? He opens the door with a flourish, and I grab his bag of food before climbing out. Like the suave bastard he is, he scoops up Elliot and waits for me to move to the side before shutting my door.
To our surprise, Elliot crawls up his neck and snuggles in, burping only one little plume of smoke before purring in happiness.
“He purrs.”
“He likes you.”
“I’ll never get used to this. There is a miniature dragon sleeping around my neck.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “But I don’t hate it.”
“He’s the perfect guardian. Come on. I smell, and I’m pretty sure you have a working shower.”
“You’re right about that.” I follow behind him as he heads up the stairs, his muscles flexing in his jeans. It would be the perfect view if I wasn’t so damn tired. As the lock snicks open and he steps inside, the scent of cinnamon and spice drift to me. “It isn’t much, but it’s home.”
It’s just as I pictured, picturesque and pristine. But there’s one door I run to without looking back or pausing to take in the rest of the apartment—the bathroom.
Greyson’s laughter follows me into the clean white room where a standing shower sits in the corner in all its heavenly glory. I’m starving, but my priorities have me peeling off my pants from two nights ago.
A clink on the tiled floor echoes around me as a little coin spins to land at my feet. I may have lost my phone to the fire, but I’m not without backup. Picking up the coin, I note how heavy it feels in my palm, and I press the lifeline to my heart.
Shower, food, and bed. That’s all I am capable of right now. Tomorrow, I’ll figure out who I am and where I belong.

63%

“I hear your wife isn’t very pleasant.”
“A title I never should have given her. Know this, Vanessa. She may hold the title of my wife, but she has not been for a long, long time.”
“But she is still yours.” I hate that she belongs to him in any way.
“There is only one the Fates deem is mine, and it is not her,” he states with conviction. For a moment, his mask cracks, and I don’t see an angry god standing before me, but a man looking at something he doesn’t just want but needs.
“No?” I’m teasing him now.
Instead of playing into my words, he says, “Pray you never meet her.” His tone turns dark, and something in it makes me look at him, really look at him—from the black shadows under his eyes to the thin silver scars across his body.
She abuses him.
“I pray to no god.” My voice is a deadly whisper, and I can feel the rage building within me, pressing against my willpower. It demands retribution for this creature who belongs to me.
Hades is mine.
Hades tilts his head to the side, a small smile playing on his pink lips. His eyes darken and dilate, and I swear he licks his lips on purpose. “There she is.”
I don’t know what he’s saying to me, because something presses and knocks on my soul, demanding entrance to my consciousness. She, it, me, demands I watch his muscles flex as he moves to kneel at my feet.
“Oh, you are so much more than I could have ever hoped for.” His hands slide up my legs, and his words brush over me until I quickly forget them under his touch.
His palms run under my dress, and I’m a goner. With a shudder, I thread my fingers through his hair, tighten my hold, and pull his head back. Those dark, dark eyes peer up at me with so much more than lust, and that cools my desire.
Releasing him, I take a step back and turn to the bookcases. I hear him rise, the small wake of wind he creates wafting toward me with a hint of leather.
“Who?” I can’t look at him. If I do, then that piece of me that wants nothing more than to make him mine will carve its way out of the prison I shove it into.
If I don’t understand it, then I shouldn’t toy with it. I may get burned.
I love the heat.
“What?” A chair creaks, and I imagine his lean form sinking into the soft leather.
“You said, ‘There she is.’ I’d like to know who you were talking about.” My fingers graze the wood shelves. They break through the layer of dust and trail through random clean spots. Hades isn’t all that secretive after all. I read the spines on the books without dust.
“Halfling.” That single word causes me to turn and look at him. With his fingers steepled beneath his chin, he watches me as though I’m so much more than an oddity that can fling herself into the Underworld. He looks at me with intensity, as though I mean something to him.
I’ve not even met him. Not really. Not in a sense that is normal to me. In the wild world, we could get a coffee, share a bagel, or even walk through a park. But I wasn’t made for such simple pleasures.
“What does that mean to you, Hades?” I pull down To Kill a Mockingbird, the spine worn and the pages frayed. I hated reading this book as a teen, I could never get into it, and here Hades is with a paperback copy, the spine worn.
“It means you haven’t even scratched the surface of what you are capable of.” His chair squeaks again, and I peer at him, though my head remains down. I’m pretending to read a book and not at all paying attention to him—but I am.
I hang onto every word. “And you know what that is?”
“No. But I’m curious.”
“You suspect.”
“Yes.”
I snap the book closed and replace it. If I can pop in here at any time, I’m going to slowly add smutty romance novels to these shelves, because there isn’t a single one amidst copies of every biblical script ever written and horror fiction about Hades.
But those horrors aren’t what I see here in this room. All I see is a broken man looking for penance.
I close my eyes as it clicks. That was the look he gave me only moments earlier. As though I can grant him that little slice of sanity, of forgiveness. But even I know that isn’t how it works. My heart hurts, knowing that the claim I want to lay on him is only on my end. I may want him, but he needs me for something he hides in those inky eyes.
“Care to elaborate?” Resigned, I begin my pursuit anew, giving nothing of my genuine feelings away.
“No.”
“You are a god of many words, Hades.” His gaze still smolders with desire as he watches me peruse his shelves. He tracks me as I ascend a ladder and push off, spinning halfway around the room.
“Speaking is for fools who need to fill the space between.”
“Am I a fool, Hades?” My fingers slip over spines of broken leather journals with no date or title.
“No. I think you’re ignorant.” His voice is much, much closer than it was a mere moment ago.
The ladder pulls back with a jerk of Hades’ hand. Pausing, he peers up at me once more. Stepping down a few rungs, I lean back so we are eye to eye. “Of what?”
“Everything. You do not know why you show up in my realm, only that you can. You look at me as though you want to claim me and then turn to ice. Your eyes turn gold around the rim with a desire so palpable, it caresses my skin.” He tugs me down a step so we are but a breath away.
I inhale him, consume his essence, and it makes me hungry once again.
“That look,” he whispers over my lips, “right there.”
My pulse thunders in my neck, my wrists, and on the next inhale, my breasts press against his chest.
“It’s dangerous to look at a man like that.”
“You are no man.”
His lips brush against mine, yet as I lean in, he leans back, dancing to a tune of desire as the tension increases.
“I’m no man, Vanessa.”
“Control,” I state, but I don’t know if I’m telling him or myself to gain control.
He licks his lips, and as I inhale him once more, he slowly licks my mouth from corner to corner, then sweeps his tongue across the same path once more. “It isn’t me who needs control.” His lips feather over mine. “But you.”
My body sways toward him, my lips seeking his, and with a snarl that comes from deep inside my soul, I press my lips to his, determined to claim his kiss, to take what I want and make him mine.
Reservation doesn’t belong here as I mold my lips to his. I worship his mouth, clinging to him and drawing him closer. His tongue strokes mine, and something inside me pulses, awakens, and slips through the cracks in my armor.
I drag my body across his, shuddering at the feel of him as I struggle to get enough. But it won’t be.
Not until I sate this fervor burning inside me.
His sinful tongue slides across mine, and once more, that need pulses within me. Somewhere, caution ripples across my awareness, but I can’t stop, not as that armor cracks.
I bite down.
His blood fills my mouth with his essence, and I swallow him down like a starving woman. Magic and cinnamon blood dances across my tongue, and he pulls back, his eyes alarmed as he touches his mouth where blood seeps from the corner. His fingertips smear the crimson liquid across his cheek, and his hand shakes as he stares at his blood on his skin.
I lick my lips. He is all I see, all I want.
“What have you done?” Hades stumbles away from me, and I struggle to stop myself from launching at him. “You have no idea what you’ve done.” He glares at the door, then turns back to me. “Leave. Now.”
A rumble shutters the library, spilling a few books to the floor.
“Now,” he commands.
Cold washes through me at his panic, abating my lust. He no longer looks at me with desire, but with horror.
My world goes dark as I somehow leave the library, the Underworld, Hades.