The sun was starting to set on this dazed Wednesday night. The skies were overcast, and the lighting merely shifted to dim. Slowly, the darkness took over, and finally, I felt at home, as if I were in the Underworld. Night was when I was most comfortable. I wore the night like a second skin, and it made me feel like I was on top of shit.

I had a nocturnal routine most of the time like I was a fucking vampire. Though my devouring of Elyse had been in broad daylight, and I had to admit, I hadn’t had that much fun in the sun in a long, long time.

Or whatever was left of the sun after Apollo had abandoned his duties in the city. It had been overcast every day over this city for the past few weeks now. I wondered when it had started getting so bad that even I had noticed.

Not that I gave a crap. I was happy with the miserable weather. I wasn’t the god of the Underworld because I loved sunshine and rainbows.

“Hades!” someone shouted from outside my house. My body responded to her voice, standing without thinking.

I opened the door and pushed my hands into my pockets, grinning at her as she stood on the sidewalk. What, she didn’t even have the guts to knock on my door?.

“Did you come for round two?” I teased. Immediately, I regretted making it sound like it was all about getting some ass. But, Almighty Zeus, her ass was delectable. Eating her out had been the best thing I had done in centuries.

“I’m not here to banter with you.” With her head held high, she kept her composure, her arms tight by her side, her hands curled. But I saw the way her eyes had widened when I’d opened the door, the quick gulp of air she’d sucked into her lungs.

“You’re angry,” I said. “I like angry.”

“Yeah? Come down to the sidewalk, and let’s see how much you like it.”

Fuck me, she was sexy. She was clad in leather as she had been before, and she had her knives and sword in their sheaths on her body. There was nothing more orgasmic than a woman who knew how to wield a weapon. I had a thing for warriors.

Which was how I had known from the start that my love for Persephone had been a spell. She had been as delicate as a flower.

And I stomped on flowers.

Now with Elyse in her combat mode, I couldn’t help myself. She was pissed off about something, but she drew me like a magnet, and her power was mesmerizing. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I had to go to her. I walked down the steps of the house that looked like a derelict piece of shit on the outside. All other homes around us had been abandoned, so it was just us on a street with trash blowing in the wind, tree branches rustling along the front yard.

“What do you want, princess?” I asked.

“I’m not your princess,” Elyse hissed through gritted teeth as she grabbed a short baton that hung from her belt.

“That’s your weapon of choice?” I barked a laugh. “You’re dreaming if you think that’s going to do anything.”

“I guess I’m a dreamer.” She wielded the baton in front of her almost like a sword, and suddenly, it was a seven-foot bo with a steel tip that had been forged into a very, very sharp point.

I jumped back.

Elyse smirked, and it was a smile full of menace.

A woman after my own heart.

She ran toward me, the bo above her head. She planted it on the ground a few feet before me and launched into the air. Using the bo, she vaulted toward me. Strong and fast. I barely managed to get out of her way.

“You seem like a decent fighter,” I said. “I like it.”

“You won’t like it for long.” She swung the stick around, lashing out with her back leg and kicking me on the knee. I hadn’t expected that. Truth be told, I’d been fascinated by her skills. But she was attacking me, not someone else. If she beat me, I wasn’t going to enjoy the show nearly as much as I would have had I just been observing her.

“Motherfucker,” I bit out as I sank to the ground for a second until the pain subsided. It was a sharp ache, but I was the god of the Underworld. The pain was inconsequential.

“If you want to fight me, fine,” I said, and my two-pronged fork materialized into my hands. It was made of metal with gems along the length of it, and it breathed as I touched it. I was also the god of the Earth, so metals and precious stones were mine to control. On our last meet, we’d kissed, but that had been the magic between us, drawing us closer, and now she wanted to kill me. Why? Because she blamed me for something I didn’t do? Wasn’t that the story of my life.

Elyse let out a battle cry and lunged for me again, swinging the stick overhead first, attacking with a kick and then following by sweeping her bo low to the ground to knock my feet out from under me.

It would have been a great move if I weren’t stronger and faster than she was. Even with her Zeus-like powers.

“You forget that Zeus is my brother,” I said. “We grew up fighting.”

I ducked when she aimed for my head and blocked two punches with my fork.

“Yeah, I can tell who lost,” Elyse said.

She wasn’t even breaking a sweat, and she moved hard and fast. I would have been impressed if she hadn’t almost nailed me.

“Your power isn’t close to being equal to that of my brother. I won’t lose to you,” I growled.

“Is that why you took me into that office in the police academy?” Elyse asked. “Was that a battle tactic?”

“That was a moment of weakness that won’t happen again, trust me,” I said. “I don’t make the same mistake twice.”

“Good. We wouldn’t want you to end up with a woman who doesn’t really want you, now would we?”

Her words were a lot deadlier than her weapons. Fuck the internet for allowing the world to know everything. Anyone could read about my failure as a man who loved a woman who could never love him in return.

I was such a pussy. Her words shouldn’t have gotten to me. But they did, and I trembled with fury. I was immortal, so time didn’t matter, but I had wasted years trying to make Persephone see I was worth loving. What hurt more was that for a while, I’d thought it had worked. I had believed I’d managed to get her to love me back.

But it had all been a lie.

I screamed, reaching for the bitterness that swirled in the pit of my stomach, and ran full-speed toward Elyse, my pitchfork lifted over my head, ready to skewer her. Darkness rode on the wind with me, blocking out everything—the scenery around us, the city lights, everything that could mean something. Being shrouded in darkness was when I felt nothing. It was where I was at peace.

My pitchfork hit something, and it wasn’t the result I had expected. The weapon obliterated anything in my path. Elyse and her bo shouldn’t have been able to block my attack.

We stood opposite each other, our weapons almost merging with the power that trembled through both of us. She was powerful. I had to hand it to her. This wasn’t just Heracles’s training. This was a power Elyse possessed that was all her own.

Her power lurked right beneath the surface, not fully realized. It peeked at me with eyes that promised torment if she realized how powerful she could be. But she wasn’t there yet. I was still a god, and Elyse was only a mortal.

Metals were mine to control, and I yielded that power, twisting her bo out of her hands and knotting it up like the stem of a cherry.

Elyse’s eyes widened, her mouth dropping open, but she didn’t miss a beat. She snatched two knives from the sheaths across her chest and came at me samurai-style, her weapon over her shoulder, charging. Heracles had covered every fighting style, hadn’t he? It was beautiful to see her in action, a dance I could sit back and admire for hours.

The blades cut through the air. She was riled up, and rage drove her. I spun out of the way every time, allowing her to slice a piece of my clothing to let her feel like she was doing something worth her while. She was strong, but I was much stronger.

But I could sense her anger burning off her, her resentment.

This fury that would end up killing her. It was uncontrolled, wild.

“You shouldn’t pick a fight,” I said.

Elyse breathed hard.

“You shouldn’t play dirty,” she reprimanded in an icy voice.

“How am I fighting dirty? You have the power of Zeus in you. If anything, this is fair.”

Elyse shook her head and threw one of the knives at me. I lifted my hand and stopped it. The knife floated in midair, the point only a fraction of an inch away from my throat.

“Tsk, tsk.” I clicked my tongue. “Don’t you know you can’t kill a god?”

“Not with weapons forged by men, but I can send you away from the Earth with weapons forged by gods.” Mirth weaved through her words.

I frowned and snatched the blade out of the air.

“This knife was crafted by Ares!” I boomed. “Where did you get it?”

“I have contacts on Mount Olympus, but I guess you wouldn’t know that, would you? Not having been there for so long.”

I gritted my teeth. “You’re a bitch, you know that?”

“Am I to assume you don’t like that? Or is that another backhanded compliment?”

“You’re starting to piss me off,” I said, and I hurled the fork at her. If it pierced her chest, she would die. Elyse had more than one life, but at least killing her—even if just temporarily—would be satisfying for a while.

Elyse threw herself out of the way despite the strength with which I had tossed the weapon.

“Is that the best you can do?” she mocked.

“No, I can do better,” I said. “That includes when it comes to finding sexual partners.”

It didn’t take her long to figure out I was referring to our little romp, and her sexy mouth twisted. Her power spiked as a result, sending a ripple through the atmosphere that tightened my chest. Bitch or not, this woman was powerful, and it was damn sexy. I couldn’t help it. My dick punched up in my pants, her technique turning me on, and the sexual tension thickened the air.

“There you go again,” Elyse said. “Do you think sex is going to win the fight for you this time?”

“Do you want to find out?” I was horny as fuck, and I wanted her on her back. I wanted to strip her clothes off and display that toned body, riding it raw until neither of us could fight anymore.

“Son of a bitch.” Elyse pulled out a short sword from her back. How many weapons did she conceal? How did a slight little thing like Elyse Lowe walk around town armed like an executioner and get away with it?

But she was part of our world. Elyse was divine in certain ways, and like us, she had shields that stopped the humans who weren’t close to her from seeing what she really was.

That didn’t stop the gods, and I knew what she was. She was a woman who somehow, despite her sharp tongue and low blows, had me by the balls, and I wanted her. Every fiber in my being screamed for her.

Which meant it hadn’t been a one-off thing and I was in deeper shit than I thought.