Hades Rewound (Hades Series #2)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Four

The moment I feel the heart-stopping sensation of his lips on mine, my eyes flutter shut and my brain goes into maximum overdrive. All my worries about Poseidon and my overwhelming guilt for what we just discovered in Naples melts away with the softness of his lips on mine.

I knew that I missed Hades, missed this part of the relationship, but I didn't realise up until this very moment just how much I missed it. How much I missed the way everything around us just seems to power off and disappear into the background, leaving us in the spotlight centre stage. How much I missed the way feeling his lips against mine set me alight, leaving me incandescent in the endless dark, and how much I relished and craved that feeling. How the thoughts firing in my brain dropped out of sight, and how easy it was for me to lose myself in everything that was him.

He kisses me hesitantly at first, slowly and delicately, like he's trying to find the answer to a question but he's scared of what he'll discover. But then my hands wind around his neck and pull him closer to me, and I kiss him back with a feverish passion, and suddenly that kiss becomes everything but hesitant. It becomes heated, it becomes mesmerising, it becomes so wholly and completely everything as he tugs me closer and our lips tangle together.

His hands cup my face, and hot electric sparks flare over my skin from every point he touches. He tilts his head to the side, deepening the kiss, and I feel something inside my brain explode. Liquid warmth - not unlike the warmth that his smile induced - spreads through me, and although it's as hot and dangerous as a forest fire, I'm completely ready to let it consume me completely.

I felt like I'd found and opened Pandora's Box, and not a single cell inside me wanted to shut it ever again. Because the feeling of Hades kissing me had once again completely devoured me. I felt alive. I felt endless. I felt like my world had been thrown into iridescent light after eternities of seamless darkness. And I didn't ever want to give up that feeling again.

I let out a disappointed whimper when he finally pulls away, even though my lungs are burning - in a completely different and much more uncomfortable sensation. I stare up at him, the jumble of emotions inside me tangling up my vocal chords and preventing me from saying anything intelligible. He doesn't say anything for a long time, his expression unreadable, even though his midnight blue eyes darken with an emotion that I can't quite place.

I lick my lips, tentatively opting to speak. "Hades-"

But before I can say anything more, his hands drop from my face and he backs away several steps. He breaks our electric gaze, and my heart, which had previously been doing flips that would put any gymnast to shame, shatters in my chest when I watch his face smooth out into that hated expression of icy reserve.

"I'm sorry." He says stiffly, before abruptly disappearing from my view and leaving me broken in his wake.

"No." I choke back a sob, holding my head in my hands. My knees give out from under me and I tumble to the ground.

What did I do wrong?

— — —

Hades completely disappears after that.

It's not the kind of disappearance that Hades usually pulls off, where I'm aware he's somewhere in the palace, but know he doesn't want me to find him. No, this time, not unlike the first day Hades returned, he's completely and utterly vanished, and even though I spend the rest of the day trying to find him, I have absolutely no luck. His disappearance does absolutely nothing for the overthinker within me, and I almost go completely out of my mind trying to stop myself from reading too much into his abrupt disappearance. Of course, I don't succeed in any way, shape or form, and end up having to lock myself in my room so the palace staff don't see me hysterically hyperventilating (they've already seen it once, and the gossip that circulated the Underworld lasted literally for weeks).