Hades and Persephone

Chapter 3 picks up immediately at the end of Chapter 2. If you have not yet read Chapters 1 and 2, please reread them before reading Chapter 3. Enjoy!

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Pomegranate arils. The lord of the Underworld could not shake the image of pomegranate arils and Persephone from his mind.

How long had he dreamed of them?

How had he not remembered the dreams when he first met her at the Owl's Roost earlier that day?

In his dreams, she was younger, still centuries old, but younger. Dream-state Persephone still seemed a twenty-four year old ingenue.

Months had passed since those hazy images flooded his brain as he slept. Rather than the movie-style dream of seamless successive action, this most recent dream was almost a trailer of disjointed images.

That was okay; he had dreamt of her enough to fill in the gaps.

In every dream, Persephone first appeared as she had for lunch, full of breathless excitement on the precipice of an awakening.

As the dream clearly took place on Olympus, she was dressed in a similar chiton as the blue one she wore earlier, usually white, her richly sunny waves pinned up. A few ringlets escaped to tease the soft skin of her jawline.

It was, Hades realized now, as if Persephone and Demeter had never left Olympus.

In the dreams, his first sighting of her was amongst the flowers, verdant green stems and leaves capped by a chapeau of every bright and pastel hue that surrounded the goddess. The heady scent of the blooms mixed with the radiantly unbesmirched beauty of Persephone dazed his senses and caused a buzzing in his bloodstream.

Dream Hades knew no restraint. Pausing not even to rely on his honed instincts of cautioned and measured lawfulness, he swooped in, time and time again, to unsettle the goddess in her leisure.

"I am Hades," he intoned, knowing his dark timbre, crimson flashing eyes, and gloomy and austere reputation would augment her discomfiture.

The goddess, notably nonplussed, gulped. "I am Persephone, Lord Hades, daughter of Demeter." Long eyelashes fluttered demurely against her skin as she lowered her gaze, a clear sign of submission.

The monster locked up tight within him, so imprisoned after Calypso's departure, hammered away at the mental cage his mind implemented.

"May I offer you some assistance, Persephone?" Hades strove for a smooth tone so at odds with the maelstrom within him. "What brings you to the Elysian Fields, my dear?"

Taken aback by the familiarity of his endearment gave Persephone pause. "I'm sorry, Lord Hades. I did not realize that I had trespassed upon your property. But the flora is so lovely here," she related, her fingers caressing the petal of a dianthus.

Gaze sharpening on the light fondling of the flower, Hades felt his cock expanding, growing turgid beneath his robes. "No apologies necessary, dear one. Might I offer you a brief repast?"

"That would be lovely," she cooed. Her soft tone belied the worried glances that she darted about, realizing that she was comparatively alone with the King of the Underworld and his minions who would only do his bidding in his domain, as the Elysian Fields surely were.

Hades signaled for his minions to bring forth a few treats. Among them was a pomegranate, his favorite, as the blood red juices trapped within the arils matched his eyes when they glinted in passion or anger.

The god and the goddess nibbled and sipped at the ambrosia and nectar until only the unassuming orb was left. "What is that?" she queried, her tone and pose now more mellow, unguarded.

Hades knew in these dreams that he was the villain for what he plotted. With one of Hephaestus's knives, he slit open the pomegranate, twisting it to reveal the jeweled seeds within. "This, my dear, is a special fruit found only here in the Underworld. A pomegranate. Ugly on the outside, this fruit contains these plump seeds that burst with luscious juice when you eat them. Here, have a taste."

While seeming to be casual, the god expertly and deliberately removed twelve intact arils from their waxy tethers. His hand shifted from right to left, tempting the younger goddess as the jeweled crimson seeds shimmered in the warm sunlight.

Nearly mesmerized, Persephone licked her lips but sought to demur. Bolts of electric arousal excited his cock with each sweep of her tongue, but Hades sought to remain outwardly calm. "I - I - I really am nearly full from the nectar and ambrosia, Lord Hades," she murmured.

With his other hand, he plucked one aril from the fruit. He noted with a dark amusement that her gaze, nearly cobalt with piqued interest, followed the aril from the pomegranate to his lips. "Mmmmmmmmmm," he moaned, only slightly exaggerating. "My favorite. Are you sure that you are too full to - taste?" At that, he balanced an aril between his thumb and forefinger and offered the plump morsel to her, this time only a millimeter from her lips.

Those same electric bolts - from her sharp intake of breath, she clearly felt them, too - wreaked havoc on his composure. When her lips parted on that breath, the aril slid in, and her answering moan thrummed in his ears.

Hades knew, as she definitely did not, that pomegranates tasted of raw desire. Temptation. Passion. And now, this shy little flower had tasted all three.

Her eyes fluttered open, and her stare revealed a new curiosity to experience the thirst for carnality that the juicy arils promised. "Thank you, Lord Hades, but I really must be going now."

In response, he could feel a knowing sneer stretch his lips. "Are you sure, my dear? You may taste a few more, if you like?"

Pure temptation.

He, the predator, knew it.

She, the prey, recognized it. But she was helpless to resist it.

"That would be lovely," she agreed, and they both heard the breathless quality to her voice.

A second one, then a third, and a fourth each passed her lips. Her moans from the succulence of the fruit became more sensual, then sexual, with each taste.

The fifth stained her lips with juice that spurted as the aril's essence escaped her mouth, the passionate crimson splash coating the soft pink of her lips. Her soft tongue swabbing the plump lower curve did not capture all of the juice.

With a growl, Hades lurched forward, securing her within his arms, imprisoning her within his solid strength. Soft biting kisses punctuated the growls as he worked to seduce, to entice, this maidenly creature so at odds with his nature.

When she acquiesced to his teasing seduction, his kiss became carnal. Her newfound passion met his, measure for measure, her heartbeat thundering beneath the soft globes of her breasts that he traced with wandering, then groping, hands. Her chiton he rent in twain; his hands now explored the bare skin previously warmed by the soft fabric.

The conqueror and predator within him merged into one victorious being as he pressed her down on her back atop the ruined silk. To distract her from what was to come, he teased another aril past her lips, and she sucked on his fingertips, her eyes dark and her eyelids heavy with desire. The aroma of the flowers crushed beneath them melded with the scent of her skin, and he grew incomprehensibly harder.

Hades's lips roamed, following the path his hands took only moments before. One petulant nipple tempted his lips; her cries of anguished passion as he drew the nub past his lips caused him to claw at his robes to release his cock.

Her hands strove to explore; he grasped both wrists in one hand and held them above her head. "No," he groaned against her breast. "You will have your turn, later. After. Now, pet. Now is time for something else entirely."

Just as his heavy turgid cock was about to enter her, breaching the resistance he knew he would find there, claiming her as his, Hades glanced up - into the infuriated eyes of Demeter.

Pulling back took momentous effort he did not know he possessed. Still, he rocked back on his heels and sought to cover Persephone with the pieces of her chiton, now stained with the remainder of the pomegranate.

"Persephone!" the goddess's voice thundered, and her daughter snapped out of her passionate daze, grasping the ruined dress to her in shame.

When her daughter didn't answer, Demeter directed, "Come along, Persephone. It is time to return home."

Persephone, still cloaked in her innocence, scooted away from Hades and stood on shaking legs. The lord of the Underworld noted that she would not look at him.

Letting the mother and daughter walk about twenty feet away from him, he waited to reveal his coup de grace. "Demeter!"

The goddess of the harvest whirled around, staring him down. Her arms still wrapped protectively around her daughter, each word she spoke was an accusation. "Hades. Persephone and I are going home. I won't discuss this with Zeus. It will do no good; he has done far worse than you have here today with my daughter and will continue to do so."

He opened his hand; the six remaining arils of the twelve he offered Persephone earlier rested in his palm. "Your daughter ate six of these. As a result, she will stay here, as my wife, for six months of the year." He saw her blanch, then flinch. "You know there is no other recourse. I could be cruel. I could claim her as my wife forever. But I'm not - unreasonable. She may divide her time between here and with you."

It was not the glare Demeter bestowed upon him that made him second guess his scheme; it was the look of betrayal that slashed over Persephone's features, robbing her of some of her innocence in that moment.

* * * * * * * *

"I consent to my punishment." Persephone's clear, musical tone brought him out of his reverie.

"Bend over my lap, slave." A pearly white tooth became visible as it indented her lower lip.

"Yes, Master." She walked slowly over, and he savored the bob and sway of her large natural breasts. Softness and warmth pressed against his thighs as her ass tilted up in offering. Placing the flogger beside him on the arm of his throne, the leather tails dangling down to tease her thighs, Hades grasped first one ass cheek, then the other, his calloused hands massaging and caressing the pert globes atop his lap.

Dipping and delving, his hands continuing to explore each curve and crevice, he nearly chortled to discover how drippingly wet she was. As his fingers strummed her clit, she let out an audible squeak, and he could not hold back his laughter. "Tell me, slave, has anyone - god or mortal - ever touched you here?"

"Only you. Today." Her voice was slightly muffled, but he heard the honesty in it. Parts of his heart that had no business in warming to those words grew cozy.

In his mind, regardless of what transpired over the next nineteen or so hours, she was still intended for someone else. This was an interlude, nothing more. An object lesson of what occurred when one invited danger too close for comfort. With that determination, he reached for the heavy flogger, draping the leather strips over her ass which clenched in anticipation.

Then, he sat, still and silent, as her discomfort grew. The silence on the way to the lake was companionable; this one was fraught with intensity. Seconds stretched into minutes as he soaked up her unease. He lavished unspoken praise on her; she asked no question, merely waited submissively for his desire to begin her punishment.

A slight shift of his body signaled to her to beware an instant before one hand clenched in her hair tugging her up so that her ear was at the same level as his mouth. "Twenty, slave. Twenty swats with the flogger," he rasped, and he saw her eyes widen with both shock and a strange calm acceptance that he chose not to probe further. Dropping her hair, he then focused on his next task, arranging her body for maximum impact, spreading her legs slightly so that her streaming cunt was exposed to the flogger, as well.

"But before that," Hades's imperious nature rose to the fore, "you will consume the nineteen pomegranate arils."

The disconnect between her impending punishment and his insistence that she must eat the pomegranate seeds beforehand carefully imploded the calm she had sought to build as a barrier against any problematic feelings for Hades and his domination.

From her previous reading of erotica, she knew that part of a Dom's job was to rip away those barriers to lay a submissive's essence bare. However, Persephone was also cognizant that this arrangement would end once she left the Underworld and had attempted to shield herself from the wrenching of the separation.

As an attempt at dissemination and to cloak her discombobulation from him, she asked the obvious question, "Why do I eat only nineteen seeds?"

Hades, clearly expecting the question had a ready answer. "My dream detailed imprisonment in the Underworld lasting one month for each aril consumed." Alarmed, she whipped around to stare at him in shock. "Now, I do not intend to hold you here, consensually or nonconsensually, for nineteen months. I will keep you here in my clutches for nineteen hours, however. That way, you would be able to return to work tomorrow, no harm, no foul."

Her mind raced with what they could do to fill those nineteen hours, and she struggled to hide those thoughts from her face. Whether he realized her turmoil or not, Hades did not remark upon it.

A brisk snapping of Hades's fingers resulted in a newly split open pomegranate proffered by a minion at his side. "You know, slave, your mother was the one who spread the pomegranate beyond Olympus, to spread beyond the Underworld, to be precise. Pomegranates were originally native to the border between the Elysian Fields and Tartarus. Zeus asked my help in tempting her away from Poseidon's attentions, and I presented him with a pomegranate. She was so obsessed by the fruit that, when she left Olympus with you, she took pomegranate saplings with her to grow there."

As he finished speaking he pressed the first aril to her lips; she eagerly accepted the taste and sighed happily at the familiar burst in her mouth. "Thank you, Master. These truly are my favorite. But these taste differently somehow."

"Hermes tasted them on the land below, and he said that those are nowhere near as potent as the ones available in the Underworld." Hades glanced down to see her skin flushing, along with other telltale signs of the aphrodisiac effects of the Underworld fruit.

"They aren't. These are - I am not sure of the words for it, but they are nearly as intoxicating as Dion's wine." Still facing away, she did not see his countenance suddenly grow stony from the reminder of her kissing Dionysus's cheek.

Hades unleashed a sound that would have been laughter had there been any humor to it. To cover his perturbation from the memory, he continued to press the jeweled arils on her. Unaware of his shift in demeanor, and growing more aroused from the effects of the pomegranate, Persephone playfully sucked his finger past her lips nibbling on the fleshy pad after she tasted the nineteenth aril.

His response was to tug his finger away, leaving her feeling oddly bereft from its absence. Only the feeling of the flogger tails being raised from her ass warned her of what was to come. The first thudding crack of the flogger nearly stole her breath.

Several heartbeats thudded between them. Hades was waiting for her to flee, to recoil as Calypso had.

What happened next mystified him.

"One. Thank you, Master," she intoned. Granted, her voice was muffled slightly, but she deliberately articulated her words.

In truth, she was in sensory overload. Vaguely, she remembered her earlier decision to flirt with him. What was happening now was beyond her wildest desires, her craziest hopes. His pausing she understood to be a faltering on her punishment, and she found that she needed the punishment, the experience of it.

Hades, upon hearing Persephone's response to the first kiss of the flogger, had to recalculate all he knew of a woman's desire. Having seen the best and worst humanity had to offer, he knew that he was not the only Dominant on either sphere of existence. He simply had given up, after Calypso's repudiation, of ever finding a submissive to match his desires.

And even considering Persephone as a possible candidate was impossible.

He could, and would, give her this taste of that lifestyle for the next several hours, if only to caution her away from him.

The second, third, fourth, and fifth strikes of the flogger landed unerringly across both ass cheeks turning them a vibrant pink. Persephone barely had time to acknowledge each with a count before he delivered the next strike.

Yet, after the fifth, Persephone could not stop the slight wiggle, a small shuffling to ease her thighs closed, if only to conceal her arousal.

Strike six marked her upper thighs, a wicked reminder that she was to hide nothing from him. "Six," she gasped out. "Thank you, Master."

To prove his point, Hades punctuated each of the next several strikes with words. "You. Will. Not. Shield. Yourself. From. Me. Do. You. Understand?"

"Yes, Master!" the young goddess howled. As a child, Demeter rarely had to punish her - and never physically. The curiosity of being spanked is what had originally led her to the darker boundaries of erotica. Her ass felt inflamed with the fires of what many mortals imagined hell to contain. Then, she groaned in frustration because he spread her thighs even wider. Questing fingers teased open her pussy lips; she yelped anew, squirming to avoid the inevitable.

This chuckle contained both warmth and humor. "There, there, slave. Four more, and I will take care of that pesky wetness, hmmm?"

An incomprehensible sound escaped her lips, part growl, part groan, part mewling need.

A full-throated laugh precipitated the seventeenth strike, this time on her exposed cunt lips. Persephone squealed. "The remaining three are going there, as well, slave," he dictated.

Eighteen. Nineteen.

Hades chuckled inwardly as his arm reared back for the twentieth. Somehow, the last several minutes had lightened his heart. Instead of a perfunctory flogging that he had planned to mete out, her responses had instead allowed him to experiment in a way he had never had the opportunity to do before.

The twentieth strike resounded in the room followed immediately by Persephone's reaction: "Aieeeeeaaiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeee!"

Dropping the flogger to the ground with a thud, Hades scooped her up in his arms and held her close to his chest, letting both his breathing and hers return to normal.

Several languid minutes passed, both of them enjoying being in the company of the other, before Persephone's fingertips skittered along his jawline. His steely grip trapped her fingers, and Hades held her fingers to his lips, tasting and teasing the delicate pads with his lips, tongue, and teeth.

Persephone shivered from returning arousal. "Thank you, Master," she whispered, noticing his jaw tightening from the words.

"Should I not be saying that? Should I return to calling you Hades?"

He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the temptation of her. "Maybe that would be best."

"Okay." She sighed and wiggled on his lap, drawing in a whistling breath as her punished flesh pressed against his lap. "Hades," she whispered, glancing up at his eyes.

He averted his gaze; a feeling not unlike dread settled low in her stomach. "What do you plan for the next 17 hours?"

One hand scrubbed over his face as he considered her question. "I'm not sure. I had originally intended something that seems unlikely now. Thrashing your ass as punishment for your outburst is one thing; considering other things would cross a line."

"What line?" she challenged.

Hades seemingly ignored her question. "Your aunt and uncle, Hera and Zeus - Zeus, my younger brother, mind you - asked me to persuade your mother to return to Olympus with you. Hera has decided it is time to meddle in your life and find you a husband among the Olympians."