Free Hades by Larissa Ione Page A

suppose.”
    “Not if you’re doing it right.” He waggled his brows, and she rolled her eyes. “So what does evil feel like to you? If good feels good, then does evil feel bad?”
    “That’s the funny thing.” She inched closer, adding another palm to his chest, and he gripped the cup so hard he heard it crack. More. He needed more. And damn her for making him crave it when he’d been perfectly fine being alone for all these years. “It’s as seductive as good, but in a different way.” She shivered delicately. “It’s hot. If good is like bathing in Champagne, evil is like bathing in whiskey. There’s a burn, but it’s almost always a lovely burn.”
    Yeah, he felt that lovely burn where she was touching him. As she talked, it spread across his chest and into his abdomen, then lower, to his pelvis and groin. Everything tightened and grew feverish with lust.
    “Seems to me,” he said in a humiliatingly rough voice, “that bumping up against evil would be an incredible temptation for angels like you.”
    “It is,” she purred. “Which is why we aren’t allowed to leave Heaven except under certain circumstances, and even then, we must have an escort. It’s one of the reasons I know I can’t ever enter Sheoul. To become a True Fallen would be to have my full powers of detection restored, and I’d be skewed toward evil. The few Seraphim who have become fallen angels are like drug addicts, seeking out the most evil beings they can find, to serve them, to just be near them.”
    He wondered how having a Seraphim fallen angel as a warden in the Inner Sanctum would play out. Then Cat dragged her palms down his chest to his abs, and he forgot all about everything except what was happening right now, right here in his home.
    “And what do you feel when you’re near me?” He knew he shouldn’t ask. Knew he was encouraging something that shouldn’t be encouraged, but holy hell, he was starving for female contact. Maybe this little bit would be enough.
    And maybe he was lying to himself.
    Closing her eyes, she inhaled. “Like I want to climb your body like a tree so you can wrap yourself around me.”
    Hot... damn . He wasn’t sure if the rum had gone to her head or if she was affected by his inner evil, but what she’d said made him want desperately to play giant oak for her so she could do whatever she wanted with his hardwood.
    Giant oak. Hardwood. Man, he cracked himself up sometimes.
    His amusement fled as her fingers brushed his waistband and reality crashed down on him, splintering the tree fantasy.  She was clearly not in the right state of mind to understand the consequences of getting physical with him, while he understood far too well.
    Cataclysm is off limits to you .
    Azagoth’s deep voice echoed inside Hades’s ears. He’d gone to Azagoth a few months ago, hoping he’d grant Hades permission to see Cat. Hades would have been happy to just talk to her, to get to know her, but Azagoth had been immovable. And then, when Hades had asked Azagoth why, after thousands of years of service, he couldn’t even take a walk in Sheoul-gra’s lush forests with Cat, the unsatisfying answer had been, You know why .
    Yeah, he did. And what if I disobey?
    Do you remember the last time you disobeyed me?
    As if Hades could forget. The very memory still made Hades’s testicles shrivel. Reluctantly, he stepped back from Cat, but she moved with him, her hands splaying on his torso as they caressed him in slow, sensual circles.
    So. Fucking. Good.
    Gods, he felt like he’d been deprived of air for so long that he no longer knew how to breathe, and now someone was offering him an oxygen mask but he wasn’t allowed to take it.
    “Is this really what you want?” He forced the question from his mouth, because dammit, this was really what he wanted. He just wanted to take a breath. “To get me worked up?”
    “Didn’t you just accuse me of panting after you?”
    He had. He’d been teasing, but there was