Promises and Pomegranates (Monsters & Muses, #1)

by Sav R. Miller

I learned I quite enjoy the taste of brutality on my tongue.

Until Elena. The most forbidden of fruits. Persephone to my Hades, as some used to call me. Springtime in a world rife with death and destruction. A woman I scorned until I found myself blinded by a new obsession.

“I see you fucking my oldest daughter in my house, even though she’s been engaged to someone since her conception.”

Dude wtf

My younger sister, Ariana, dreamed of soft pastels and virginal white, despite being anything but. Years of ballet meant she knew the exact song and dance she’d bring our papá out for, and she’d look incredible doing it.

Welp that didn't happen lol

Even Stella—the youngest, and smartest Ricci daughter—had the menu scribbled down on a piece of paper, using it as a bookmark for her textbooks.

I wanna see her wedding so bad

“I’m sorry.” Elena’s the first to recover from my assertion. “Your what?” As if on cue, the bedroom door opens once again, Rafael entering with a bald priest in tow. He holds a Bible close to his chest and beams at Elena when he sees her, sweeping his gaze over her dress.

Wait a damn minute

“Even if he wanted to, I assure you, there’s nothing he could do.” Shooting the priest a dirty look, I snap my fingers, telling him to get on with it. “My father is the most powerful man in the city,” Elena says, speaking over the priest as he begins his speech. I snort. “No, he isn’t.” Rafe stiffens, but I ignore it. That can’t be news to him, anyway.

“I do,” I say, something pinching in my chest as I say it, the lie bitter on the back of my tongue.

It’s a lie but also like not

“I’m not some sort of vagabond. I do have material possessions. A house, even, as I’ve said before.”

She tried to call him poor lol

How I’d drag her to the depths of Hell but convince her she’d gone to Heaven, using my tongue to write wordless poetry on her sensitive, swollen flesh.

If I thought I could actually love her, and not just use her as a pawn in my twisted games.

“Would that prove to you that this marriage is real?” he asks, his thumb smoothing back and forth over my mangled flesh. “If I took you again? Was the first taste of ruin not enough for you? Do you still crave my darkness, little one?”

Please

“If you run,” Kal says, somehow reading my thoughts, a cold note to his tone that contrasts deeply with the man who just had his hands all over me, “I will find you. And you will regret it.”

Please I love the chase

If Elena is even half as divine as the fruit in the Garden of Eden, I absolutely understand Eve’s surrender.

I’m met with grainy footage of a private moment between Elena and I, from minutes before the knocking began.

What is going on?!

“Whoever said Kal Anderson isn’t husband material clearly never felt his hand between their thighs,” I mutter, biting back a moan at the memory. “Is that so?”

“What are you doing?” he asks. I pause, my fingers gripping the bedspread until my knuckles cramp. “This feels like a conversation I shouldn’t be naked for.” “Put your fingers back on your pussy and show me what you think of the shit they say about your husband.” Licking his lips, Kal moves forward to kneel on the bed with one leg.

“You’re going nowhere, my little Persephone. I didn’t bring you back to my island just so you could leave, and I’m certainly not relieving you of your sentence. You’ll serve it at my goddamn side as the queen of my little underworld, and all your family will ever be able to do is watch.”

crashing the post-orgasm glow.

That post nut clarity

I only know because I haven’t slept since her arrival, sitting in the living room armchair each night with a bottle of scotch, trying to get up the nerve to join her in bed.

“But I ordered lasagna.” “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: you’re of no use to me dead, Elena. Don’t eat the fucking food.”

“Uh...” Gwen says, moving back down the bar toward us, eyeing the needle in Vinny’s hand. “Did he tell you to drug her?” Vinny scoffs. “He said to keep an eye on her. I can’t very well fuckin’ do that if she isn’t here, now can I?” “This is definitely not going to end well for you,” she mutters, shaking her head.

Maybe Hades was lonely too, and he brought Persephone to his realm because he knew she’d bring the light with her.

It’s the kind of quality you look for in an employee. A soldier.

I want blues story

Anyone who touched her will die.

Kal breaks the lock on the outbuilding with a pair of bolt cutters,

Does he not have the key

Heat stirs in my core as I watch him work, filling me with unease that has less to do with the gore in front of me and more to do with the fact that I’m apparently not at all disgusted by it.

When Kal finishes several minutes later, brushing his forearm over his face and smearing blood over his cheek, I’m met by an intoxicating, complicated wave of arousal.

She nods. “Make me yours.”

“Oh, my little Persephone,” I say,

She cups the back of my head, pulling me into a hot, openmouthed kiss, and we moan together as our bodies join, legitimizing our marriage and solidifying my obsession once and for all.

“Good little wives need good fuckings,” Kal says, pressing his lips to my temple. “And I’ve been neglecting you, haven’t I?” “God, yes,” I squeal, my voice low and raspy like it’s been raked over coals and burned to a crisp. My head knocks against the door as he fucks me, and I wrap my arms around his neck to keep from falling. “Yes, Jesus, please. Right there.”

I roll over again, propping my cheek on my pillow, studying him as he slides on a pair of black-framed glasses and begins to read, eyes scanning the page in a slow, hypnotic fashion.

Not the glasses

“You were spring, and I the edge of a cliff, and a shining waterfall rushed over me,” he recites softly, the line barely registering in my brain before sleep welcomes me once again.

“Don’t most people think jealousy is bad?” “Less evolved folks than me, perhaps. Or more, depending on how you look at it.” I gasp as he brushes the tip of a finger over my core, the sweep brief and featherlight, as if he’s just testing the waters. “But what it tells me, with us, is that you’re as fucking crazy as I am.”

“Do you get it, little one?” he says, plunging two more fingers inside me, spreading them so I’m stretching around him, desperate to be filled. “No one awakens that sensation in me, so how could I ever find myself drawn to another’s bed? You make me feel...”

“Kal, there are people—” He smiles, devilish and hungry and foreign. I’ve never, ever, seen him smile.

“If you’re jealous, I’m a goddamn psychopath.”

I don’t know why, but the man has some sort of complex about his body. And while I’m sure it’s something I shouldn’t pry about, I just don’t know how many more times I can have sex with a fully clothed man and not feel like a prostitute.

Thats fair

You know what Dr. Anderson would do if he knew you called his wife stupid and implied she’s a whore?”

“I guess now I get why she acted so offended that I had no idea who she was. What kind of wife doesn’t recognize her own sister-in-law?”

I’m in love with my husband.

I dont blame you. I am too

You are the only one who knows anything about me.

“I can’t stay mad at you when you look at me like that,” she says, speaking around my thumb, a furious blush creeping up her neck. “It isn’t fair.” “When I look at you like what?” I muse, the hand on her thigh traveling until it reaches the soft silken heat at its apex, my knuckles ghosting against her clit. No panties, even in fucking Boston. Carmen’s going to lose her shit.

It didn’t necessarily feel good seeing people I’d known for years become visibly bored by the truth behind my disappearance, but at least Kal looks less likely to commit mass murder now that the house is silent.

“I’ve had enough shame put on la famiglia between the two of you,” Papá says, starting from the room, pulling Ariana along with him. “You’ll wait on the rooftop for Father Sabino.” “The rooftop?” She strains against him as he leads her up the winding staircase. “What are you going to do, push me off?” “Don’t be so fucking dramatic, Ariana. You’re lucky I don’t put you in a convent after everything you’ve pulled.”

Is referring to what happens in her books? I’m kinda sad we don’t have one for Stella

Aiden James

Seeing all these little tid bits of the other books. Is awesome

“Why are you locked in some sort of dick measuring contest with Papá right now?” “Mine’s bigger. Contest over.” He tucks his napkin into the collar of his shirt, clearing his throat without dropping my father’s stare. I make a face. “Ew. What’s going on with you two?

“Girls, why don’t you take Nonna to her room for a nap? We don’t want her falling asleep at the recital.” Ariana snorts. “I don’t want to miss whatever this is.”

My hands itch to wrap around her neck and squeeze for using his full name so flippantly. Like she’s at all deserving of it.

Elena is a baddie