For The Love Of A God by Rosanna Leo (ebook reader for comics .txt) 📕

a temporary change, Miss Douglas. Eryx is already down in storage. Don't worry, though. We'll bring him back, in about two years or so.” He stared at her.

"No,” she whispered. Without waiting for Eric Lord to respond, she hiked up her long skirt and ran toward the spot where Eryx had stood for twenty-three years.

As she careened around the corner, Maia didn't even hear the footsteps behind her. All she felt was the horrible, empty feeling in the pit of her stomach and the trail of her tears on her cheeks.

Why him? Why her Eryx? He could have traded any other statue.

She stopped before his pedestal and looked up toward where Eryx's face had been. The face which used to smile and wink at her. The face her father had pulled from the rubble and brought to light. The face she'd fallen in love with.

He was gone. The pedestal on which her beloved Eryx had stood was bare, as if the god had never been there at all.

Eric Lord caught up to her. She turned to him, her face white. And promptly collapsed into his strong arms.

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Chapter Four

Eric fished the teabag out of the mug and tossed it into the trash. He turned and gazed at the sleeping Maia.

What a basket case. All he'd done was shift a statue, and she'd reacted as if he'd pulled the plug on her comatose granny.

Okay. So maybe he'd done it to provoke her. Maybe he didn't really have an arrangement with the Hermitage. But when he'd seen how strangely she'd acted with the statue, he had wanted to mess around with her mind a little.

Museum employees were always so staid, so resistant to change. He always thought it best to come in and show them who was boss right from the start. So he'd dismissed that one waste of space Mark, and toyed with Maia Douglas. The same sort of wrangling happened in the corporate world every day.

The problem with museum staff was they all thought they were somehow above it.

He hadn't expected her to pass out on him, but he should have seen it coming. Her little face had been just burning with indignation, lit with an inner fire which had touched him in a way few things had in a long time. When she'd fainted, he'd picked her up and carried her to a nearby staff lounge. He'd laid her on a couch so she could recover from the stress of not seeing the statue.

And then Eric had uttered a quick incantation to ensure no one walked in on them. He didn't know what to make of this Maia Douglas and wanted some time to contemplate her in silence.

He also hadn't expected her to comment on his “grandfather's” work. There was no grandfather; there never had been. It was all Eric, doing work at different times. And it gave him a not-insignificant thrill to think Maia had read and enjoyed his paper.

He could still see the tracks of her tears on her cheeks. Even passed out, her face was still crumpled in pain. Pain he'd caused.

And it bothered him.

He'd been too hard on her. Why? Was Dionysus right? Was he being an ass because he was pretending he hadn't felt a crippling attraction to Maia Douglas right from the start?

No.

Yet, without knowing why, he slid over to where she lay and brushed his fingers against her clammy cheek. “So cold,” he murmured.

What would it feel like to warm her up?

Even as the tempting thought strayed into his head, Eric moved away from her. “No,” he said. “I'm not here for sex. I'm here to work. And I don't need to get distracted by a mortal conservator. Especially not one as flaky as this one."

But even as he said the words, he drank in the sight of her. Long dark hair pulled into a messy ponytail, spilling over the couch cushion. Sweet brown eyes, now obscured by fluttering lids. A pleasantly round face with lips that looked so soft. Skin so delicate and pale he could make out a dainty vein under her left eye. And the voluptuous body of a goddess, hidden under a long peasant skirt and an old denim jacket. To top off a disturbingly sensual picture, one of her plastic crocs had fallen off, revealing a pretty foot and toenails painted bright purple.

Those toenails were as silly as she was. But they made him smile.

He hadn't smiled the same way since before Chloe was taken from him.

If only Nemesis hadn't found her.

He passed a hand over his face. It did no good to remember what he could not change. Since Chloe, since the few other women he'd tried to love, he'd changed his life, devoted himself to a cause. It was his only love now.

He couldn't allow any other love into his life. Not even lust.

And yet, here he was, holed up in a staff lounge that had seen better days in the 70s, with a woman who brought back troubling memories of Chloe. Why? Clearly, Maia Douglas was nothing like his Chloe. His Chloe was all grace and delicate beauty.

Maia was a Shabby Chic mess. And she was dribbling on the couch.

Feeling a strange tug inside his belly, Eric grinned and wiped her chin with a tissue.

Upon feeling his touch, she moved. He retreated, moving to the counter. He watched as her eyes cracked open, and she stared up at the stained ceiling tiles. Then she turned toward him and took him in as an adorable frown creased her brow. “What happened?"

He brought her tea with him and sat at the far end of the couch, needing to feel space between them. The old Eryx would have taken her there, would have seduced her until she was a pliable hot mess in his hands. He couldn't allow himself to be a man of that sort anymore.

He was Eric. For all intents and purposes a man, not a god. At least,