Page 3 of The Demigod Complex
Castor sat in a fancy chrome chair behind a modern glass desk and leaned back, the supple leather not even creaking, as he directed his gaze to the woman across the way.
Even this far away from her, Leia’s rainy-day scent, the hallmark of a water nymph, drifted around him. Drawing him in.
He would always associate water with her now. These days the sound of rain, or the flash of sunlight on a lake as he flew his plane overhead, or, hell, even the sound of his shower put him in mind of her. And left him hard and aching every fucking morning.
Damn and blast.
One simple request had led to this.
When he had hired Brimstone, Inc., to find him a new executive assistant, he’d asked the owner/operator, Delilah, for one thing. Someone who wouldn’t ever fall in love—or lust—with him. Something that was damn near impossible for humans and supernaturals alike. Most couldn’t resist the ancient god’s blood coursing through his veins.
Delilah had managed to provide the perfect solution to his dilemma…a nymph. How had he not thought of that himself? After all, he knew the stories…
The gods had “blessed” nymphs to give and receive extraordinary pleasure. Essentially, making the guardians of nature—minor deities in their own right—into the gods’ own personal sex toys. To retaliate, the goddesses, sick of all the bastard children the randy gods kept churning out, had given nymphs a doozy of a gift—the ability to resist any sexual temptation.
Hera, Zeus’s wife herself, and goddess of marriage and birth, was known to have been jealous and resentful of all her husband’s illegitimate offspring. Castor should know, since he was one. The goddess couldn’t stand him and his brother Pollux. No doubt she’d been the one to come up with the idea of the counter blessing. Not so much to help nymphs as to screw the gods, her husband in particular.
Regardless of the hows and whys, Leia could resist his raw, innate sexuality. She could, with ease, ignore the vibes Castor couldn’t help but put out.
More than that, his EA hadNot Interested—or, more accurately, he suspected,The Gods Suck—tattooed across her forehead.
Something to do with how she lost her spring. He didn’t have all the details, but whatever happened wasn’t pretty. Now she hated the gods, and by association, their demigod children.
But what he hadn’t counted on was howhewould react to Leia.
Respecting her past, and his own edict, he’d kept his distance, kept things in the strictly professional box. But no one else talked back to him like she did. Or got his blood pumping like she did. Or challenged him to be better, think smarter, like she did.
He had a sinking feeling that he was falling ass over head in love with her. What the fuck was he supposed to do about that?
Especially when the woman had been trying to resign for a month and he was running out of ways to stave off the inevitable.
She had no idea he knew, either. As she’d left his office one evening, a white envelope had fluttered to the floor. Castor had moved around his desk to pick it up and had his hand outstretched for the doorknob to take it into Leia’s adjoining office only to pause at the sight of his name printed in her neat, looping handwriting.
Curious, he’d pulled out the single, typewritten page.
Dear Mr. Dioskouri…
Not since the first week, when he’d corrected her a thousand times, had Leia addressed him so formally.
Then he’d kept reading.I hereby tender my resignation…
After reeling in shock, the thought of losing her hit him with the force of a lightning strike, the emotion so visceral his lungs had hurt with each indrawn breath. A sensation he hadn’t appreciated, given that he’d been walking this earth with as few emotions as possible since losing his wife. That was the moment he’d realized that liking, respect, and a physical attraction that simmered through him at the oddest moments weren’t fleeting, but falling for her hard.
Almost as much of a shock as her letter.
He’d tucked the damn thing into a pile of papers on her desk after she’d left for the day and said nothing.
That had been a month ago, and he’d been scrambling ever since to figure out why in Hades she wanted to leave and what he could do to make her stay.
Fuck all apparently. Because the woman looked resolved to resign right here, right now.
Leia took her usual leather armchair across the way.
Then she seemed to register his expression and blinked.
There. Satisfaction sparked inside him, electricity sizzling down nerve endings. A flash of something lit her eyes that was beyond professional. Something that heated his blood. She wasn’t disinterested.
At least, he didn’t think she wasn’t. She was so damn hard to read.
