"Falling" by Cecilia Gray (Novella)

Genre: Romance

Short Story Type: Novella

Summary: A paranormal contemporary romance novella with a feisty heroine, an immortal hero, and their wee trip to hell and back...

 The trouble with falling in love is the long drop down…

Alexis isn’t afraid of much. She’s never met a cliff she didn’t want to climb or a waterfall she wouldn’t plunge over. Yet when her fiancé leaves and takes her daring edge with him, she swears off love….

Until one wild night out at San Francisco’s latest hard-to-find, impossible-to-get-into new club where she discovers more than just a stiff drink awaits her inside, because the owner of this club is the sexiest man she’s ever met—and the most dangerous.

A few hundred years ago, Jason made a very bad bargain with a very vengeful goddess. Now it’s time for him to pay up, either with his soul… or his heart. And when one long look at Alexis makes him understand just how hellish a life of unrequited love could be, suddenly the alternative doesn’t sound so bad.

Only it turns out, the alternative isn’t just hellish—it is hell… and Alexis is the only one who can spring him loose. If, that is, she’s brave enough to try…

Excerpt:

Little known fact about gods: We segregate like students in the crowded cafeteria of a bad teen movie.

Hindu Devas compete with the big G-O-D for center seating. Zeus and my Hollywood-hungry Hellenic crowd dominate a small yet mighty popular table. Our needy young Roman counterparts strut their stuff nearby
with Cupid often leading the catwalk. On and on down the pantheonic hierarchy.

No matter where gods sit, our tables—our realms—overflow with angels and animistic spirits and friends and enemies and mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and sister-mothers and brother-uncles. Incestuous, creepy lot, we gods.

Like any high school cafeteria, our tables buzz with gossip and angst and drama that spill over onto our playground: Earth.

How I miss the action.

I have been called many things, none fit to repeat except my name. Mhaya. For one hundred years, I’ve sat in the ungodly equivalent of a bathroom stall. Alone. Banished from Mount Olympus. Erased from human history.

Moping.

Yes, moping. Having a grand cry. A self-indulgent wallow. I’m entitled. After all, I’m a goddess, if I haven’t mentioned it, and what is a goddess if she isn’t being worshipped?

Nothing.

But now that I’ve had my hissy fit, I want my seat back at the popular table, and by gods, I’m going to get it.


Read Cecilia Gray's short story on the Kindle. And check out her website.