Page 20 of Loved By Aphrodite

Aphrodite’s magic had done its job shutting down the main program, but the app actually functioned independently. It needed no updates, no central server, or even any type of manual intervention.

“Did you find out anything else?”

“Huh?” He looked back at the source of the voice. “Aphrodite? You’re still here?” Checking the clock, he saw it had been a few hours since she arrived.

“Of course.” She offered something to him—a steaming cup of tea. “I stuck around to watch you work, but you were so engrossed, I didn’t want to interrupt. However, I thought you might like this.”

The aromatic brew caught his attention. “Thank you.” As he accepted the mug, their fingers brushed. The accidental touch sent gooseflesh up his arm, which was a strange reaction seeing as he already had her in his arms just a few hours ago.

No one ever came to visit him, so when he heard someone in his workshop, he’d acted on instinct, intending to neutralize the intruder. It was only when he felt the soft curves against him and smelled the sweet, rose perfume that he realized who the ‘intruder’ was. Just the memory of it made his cock twitch.

“So, did you, um, change something or do something with your hair?” Aphrodite asked.

“What? Oh.” He raked his fingers through his newly-shorned hair, the length of it still a new sensation to him. “Yeah, um, about that.” He explained how he used the makeover session as a distraction so Artemis wouldn’t probe further into Eros’s activities.

“Oh, I see.” The corner of her mouth tugged up. “Thank you for thinking of Eros, even though he himself didn’t give a single thought to the consequences of his actions.”

“Yeah, it’s not a big deal. Though I think that Roberto guy overdid it.” He rubbed his newly-trimmed beard. “All I wanted was a trim, and I ended up with this.” He gestured to his new haircut. “When he took out the tweezers to pluck my eyebrows, I put my foot down.”

This time, the laugh she’d obviously been holding back bubbled from her lips. “I can imagine. Oh, wait. You have a cowlick.” Reaching forward, she brushed her fingers on his temple as she fixed the lock of stray hair. “There you go.”

“Thanks. Excuse me.” He swiveled the chair back toward the computer so she wouldn’t notice the growing erection in his pants and so he would stop staring at her lush curves through her flowy dress.

Damn, Artemis, insisting on these tight jeans.Not satisfied with the “glow up,” she had insisted on revising his wardrobe too, but if he didn’t control his thoughts, he’d surely embarrass himself.

He let out a slow breath in an attempt to relax his body. Perhaps it had been too long since he’d been with a woman. That’s the only explanation why he was acting like some teenage boy. It wasn’t that he lacked female company, though the sexual act had always been more of a release for him, a one-night arrangement that suited both him and his partner. He’d just been much too busy in the last couple of years, especially with the way technology had progressed and exploded. He found more satisfaction in his work than in anything else.

“Your tea is getting cold,” Aphrodite said.

Without glancing back at her, he took a sip from the cup as he continued to stare at the screen. He punched in more keys, before a large beeping sound rang through the speakers.

“Is everything alright?” Sidling up to him, she leaned down. “What does that all mean? Was it my magic? Did I set off a counter curse?”

The monitor glowed as purple lines of code rushed across the display. “I don’t think so. This is something different. I traced the app’s communications back to the mainframe of the company that owns Winged. It’s a corporation called Philautia, headquartered in Seattle.” The screen on his right lit up to reveal a company webpage.

“That seems like your normal corporate website,” she remarked.

“Yeah.” Clicking on the different links, he scrolled through the various pages detailing Philautia’s background. “All corporate speak BS, doesn’t really say much about what they do except that they’re in technology.”

She perched her hip against the back of his chair. “How can this all help us stop the app?”

The faintest whiff of her sweet perfume distracted him for a moment, though he managed to ignore it. “I think I know how to completely shut down Winged.”

“You do? How?”

“The central mainframe. It’s the only thing that’s keeping the app functioning for now.”

Her eyebrows knitted together. “Oh, so it’s like … I shut off the brain, but this is the heart powering Winged.”

“Exactly. If I can get in and disassemble it, we may be able to fully shut it down.”

“Get in? Like you would have to be there physically?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t you just…I don’t know, hack your way into the mainframe?”

“That’s not quite how it works. See, at first, I was able to access Winged’s system on the cloud—that’s what you shut down. But this is different because we’re talking about hardware. I’ve been trying to get in, but it keeps shutting me out. I can’t be sure, but I think there’s something there keeping me out. Might be an extra piece of hardware that’s not connected to the network and needs a physical key. But I won’t know until I see it.”

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