Wicked Demons

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 by Reece Vita Asher

All rights reserved.

Copyright page credits:

Cover art by CCR Book Cover Designs
(www.CCRBookCoverDesign.com)

Formatting by L. K. Campbell Design
(design.lkcampbell.com)

'Wicked Demons' is dedicated to the men we've
loved and the demons we've embraced.

Reece lives in North Carolina with her loving
family and ever-expanding herd of fur babies. She indulges in sweet
tea way too often, and couldn't possibly begin to take over the
world without lazy afternoons at home, the perfect cup of coffee,
and a damn fine husband to do her bidding.

Visit Reece on the web at

somethingwickedthiswayloves.blogspot.com
.

Chapter
I

Chapter
II

Chapter
III

Chapter
IV

Chapter
V

Chapter
VI

Chapter
VII

Chapter
VIII

Chapter
IX

Chapter
X

Andi O’Day was a paralegal for one of the
most prominent law firms in Savannah, Georgia, and had managed to
wiggle into an exquisitely renovated home in the heart of the
Savannah Historic District due to a wild inheritance after her
grandfather’s passing.

Her life followed a thoroughly realized
success plan.

That’s what she told herself, anyway,
especially on lonely evenings as she sat at her desk, looking into
a vastly empty office. Okay, most of the time she felt focused and
accomplished. But sometimes she reminded herself that she was
thirty-one.

Her mother had celebrated her thirteenth
wedding anniversary and had bore three children by the time she was
that age. Andi’s older sister Bronwen opened her own consignment
store, was raising two children, and had managed to marry and
divorce three men by the time she turned thirty-one.

Thirty-one! What did that mean to Andi? She
forewent the idea of parenthood long ago, not feeling it the right
choice for her. And while her pride ran over for Bronwen, Andi
wanted nothing to do with the hassles of owning a personal
business. So what did she want at thirty-one?

Love, of course, damn it! The only thing
missing from her success plan.

And feeling bitter after being
unceremoniously dumped by Kirk From the Second Floor after four
promising dates, Andi was in no mood to sit at her mahogany desk
while her coworker was throwing an engagement party.

Which is why she was barreling through the
darkness on an unfamiliar road, determined to join the partygoers
and celebrate into obscenely wee hours with champagne, microscopic
finger foods and, hopefully, a good shag.

“Goddamn GPS, work!”

Andi fiddled with the tiny lit box attached
to her windshield. It was a crude reminder of the new Charger with
built-in GPS system she
should
have purchased last week but
decided against in favor of using her savings for travel and
investment opps.

The screenshot zoomed to an unidentifiable
location.

“No! Where am I?”

Reaching for the bane of her frustration, she
hit the slender screen again. And again, and again, and again. It
hadn’t registered to Andi that her eyes had been off the road
longer than her tenth grade driving instructor would have
permitted.

Pushing the screen for the twentieth time, it
wasn’t until a dark shadow in her peripheral vision caused her to
look up…just in time to watch her vehicle leave the safety of the
asphalt.

Andi screamed and grabbed the wheel, jerking
it to the right, causing the car to fishtail. The tires were
useless as they screeched into the night, only stopping when the
silver Jetta slid down a muddy embankment. And as the carnival ride
quickly came to a stop, Andi thanked God it was the deep mud that
stopped her rather than a thick cluster of trees that could have
been the death of her.

Everything stilled.

Sitting in the quiet darkness, she reflected
on the noises claiming the night right before losing control of the
vehicle. A groaning, almost howling—an ungodly combination—had
pierced the night before fear overrode everything Andi knew.

Fighting the buzzing in her ears and rattled
breaths, purse in hand, she rolled down the window and climbed out
after the door failed to open.

Andi had never been in a car accident before.
Adrenaline fed her heart with a fierceness it hadn’t experienced
since that time when she was ten and fell from her cousin’s
treehouse. That’s when she ripped a cluster of muscle tissue in her
knee, causing years of limitations and chronic pain.

It plagued her even now as she forced her way
vertical, fighting the massive incline back to the lightly traveled
highway.

Dropping to the ground in a grubby heap, Andi
sat close to the blacktop’s edge. The whole event seemed surreal.
When her heart failed to recover a healthy rhythm, she lay back,
feeling the grass press against her neck, the hard earth cradling
her back.

As if awakening for the first time since the
accident, she muttered, “My cell phone…” It had been on her lap.
Who the hell knew where it was now? She should have thought to look
for it before the climb. “Too late now. Shit.”

There was no way Andi could physically
descend the mudslide safely. It had been a huge chore just to climb
up, and her left knee was already reaping the stress. It pulsed
with the promise of greater pain to come.

The world was a safer place as she rested,
eyes closed. That is, until she felt a shift in the air and opened
her heavy eyelids to find a man standing over her.

Leaping to her feet, Andi screamed, “Jesus!”
and limped backwards.

“Not quite.” The stranger stalked her, pacing
her steps two to one as he yelled, “Stop!” Lunging forward, he
grabbed her waist, tugging her close.

“What the hell are you doing? Get off
me!”

His dusk blond hair swung in tandem with
their bodies as he backed her to the nearest tree, his hard chest
pressing against her breasts.

“Are you mental?” Andi fought the need to
scream again.

“You were about to step off the edge of the
embankment.” He glanced down, meeting her gray eyes, and whispered,
“Stop panicking.”

His square jawline, visible even under a
short layer of facial hair, and the barely crooked bridge of his
slender nose created a charming appearance at first glance. Though,
Andi had known plenty of “charming” men who turned out to be real
douche rats.

“Hey, it’s not like a bee landed on me and I
overreacted,” she snapped. “You just snuck out of the darkness
after a crazy accident and scared the shit out of me.”

“I did that.” His baby blues looked
sympathetic. Genuinely sorry, even. “For that, I apologize. Do you
need help?”

“No, I-“ That’s right, her phone was lost.
She was lost. The worry didn’t fail to cross her crinkled brow, or
the stranger’s attention.

Andi could feel the steady beat of his heart,
strong and restless. It mingled with hers, the rapid tempo of a
bunny in the throws of a heart attack.

“What happened?”

Everything about him caused a response in
her. The warmth of him so near pulled the muscles in her chest up
around her heart. The even baritone of his voice caressed her mind
like a heavy quilt in a cold house. And he smelled like nothing she
had ever come across. Something mingled with the musk of his
deodorant. Wrapping her arms around the stranger and kissing him
would be nothing like kissing Kirk From the Second Floor, who was
practically emaciated and comatose from marathon work weeks and
lack of vitamin D.

Loosening his grip around her waist, the
stranger repeated, “What happened? Are you okay?”

“I… Can you get off me?” She couldn’t think
while practically wearing him.

“Sorry.” He backed away and Andi was
immediately sorry to feel the distance.

“I wrecked. Something blurry and loud made me
drive off the road.”

“Like a bear?”

“Yeah, like a big fucking bear having a bad
acid trip.” She eyed him. “Where did you come from?”

“I was walking,” he answered. “Luckily,
right? My campsite is just down the road. I’ll show you.” He made a
gesture to grab her arm, but she dodged, moving just out of
reach.

“How convenient.”

Finding her suspicion quite amusing, he
crossed his arms and added, “Yes, it is,” so sincerely, it was just
plain aggravating to Andi.

“What does your campsite have that I can’t
find right here?”

“Lights. Shelter from the elements. A cell
phone.”

After a moment of consideration and a
flashback to whatever had been the cause of her accident, Andi
begrudgingly muttered, “Damn it,” and followed him to the road.
“Can I at least have your name?”

“Why? So the cops can identify me faster?” He
turned to meet her absolute shock with the largest smile she had
seen from anyone in years. The kind that inspired poetry. And not
shitty poetry. The premium Keats kind. “You have no faith in the
goodness of strangers, do you?”

“Just asking that is incredibly creepy.”

“Really?” He thought for a minute, giving her
ample time to watch the muscles in his shoulders shift and tug at
his long-sleeve navy tee as he continued walking. “What happened to
southern hospitality?”

“It was replaced with tasers and Krav
Maga.”

Spinning to face her, he asked, “Do you have
a taser?”

“Absolutely.”

He chuckled and resumed walking. “No you
don’t.”

“I totally have a taser,” she asserted,
trailing behind him.

Shaking his head, he corrected, “If you had a
taser, you would have used it when I startled you.”

Damn, he's right!

“You think you’re such a smartass. Fine. But
I did take Krav Maga with some coworkers, so don’t assume that I’m
helpless.”

In all seriousness, he turned, his distinct
profile barely outlined by the dim moonlight. “I would never make
that mistake.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes with
only the sound of their footsteps on the pavement and the
occasional crickets. There was something about the man’s demeanor
that made a carnal, fluffy, feminine part of Andi feel safe. And,
to be honest, she wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

“You never told me your name.”

“Michael.”

“That’s so normal.”

Michael laughed from the darkest depths of
his gut. “You sound so surprised. Would it make you feel better if
I lied and said I was born in a cellar and my parents referred to
me as ‘Experiment Number Nine’?”

She shrugged, unable to chase back a smile.
“Kind of.”

Once the humor died, Andi ventured to ask,
“What did that to my car? Do you really think it was a bear?”

“Did you see it?” There was caution in his
voice, like he was balancing on an imaginary line.

“Barely. It was big. Sure as hell wasn’t a
raccoon, I’ll tell you that.”

He shrugged. “Could be a number of things
this far out of town… What are
you
doing out here?”

Embarrassed, she stared at the sky rather
than make eye contact. “I was invited to a party.” Reluctantly, she
shared, “I didn’t want to be the only one in the office working
overtime on a Friday night. Again. But I was the last to leave and
got bad directions, I guess.”

“Ever hear of a GPS?”

Andi scoffed. “Don’t even. Technology is my
arch-nemesis right now.”

Raising an eyebrow, Michael remained silent,
continuing to walk with purpose.

Silence consumed them once more. Andi took
note of the forest flanking both sides of the road, wondering if
civilization had ever bore a finger of light on the tallest group
of trees out here. It reminded her of a line from a Robert Frost
poem.

They cannot scare me with their empty
spaces

Between stars, where no human race is.

Feeling more isolated with every step, Andi
said, “I thought your campsite was just up the road.”

“It is. We’re almost there.”

“What are
you
doing wandering around
in the woods alone?”

Her mind filed through episodes of
CSI
and
Bones
.