What a Goddess Wants by Stephanie Julian Read Free Book Online

damage.
    Right now, he was losing his grip on the thing. Its skin grew slippery with sweat. At least he hoped it was sweat. The damn thing could be poisoning him and he wouldn’t know until it was too late. Still, he couldn’t let it get away.
    With a burst of strength, Cal wrapped his hands around the demon’s thin, wattled throat and tried to cut off its air supply. It just smiled, showing off four rows of razor-sharp teeth, and rolled him like he was a kid.
    Cal found himself on his back, staring up at the demon.
    Shit, this was bad news. He’d underestimated the thing’s strength.
    But Cal still had a few tricks up his sleeve. He began to throw deadly hard punches, aiming for the thing’s head. Only a few of them connected because the demon was fast and limber. And each time it moved, its teeth got closer. Cal lifted his arm, hoping the demon would bite that before taking a chunk out of his face.
    The demon opened its mouth and hissed—
    And suddenly it wasn’t there.
    Tessa stood over him with a tree limb shaking in her trembling hands, panting, eyes wide. Then they both turned to look at the demon, which Tessa had managed to smack a good ten feet away. On all fours, it shook its body like a dog after a bath. Then it stood, a wiry mass of naked flesh with no sex organs to indicate male or female. It hissed again, showing off those pointed teeth, and smiled before loping into the forest away from the house.
    Cal pushed himself off the ground, watching the tree limb bob and weave in Tessa’s hands.
    “Tessa.”
    Actually, Tessa’s whole body trembled, making that limb extremely dangerous to Cal. Eyes wide, she stared in the direction the demon had run. Her breath rasped hard and rough out of her body, and her knuckles had turned white.
    “Tessa, it’s okay. It’s gone. Put that down before you hurt me with it.”
    There, that got her attention. Her gaze swung around to his, and he was almost startled to see real fear in her eyes. Apparently deities were afraid of some things, which meant the demon was probably not something he wanted to run into again.
    “Are you okay?” Tessa asked as she stepped closer, dropping the limb at the last moment before it batted him in the side. “It didn’t bite you, did it?”
    He shook his head. “I’m fine. What about you? You okay?”
    She took a deep breath and then another. With a visible effort, she forced her body to stop trembling. Then she nodded. “Yes, I’m fine. It didn’t hurt me.”
    “You wanna tell me what the fuck that was?”
    She shivered, her entire body getting in on the action. “Tukhulkha demon. Charun’s bringing out the big guns.”
    And that scared the shit out of her. He saw it in her wide eyes and the paleness of her skin.
    “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get back to the house. Then we’ll figure out what to do next.”
    She blinked. “We?”
    He sighed. “Yeah, we.” Although he was probably going to regret this. “I don’t like to be attacked on my own ground. Pisses me off.”
    Her eyes widened even more. “So you’ll help me?”
    Putting his hand on her arm, he let the warmth he shouldn’t be able to feel seep into his skin. Obviously, something about this woman, this goddess, brought out a part of him he’d thought lost.
    “Yeah, I will. Let’s go.”

Chapter 4
    “I tell you to do something, you do it. No questions asked.”
    Tessa kept her eyes trained on Cal as he drove his Jeep Wrangler down a dirt road in the woods. Actually, “road” was too kind to describe what was little more than a deer trail. The Wrangler barely fit between the trees, and branches whipped by at terrorizing speed. Her fingers cramped from holding the roll bar so tightly.
    She was watching him because she couldn’t bear to look out the front window. She didn’t want to see the tree they were surely going to hit if he didn’t slow down.
    So she focused on her savior. She was so grateful to him for saving her life back there that she was