Dusky, hazy light echoed back.
I held open the door so she could step inside my home.
A home that normally felt vacant and vast.
Artificial warmth in the dark woods and fabrics, but the only thing I ever really felt were the ghosts howling back. The demons that thrived in the shadows.
Salem stepped inside. Immediately, her attention went to the floor to ceiling paintings hung on the far wall.
An expression of my dreams.
The nightmares that chased me into sleep.
My sins I could never escape.
Could feel the questions rush from her skin, the way she looked back at me, asking me to let her see what lived in the recesses of my mind.
I set my hand on the small of her back. Severity zapped through the connection. “I’ll show you.”
Salem leaned down and removed her heels the way she’d done the last time she was there.
It dropped her four inches.
This barefooted girl sexy as fuck.
She hooked them in the fingers of her right hand at the same time as she wound the fingers of her left with mine.
Peace.
It whispered beneath my skin.
A slow burn that flooded my veins and threatened to seep all the way to my soul.
A motherfucking fool, but still I led her across the loft, through the open living room and along the far-right side of the kitchen, to my bedroom double doors.
Stalling, Salem swung her attention to me, her tone incredulous. “Your bedroom?”
A low chuckle rumbled out. “Thought you trusted me?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I never said that. Besides, you’re the one who just told me I shouldn’t.”
“I changed my mind.” The words were close to a growl.
“Touch me and I stab you.” Mischief glinted in those blue eyes.
A bolt of laughter boomed from my chest.
Shit.
This girl was too much.
My little wildcat.
I reached out to open the right side of the double doors.
Salem warily looked through the opening.
Ripples of need.
Waves of unease.
I shifted around to face her, tugging at her hand while I walked backward, luring her in.
Her attention raced across the rambling bedroom. Entire thing was this extravagant show of the wealth I had built. A reminder that I was doing it right for a change.
Had to wonder if that applied right then.
I kept moving across the room to the door on the left wall.
I paused outside it with the girl facing me.
The room dark. Her gaze bright.
“Just what are we doing, Jud?”
Disquiet rattled me to the bones.
“Should I be concerned?” She attempted the tease to break through my apprehension. “Is this where you hide your victims?”
I reached out and brushed back the lock of hair from her face, tucked it behind her ear, my voice close to shaking when I muttered the truth, “No one has been inside here except for Trent.”
Not even Logan.
A frown marred her gorgeous face.
I watched as her expression shifted, as she realized I was giving her something I rarely shared with anyone.
A view into my forsaken soul.
I punched in the code that unlocked the door and let Salem into my studio. A studio that took up half the area of the loft.
The soft glow of recessed lights barely illuminated the massive space, just a drizzled white seeping over the shadowy room.
There wasn’t any furniture except for the easels that were littered about and the stacks of canvases piled everywhere.
Buckets of paint and supplies were strewn all over. Ladders and scaffolding climbing the walls.
Salem stumbled in, her eyes wide and a gasp leaving her mouth as she took in the scene.
Paint covered every inch of the room.
I didn’t only utilize the canvases.
My art spilled onto the floors and the walls. Every surface cloaked in the artifices of my mind.
A kaleidoscope of images—images I’d painted and repainted again. Where the strokes were almost manic, my thoughts and fears and shame imprinted in the scenes.
Place a nightmare.
A mess.
A dream.
Surprise wheezed from her lips, and Salem eased deeper into the studio. In the middle of the room, she slowly turned around, studying it through the dim, hazy light.
“You said you didn’t know me.” I uttered it low. A morbid confession.
The heels slipped from Salem’s fingers, and they clattered to the floor. She all but floated to the far wall, her feet so soft it felt like I was watching a slow dance in the darkness.
She glanced back at me once before she turned and ran her fingertips over the deranged depictions smeared on the wall.
Demons climbing from Hell.
Angels falling from the heavens.
Whispers of dreams.
Half, undefined faces.
Scourges and eternal fire.
So much fire.
Some were rudimentary outlines of my family.
Brushstrokes of hope and joy and desperate devotion.
Indistinct intonations of those that I’d lost and others that I clung to.
They were all haphazardly woven together across every flat surface.
As if she were drawn to it, she moved, her fingers quivering over the crude image of the child that would forever haunt my mind.
Salem’s chest heaved and her body shook as she traced the cryptic shape.
The air locked in my lungs as a rush of old agony froze my blood.
“This is me, Salem.” I shoved my tatted hands into my pockets. Shame came at me tenfold.
She swiveled back to look at me. Tears soaked her cheeks.
“Jud.” My name was a whimper.
“Warned you it was ugly.”
Her head shook. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” She touched her chest. “And the most devastating.”
There she was, looking at me in a different light, in the way I should have shown her from the start.
Because what everyone else got was deception.
They didn’t get the scars and the tragedy.
But Salem?
Felt compelled to show her this.
A fucking fool.
But there I was, laying it at her feet.
“And you see me like this?” She whispered that, a spec of horror and confusion, her brow pinching in the most gorgeous way.
That frozen blood thudded.
Pulsed harder. A warning that lit in my veins.
Or fuck, maybe it was straight-up liberation. This moment I’d found with an enchantress who floated through my studio.
“No, Salem. Think that’s the problem. I see you in an entirely different way. In a way that fucks with my head. Because when I’m looking at you? I see beauty. I see light. I see a treasure and goodness and every fuckin’ thing that is right.”
She slowly shifted, her gaze soft as she carefully padded in my direction. Waves of energy rippled with each step. She stopped in the middle of the room, the girl warring, though she lifted that chin.
“And I see a man who found me in a storm where I was lost. A man who took the time to rescue me. A man who’s a protector. A man who’s good and kind. A man who’s also broken. I see the pain, Jud. I see it. I feel it because it lives in me, too.”
“Enchantress. You’ve got me transfixed. Don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”
Energy crashed from her spirit.
Need fisted my guts, and the words left me on a low demand. “When do you feel the most beautiful, Salem?”
This fierce, unrelenting girl actually blushed. Heat exploded from that delicious flesh.