Visions of his face blinked through my mind.
It was pure savagery.
I gulped for air, trying to find my footing. But I’d stumbled onto dangerous, treacherous ground. Where nothing was solid and the world was slipping away.
Quicksand.
“We’re a mess.”
Jud chuckled a rough sound. “A beautiful fuckin’ mess.”
He kept edging forward. Aggression rippled beneath the surface of his flesh, but it’d shifted and found new focus.
A tremor rocked through me when he reached out and set his massive hand on my face. His thumb traced along the scar on my jaw. “Who is he?”
“Jud…” It was a whimper.
“Tell me, Salem. Trust me with this.”
“He was my husband. He did this the first time I tried to leave.” The admission floated on the breeze.
Every muscle in Jud’s body tensed.
“And he forced you to go back to him? Did this to you as a warning?” They weren’t really questions. They were vicious razors cutting from his mouth.
My nod was spastic, and another rush of tears bled free. “He said he was letting me off easy. That next time…”
My throat locked. The words held in the torment.
“Salem…baby?” Jud’s words were shards, hinged, sure he didn’t want my answer.
I blinked through the agony. “But I did it, I got the courage to leave again, but he found us, Jud…he found us and he…”
I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t let the atrocity free. Still, Jud held my face, like he saw the pain written there. Like he could hold the vacancy that throbbed even when he didn’t fully see the details.
“Somehow, Juni and I got away,” I continued, “and we’ve been running ever since. Never truly living. Never truly free. Under the radar, pretending we don’t exist.”
Rage boiled in the air. A strike of violence. A blister of rage.
His other hand cinched down on my side, and he jerked me toward him.
A gasp ripped up my throat as heat burned through my veins. This man was too much. So much that I was sure he was going to wreck me, though that would fall on Carlo, too, wouldn’t it?
The one who would never let me live because I’d survived.
“You exist, Salem. I see you. I feel you. You’re alive in my heart and in my eyes. And I won’t let him take you from me.”
“Jud…”
“Stay with me, Salem. Let me take care of you. Protect you.”
My being rocked.
Overcome.
My spirit wanted to cling to his promise while logic reminded me of my truth.
“I have to take care of myself.”
Because I would leave. I would leave because this fear promised I could never stay.
Tonight was a horrible reminder of that.
I’d made myself vulnerable.
Exposed.
And still, I was right here, wanting to let him hold that broken part of myself.
Jud brushed away the tears on my face. “It seems to me we’re taking care of each other.”
My head shook, unable to form a response.
“Magic, sweet enchantress. What you’re doing to me. The way you’re wrecking me, heart and mind.”
His arm curled around my waist. “I have you.”
He repeated the promise again as he lifted me from my feet. He held me gently as he sank to his knees on the damp ground. He laid me out on the grass.
The man wavered there, his hands on my shaking knees.
“Look at you. Most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
My trembling fingers reached out to brush over his face. The sharp angle of his eyebrows, his nose, his full, full lips, down through the cover of his beard.
“You stole my breath when I saw you, Jud. I was terrified, but I’m not sure it had a thing to do with you being a stranger finding me in the dark. It was this.” I gathered his hand and pressed it to the wild drum of my heart.
“And this.” I barely brushed my fingertips over his eyes. “The way you saw me. The way you made me feel seen. The way I felt changed in a beat.”
A blanket of lightning flashed through the heavens. It lit him in a stroke of severity. A flare of greed in the night. The man a mountain that towered over me.
Jud groaned a pained sound, and he wedged himself between my trembling thighs. Angling forward, he set one hand on the ground beside my head and the other cupped the side of my face.
Obsidian eyes sparked. “Since the moment I found you, you’ve been the only thing I could see.”
Emotion gathered fast. Welled from the broken parts of me. It crested and overflowed. I could barely force out the words. “Don’t make me fall in love with you, Jud.”
A sad smile hitched the edge of his mouth, and he traced his thumb at the edge of mine, words tender misery. “Who said anything about love, darlin’？”
He watched down on me. A thousand questions and reservations flashed through his expression, or maybe I was only witnessing what was reflected in mine.
“What do you want, Salem?” Jud asked.
My chin trembled, though I lifted it. “I just want to feel real.”
Jud pressed up on both his hands.
Thunder rumbled.
Energy lashed.
Desire burned and blazed.
“What I want to do to this sweet little body.” It was a warning. He slipped a hand up my thigh, pressing the bunched fabric of my dress higher.
Without my permission, my hips bucked against the bulge in his jeans. “Please.”
The second I said it, Jud snapped and dove in.
Remnants of the aggression that blazed through his blood were dumped into that kiss.
This fierce, unrelenting kiss as Jud devoured my mouth.
It was possession.
A promise of protection.
All the things he couldn’t give.
But right then, it didn’t matter. Didn’t matter that neither of our hearts could stay.
His big hand wrapped around the back of my neck to draw me closer as he pressed harder against me.
Rocking.
Sliding.
Whipping my body into a frenzy of lust.
He dropped to an elbow, and his other hand spread over my shoulder. He drew the fabric of my dress down to expose my left breast.
I heaved a gasp.
The heavens rumbled and flashed.
Need streaked, and Jud kissed me deeper as he kneaded my breast. I whimpered when he pinched my hardened nipple.
Jud moaned as his tongue stroked deep into my mouth, his other hand fisted up in my hair as he demanded my kiss.
He tugged my head back, and he kissed along my jaw, my chin, my throat, right down to the hammer of my heart. Then his mouth was taking the place of his fingers, and he sucked my nipple into his hot mouth before he bit down with his teeth.
A groan bumbled in my throat, mixed with a desperate, “Yes.”
“I have you,” he grunted at the heated flesh. He eased back to blow on the sensitive skin then he edged back onto his knees and drove his hands under my dress.
It pushed the fabric the rest of the way around my waist.
He ripped my underwear down my legs.
Hot and cold clashed.
The cool of the wind that blustered through and the fire that burned my blood.
Heavy clouds enclosed and veiled the moon.
Darkness eclipsed.
Recklessness obliterated all reason.
The only thing in this moment that mattered was this man.
Jud jerked through the button and zipper on his jeans, and he shoved them around his thighs.