Say It's Forever (Redemption Hills #2)(71)

Jud swung off his bike and rose to his full, towering height.

“No.” It was the grumble of a command.

Dull moonlight fell over him, casting his stunning face in shadows. In hard, devastating lines that whispered of goodness.

Of darkness.

Of horror and light.

He took one step in my direction.

The ground shook beneath my feet.

“No,” he said again.

“Jud, I have no idea what I’m doing here. My life—”

“You’re worried about your life, Salem? About what you’re bringing to the table?” He lifted his arms out to his sides. “Did you see me tonight? That’s just a glimpse at who I really am. Told you, I’ve done horrible, horrible things, and I have no fuckin’ clue how to contain it when I’m with you. I want to break every rule I’ve ever made for myself for you.”

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.