Enigma

Chapter 30 Salem

CHAPTER 30

SALEM

Salem lay in bed, Caz pressed into her side, looking at her, propped on his elbow as he caressed her hair.

This was her favorite part of being with him. The sex

was great, but it was the after that got to her, when he nuzzled her softly, petted her carefully, held her closely. In the aftermath, with their walls down, intimacy swirled between them.

“You okay?” he asked her, his voice low, and she realized that as rough as he got, it was this side of him that made her fall deeper.

She nodded. She was sore, the best kind of sore, but she was good.

She caressed his jaw, marveling at the freedom to touch, to feel, to be. “I like this,” she murmured.

“My face?” he teased.

A chuckle left her. “Yes. But also this. Us. Like this.”

He twirled a curl around his finger. “What do you like?”

Salem paused in her stroking, considering his question. “I like how soft you are with me after being so rough. I like that you give me what I need, sexually and emotionally. These quiet moments, I like them.”

He bopped her nose. “Look at you, melting for me.”

Salem gave him a mock glare and he laughed, the sound rich and lustrous, filling the cracks inside her, a balm to her soul after everything that had happened.

He brought her close, turning to spoon her, and pressed a kiss to her neck. “Sleep.”

Salem felt her eyes get heavier, and settled in.

There was a buzz on campus the next morning.

Evidently, word about what had happened with Lara the night before had spread around, many witnesses telling their friends their account of things and others just taking the word of mouth and running with it.

Salem stood next to the administration block by the old library, the part of the castle that was the oldest given to the admin staff for paperwork. The fact that it was next to what had been a prison was mildly disturbing, especially when she remembered the rumors the policewoman had told her about it.

She had been on her way to collect the package that Anna had sent her when she stopped in her tracks in front of the entrance. The main gates to the university were visible from where she stood, and she could see a media van right outside, with a reporter, one who had been in the studio when Tanya’s death was being covered. Now she was pointing to the university with her mic to her face, another woman behind the camera recording her.

Curious, she changed her path and headed to the gates where a few students stood and lingered.

“Although Mortimer University is one of the most prestigious, exclusive institutes of education in the world,” Salem heard her say as she neared the gates, “there is a disturbing tale of death that remains buried behind its walls. Since we have not been granted permission to be on the premises, we are coming to you right from the gates. What exactly is going on at this university? Are these students, who come from some of the most elite families, truly safe?”

Salem pondered the words just as the reporter’s eyes flitted to hers. The woman’s eyes widened.

“Turn the camera,” she told the camera lady, before looking at Salem with the gates between them. “That’s Javier Salazar’s daughter.” Fuck, her eyes.

She had begun to turn and leave when the woman had the audacity to call out. “Do you know why your father killed the Vanguard family, Miss Salazar? Did your family have a feud with them? I heard he was having an affair with Mrs. Vanguard and got caught.”

Salem’s hands fisted as she stood her ground, aware of the students who had turned to look at her. It was nothing she hadn’t heard before, but she had always dodged the questions. Knowing what she knew, becoming who she had become, she didn’t run. In fact, this time, she turned to look straight at the reporter, lifting her chin up in that haughty way she had perfected, wearing her cloak of ice so she could feel the chill emanating from her.

“Get out.”

She might be covered in scandals, but she was a Salazar, and that name still carried weight.

“But I am not on university property,” the reporter told her, almost gleeful.

“Yes, you are,” Salem said, bringing her down a peg. “The ten acres around the boundary is still university property. There is a sign at the mouth of the street. Learn how to read.”

The reporter’s face flushed.

“You heard her.” Baron’s lazy drawl came from her side. “This is private property and you’re trespassing.”

The other students chimed in as well, until the media van pulled out, and Salem gave a nod to Baron in thanks. Others lingered, and he gave them a look, prompting them all to leave.

He looked at her in contemplation. “You’ve changed.”

Salem raised her eyebrow. “You don’t know me well enough to comment on that.”

The man chuckled. “I’ve done enough research on you to know you never stood up to the press before, not even when they were hounding you and your mother after everything happened. This was… unexpected. Van der Waal seems to be rubbing off on you.”

Salem ignored his last sentence and the warmth it filled her with, the memory of Caz filling her last night, of him sliding inside her this morning before she was even fully awake, fucking her into the bed like an insatiable beast before planting the softest kiss on her and leaving, all of it filling her.

She kept it all close to herself and asked this man the question that she had always wanted to ask him. “Why did you research me?”

He seemed to tense slightly at the question, his eyes drifting to the side, before coming back to her. “Well, both Salazars and Vanguards are some of the longest lines of legacy families. It was a shock to… shock to everyone with what your father did. Didn’t make sense. Hence the research into you when you were coming.”

Salem took a note of his hesitation, her eyes narrowing slightly. “Do you mean it was a shock to whatever legacy group my father was in?” she asked him, keeping Caz’s name out of it since his true identity was under wraps.

Baron seemed to still, his eyes looking around to check no one had heard her, before he dragged her to the side of the gate in a more private space. “How do you know about that?”

Salem shrugged. “I’m a legacy, remember?” She let it go at that, let him think she knew because of her family.

Baron considered her for a few moments. “Yes, but it’s just surprising because, well, as outdated as it is, the female legacies don’t know about it. So how did you?”

Salem kept her face clean of any twitches that would give her away, and said casually, “I overheard my father talking about it in his study when I was younger. I’ve known it ever since.” Sounded completely plausible, especially since Baron already knew she eavesdropped.

“Hmm,” he hummed, not convinced, but he let it go. “I have to get to class. My advice? Don’t tell van der Waal that you know.”

Salem’s grip tightened on her phone. She was confused, since it was Caz himself who had revealed it to her. “Why do you say that?”

“Let’s just say,” he said, walking backward, “he’s not who he seems to be. A wild card of sorts. Weirdly loyal to them.”

Or maybe that was an act. “And you’re not?”

A slashing grin. “I’m only loyal to myself.”

And he walked off. Aditi had her hands full with that one. Shaking his words off, Salem turned to her original path and continued to the admin block.

The day was gloomy, gray and giving major seasonal depression to anyone who liked the sun. Mist was perpetual around her knees at this time, the cobblestone paths shiny with moisture, the air heavy with invisible droplets that made her hair frizzy even in her bun. She tugged her coat tighter around herself, warding off the chill as she quickly made her way to the entrance.

A lobby with a front desk to her right, wide steps opening to an office space on the left, stone walls left unpainted and textured, and chandeliers on high ceilings, all the interior she had come to associate with Mortimer greeted her as she entered.

An older gentleman sat behind the front desk. “May I help you?”

Salem headed to him. “Yes, I’ve received a package.”

“Student card, please.”

Salem gave it to him, watching as he scanned it and handed it back to her. He turned and picked up a cardboard box from a shelf behind him, placing it on top of the flat surface in front of her. “Here, Miss Salazar.”

He extended a form out to her along with a pen. “Please mark that the package does not have any of the items listed and sign here.”

Salem quickly marked it safe and signed.

Then she picked up the box, felt her arm muscles scream, and promptly put it down again. She looked at the package, knowing how heavy it would be, and that lugging it back to her room, up an incline, all by herself, wouldn’t be possible for her.

Opening her phone, she pulled up her thread of texts.

Salem: Are you free?

Bane of my existence: Tell me.

Not yes or no, but depending on what she told him.

He was cute.

Focus.

Salem: I got an important package. It’s heavy. Can I put it in your library studio?

Salem: Don’t want to carry it all the way to the room.

Bane of her existence: Coming.

Just one word, and she felt her muscles relax.

She locked her phone and waited, walking to the side by the notice board, looking at the different notes on it talking about exams in a few weeks, an end-of-the-year charity gala organized by the board that all students were invited to, and the break at the end of the semester right after that.

The next few weeks were going to be packed.

The hairs on the back of her neck prickled with that familiar awareness, that familiar way the molecules moved around him to collide with her skin in a vibrato, and she turned to see him stride into the lobby, his eyes on her.

She felt it, that intense, fierce way he looked at her, felt it right in her stomach that caved in from the force, right in her chest crushing around her ribcage, right in her core fluttering with the memory of him. But most of all, she felt it right in her mind, the intensity transferring from his eyes to hers, firing the neurons in her brain, changing the receptors, realigning them to accept the overload of sensation, sending electricity down her spine and dispersing it throughout her body.

She shuddered, in that delicious way she had come to recognize and associate with him, and his eyes flared, because he saw it too.

“Hey,” he greeted her in that voice of rumbling sea and raspy smoke, a voice she now knew wrote sin upon her skin and fire on her flesh, and she felt a breathy “hey” come from her own chest.

A throat clearing had her realizing that the man at the front desk was still there, watching them. She felt a slight flush cover her face.

“This it?” Caz asked, looking at the box on the countertop.

She nodded, and watched in awe and appreciation as he picked it up like it weighed nothing, when she knew it was heavy, watching the muscles in his biceps and shoulders bulge under his jacket, the way they bulged when he picked her up or used force to keep her immobile.

A wisp of feminine appreciation curled around her, affecting the throbbing spot between her legs. It had become a perpetual problem around him. Ever since he had taken her that night in the woods, ever since she had felt him, the power of him, the weight of him, inside her, her body immediately prepared itself for another taking the moment he was in the vicinity. Though, if she was honest, it had been doing it long before that night.

He walked out the door and she followed him, cold wind slapping her in the face as she wrapped herself tighter, ogling him as he swiftly moved to the next building and entered the library.

The librarian gave them a chin-up nod and went back to her bodice-ripper. Salem had found out she had a penchant for them, and looking at the hunk on the cover with the long dark hair and gleaming chest muscles, in a clinch with a buxom beauty overflowing out of her dress, she didn’t blame her.

She followed Caz right to the back of the library, where the door led down to his studio space, the doorway where she remembered panicking and him coming up behind her, the first time they had been intimate in such close proximity.

Her heart began to pound as the door opened and she saw the narrow space again, saw the tiny doorway that led down the stairs, and her hands began to tremble. Caz stopped, turning to look at her, his eyes calculating.

“Stay here,” he instructed, and she was more than happy to comply, staying right outside the door, keeping it open with one hand, the other gripping her tote.

She watched him jog down the stairs with the box, disappear from view, a thump coming from below as he dumped it, and then he was bounding right back up.

Salem kept her eyes on him as he strode to her, wrapped an arm around her waist, and tugged her in, pulling the door closed behind her. It locked with a click behind her back, trapping her again between the stone walls and him, making her breaths lock in her lungs as she looked around.

Before she could process it, she was suddenly high up in the air, her legs over his shoulders, her face almost touching the stone as she steadied herself by holding the ceiling, the feeling of being trapped amplified a hundredfold by the way he had locked her against it.

“What the—”

The words died in her throat as his teeth tugged her panties out of the way, much like he’d tugged her sweater down her lips, his head burying itself under her uniform skirt, his mouth falling on her.

Salem felt the panic mix with pleasure, the combination charging up her clit to her brain, clicking in a way she hadn’t anticipated as he kept her locked into place and began to consume her.

“Oh god,” she cried out, unsure what she was feeling, her body confused between the signals of fight, flight, or fuck, her palms holding the stone above her to try to stabilize herself.

The aggression of his mouth was telling her that he wasn’t playing around, that he wasn’t savoring it and edging her. Rather, he was pushing her to the cliff, leading her straight to the drop, making her jump as his tongue wrote deviant desires on her clit, his hands wrapped around her thighs and holding her steady on his broad shoulders.

She dragged a hand down into his hair, writhing against his face, chasing the pleasure she knew he was capable of giving her while her face against the ceiling brought the memory of being trapped to the fore, her heart skittering in her chest as she began to pant.

She didn’t have to beg him, didn’t have to listen to his voice, didn’t have to do a thing as he took her to the edge, moving his mouth expertly over her nerves like they were his own, firing sensation after sensation up and down her body.

And then he let her drop.

Salem brought her hand from the ceiling down to her mouth, muffling the scream that left her throat as her orgasm crashed into her, her body shuddering, her thighs shaking, her toes curling.

It lasted just for a few seconds, or maybe a few minutes, she didn’t know. She just stayed limp, looking up at the stone ceiling, letting her racing heart calm down as he pulled back, his teeth tugging her panties back into place, and let her slide down the door until the ground was back under her feet.

She blinked up at his face, seeing his mouth and jaw glistening with her juices as he leaned forward, kissing her deeply, making her taste herself in a way that felt so dirty but so decadent.

“What was that for?” she breathed when he pulled away and stared down at her.

“So a better memory replaces it. So that every time you come here, this is immediately what you think of rather than whatever terrifies you.” He nuzzled her neck, speaking against her skin. “I want to be the only villain you see. I want to be the only devil who drags you to hell.”

His words should have been disturbing, but they thrilled her instead. Knowing that he could take over her vulnerabilities, consume them whole, and laugh while doing it, made her feel a sliver of power.

“You’re crazy,” she whispered. He was.

“About you?” He pressed a kiss to her neck. “Utterly.” Kiss. “Absolutely.” Kiss. “Shamelessly.”

“Why?” she asked, not understanding. No one had ever been as obsessed, as focused on her. Even with the history she knew they had, she didn’t understand it.

He straightened, sliding his fingers into her hair, so she looked up into his eyes, feeling completely surrounded by him. “Because life with you feels greater than death. Because you make the artist in me burn with the need to create, make the man in me burn with the need to possess, make the killer in me burn with the need to protect. You make me want to live, Salem. You give me a modicum of peace in a world of chaos. Is that reason enough?”

Salem just stared at him, the emotions in her body a riot, her vision becoming hazy as her nose tingled, the tightness in her throat overwhelming her as she clung to him.

She just nodded, her lips quivering with the need to say words she couldn’t find, and he pressed his forehead to hers, stilling the tremors, his words tattooing themselves in her brain, changing her chemistry, her composition, her core.

To a girl who had never been accepted, never been wanted, never been loved, a girl who had been abandoned more than she had been embraced, a girl who had made peace with the fact that she was meant to be alone for the rest of her life, however long that might be, the words…

She felt the flame ignited by them burn slowly in her ice heart, warming it from the inside, changing her at a molecular level, changing her form, changing everything she had been and transforming it to who she could be, and she cupped it close, nestled it deep, and let it melt her.

To that girl, his words weren’t reason enough.

They were everything.

I was looked at, but I wasn’t seen .

—Albert Camus, The Misunderstanding