Page 11 of Soul to Possess (The Artmaker Trilogy #1)

One story, maybe three or four rooms max.

No barn in sight. No stables. No outbuildings.

No glow of floodlights marking fencing or pasture or animal shelters.

Just this. This… box. My steps slowed. Something wasn’t right.

The air shifted. That strange pressure behind my ribs—foreboding, sharp and precise—settled in deeper.

Had I been catfished? Had I just dragged myself through a half-mile of blizzard for this?

This was the future? This was the home I was supposed to build a life in?

My breath came out in a hard, shaking exhale as I mounted the first step.

The porch had no roof. Snow clung to the warped boards.

The light I’d seen was coming from a crooked lamp above the door, its bulb blinking just slightly, like it might burn out at any moment.

I scanned the treeline, but there was nothing else. No silhouettes of other buildings. No distant fences. Just black sky and snow. Animals wouldn’t be left in the dark like this… would they? The wind howled behind me, and I raised a trembling fist to knock.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The sound was pitiful—muffled by my cold-reddened knuckles and the roaring in my ears. But it echoed through the door, louder than I expected. I stepped back instinctively, suddenly unsure. The silence that followed dragged out too long, straining my nerves to the breaking point. Then—

“What in the actual fuck .”

The voice on the other side of the door was deep, masculine, and pissed. I stumbled back down the step, slipping a little on the ice. My breath caught in my throat as adrenaline surged—cold and hot all at once.

What the hell did I just walk into?

The door yanked open with such force I flinched.

A man filled the frame—broad, shirtless, and barefoot, standing in the swirling snow like he didn’t even feel it.

His jeans clung low to his hips, worn and dusty, like they’d lived an entire life before today.

His hair was a mess of auburn waves, long enough to catch in the wind and whip across a face that should’ve belonged to someone carved out of stone.

But it was his eyes—sharp, glacial, a kind of cruel green—that held me frozen.

“What in the actual hell is a woman doing on my porch in the middle of a damn blizzard?”

His voice was sandpaper and smoke, rough and cutting, like it had been dragged through too many bad nights and never quite recovered.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

I was cold. Wet. Lost. My lips were numb, and my brain felt just as frozen.

This wasn’t what I imagined. Not even close.

He stepped forward. Just a little. Enough to make the night feel smaller.

“Are you deaf?” he snapped. “Or just stupid?”

That woke something in me. The fear, sure. But also... something else. Something deeper. Unnamed.

“I—I was told this was the ranch,” I stammered. “I’m supposed to—someone was supposed to—Marvin—”

“For the love of God.” He rolled his eyes and slammed the door in my face.

The silence that followed was worse than the shouting.

Snow bit at my cheeks. My breath came out in ragged little clouds.

I blinked at the wooden door like it had personally betrayed me.

What the hell just happened? My knuckles cracked against it before I could think better. Once. Twice. Again.

“Marvin!” I shouted, absurdly. “Marvin, open the damn door right now!”

Heavy footsteps pounded inside, and then the door flew open again with a bang that made me stumble backward.

“Who the fuck is Marvin?”

I stared at him, throat dry. “Uh… you are?”

A pause. And then—he laughed. It wasn’t a kind laugh. It wasn’t anything I wanted to be the reason for. It felt like being undressed and spit-shined in the same breath. His smirk curved slowly across his mouth, wolfish and amused.

“I think I’d remember if my name was Marvin, little girl.”

Little girl.

The words scraped across my skin, and I hated how they made me feel. Small. Stupid. Not because they were true—but because there was a part of me that still wanted someone to take care of everything. Fix everything. Be the answer to every wrong question I’d ever asked.

“And who exactly are you looking for, hmm?” he asked. “This Marvin. Why?”

I wrapped my arms tighter around myself, glancing over my shoulder like maybe the bus would come back. Like maybe I still had a way out. But I didn’t. I knew that now.

“I don’t think I should answer you.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he drawled, leaning against the doorframe like he had all the time in the world, like he was perfectly comfortable with me freezing to death on his porch.

“You’re about three hours from the nearest town.

You could start walking—if the bears don’t get you first, maybe you’ll make it eventually. ”

He lifted a brow. “Or… you could come inside and take your chances with the devil. Catch is—you tell me who Marvin is. And why you thought he lived here.” The wind howled behind me.

I shivered. But it wasn’t the cold that scared me most. It was him.

And how, somehow, I already knew I’d never really left the bus alone.

Three hours? There was no way I could walk that far.

Not in this cold. Not in these shoes. He hadn’t specified if that was by car or on foot, and something about the way he’d said it made me think he meant the latter.

Which meant it wasn’t three hours—it was days .

Days of snow, wind, and whatever wild things lurked out here with teeth.

Why would anyone live so far from town with nothing around?

Where the hell had that bus dropped me off?

Clearly, this man wasn’t Marvin. Maybe he was lying.

But something told me he wasn’t. More likely—I’d been left in the wrong place.

Or maybe… exactly where someone wanted me.

I had two choices. Try to make it to town and freeze to death.

Or stay here. And hope he didn’t kill me first. I swallowed the knot in my throat and tipped my head toward him, summoning more calm than I felt.

“I guess I’ll spend the night with the devil. ”

His face split into a wide grin. Not kind. Not reassuring. Just sharp. “Excellent choice, little girl. You’re half-frozen. Come on in. I’ll make you a cup of hot chocolate.”

The shift in his tone startled me. Like he could snap from cruel to cordial without missing a beat.

I stepped inside. Warmth wrapped around me like a blanket, and I exhaled for the first time in what felt like hours.

The wind still whistled against the windows, but it was nothing like outside.

He closed the door behind me with a hard click , locked it, and didn’t look away.

“Take a seat.”

I looked around, wary. The cabin was… not what I expected.

Rough, yes. But lived in. Cozy, even. A large brown couch in the corner, piled high with buffalo plaid blankets.

A TV mounted on the wall—true crime flickering on screen, surrounded by mounted antlers.

A fire crackled steadily in the hearth. Electricity.

Heat. Running water, probably. Amenities I hadn’t expected to find this far off the grid.

Still… the place gave me the strangest feeling.

Like I’d stepped into something I wouldn’t be able to step back out of.

“Something wrong with my couch?”

I startled. “No—I mean, no sir. Not at all. I’ll sit.

” I lowered myself stiffly onto the couch.

Shivers still rippled through me. My toes were numb.

My fingers ached, throbbing like they were on fire.

My face burned from the cold, the heat already starting to sting as it returned.

I was freezing, but alive. For now. A mug clinked softly against the table in front of me.

Steam curled from it. Hot chocolate. My eyes darted to the table—glass-topped, but partly covered with a stretched piece of what looked like…

leather? Old. Stained. Maybe some kind of animal skin.

There were odd little sculptures scattered across it.

One of them caught my eye—dark, jagged, strangely organic.

Teeth. It looked like it had been made out of teeth.

Human? No. That was ridiculous. Right? I swallowed, hard. The cabin was warm. Beautiful, even. But there was something wrong here. Something I couldn’t name. It wasn’t just the isolation. Or the cold. It was him. And the way this place felt like a trap, disguised as a home.

“Drink up,” he said, nodding toward the mug. “It’ll warm your fool ass up.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m not a fool. I was looking for… for…”

“For what?” He leaned forward slightly, shadows from the fire licking across his bare chest. “Jesus, woman. I don’t bite.” A beat. “Hard.”

I stared at him, stunned.

His lips curled into a smirk. “Just joking, little girl.”

“I’m not a little girl.”

“Stop deflecting.”

He raised a brow, slow and deliberate, then winked like we were sharing some kind of inside joke.

We weren’t. He was the type of man who knew he was beautiful.

The kind that used it like a weapon. The firelight danced over his skin, tracing the lines of ink that wound across his arms and chest. Every inch of him was muscle—lean, hard, coiled.

Dark hair spread across his stomach in a trail that led down to his belt buckle, and I looked away quickly, heat creeping up my neck.

“I don’t even know your name,” I muttered.

“Still deflecting.”

“The point stands.”

“I’m the boss here,” he said flatly. That smirk faded into something sharper. “You’d do well to remember that.”

“You’re not my boss, however… sir.” I picked up the mug, letting the warmth seep into my frozen fingers. It felt good. Too good. “It’s warm in here. Thank you. Really.”