Page 32 of Craving Venom (The Venomous Beauty Trilogy #1)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE BEAUTY

I sit stiffly in front of my laptop, watching the grainy feed of the visitation room on the screen.

It’s small. The kind of place where emotions get locked up tighter than the inmates.

The walls are washed-out gray, making the whole place feel even more suffocating.

There’s a bolted-down table in the center, two metal chairs on either side.

No decorations. No distractions. Just an empty fucking room where people come to face the worst decisions of their lives.

My fingers hover over the trackpad. I could shut this down. Right now. Close the laptop, pretend I never made this call, pretend I never got that fucking message.

But I need answers.

And one video visitation won’t hurt me.

It’s not like he can filter through my laptop or reach through the screen.

I check the time. 6:10 p.m.

He’s late.

Good. Let him not show up. Maybe this was a bad idea anyway. The universe is throwing me a fucking bone, warning me to get out while I still can. And yet, for some goddamn reason, him not coming on the line is more terrifying than facing him.

The door swings open.

Zane plops into the chair with the same lazy arrogance he had the last time I saw him. “You miss me, good girl?”

I grip the edges of my laptop. “Why the hell am I listed as your lawyer?”

“Would you rather be listed as my wife?”

I narrow my eyes. “I’d rather be listed as your executioner, but they don’t offer that option, do they?”

Zane chuckles, dragging his tongue over his bottom lip, tasting the words I just threw at him. “You don’t need a title to tie me up and make me beg, I’m already yours to command.”

I don’t comment on any of that. Mostly because it sends something crawling under my skin. Butterflies, maybe. But they might as well be fucking crickets for how unwanted they are.

“You do realize this is fraud, right?”

“Technically, no. You have a legal background. Just enough for them to believe it.” He stretches out in his chair as though he’s settling in for a date, not a prison visit. “Besides… listing you as my wife would’ve been a dead giveaway.”

“A dead giveaway of what?”

“That you can’t stay away from me.”

“You’re confusing pity with obsession,” I say coolly. “Happens when you’ve been locked up too long. You start imagining connections where there aren’t any.”

Zane grins, but his eyes drift toward my collarbone. “The necklace says otherwise.”

Shit.

“I just didn’t want to lose track of stolen property,” I lie smoothly, though I know he’s not buying it.

“Stolen? That’s a bold accusation.”

“Yeah? Then where’d you get it?”

“It belonged to a princess. She told me to give it to someone almost as beautiful as her.”

I scoff, rolling my eyes hard enough to give myself whiplash. “Oh, so now you’re fencing royal family heirlooms? What’s next, Zane? Are you going to tell me you dated her too?”

He just smiles. “Would you be jealous if I did?”

I snort, rolling my eyes. “Oh, shut the fuck up.” I cross my arms. “Just tell me why you killed your family and I’ll leave you alone.”

His smirk vanishes, and his expression changes as the playfulness drains from his face, replaced by something darker.

“I don’t want you to.”

I open my mouth to respond, but nothing comes out, because that wasn’t a taunt, wasn’t him being an arrogant bastard this time. It was something real.

“But I want to.”

Zane clicks his tongue, shaking his head. “Here we go again. Your body doesn’t lie, Faith. No matter how much that pretty little brain of yours tries to convince you otherwise.”

My fingers dig into my thighs beneath the desk. “You forced me.”

“You came hard, good girl.”

I hate that he says it so fucking easily, like it’s something that can’t be debated.

“You forced me,” I say again, but it sounds weaker this time.

He rests his forearms on the metal table. “I pushed a few of your boundaries, yeah,” he admits. “And look at you, you’re still shaking from it.”

“You violated me, you asshole!” I yell.

Zane laughs, and it’s a full, deep, genuine laugh. Every inch of him radiates mockery, turning my words into a punchline. And just like that, I see red.

“This is not funny!” I seethe.

“But it is,” he says, wiping the corner of his mouth. “A good girl lets loose for one night, has the best orgasm of her life, and then spends the next week convincing herself she was violated.”

“I’m not a good girl.”

Of all the fucking things to say.

Out of all the arguments I could’ve thrown at him, all the ways I could’ve torn him apart, that is what comes out.

His grin widens. “That’s all you are, good girl. You broke a couple of rules, let someone else take the wheel for once, and now your brain doesn’t know what the fuck to do with it.” He lifts a brow. “You liked it, but you’re not allowed to like it, are you?”

I open my mouth to speak, to deny whatever the fuck he thinks he knows about me, but Zane’s entire demeanor shifts.

“I told you to find a boyfriend. I told you I was going to push your limits. You knew exactly what you were walking into. Maybe you didn’t know how far I’d go, but you wanted me to push you.”

“No.”

“Yes,” he says firmly. “In your head you might want the kind of sex that feels safe. The kind where the guy strokes your cheek, calls you beautiful, tells you how much he loves you before he pushes inside slowly. The kind where he holds you gently, moves so fucking carefully, like you’ll break if he’s too rough.

Where he stops every few seconds to make sure you’re okay.

Where he doesn’t grab your hips too hard, doesn’t pull your hair, doesn’t make you take it deeper than you think you can. And that’s cute.”

His next words make my skin prickle.

“But that’s not how I fuck ,” he continues. “And next time when I see you, which I will, you can expect that I’m going to leave you drooling, gasping for air and sore.”

“You will not,” I say crossing my arms.

“I will fuck you like an animal,” he whispers. “I want to hear sounds torn from your throat that no human makes.”

I hate how my stomach flips, how my breath hitches a little.

I rip my gaze away from him, turning my head to hide the heat crawling up my neck. “You’re disgusting.”

“Say that to my face.”

Out of all the things he’s made me do, out of all the ways he’s controlled me, this one thing… I want to do willingly.

I force my head up, meeting his gaze. “You’re disgu—”

The words die in my throat as my eyes drop and that’s when I see his hand beneath the table, moving up and down. I can’t see much, but I can see the lazy rhythm of his arm, the subtle flex of his fingers.

“Are you seriously doing... that right now?”

“I told you,” he murmurs. “You make me hard.”

I snap my head up, trying to look at the door behind him. My entire body is suddenly aware of where he is, who could walk in, what could happen if someone sees.

“Eyes on me.”

I try to focus, but I can’t. Fear pins me still, and beneath it lies something colder.

“Eyes on me, Faith.”

This time, I listen. I look at him, and fuck, I shouldn’t have.

Zane looks wrecked but not in a bad way. In a way that says he’s still riding the high of last time, still starving, still hungry. His hair is a little messier than usual, strands falling over his forehead.

Because suddenly, I want to materialize in that room, slide to my knees between his legs, and feel him in my palm. I want to grip the base of his cock, feel the weight of it, drag my tongue over the leaking head—

What the fuck is wrong with me?

The idea makes me recoil, and my thighs clench so tightly together it almost hurts

“You want to see how hard I am for you?”

I choke on nothing. “Shut the fuck up.”

His laugh is low, dark. “I bet your pussy’s aching for me right now, isn’t it?”

I hate him, but my pussy is aching.

“You can’t just jerk off in the middle of a prison!”

His head lolls backward, disappearing behind the chair. “Why not?”

I gape at him. “Because someone could walk in—”

His hand slows, dragging up his length with infuriating control. “And?”

“And you’d get caught, you lunatic!”

He brings his head up with a shuddered breath. “You think I care?”

“Fine. Get caught. You’ll look good in handcuffs.”

“Would I?” His hand keeps moving. “Or do you just want to see me restrained?”

“You think too highly of yourself.”

The muscles in his forearm flex again as he strokes himself. His pupils are blown wide, his lips parted just enough for me to imagine what he’d sound like if he let go completely, if he growled my name, if he moaned like I made him come undone.

A shiver rolls down my spine.

He fucking sees it.

His smirk turns into something lethal. “I’d let you.”

I swallow hard. “Let me what?”

“Use me,” he says smoothly, tilting his head. “If that’s what you wanted . You could ride me, sweetheart. Get yourself off however you needed. Fuck me slow, drag it out—” His voice deepens, his hand moving faster now. “Or fuck me hard, until I’m growling into your neck, begging you to keep going.”

The second the words leave his mouth, X-rated images flash through my mind so vividly they might as well be real.

I dig the nails of my foot into my leg so hard I should probably be bleeding.

It’s the only thing keeping me from pressing my thighs together even tighter, from giving away just how badly my pussy aches.

“But when I get free?”

His chest rises and falls with heavy controlled breaths, but his moans aren’t silent. They come out in rough, uneven sounds, every single one dragging through my laptop speakers like a fucking sin.

“I’ll destroy you,” he rasps growling my name.

Fuck.

He does it again, breathing it out like he can taste me, like he’s imagining his name torn from my lips the same way I’m picturing his.

Then he groans it.

I never thought a man could sound this sexy.