Page 49 of Craving Venom (The Venomous Beauty Trilogy #1)

Mark twitches. A reflex. Or maybe not.

Frank sees it too. “Oh, there you are. Thought I lost you.” He presses his cheek against Mark’s. “Say hi to your boyfriend. Bet he’s crying for you.”

I push myself up, using the wall. My legs barely hold. “When that door opens, you’re fucking dead.”

Frank grins over his shoulder. “Nah, you won’t touch me.” He smacks Mark’s ass so hard I hear skin split. “Cause when I’m done, he’ll come crawling back for more.”

Mark flinches. Just barely.

That tiny fucking flinch breaks me.

I throw myself into the bars again. “I’ll fucking eat your heart while it’s still beating. You hear me?!”

The one on the bed moans, working his hand faster over his dick. “Oh fuck, that’s hot. I might blow just hearing his dirty talk.”

Mark’s body collapses forward, too weak to hold itself up. The nylon cuts deeper into his gums. Blood drips onto the floor. He’s not even flinching anymore.

Frank lets out a feral groan and rams in deep one last time. His hips jerk as he empties inside him, teeth bared like a wolf.

The sound of boots slamming against the concrete cuts through the cell as the guards storm in with tasers drawn and batons raised. One of them shouts something, but I don’t hear a single fucking word.

The second the guards throw the door open, the air ignites.

Frank’s cronies scramble as the one with his cock in Mark’s mouth shoves him aside like garbage and stumbles back, still half-hard and dripping. The other one kicks off the bunk with his pants around his knees, already shouting that it wasn’t his idea.

Mark crumples onto the floor. His legs fold under him like broken twigs. Blood stains the inside of his thighs. He doesn’t lift his head.

I don’t hesitate.

I lunge.

Two guards grab me—one on each arm. I shove off, jerking them forward, using their momentum to rip free. My hands close around Frank’s throat like iron vices.

His eyes go wide.

I drive him back into the wall, hard enough that the sound echoes through the block. His skull cracks against concrete. I don’t stop. I slam him again. And again.

“You like ruining people?” My grip tightens.

Frank claws at my arms, laughing through a crushed windpipe. “F-fuck… you…”

I slam my forehead into his nose before I drag him by the throat. His feet scrape against the floor and his breath comes out in a wet wheeze. The guards scream behind me, but no one steps in. No one dares.

I march through that open door and storm into the yard. The sun scorches down. Prisoners gather, but I don’t care. Let them fucking watch.

I hurl Frank into the dirt, and he rolls over, coughing with blood splattered down his chin.

I don’t give him a second to think as I stomp on his ribs, making him choke on the scream.

I straddle him with my fists already swinging.

The first punch caves in his cheek, and the second snaps his head to the side as blood sprays across the ground.

“You think this is funny now?” My fists don’t stop.

His hands flail up, trying to block, but I bat them away like paper. I punch until his eye swells shut. Until his lip is split wide open and his teeth are loose.

“You like hurting people?” I spit. “Let’s see how you like pain.”

His face is a fucking mess. One eye’s purple, the other drowning in red. He’s trying to talk, lips shaking, breath rattling in and out of his nose—what’s left of it.

He coughs, chokes on blood. “P-please…”

I slam my fist into his mouth, snapping his head back as a string of spit and blood trails from his gums.

“I want you to beg,” I snarl, gripping his hair and yanking his head up just to crack it back down against the ground. “Beg like he should’ve. Like you never let him.”

The bastard fucking whimpers. “Z-Zane… don’t… I was just—”

“Just what?” I spit in his face. “Just fucking him? Just tearing him open with your diseased dick?!”

I beat him until my fists ache. Until blood slicks my knuckles and his body wobbles under me.

“Please… please… I can’t see… I can’t—”

I grip his jaw, and my fingers dig into the broken mess of it. “You’ll see enough when you meet the fucking devil.”

I raise my fist one more time, but before I can bring it down, someone grabs me. Five guards, maybe more, tackle me off him, but I claw for more. My nails scour at the dirt as I lunge again, my boots dragging through the gravel and my muscles straining to break free from their grip.

“Get the fuck off me!” I roar, spit flying from my mouth as I thrash against the guards holding me back. “Let me fucking finish him!”

Frank gurgles in the dirt. His face is a wreck, caved in and bleeding from every opening. His mouth is torn, with a split lip that reaches his nose and a shattered cheekbone. One eye is rolled halfway back while the other is swollen shut, but his heart is still beating.

Not enough.

I kick off the ground and twist, elbowing one of the guards in the gut. He doubles over with a grunt. I wrench my arm free and surge forward toward the limp sack of shit crumpled in the blood-soaked gravel.

A baton cracks across my back. Another bashes my side.

I don’t stop.

I drop onto Frank’s chest and drive my knee into his ribs with a sickening snap. “You fucking ruined him!” I scream as my fists rain down on him, knuckles crashing into his jaw before my palm slams against his temple and my forearm smashes straight into bone.

Frank’s body jerks weakly and a guttural moan leaks from his ruined throat. He’s not even present anymore. He’s just a pile of flesh who is barely breathing.

Hands grab my shoulders, arms, and waist as barked orders hit the air. “Zane! Stand down! Now!” But they might as well be whispers. Threats don’t mean shit. Nothing they could do—not tasers, not beatings, not solitary—comes close to what he did. What Mark endured.

Nothing compares to the sound of Mark choking on a cock. The sight of blood on his thighs. The way he didn’t fight back.

“Let go of me!” My arms thrash, fists punching the air, trying to land one more blow.

I throw my weight to the side and almost knock one of them over. A baton slams into my shoulder. Someone punches me in the gut. My knees dip for a second, but I don’t go down.

I try again.

One of them grabs my wrist, twisting it behind my back.

Cold steel bites in as cuffs slam shut. The other wrist follows.

I thrash, but they’ve got leverage now, but not enough.

I could pry myself out of the grip of five guards without even thinking.

But then my eyes catch on Mark across the yard, and that split-second of hesitation is all they need.

Someone sweeps my legs out from under me, cuffing my ankles before I can rive again.

They finally get me upright, shoving my spine so hard I stagger back into one of them. My chest heaves so hard it feels like I might vomit rage straight out of my ribs, I want nothing more than to kill Frank, but my eyes stay on Mark.

A guard’s got an arm under his shoulders, half-dragging, half-carrying him down the opposite corridor. His knees buckle every third step, and his face—fuck. It’s so blank, it looks like he’s already dead.

He mouths “thank you,” and I don’t even think he knows he’s doing it.

That’s when reality rams into me, hammering me right in the throat. Marks’s alive. He’s hurt, broken, and bleeding, but he’s still breathing.

And Frank?

He’s still coughing blood into the dirt.

It was worth it. Every fucking second.

The guards start dragging me toward the admin wing, pulling me in the opposite direction from where they’re taking Mark.

The door to the disciplinary hearing room slams open. There’s a long table. Plastic chairs. A clipboard sitting on a chair. Two security supervisors. Some flunky from the legal unit. Clipboard guy in a cheap tie looks up, visibly flinching when they shove me inside.

“Wow,” I gripe, rolling my eyes as I let my head loll back just to annoy them, “everyone’s rallying to protect me from... well, me .”

“Sit,” someone barks.

I drop into the chair. The cuffs stay on. Of course.

Clipboard Boy clears his throat and gestures stiffly toward the paper in front of him. “This is an emergency disciplinary session. You’re being sanctioned under Code Seventeen for assault resulting in near-fatal injury of another inmate.”

I snort. “Near-fatal? Fuck. Guess I didn’t hit hard enough.”

“Zane.” The head of security slouches closer. “Shirley’s the only reason you’re not already in a black box. You want to test how far that protection goes?”

I slide back, dragging my cuffed wrists up and setting them on the table with a loud clack. “You gonna give Frank a medal while you’re at it?”

Clipboard Boy flicks through some notes. “You’re being offered a controlled resolution. No further charges filed—”

“Gee, thanks,” I bite out.

“—provided you comply with a seven-day restraint order,” Clipboard Boy drones, tapping the paper, thinking it’ll intimidate me. “You’ll remain cuffed at all times.”

“And here I thought you assholes were going to go all out.”

Clipboard Boy doesn’t meet my eyes.

“You’re lucky,” the guard on the right mutters. “Warden Shirley’s fond of you. She called off a full psych eval.”

The clipboard slides across the table toward me. A pen follows.

I glare down at it.

“Sign it,” the older one says. “Or we throw you in the hole anyway without any protection, and no one watching what happens next.”

I grab the pen with my cuffed hands, twist it awkwardly in my grip, and scrawl my name.

“Enjoy the week,” Clipboard Boy spews, grabbing the form and tucking it into a folder. “You’ll be in cuffs for all of it. You’ve earned it.”

The pen’s still warm between my fingers, gripped awkwardly in my cuffed hands.

I glance down at it.

Then I grin.

“You know…” I angle my head and press my tongue against the inside of my cheek while rolling the pen between my fingers. “You really should stop underestimating people with blood on their hands.”

Before Clipboard Boy can even ask what the fuck I mean, I jam the pen’s clip into the seam of the lock on my left cuff.

Click.

The cuff falls open.

Clipboard Boy stares with his mouth open and his folder is paused halfway to closing.

“W-What the—?”

I pop the other one the same way. There’s a bit of resistance, but nothing I can’t handle. I drop the pen with a clack on the table and flex my hands, rolling out the stiffness. Deep red lines groove into my skin where the cuffs bit down too long.

One of the guards steps forward, his hand brushing the baton at his hip. “Hey—what the fuck?”

“Relax, princess. Just proving a point.”

I take a slow step back from the table. No one moves.

“You got a problem?” I lift my arms and spread my palms open. “I’m right here. Unarmed. Oh wait, guess you thought the cuffs did that part for you.”

The older guard mutters under his breath, already regretting his entire fucking life. “We don’t have the special restraints, do we?”

The guy on the left grimaces. “Not ‘til tomorrow morning. Shirley said the order was still processing.”

“Well,” I chuckle, picking up the cuffs from the table, giving them a shake just to hear the chain rattle, “until you manage to get me those new cuffs, I guess you’ll just have to let me go.”

I walk toward the exit, and Clipboard Boy scrambles to gather his papers, clearly afraid that I might rip the folder out of his hands and staple it to his forehead.

I pause at the door. One hand extends back lazily.

“Here.” I drop the cuffs into the stunned guard’s hand. “Try not to lose these again.”