Page 52 of Craving Venom (The Venomous Beauty Trilogy #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE BEAUTY

I sip my wine, the bitter red tingling on my tongue as my eyes stay fixed on the screen. Christopher Valehart is nothing but shadows and scattered background mentions, without a single detailed profile or tell-all exposé.

Isabella, on the other hand, has page after page of polished public praise. She’s regarded as a beautiful philanthropist and a devoted mother. Everything about her is painted soft and angelic. There’s not a single article that dares to suggest she ever laid a hand on Zane.

I drink the last of the wine, toss the phone away, and collapse into the bed. At some point, the blanket finds its way to my chest. My eyelids slip lower, pinned down by a weight I can’t shake.

Sleep comes fast, and it doesn’t feel like I’ve been out for long when it feels like I’m slipping right off the bed. My brain registers it, but my body doesn’t care. It’s tired and heavy, and honestly, if I fall, maybe I deserve to. Maybe the impact will knock something loose.

I let myself drift.

Just as I begin tipping forward, a hand catches the side of my head and steadies it gently against the pillow. My breath jerks in my chest even before my eyes snap open. When they do, Zane’s face is already there, hovering inches above mine.

Moonlight slips through the slats of my blinds and slices across his cheekbones.

It softens the bruises under his eyes, glints off the stubble on his jaw, lights up his irises like ice cracking under pressure.

He looks like a dream, or a statue, or some creature that only steps into your world when you’re too dazed to tell it’s real.

But I know better.

Even the sweetest wine can poison you if you drink too much.

I open my mouth to scream, but his hand clamps over it fast.

His fingers are warm and calloused, rough from fights and whatever else he’s been through. I thrash my head to the side, trying to break free and force him to leave.

But he doesn’t move.

He isn’t holding me down, but he’s not letting me up either. My eyes dart around the room as I remember the last time he was here, snakes were slithering beneath my sheets.

I whip my head toward the floor.

He follows my line of sight. His mouth twitches into a smile.

Fingers brush lightly against my jaw, guiding my face back toward him. “There are no snakes. Stop looking.”

My body stiffens, and he lets the moment hang. My breath flares through my nose as I try to speak, but it comes out as muffled nonsense against his hand.

“I’m going to let you go.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, playing at being a lover instead of whatever the fuck we really are. “But you don’t scream. You’ll do that for me, yeah?”

I dip my head as his fingers slide away from my mouth, leaving behind a heat that feels more like a burn than a simple touch.

He pulls back and doesn’t touch me again. He rises, crosses the room in two silent strides, and settles against the windowsill. The moonlight kisses one side of his face and leaves the other in shadow. It makes him look unhinged.

I push up on my hands and sit all the way up, dragging the covers with me and tucking my knees beneath my ass. My tank top shifts again, and I yank it higher over my tits before glancing at the window.

“How the fuck did you get in?” I ask, squinting toward the glass.

Zane lifts a hand, barely bothering to point at my door.

My mouth falls open, but not because I believe him.

That door was locked. I remember checking it.

I always check it. He’s lying. I don’t know how he got inside, the window, maybe, or something worse but I know he’s lying, and he’s daring me to call him out.

The silence stretches so long it folds in on itself. The way he’s just standing there bothers me more than his usual threats. He’s not smirking. Not prowling. His eyes aren’t hungry, they’re hollow.

I glance at him again.

Something’s off.

He looks different.

“Are you sick?”

No reaction.

“Did you fall down a flight of stairs and forget who you are?”

God, he’s doing that quiet thing.

It’s somehow worse than him dragging a bottle across my thigh or threatening to fuck me with broken glass. At least then I knew what version of him I was dealing with.

I snap. “Jesus, Zane, can you say something before I throw a pillow at your face.”

His gaze finally lifts and locks onto me, studying me the way someone looks at something they’re not sure they can trust.

“Go back to sleep.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re tired.” He runs a hand down his face. “Go back to sleep.”

“Okay, wow,” I mutter, shifting forward and jabbing a finger toward him, “you don’t break into someone’s room, cover their mouth, point at their unlocked door like a passive-aggressive ghost, and then tell them to go back to sleep like you didn’t just completely fuck up their entire night.”

His brow raises by a centimeter.

I throw my hands up. “What are you even doing here? You’re not threatening me. You’re not touching me. You’re not even monologuing. Who are you and what have you done with the emotionally constipated psycho I’ve come to—ugh, not trust, but, like, expect?”

He flexes his hand as if it’s cramping, then balls it into a fist.

I squint.

“Wait… are you bleeding?”

His hand slips into his hoodie pocket, covering the damage and leaving me to wonder if I ever saw it in the first place.

“Zane,” I snap. “What the fuck is going on?”

“I got into a fight.”

“With who?” I press.

He doesn’t answer. Even if he did, it’s not like I’d know them. His world is stitched in shadows and blood and half-truths. His people are ghosts. Skeletons in cells. Men who only speak in fists and fuck yous.

“Why?”

His fingers stretch inside the pocket, haunted by the feeling he can’t shake.

“He hurt someone I considered like a brother.”

I almost scoff. The irony’s right there, begging to be dragged. Brother. Like the one he killed. But I let the sarcasm die on my tongue. He’s not in the mood, and weirdly, neither am I.

“Stay there.”

I cross the room, drop to my knees in front of the drawers.

I yank one open and rummage through my stuff.

I grab the antiseptic bottle, cotton pads, a clean towel, a roll of gauze, and the little silver tin I keep alcohol wipes in.

I toss in the small scissors too, just in case it’s bad enough to need trimming.

My hands are full when I walk back toward him.

“What are you doing?”

I drop the supplies on the ledge and grab for his wrist. He jerks at the contact, a reflex born from being touched without warning. I don’t loosen my grip. I drag his hand from the hoodie. “If you’re going to bleed in my room, the least you could do is not drip on the floor.”

It’s worse than I expected, with split knuckles, blood crusted over raw skin, and swelling already setting in around the joints. It looks as though he hit someone hard enough to shake the ground.

“You need better hobbies,” I remark with a roll of eyes.

I press the cotton pad to the antiseptic bottle and tilt it until the liquid soaks through. I dab it against the edge of the wound.

He hisses as his body jerks in response. “Fuck—”

“Sorry,” I mumble automatically, then blow a soft stream of air over the wound. It probably doesn’t soothe the burn, but still.

He doesn’t say anything.

I glance up and see that he’s already staring down at me.

His eyes trail between mine and my mouth, then follow the curve of my shoulder before returning to my face.

I blink and look down. My fingers work faster, pressing gauze against the worst of it. My thighs graze his jeans as I shift closer.

“You’re lucky I stocked up.” I tape the last edge. “Most of this shit’s expired, but you don’t strike me as the tetanus type. Rabid, maybe.”

His lips quirk as I wrap the tape around the gauze and yank it tighter than necessary, a small act of payback.

“You didn’t have to.”

I drop his hand, grab the crumpled wrappers and half-empty bottle of antiseptic, and turn back toward the drawer.

“You’re welcome.”

I shove the supplies into the drawer, wrappers crinkling under my fists. The antiseptic bottle tips sideways and rolls, but I don’t bother fixing it.

“Why are you even in here?” I ask, keeping my back to him.

“I came here to watch you.”

A small laugh slips out before I can stop it. “Watch me? What are you, my stalker now?”

“Baby,” he says, “I’m your predator.”

The lightness snaps clean in half.

I don’t look at him. I keep my head down, shove the drawer closed with a loud bang, and straighten up, but the second I turn, I collide straight into him.

“Jesus—”

His hand catches my elbow. I look up, ready to fire something off.

“Dance with me,” he demands.

My thighs shift where they’re pressed together as my knees start to go weak beneath me, turning slightly to jelly.

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t get to dance at my prom.”

I remember reading about it. He was convicted on his birthday, the same day his school had prom.

There was a whole line of girls outside the courtroom crying for the judge to let him attend “just one dance.” Girls clutching his picture like he was some tragic prince instead of a teenage killer. The thought made me want to gag.

I want to spit in his face and tell him to get the fuck out.

I want to tell him prom’s for people who don’t set fires and kill other people.

But he looks vulnerable tonight. And if I’m smart— and I am —I can use that.

Maybe I can get him to talk about the part I haven’t found in the files.

That his mother wasn’t sweet or generous or any of the bullshit written about her.

That she hurt him. That he killed her for a reason.

So I nod once.

He lifts a hand to take mine.

I stop him with a single palm to his chest. “We can’t dance without music.”