Page 65 of Craving Venom (The Venomous Beauty Trilogy #1)

His words hammer into me, dragging my body into submission while my mind screams for a way out. I know what happens the second I drop to the floor. He’ll ruin me. Not just my body, my fucking life. There’ll be no other man after this. No casual dates. No vanilla touches.

I’ll be his.

He starts to push me down anyway, forcing my head to dip, and I grit my teeth through the heat building in my cunt, through the shame curling around my heart.

“You don’t have to force me,” I grit out, wetting my lips, giving him just a sliver of submission, tempting him to loosen his grip.

The pressure in my scalp eases, just slightly. Enough for me to move.

I let my body sink lower, handing him the illusion he’s been starving for, pretending I’ve caved, pretending I’m ready to fall to my knees and be the obedient little slut he’s trying to make me.

Just before my knees hit the floor, I lunge for the door. My hands fumble at the lock, reaching for the bar, desperate to escape before I ruin everything, but I don’t make it.

Zane fists his hand in my hair again, yanking me back so hard I see stars. My kneecaps crash against the ground in a brutal scrape, shooting pain jolting up my legs.

“Fuck!” I snarl, reaching for balance, but he’s already turning me, dragging me to face him.

He crouches down, holding my hair tight as his fingers trace my jaw, pressing into my cheeks until my mouth falls open under his hand.

“You’re a goddamn tease.”

His cock strains beneath the towel slung dangerously low on his hips, and the muscles in his chest flex as he pulls me in tighter.

“I don’t chase, Faith. I take .”

I tremble, not from fear, but because every single nerve in my body is screaming to be touched. I want him to wreck me, fuck me, claim me until nothing else exists. But I also want to run. Want to slam the door and pretend I never stepped inside this godforsaken cell.

His fingers trail down, brushing the top of my tit. I clench my thighs, trying to suffocate the throb between my legs, but it’s no use. I’m soaked.

And he knows it.

“Next time you try that.” He leans in with his lips brushing the corner of my mouth, close enough to feel but not enough to kiss me. “I’ll make sure your knees are too bruised to stand.”

My breath stutters. I’m furious at how wet that threat makes me.

Zane straightens to his full height. His fingers hook into the edge of the towel and with one tug, he pulls it away.

It falls in silence. And so do my defenses.

His cock stands proud. My mouth goes dry, then floods with need as my tongue remembers the weight of him, the stretch, the ache in my throat from the last time I sucked him so deep I couldn’t tell if I was choking or praying.

And now?

Now I see all of him.

He’s bigger than I remember. Or maybe my memory did him no justice.

His cock is everything filthy and divine.

Long, veined, perfect. The head throbs a deep, angry red, glaring against the pale skin stretched along his shaft.

Thick enough that my fingers wouldn’t meet if I tried to wrap them around it, not that he’d let me.

One vein wraps around the base, crafted to fuck pain into pleasure.

Another runs up the underside, branching into finer tributaries, lightning captured in skin.

I could follow them with my tongue for hours and still be starving for more.

He’s not just big.

He’s beautiful.

Too fucking beautiful.

His body is built for both war and worship.

Every muscle cuts sharp against smooth planes, thighs strung with steel, powerful enough to crush a skull or trap a woman who can’t decide whether to beg for mercy or more.

His stomach ripples with taut muscle, abs layered clean beneath smooth, ink-marked skin.

His obliques sharpen into arrows, drawing a line straight to where salvation and ruin wait as one.

And then there are the tattoos.

Hundreds of snakes. Some emerald green with gold eyes, others deep purple.

They slither across his torso in every direction.

One wraps around his ribcage with its mouth open in a silent hiss.

Another coils up his side with a forked tongue flicking toward his nipple.

I spot blue scales near his hipbone, then black ones winding up the planes of his stomach, darker and heavier against his skin.

There’s no symmetry in the ink, no balance, only the raw thrum of motion and danger.

Yet even through the madness, my gaze finds the word carved low on his body, perched right above the base of his cock. GRIM.

My hand moves before I can stop it.

My fingers trail down his stomach, guided more by hunger than sense.

I follow the path of the snakes, every ruffle of muscle beneath it convulses as I pitch lower until the pads of my deep red nails trace over the word inked just above the base of his cock.

My touch is featherlight, but the reaction it pulls from him is anything but.

Zane tips his head back like I struck him.

His eyes fall shut.

His fingers clench in my hair, as if that one soft, reverent touch ripped something out of him, cracked something open he hadn’t meant to reveal.

His cock is straining, but he doesn’t force it down my throat. Doesn’t force my hand lower. Doesn’t speak. That silence is louder than any groan, more honest than any moan.

I touched him without fear. Without hate.

And he felt it.

This man has tasted flesh, broken bone, spilled blood, and never flinched. But one gentle stroke and he looks like he’s about to come apart.

That’s the danger.

Not his strength. Not the prison bars. Not the rumors whispered by guards and ghosts.

This.

This is what will destroy him. And me.

If I give myself to him, I’ll be pulling him toward the edge. And he’ll drag me right down with him. We won’t burn. No. That would be mercy. We’ll rot inside each other, feeding every hunger until there’s nothing left but bone and madness.

I can’t give him that.

Because this man… this fucking man… he’s not made for affection. His body stands as something carved for worship, but his soul is a graveyard.

And I just touched the tombstone.

I press harder against the tattoo, branding a memory into his skin before forcing myself to pull away.

Because I have to.

He’s the end of everything good. And I’ve spent too long fighting to be good.

The moment he realizes I won’t touch him again. Not without being pushed. Not unless it’s taken from me, the softness in his grip is gone. Replaced by the man I should be afraid of. The man who never begs.

“Open your mouth.”

There’s nothing I can say that’ll stop him. I know it. He knows it. But I try anyway, because fuck, I need to buy myself a moment.

“There are guards,” I manage hoarsely as the dryness crawls up my throat. “They do checks. You know that.”

“Let them watch.”

“They’ll report it.” I search for any scrap of logic I can throw between us.

He doesn’t let me argue further as his cock spears past my tongue, ramming the back of my throat with no warning. He growls low, as if my mouth is the only place he’s ever belonged.

“You think I give a fuck about the guards?”

I choke again as spit dribbles down my chin.

“They so much as glance at your tits—” he thrusts deeper, “—I’ll cut their fucking eyes out.”

My pussy constricts hard at the rage in his voice. He starts rocking his hips slowly, fucking my throat as though it’s his own personal holster.

“They try to remember the curve of your ass?” His grip tightens in my hair as he pulls my face down harder, burying my nose against the part of his cock where it hasn’t entered my mouth. “I’ll slit their stomachs open and feed them their own guts.”

My eyes water. My jaw aches already. But the second he bottoms out again, his cock beats against my tonsils.

“If they even think about jerking off to the sound of your moans…” He snarls. “I’ll cut their cocks off, leave ‘em hanging in the showers like a warning.”

A choked sob gurgles up past the blockage of his cock.

“They don’t get to look at what’s mine. They don’t get to fucking breathe around you.”

I try to pull back but he holds me there with his chest heaving above me as if he’s on the edge of total unholy release.

“I’ll kill every last one of them with a smile,” he whispers. “And fuck you over their bodies if I have to.”

And I believe him.

That belief burns more than the stretch of his cock down my throat. Because I’ve never been wanted like this. Never been claimed with so much certainty. It should terrify me. And it does. But not enough.

He gives me some more of him before he pulls out slowly, dragging my lips over every inch of him as he exits my mouth. My lungs heave, greedy for oxygen, but the second I can breathe, I’m already begging.

“Please,” I croak on unsteady knees. “Zane—fuck…”

His hand clamps around my throat and lifts.

He yanks me up effortlessly, my knees scraping the cell floor before my feet leave the ground entirely.

I choke on a gasp as my spine crashes into the door, my legs wrapping around his waist on instinct.

My pussy grinds against the hard plane of his stomach, slicking the ridges of his abs.

He shifts me higher, aligning his cock against the seam of my folds, dragging it through the wet mess between my thighs.

The head slips against my entrance, and I nearly sob from how hollow I feel.

“What did I tell you,” he hisses, “would happen the next time I saw you?”

He fucking knows what he said. I know what he said. But he wants me to say it. He wants to rip the last of my pride out of my throat and hear me choke on it.

I tear my gaze away, cheeks aflame. My throat constricts under the unrelenting weight of his hand as my lips open around a breath I can’t catch. His hips slam into me, the ridge of his cock grinding over my clit, and my thighs lock tighter, desperate for something I’ll never be able to name.

“Say it.”