Page 81 of Craving Venom (The Venomous Beauty Trilogy #1)

Because something darker than gravity is holding me in place.

Zane isn’t the wind or the storm. He’s the thing creeping up—the black tendrils that move without sound, curl higher and higher, as though they’ve waited years to reach me. He’s not chasing. He’s claiming. Bleeding into every inch of me.

And I’m not fighting it.

Because maybe I want to know what happens when the darkness finishes the climb. Maybe I want to fall, not off the cliff, but into him.

Because in that painting, the scariest part wasn’t the girl on the edge.

It was the reflection in the abyss.

And now I know why.

Because the reflection wasn’t some warped shadow of her.

It was the part of her that had already given in.

I drag myself out of the memory. Out of the image that feels less like a painting now and more like a prophecy.

Zane’s watching me.

No, not watching. Devouring .

And I can’t stop staring back.

The full moon is bright tonight. Its glow spills across his face like silver fire, illuminating every sharp edge, every brutal line carved into his features. His greyish-silver eyes catch the light, glinting with something unholy.

It makes the black vein beneath his right eye stand out in stark relief. It pulses faintly, twitching with every breath he takes, as if it’s alive and trying to escape his skin.

I can feel the war inside him. The need to break the promise he never should’ve made.

He’s so close to kissing me.

So close to ruining me in a way that has nothing to do with blood or bruises.

And I want it.

I want to kiss him.

His hand leaves my throat. It trails down as his knuckles graze the center of my tits before slipping up and tangling his fingers into my hair.

He pulls.

Not rough enough to hurt. Not soft enough to forget. Just enough to tilt my head back, to force my chin upward until I’m staring at the sky.

At the moon.

The wind lifts strands of my hair around us as if we’re suspended in time.

“Look at it,” he whispers, voice rough. “The moon.”

I do. I let it anchor me. Let it blind me so I don’t have to look at him, even when every nerve screams for his eyes.

“There was a creature born with wings sharp enough to kill the sky,” His fingers slip down and stroke over my clit, “but cursed to never fly unless the moon calls it.”

His breath drags along my neck, and his cock slides deeper inside me.

“They called it the Nighthawk . They said it would never love. Never feel. Just circle the dark until it forgot it was even alive.”

He thrusts deeper, grinding his cock against that spot inside me that makes everything go white.

“My father used to say,” he goes on, “that some people are born under curses, not stars. That fate writes warnings into their skin long before the world learns how to read them. He said that I’d hunt in shadows, that I’d bleed people just to feel something move inside me.”

I shiver, but not from fear. Not exactly.

“Do you believe that?” I whisper. “That you’re cursed?”

“I believe I was made for the dark,” he grits. “I’ve never followed light. Never trusted it. Not until you.”

His breath skates across my ear, and when he speaks, it’s not soft.

“You’re the moon to my Nighthawk.”

The moon to his Nighthawk.

I know what he’s really saying. That he thinks he was born broken, made to destroy, never meant to love or be loved. That he’s lived his life circling shadows, hunting silence, trying to outrun whatever ache lives in his blood.

He thinks I’m his light.

But what he doesn’t know is, he’s mine too. Not because he’s safe. But because in a world that tries to silence, to harden, to make me small, he sees all of me and doesn't flinch. He meets my storm with his own. And somehow, together, we don’t break, we burn.

And maybe that’s what the moon does best—not save, but illuminate the shadows that others run from.

I don’t say any of this out loud. I just hold him tighter, press my lips to his jaw, and let him feel it in the way my body answers his. The way my soul anchors to his as though it’s always known the dark.

Because if he’s the Nighthawk, cursed and winged and hungry for something more—

Then I’ll be the moon that never stops calling him home.

He thrusts again, and it’s not just to push me over the edge, but to swallow the sky just to reach me.

My scream rips through my throat, but it never makes it out.

It’s devoured by the ringing in my ears.

The world falls away. My head jerks back.

The moon is the last thing I see before my eyes slam shut and it follows me into the dark.

The moon holds me as I shatter, but the stars burn me back together in his image. I don’t get to rise as myself. I rise as his.

The cry that leaves me is jagged, and it knocks me off-center, pitching my body backward as if it’s ready to follow the orgasm into freefall.

My pussy pulses hard, clenched around his cock, milking him for everything, but Zane doesn’t slow down.

He thrusts through the pleasure that tips over into pain.

“Give me one more,” he growls. “Right now. I want one more.”

“I—Zane—”

“Now.”

He slams into me again and I scream. My legs shake. My nails dig into his back. My orgasm hasn’t even finished before the next one crashes into it. My body locks. I clench so tight it hurts.

And Zane roars.

His cock throbs deep inside me as he comes, pumping into me like he’s trying to leave something I’ll never be able to scrape out.

We’re both shaking, both wrecked, but he doesn’t stop. Zane keeps grinding into me, drawing out every last tremor like he’s determined to make it last. My thighs quiver around his hips, oversensitive and raw, but I don’t pull away.

Our breaths clash between us, filling the silence with something heavier than words. He doesn’t move for a long time. Just holds me, breathing like a man who’s finally found his religion.

And I realize that I am the prayer he never meant to say out loud.

And now, he’ll never stop worshipping me.