Page 88 of Craving Venom (The Venomous Beauty Trilogy #1)

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

THE BEAUTY

T he mansion is obscene.

Three stories of carved stone and glass rising like a cathedral of excess, framed by gates that cost more than the home I grew up in.

The driveway’s longer than most freeways.

Palm trees line either side. The marble fountain in the center is bigger than some public pools.

Gold-tipped water sprays from a naked goddess riding a lion.

Real gold. I can tell by the way the light hits it.

The second we step inside, the air shifts.

Chandeliers drip from the ceiling like molten crystal. The floors are white marble, streaked with veins of onyx, shining so bright I can see my reflection in them.

Waiters are gliding past with gold trays stacked with flutes and strawberries dipped in chocolate so dark it looks black.

The men are in designer suits. The women in gowns that look airbrushed on.

Masks cover every face. Feathered, jeweled, intricate.

Nobody speaks unless they’re whispering.

Nobody looks surprised by how expensive sin can be.

If Zane wasn’t holding my hand, I’d be doing a perfect 180 and sprinting straight back to the car.

The ballroom is worse. Bigger. Richer. Red-tinted lights turn the walls into a womb of indulgence. The music is slow, sexy, and absolutely not for dancing, it’s for making bad decisions and getting fingered in dark corners.

Every eye turns toward us. Or maybe just toward him.

I don’t blame them.

He’s in a black suit. I look up at him and see, how he became someone else the second we crossed that threshold. More dangerous. More in control. As though this isn’t their territory.

It’s his.

We pass a man in a navy mask who’s whispering into a woman’s ear. Her dress is nearly transparent. His hand is already between her legs and nobody stops him. Nobody even notices.

I keep walking.

I feel Zane’s thumb brush the inside of my wrist, and I know what it means— breathe .

A woman in a red mask passes us, her tits are barely covered. A man in a matching mask tugs on her collar. She smiles, wanting to be dragged.

I grip Zane’s hand tighter.

He doesn’t let go.

Instead, he leads me toward the far edge of the ballroom, through a corridor with less light, fewer eyes. I catch a glimpse of a girl being led down a stairwell by someone in a black-and-gold mask.

Nothing about this arrangement looks forced.

And not that I’ve had a lot of experience walking into underground sex palaces, but I’d like to think I’d know if a girl was being dragged against her will.

The one going down the stairs doesn’t fight.

Her eyes aren’t wide. Her steps don’t falter.

She’s high or she’s numb or she wants it, maybe all three, but she’s not being forced.

Zane doesn’t comment. He keeps moving with the certainty of someone who’s memorized the path, and it makes me pause.

He told me it was his first time here, but the way he’s leading me down the stairwell, it doesn’t feel like first-time energy. It feels rehearsed.

I don’t ask. Not yet anyway.

The stairwell is spacious. The walls shift from marble to matte black. The music fades the deeper we go, replaced by a silence that haunts. Zane stops in front of a tall, smooth black door with no handle.

He reaches up and lifts his chin, letting the mask he’s wearing pass under the scanner built into the wall.

There’s a quiet click before the door opens.

I follow him through, and we step into a hallway so dim it swallows color. At the end, we reach another massive door. It’s so tall it touches the ceiling, and wide enough to swallow a car. Zane steps in front of a hidden panel, punches in a code with fingers that don’t pause.

The locks hiss.

The doors groan open.

And hell opens with them.

The basement isn’t a room.

It’s a fucking auditorium.

Rows of velvet seats curve into a half-circle around a sunken stage, each row elevated to give every man the perfect view. There are maybe twenty men in suits and masks. Each man has a girl sitting beside him.

They’re mostly naked.

Some wear collars. Others are leashed. A few kneel with heads bowed and hands folded, waiting to be called on. One has her face buried in a man’s lap, and the only thing covering her ass is a gold chain.

My lungs don’t work right. I can’t get enough air. The dress clings tighter. My legs want to move, but I don’t know where the fuck to take them.

Zane’s hand moves from my palm to my waist. The mask distorts his voice, making it impossible to place the words clearly, but I feel them.

“Do you want to go home?”

If I were smart, I’d say yes.

But I’m not smart.

“No,” I say. It barely comes out. But it’s enough.

He walks us toward one of the empty chairs at the edge of the half-circle. His fingers never leave my waist. I keep expecting him to let go, but he doesn’t. Even when we stop. Even when he lowers himself into the chair.

I move to kneel beside him. That’s what every girl is doing. I already feel the cold of the marble against my knees when his hand hooks my elbow and pulls me onto his lap.

My legs drape over one side of his thighs, and his arm wraps fully around my waist, holding me there as if daring anyone to look at me too long. I try to sit up straighter, but his hand tightens, dragging me closer.

The curtain drops with a slow mechanical hiss, and the moment it does, every breath I’ve been holding turns to ice.

Corrine is in the center of the stage.

She’s naked, bruised, and propped up in a steel chair.

Her arms are strapped down. Her head lolls forward, chin pressed weakly to her chest. IV lines snake out of her veins, running into clear bags steadily filling with her blood.

Her skin’s pale and splotched with bruises in shades of violet and sick yellow.

Her knees are parted, her chest rising and falling in short gasps.

“Still leaking,” someone mutters behind a mask. “They should’ve chilled her first. Slows the bleeding. Preserves the taste.”

“Ugly little thing,” another says. “I’ll still take a piece if the price is low.”

“Open her eyes, someone. I want to see if she bleeds when she blinks.”

A peanut sails from the left row, it bounces off her shoulder and hits the stage. She doesn’t move, but her body slumps a little further in the chair.

My fingernails dig into Zane’s arm. My stomach turns so violently I almost gag.

Zane’s hand tightens around my hip as if he’s trying to find a reason to hold both of us back.

His body turns to stone beneath me. I’ve felt him hinged.

I’ve seen him amused. I’ve seen him wild with lust and slow with sadism. But this?

I’ve never felt him angry.

I don’t realize I’m shaking until Zane’s hand flattens against my stomach. His fingers spread wide, anchoring me back down.

He doesn’t look at them.

But I do.

They sit like they’re discussing stocks. Not a human being. Not a girl who’s clearly being tortured.

Then the sharp clink of crystal interrupts the murmurs. I draw my attention in front of me to find a masked waiter. He approaches with a tray, his gaze flicking straight to me before he hands Zane a wine glass.

“Master,” he says smoothly, “have your slave expose for the club. It’s in the rules.”

The moment the word slave leaves his mouth, my stomach turns. The word slides down my throat with the weight of rot. I grind my teeth until my skull aches.

Zane’s hand lashes out, snapping around the waiter’s wrist with a grip that makes the bone crack.

It’s not just bone that breaks. It’s pride.

The wine glass slips from the man’s stunned grip and crashes to the marble, splintering into jagged shards that scatter across the floor.

Every head turns. The whole room stills, caught between shock and fear, watching Zane without daring to blink.

“My woman stays right where she is,” he growls, loud enough for every sick fuck in the room to hear. “Because I’m the one making the fucking rules.”

Zane doesn’t stop.

He jerks his chin at the floor. “Pick it up.”

The waiter sweats through his collar. He starts to kneel, reaching with shaky hands, but Zane’s grip tightens again.

“Use your mouth.”

The man hesitates.

So Zane twists his wrist again.

The waiter drops to his knees. His tongue drags against the sharp edge of glass. It cuts into his lips, rips his mouth open, making the blood drip down his chin and onto the marble. His breathing hitches with every jagged scrape.

The man howls as the glass slices deeper into his tongue.

He starts to rise, maybe to crawl away, maybe to run, but Zane doesn’t let him get that far.

He lifts his boot and presses it against the side of the man’s cheek and pins him down.

The waiter lets out a garbled noise, more blood seeping past his lips, mixing with the shards still scattered beneath him.

I don’t even realize I’ve moved until I’m climbing higher on his lap, thighs tightening around his, silk dragging up until I can feel the sharp edge of his belt buckle against my inner thigh. I lift my eyes to meet his, and everything stops.

It’s not rage I see there.

It’s devastation .

The kind that bleeds. That burns. That doesn’t belong in this room. His jaw is tight, but underneath all that fury, there is something that aches for me. It coils in his stare like a promise and a confession he hasn’t said out loud.

He loves me.

He hasn’t said it. I’m not sure he ever will. But it’s all over his face now. In the way his body shields mine. In the way he’s crushing someone just for calling me a word I didn’t even answer to.

And I know, right then, if he wasn’t in prison, if he didn’t carry a hundred crimes on his back, if we had even one version of reality where he was free, I’d love him back.

God, I would love him back so fucking hard it’d ruin us both.

I press my palm gently to his chest and plead without saying a word.

Don’t.

Don’t blow your cover.

Don’t ruin what we came here to do.