Page 103 of Sweet Venom

I even dreamed.

Blue hair tangled in my fists. Plump pink lips that tasted like cherries and sin. Green eyes that saw too much and still didn’t look away. If sin had a body, it would curve like Poe’s—temptation wrapped in skin and soft smirks.

I never dream.Never.Not when I sleep. Not when I’m awake. I never got the chance to dream when the reality of this world was carved into my soul. There’s no room for dreams when monsters don’t hide under your bed…

They lived inside men like me.

But last night I did. It wasn’t dark, bloody or haunted. No. It was holy. It was something made of starlight and shadows, something far too good for someone like me to touch.

But I touched her anyway. I claimed her.

And now that I’ve had her, I won’t survive losing her.

Her words kissed my soul.

“I see you, Azariel. You’ve always been all I ever saw.”

Her voice still runs through me like the fire she lit in my chest—slow, steady, and very fucking hard to put out.

She never flinched. Never lied. Never backed down.

She saw the man. The quiet, cold bastard who made her feel like she wasn’t seen when in reality she was everything beautiful I saw. She saw the boy who learned to survive by becoming untouchable.

But that’s not all I was.

She hadn’t met the other half yet.

The part of me that didn’t dream.

The part that didn’t have nightmares because it was the nightmare in skin and bones.

The part that hungered for blood.

That destroyed to protect. That loved like a never-ending war—bloodied, brutal, and merciless.

The monster.

The beast in me.

The one that was born in silence and raised in darkness. Fed by violence. Shaped by cruelty. That beast doesn’t know how to love softly. It only knows how to possess. How to claim. How to guard what’s his with sharp teeth, blood-covered claws, and a fury that scorches everything that is a threat.

She’s seen the man.

But the beast?

She still has to choose him, too.

Because I can’t separate them. One breathes because of the other. And both live because of her.

And when she finally sees everything I am—every bloody, brutal part—I don’t know if she’ll stay.

Or if she’ll run from it.

Poe wasn’t raised in madness.

The ugliness of this world didn’t sink its claws into her the way it did me.

And as long as there’s blood in my veins and breath in my lungs—it never will.

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