Page 145 of Craving Venom

He’s not just talking about walls and locks and iron bars. He’s talking about the cage I’ve built around who I’m supposed to be.The good girl. The smart one. The one who knows better, who does better, who says no and means it.

But somewhere along the way, that cage got too tight.

I want more.

More darkness. More meaning. More pain that feels earned.

He’s offering it. In the sickest way. And somehow, part of me reaches for it.

I don’t respond. I just keep watching him as he gathers the last of the snakes with quiet care. The more I watch him, the more he fits with them.

Maybe that’s why the snakes come.

Because they see the venom in him.

And they trust it.

And maybe I do too.

Not the man. Not fully.

But the monster who doesn’t lie about what he is.

My lashes grow heavier, the weight of everything finally starting to pull me under. I’m not safe. I know that.

But before the fear can creep back in, sleep takes me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THE MONSTER

The prison gates stand tall before me as if they could ever contain me.

The guards barely glance at me as they let me through, treating me like just another criminal returning home, but I know better. While they may think bars can hold me, they don’t know the first fucking thing about what I am.

Faith had learned that the hard way.

My cock still aches as my fingers trace the memory of her skin. She’s still on my tongue, in my head, and beneath my nails.

Last night, I ruined her and I have never felt more alive.

My jaw tenses as flashes of her body invade me. She looked so fucked-out and wrecked that even when I pulled away, her body still wanted me.

I saw it.

Felt it.

The fear and rage fueled the desperate war inside her because even as she hated me, she hated herself more for the way she responded. And that’s what I love about her. She’s not weak, notsome mindless, compliant little doll who folds the second she’s pushed.

She fights.

She bites.

She fucking burns.

I run my tongue over my teeth, tasting the lingering remnants of her on my lips as my cock jerks against my zipper, still hard from the memory of her pussy shaking beneath my tongue.

I shouldn’t be this fucking wired.

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