Page 249 of Craving Venom

The breath leaves my chest as arms wrap around me. A solid chest presses close. Fabric brushes my skin as a gloved hand catches my waist. I look up and see the mask.

My scream catches in my throat, dying in the shape of a sob. He’s not even breathing hard. Not out of breath. Just standing there, as though he’s been waiting for me to run all along.

His glove brushes my jaw. My body jerks but I can’t escape him. His fingers trail lower, ghosting my collarbone, then dragging down the center of my chest, grazing the space between my tits.

“You run like you’re hoping I’ll chase you.” My knees almost give. My thighs press tight. The heat pooling inside me is the worst betrayal of all. “Didn’t I tell you I’d never hurt you?”

He tips his head, mask cracking light down the middle like it’s bleeding its own madness. “Or do you just want me to drag you down to your knees and fuck the good girl right out of you?”

“Get off me!” I snarl, thrashing against his grip. “You’re not touching me again. I swear to God—”

One hand snakes behind my neck, the other clamping around my throat so tight my heels lift off the ground. My back hits the brick wall before I can scream, and he crushes my windpipe just enough to make the world go fuzzy at the edges.

“You came in your shorts the second I whispered in your ear,” he growls. “You think you can lie to me about what your pussy wants?”

“Fuck you,” I gasp out, struggling against the vise around my throat. “You’re sick. You’re a fucking monster,”

“I am,” he says, not denying it. “But I’m not the worst thing out there, Faith.”

My nails dig into his arm, useless against the leather. “You think that’s comforting?”

“I’ve slit throats that deserved worse,” he rasps. “I’ve taken out men whose crimes don’t make the news because no one mourns them. Not even their mothers.”

He drops me and I crumble to the ground, coughing and wheezing as oxygen claws back into my body. My knees scrape the pavement. My palms sting.

“I’ve carved the truth into pedophiles. Cut out lies from men who paid to break girls like you,” he says crouching beside me.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means.” He lowers his head with his elbows resting on his knees and his fingers flexing like he’s holding back something animal just beneath the surface. “I know the smell of rooms that shouldn’t exist. I’ve scraped teeth off concrete in alleys where screams go to die. I’ve walked into basements lined with camcorders and children’s names carved into the walls in nailscratches. And I’ve waited until the ones responsible begged for the very mercy they’d never once given.”

I recoil as bile rises in my throat, but he doesn’t stop.

“I don’t kill for God. Or glory. Or cause. I do it because someone fucking has to. Because no badge will. Because no cell will hold the kind of sickness I’ve touched. And once you see it—once you smell it—you don’t walk away. You burn it.”

He turns to look at me like he’s expecting pity, understanding, maybe absolution.

I give him none.

“You’re insane,” I spit. “You think you’re some avenging monster, but you’re just like them. You enjoy it.”

“I never said I didn’t.”

“That’s the difference,” I bite out, dragging myself up on shaking legs. “You think hurting bad people makes you good. But all I see is a man hard from the kill. A man who wraps his sickness in stories so he can sleep at night.”

I stagger back a step.

“You’re not a hero. You’re not justice. You’re just the last man standing when the blood dries.”

He stands too and every inch of him starts crowding my shadow.

“And you’re fine with the monsters,” he says. “As long as they’re polite.”

“What?”

“The ones in suits. In uniforms. With wedding rings and fake smiles. The ones who slip something in your drink, not a knife in your ribs. You sleep just fine knowing they exist, don’t you? Because they say the right things. Because they don’t wear masks.”

He takes a step forward. I take one back.

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