Page 55 of The Venom We Bleed

Until I’m not.

“Pretty, pretty girl…” A whimper escapes my mouth as those words trail into my ears. “Pretty girls like it when the boys look, don’t you, Juliet?” I try to roll away, but my limbs are far too heavy. My thighs are pressed open. My dress is lifted. Cool air slides across my breasts, my pussy. I can’t open my eyes. I don’t want to. I’m scared to know who’s on the other side of this too-familiar nightmare.

Hands move down, down, down. The darkest oblivion reaches for me and I latch on to it. If I fall, then I won’t have to endure this.

“Juliet.” My head turns towards the familiar voice—different from the one before. The one that always compliments me but makes me feel like something sticky is clinging to every pore. This voice is deeper, gruff with a hint of feral danger. Somehow, I know it’s safer.

My heart pounds against the inside of my breast, an internal warning. The darkness surrounding me devours all of my senses, dropping into an abyss where I’ve never been before.

“Juliet.” My name echoes back to me in the shadows. Another voice, just as dangerous, but almost lighter—amused—as he calls to me.

Ragged breaths crawl up my throat. In and out, I breathe and I wait.

“Juliet.” Closing my eyes against the darkness doesn’t bring me any relief as their voices resound around me. There’s no pinpointing their location, and if that’s true, then there’s no escaping them either.

Still, I try. Stumbling forward, I place one foot in front of the other. Again and again, picking up the pace when nothing reaches out to stop me. Wind rushes up into my face, and every so often, something soft brushes against my sides, letting me know I’m not alone—that there are other things surrounding me. To my surprise, though, I never hit anything. I don’t run into any trees. I don’t trip over any roots. My legs find it quite easy to simply keep going. Through the woods and into the darkness, I run. And though I can’t see them, I know I’m being tracked.

“Run, Princess,” I hear someone say. “If we catch you…we eat you.”

‘We.’ If I wasn’t already sure I was being hunted by more than one of them, that statement confirms my suspicions. My bare feet fly across the soft earth, crunching dead leavesunderfoot. A shiver of warning slithers down my spine and I stop in my tracks just as a pair of eyes appear before me. Crimson and glowing in the shadows, they hover a foot or so higher than my own—growing bigger and bigger the closer they come. I know I should turn and run in the opposite direction, but my feet don’t move. My legs hold me in place until I’m little more than a captive before the monster that steps from the gloom.

Big and broad, Nolan Pierce glares down at me. Moonlight suddenly fills the area, turning the void back into something I can see. We’re surrounded by thick trees and when I glance back, I see no path—no hint of where I came from and no sign of where I can go to get away.

“Juliet.” I close my eyes as Nolan’s voice skirts over my ears, deep and vibrating.

My hands shake at my sides, trembling against naked skin. Naked…skin? My eyes pop back open and I glance down to find that I’m not wearing clothes. I’m completely nude and so is he.

Hands slip from the darkness—more than one man’s hands. Gio and Lex appear on either side of me, caging me in as they had in the forest next to the farmhouse party. My throat closes completely, allowing not even a single gasp of air to pass into my lungs.

A light-headed feeling enters my veins, making the whole dream seem hazy.

“Pretty…” Rough, masculine fingertips brush my arms and then move down. Lex grabs my hand and lifts it once more. Except this time, there is no wound for him to make better. He sets his teeth to my skin and bites down.

“Are you ready to be eaten, Jules?” he asks. Something tells me that he’s not talking about cannibalism.

With eyes the color of dead embers, he crowds me closer to the others—both Nolan and Gio pressing against me to keep me locked between them. This is what was missing in the real world. There had only been two kings against me in the woods. Now, I have all three.

I swallow roughly, my head swimming. My body thrums with barely repressed desire, a need so volatile and extreme it threatens to set me aflame and burn my bones to ash. The darkness recedes a bit more, the silvery light of the moon sprawling across the four of us, revealing the dips and hollows of perfectly sculpted bodies.

All around me, holding me, caging me, protecting me.

When has anyone ever protected me?

A pair of lips descends and meets the skin of my throat. I tip my head back, my lips parting on a cry as fresh oxygen rushes in. I feel branded, claimed.

Tingles race up and down my spine, spilling into my bloodstream and stealing away all logic. If this is what insanity feels like…I never want to be sane again.

“Give in to us,” Nolan whispers.

Sweet, cruel words, but it’s alright. In this world—in my dreams—I don’t have to deny them. Here, I can take the pain and I can take the pleasure.

So, I do.

I wake to dull sunlight coming in through the thin blinds over the sliding glass doors next to my futon and my laptop’s notification alert dinging. Though all I want to do is close my eyes again and try to go back to sleep, there’s only one reason my notifications can be going off.

With a groan, I fling the covers off my bed and reach for the damn thing, dragging the computer from its spot on my scarredcoffee table into my lap. There are a series of fresh emails from my dad’s lawyer. As I scan through them, I see that he’s been sending them at least once every few days. Without reading them, I drag the lot into the trash and delete them before moving on to the newest one.

Through bleary, sleep-heavy eyes, I rub my finger over the trackpad to the voicemail-to-text email application I set up to receive calls from The Dionysus Lounge. Past the date and time stamp that tells me the information came through less than thirty minutes ago, there is a request from one of the waitresses at The Dionysus Lounge asking if I can pick up an extra shift. I quickly check the timestamp of the notice and then the time it is now. If I hurry, I can make the next bus into Tangier, so I type back a quick reply to let her know I’ll be there.

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