Page 93 of The Venom We Bleed

My fury is waning, slowly being replaced by desire. I latch on to it, the tension coiling low in my belly forcing me to act in a way I never have before. I grip Lex’s shoulders and lick away the blood from his mouth. He shoves me back into the SUV’s cold, hard surface and takes my mouth in another desperate kiss.

He’s big enough to block out most of the area around us, his broad shoulders a mass of darkness that cages me in. Muscles ripple under my hands, against my chest. Lex’s hips roll into me, the hard length of his cock rubbing between us—a warning and a promise.

You hate that I see you. You hate that none of the people you trusted ever saw the real you. But I do.Wedo.

Damn him.Tears prick at the back of my eyes. I push them away, stuffing the ache that those words had caused in my chest so far down that I hope they disappear forever. Never to be seen again.

I kiss him back with renewed energy, as if letting him consume me will erase the hurt his words caused. There is a darkness inside me that has swallowed me whole. It eats away all of the pain and the fear until there is nothing left but bone-aching emptiness. I have become a void of morality.

In a move that speaks of his upper body strength, Lex reaches down and plucks me off the ground. He lifts me up and my legs part immediately, wrapping around his waist. One of his hands leaves my backside and slaps the door of the vehicle. My hands creep around his neck as I hang there against him, nothing but him to keep me afloat. Lex shifts his head, trying to find the perfect angle. His tongue twines around mine, stroking, teasing then withdrawing. I gasp for breath, dragging in lungfuls of air before he dives back down. He licks at my lower lip and then sets his teeth to the soft, vulnerable skin there. My chest burns, but I don’t stop kissing him. Instead, I reach out and entice him back into my mouth, curving my tongue around his and playing at the seam of his lips.

Lex drags his head away, breaking the kiss. There’s a sudden rush of wind and Lex turns and shifts the two of us to the left before he yanks the back door of the SUV wide open. My ass hits faux leather seats and I’m shoved, unceremoniously into the backseat of his car. I crawl backward, my chest heaving for more breath. Ember dark eyes are locked on me, Lex’s face shrouded in shadow as he bends his head low. For just a moment, a beam of moonlight hits him at the crest of his forehead and the image it presents sends a shiver of fear down my spine. His faceappears skeletal, the shadows of his brow covering the hollows of his face, but nothing can hide the square cut of his jaw or the powerful muscles beneath his t-shirt. Fear and desire war within me, both fighting for survival.

As if sensing the direction of my thoughts, he hooks a booted foot into the floorboards of the car and leverages himself inside. The door is left hanging open and the cold night air slips over my too-hot flesh from both that and the broken window at the back of the vehicle. A window that I broke—fuck, what was I thinking?

Slowly, Lex’s eyes drift over my face and down to my t-shirt. My nipples pebble against my bra, so hard that they poke out and throb in time with the beat of my heart pulsing in my ears. His gaze stops on my tits and his jaw clenches. His shoulders rise and fall with the force of his own breaths.

My chest constricts. The air I was so readily sucking down seconds before evaporates. I can’t fucking breathe. I blink quickly, pressing against Lex when he leans over me.

No.Everything’s closing in. His body, the car, the seat at my back. I close my eyes, but that only makes the sensation worse. They shoot back open and Lex’s face swims in front of mine. His hands hold my face, keeping me in place when I start to fight against him.

“No,” he says. “It’s okay, baby. Calm down.”

Everyone can see me. Everyone is watching. They see the damage. The blood seeping from invisible wounds. My lashes flutter. They’re always there, always staring, always judging. Bile starts to crawl up my throat.

Why was I attacked? Why did someone try to rape me? Why me?Why. Me?

“Juliet!” Lex barks my name like a command and I blink, focusing on him. When he notices my attention, his tone gentles. “What’s my name?”

“W-what?” I stare at him, confusion pushing aside the panic.

“What is my name?” he repeats the question calmly.

“Lex.”

He nods. “Good. Remember that when I make you come so hard you forget everything else. I want to hear you screaming my name when you see God so he knows who sent you.”

He silences me with his mouth before I can utter a reply. Air whispers across my stomach as he grabs my shirt and tugs it upward. The fabric moves higher and higher, revealing first the rounded curve of my stomach and then the undersides of my breasts contained in a black bra. His tongue invades like a marching army, erasing my panic and my rationality.

When Lex reaches the front of my jeans, I manage to rise back from the depths of his kiss. Shoving against his shoulders, I rip my lips away from his. Gasping, I reach for his shirt too. Grabbing the hem, I rip it up and over his head.

Fast. We’re going so fast. Wind whips through the SUV and I shiver, pressing closer to the heat of his skin. He has tattoos just like his friends. His are a bit different though. I trace the curling limb of a snake as it moves over his shoulder and down his bicep, disappearing onto his back.

Like Nolan, Lex is built from granite. All muscle and hard sinew with olive skin stretched over it. My fingers trail further down until I stop at the waistband of his pants. There’s something written over the curve of one side. I touch it with the pad of my pointer finger, following the script to the end.

Vivere est militare.

I lift my gaze to his, noting that he’s panting as if he’s run a marathon. “What does it mean?”

His nostrils flare. Shadows dance over his features. The light coming in through the moonroof is dull and shifty. There must be clouds because one moment it reveals all of the lines of hisexpression—tight and hungry—and the next, we’re cast back into darkness.

“To live is to fight.” It takes me a moment to realize he’s answering my question.

“To live is to fight,” I repeat the words, contemplating how they feel on my tongue. Did he get them in memory of his parents? I wonder. Or for something else? For that matter, does he share any tattoos with the other Scorpion Kings? It’d been near pitch black when I’d been with Nolan. I hadn’t seen much of him. Only felt.

Lex returns to my jeans and unbuttons them. Backing up until he’s out of the backseat and standing on solid ground, he reaches down and rips off my sneakers before divesting me of my pants and tossing them somewhere onto the floorboards. There are so many reasons this is a bad idea. Still, I don’t utter a single protest as I lean back, sprawled out on the backseat of his SUV in the middle of nowhere, and let him touch me.

Rough hands skim up my legs, lifting them, smoothing over the surface of my calves and then my thighs. I close my eyes and drop a forearm over my face, letting the other hang at my side. He reaches for my t-shirt and lifts the fabric again, higher and higher until I’m forced to open my eyes and lift my arm away from my face for him to pull it over my head. My skin burns under his gaze as my shirt goes the same way as my pants and I’m left in nothing but my bra and underwear.

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