Page 211 of Craving Venom

His cock strains beneath the towel slung dangerously low on his hips, and the muscles in his chest flex as he pulls me in tighter.

“I don’t chase, Faith. Itake.”

I tremble, not from fear, but because every single nerve in my body is screaming to be touched. I want him to wreck me, fuck me, claim me until nothing else exists. But I also want to run. Want to slam the door and pretend I never stepped inside this godforsaken cell.

His fingers trail down, brushing the top of my tit. I clench my thighs, trying to suffocate the throb between my legs, but it’s no use. I’m soaked.

And he knows it.

“Next time you try that.” He leans in with his lips brushing the corner of my mouth, close enough to feel but not enough to kiss me. “I’ll make sure your knees are too bruised to stand.”

My breath stutters. I’m furious at how wet that threat makes me.

Zane straightens to his full height. His fingers hook into the edge of the towel and with one tug, he pulls it away. It falls in silence. And so do my defenses. His cock stands proud. My mouth goes dry, then floods with need as my tongue remembers the weight of him, the stretch, the ache in my throat from the last time I sucked him so deep I couldn’t tell if I was choking or praying.

And now?

Now I see all of him.

He’s bigger than I remember. Or maybe my memory did him no justice. His cock is everything filthy and divine. Long, veined, perfect. The head throbs a deep, angry red, glaring against the pale skin stretched along his shaft. Thick enough that my fingers wouldn’t meet if I tried to wrap them around it, not that he’d let me. One vein wraps around the base, crafted to fuck pain into pleasure. Another runs up the underside, branching into finer tributaries, lightning captured in skin. I could follow them with my tongue for hours and still be starving for more.

He’s not just big.

He’s beautiful.

Too fucking beautiful.

His body is built for both war and worship. Every muscle cuts sharp against smooth planes, thighs strung with steel, powerful enough to crush a skull or trap a woman who can’t decide whether to beg for mercy or more. His stomach ripples with taut muscle, abs layered clean beneath smooth, ink-marked skin. His obliques sharpen into arrows, drawing a line straight to where salvation and ruin wait as one.

And then there are the tattoos.

Hundreds of snakes. Some emerald green with gold eyes, others deep purple. They slither across his torso in every direction. One wraps around his ribcage with its mouth open in a silent hiss. Another coils up his side with a forked tongue flicking toward his nipple. I spot blue scales near his hipbone, then black ones winding up the planes of his stomach, darker and heavier against his skin. There’s no symmetry in the ink, no balance, only the raw thrum of motion and danger. Yet even through the madness, my gaze finds the word carved low on his body, perched right above the base of his cock. GRIM.

My hand moves before I can stop it.

My fingers trail down his stomach, guided more by hunger than sense. I follow the path of the snakes, every ruffle of muscle beneath it convulses as I pitch lower until the pads of my deep red nails trace over the word inked just above the base of his cock. My touch is featherlight, but the reaction it pulls from him is anything but.

Zane tips his head back like I struck him.

His eyes fall shut.

His fingers clench in my hair, as if that one soft, reverent touch ripped something out of him, cracked something open he hadn’t meant to reveal.

His cock is straining, but he doesn’t force it down my throat. Doesn’t force my hand lower. Doesn’t speak. That silence is louder than any groan, more honest than any moan.

I touched him without fear. Without hate.

And he felt it.

This man has tasted flesh, broken bone, spilled blood, and never flinched. But one gentle stroke and he looks like he’s about to come apart.

That’s the danger.

Not his strength. Not the prison bars. Not the rumors whispered by guards and ghosts.

This.

This is what will destroy him. And me.

---