Page 262 of Craving Venom
My back hits the parapet wall, but Zane keeps coming. His chest rises and falls in slow, steady drags. The wind rips between us, tangling in the hem of the hoodie hanging off my thighs.
“Don’t,” I whisper. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Why?” He tilts his head. “You’re wet, aren’t you?”
I climb onto the base of the parapet just to get away, it’s not like I’d actually jump. My toes grip the stone as the wind lashes at me.
“Don’t,” I repeat. “I’ll fall.”
He steps closer.
“I know.”
One more step and my heel slips.
I yelp, but before I can fall his hands snap around my waist.
“But you’re falling in love with me.” He slams into me in the same second.
I scream because it’s too much, too sudden, too deep. His cock stretches me all over again like he was never inside me before. My back bows so hard it arches over empty air. If it weren’t for Zane holding me, I would’ve fallen seven stories. I dig my nails into his arm, hard enough to slice skin, and I feel his blood bloom beneath my fingertips.
He thrusts again, harder, deeper, driven by the need to be inside me, to turn the rooftop into a launch point and fuck me straight into the clouds.
He shifts his grip to my ass, holding me up, forcing me to take every inch. My legs dangle. My toes barely brush the edge of the wall.
If he lets go—I die.
If he stops—I might beg him to kill me.
The hoodie bunches around my waist, riding up with every thrust as his hips grind into mine. Cold air licks the skin above my ass, but it’s his heat that devours me.
My eyes fly open when his hand grips my throat.
The breath punches out of me, not just from the pressure, but from the reality. His cock is buried inside me, his hand is choking me, and my body is dangling over death. I tip my head back and stare into the void
My stomach lurches.
And then I remember the painting.
I realize now that I’m the girl on that cliff.
Perched at the edge of something sharp and irreversible, wrapped in something too delicate to survive it. My body isn’t draped in white silk, it’s in Zane’s hoodie, oversized and soaked in sweat and come, but it clings just the same. And like her, I don’t move. Not because I’m safe. But because I can’t.
Because something darker than gravity is holding me in place.
Zane isn’t the wind or the storm. He’s the thing creeping up—the black tendrils that move without sound, curl higher and higher, as though they’ve waited years to reach me. He’s not chasing. He’s claiming. Bleeding into every inch of me.
And I’m not fighting it.
Because maybe I want to know what happens when the darkness finishes the climb. Maybe I want to fall, not off the cliff, but into him.
Because in that painting, the scariest part wasn’t the girl on the edge.
It was the reflection in the abyss.
And now I know why.
Because the reflection wasn’t some warped shadow of her.
