Page 71 of Craving Venom
It’s nothing.
It’s—fuck, it’s just the atmosphere. The music, the lights, the adrenaline of the night playing tricks on me.
I force a tight smile and nod. “Yeah. You’re right.”
Tria grins. “Damn right I am. Now, let’s get some drinks before I start thinking too hard about life and spiral into an existential crisis.”
I laugh, pushing the moment away, forcing my shoulders to relax as we weave through the crowd toward the bar.
The bar is packed. People are shouting orders over each other. Tria elbows her way through, flashing a flirty smile at the bartender, and within seconds, we’ve got two shots lined up in front of us.
“To bad decisions,” she toasts.
I roll my eyes, but I clink my shot glass against hers anyway.
“To bad decisions,” I echo.
The tequila burns all the way down, but it’s exactly what I need.
The second shot goes down just as easy.
The music pounds through the room and the bass rattles my ribs until it sinks into my bones. I move against the counter and let the rhythm take me as my hips sway in sync with Tria. We don’t bother with the dance floor because we don’t need it. We dance here, pressed to the bar, moving with the music, with the buzz of tequila thrumming through our veins.
I let go of the feeling still tingling on my skin.
I let go of the ghost in my ear.
I let go of Zane.
Until I don’t.
Because when I reach for my fourth shot, my fingers curl around the glass, and the second I turn back, I see him.
Or at least, I think I do.
The breath in my chest locks up as my eyes snap back to the bartender.
I try to breathe. Try to remember how to make my ribs expand, how to make my lungs pull in air. But I can’t move because his eyes—God, his fucking eyes.
They pin me in place, and suddenly, I feel small. Not in a fragile way, not in a way that suggests I could be broken, but in a way that makes me feel preyed upon.
Up close, they’re wrong. Unnatural. A color that doesn’t belong on anything human. So pale they’re almost white like pearls soaked in moonlight, haunting in a way that
makes something cold coil at the base of my spine. But his pupils? They’re black. Swallowed whole. So fucking dark I could fall right in and never find my way back.
I blink. He doesn’t.
I inhale. He doesn’t fucking move.
The longer I stare, the more wrong it feels.
Like he’s not standing behind the bar. Like the distance between us is fake, a trick my brain is playing to keep me from screaming.
My fingers dig into the counter, desperate for an anchor, because if I let go—if I so much as shift an inch—I know I’ll fall.
I have to move.
I have to say something.
