Home > Venom (Rosewood Realm #1)

Venom (Rosewood Realm #1)
Author: Dee Garcia

♫ Requiem, K. 626: Lacrimosa - Mozart ♫

 

 

Everything aches.

No—it screams.

Every inch of my body screams in agony to the point that, I can’t move. Yet, somehow, I am moving. The haziness in my mind won’t allow me to make sense of the how; I just know I am.

Can feel the cool night air whipping across my face with such speed, I grow colder by the second. Oddly enough, it feels good. So freeing, like flying once felt.

That’s when it hits me. This must be…

My lips quirk in a faint, pained smile.

I did it. I actually did it. I finally found my peace.

But as I crack my heavy eyelids open and see the tops of the palms blurring past the dark, starry sky, what’s left of my fragile heart sinks to the deepest pit of my stomach.

I’m upside down.

How am I…?

Takes me a moment to realize I’m being carried, by a formidable source, no less, that doubles my size. We’re running, too, flashing through the lush tropical forest of the island at lightning speed.

I know who it is before he can so much as speak.

“Forgive me, love.” It’s Callan—Captain Hook to most of Rosewood. I can just make out his booming voice, but it’s seemingly distant despite our proximity. “Forgive me, please. It was the only way...”

I haven’t the slightest idea what he’s talking about, but almost instantly, that longed-for sense of freedom, of peace, vanishes and I’m left with nothing but fear. Instinct calls for me to move, to wriggle free from his embrace and take flight, but my wings won’t even so much as flutter.

Of course they won’t. How could they when I...

Tears spring to my eyes as the harrowing memory slowly comes back to me. All the while, I lay here limp. Broken. Terrified. I’m literally dead weight in his arms, and it’s all my fault.

I should’ve known it wouldn’t be so easy.

Streams of grief trickle down my cheeks, distorting my view of the full moon overhead. The breeze, one that’s far too cold now, amplifies the anguish radiating through my limbs. I don’t even bother screaming. Why should I?

I probably wouldn’t be able to anyway.

Callan squeezes me as if sensing my sudden realizations, cradling me tighter against his taut chest. I try catching a glimpse of him, but I can’t do that, either. My head hangs heavier than an anchor.

It’s right about then I finally grasp the full extensity of what I’ve done to myself.

I really am that broken now.

As mangled as he left my heart.

Flashes of our time together hit me in a reel, reminding me of why I became so irrational in the first place. Of how I ended up here.

“Stay with me. We’re almost there,” Callan coos. “Don’t think about the pain, just stay with me.”

Except the pain he speaks of seems to be dissipating.

The more I dwell on it, the more I try to feel it, the less I can seem to grasp it. It’s like my body is somehow dulling it.

But how…

I can’t even finish contemplating it. From one moment to the next, a whole new kind of pain envelopes me from head to toe. My mouth is drier than a desert, tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. And my gums, dear God, my gums burn, as though I’ve poured acid in a glass and drank the entire thing.

Thirsty—I’m so thirsty.

No, famished.

My stomach contracts at the thought, bursting forth a protest off my tongue.

Callan tenses then, and curses under his breath as he bangs on a door with all his might. His door, I note the door to his home.

“Callan,” I whisper, wincing at the havoc raging through my mouth.

Glancing down at me in his arms, he flashes me a look that screams nothing short of remorseful and tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Forgive me, Tinksley. When it’s all said and done, please forgive me. It was the only way.”

 

 

♫ Do I Wanna Know - Arctic Monkeys ♫

 

 

Watching Tinksley has become one of my favorite things.

She’s a wicked little creature, that one. And she doesn’t even know it; a heady combination of innocent and sexy.

Poised.

Demur.

Yet there’s such sass on her, too—a wild, mischievous side she can barely contain.

I would love nothing more than the chance to tame her, to own her, but Tinksley’s heart is spoken for.

Might be a good thing, honestly, because if I were ever to get my hands on her—may the Gods have mercy. I’d corrupt that little pixie with a singular swipe of my tongue.

Hence why I watch her from the obscurity of the shadows instead. Indulge in the rare moments she’s in her own company, free of that repulsive abomination.

Some of the things I’ve witnessed her do? Jesus. They’d ruin any man. But I pride myself on having ironclad restraint, a practice that took someone like me centuries to master.

And even now, I have days where impulse runs rampant.

The scenario playing out before me is a perfect example. Teeth bared, I’m barely withholding myself from remaining in place. Tinksley just emerged from a shower, her petit and deliciously curvaceous figure glistening with scattered droplets. Towel to her long blonde tresses, she stands before the gold-encrusted mirror of her vanity completely bared, drying off that almost translucent mane with meticulous strokes. The steady motion bounces the full swells of her tits, her pert little ass jiggling as well.

She’s a dream, a glorious dream I can fantasize about at any given moment of the day or night.

Especially after moments like these.

I can almost taste her on my lips, feel the delicate planes of her skin shivering beneath my palms. Every part of me vibrates with the need to possess her, to show her what a real man feels like. What a real man could do to her…

One day, I keep telling myself. Because one day, he will fall.

Won’t ensure my place with her, of course. We’re very different, her and I.

Where she’s purity and light, I’m maleficence and darkness.

Not that he’s any better. He, Peter Pan; the boy who never ages.

He’s a man, really, mid-twenties based on the in-depth examinations provided by my personal physician, but he’s yet to age a day since then. Somehow, he’s been granted the gift of immortality—or perhaps cursed—yet he’s not of my kind. Pan is human, complete with warm flesh and a beating heart.

How that’s possible? No one is for certain.

He’s one of a kind; cracked open his eyes one morning upon the island with no recollection of how he got here, let alone a thing about his past.

All he had to give was a name.

It’s been years since then. Many, many years in which I’ve watched Tinksley age by his side. When she befriended him within the luminous range of the Incandescent Forest, she was nothing but a wee little thing—a curious halfling disregarding any and every warning she’d heard about the mysterious man. As she grew older, they grew exponentially closer, spent countless hours together day in and day out. And upon her eighteenth birthday, he finally made his wicked move…

Tap, tap!

“Tinks, open up!” The abrupt sound of his whisper-hiss refocuses my attention from the not-so-distant memories.

Pinning him with my stare, I watch as Tinksley slips into her pearlescent robe and rushes to the window with a sneaky smile tugging her lips. As soon as she cracks it open, Pan pushes it up the rest of the ways and slides inside the feminine confines of her room.

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