Archangel's Viper

“Potato and peas,” Venom said. “Fastest option.”

Holly took a bite and flavors exploded on her tongue. Potatoes and peas? Hah! He’d mixed in all kinds of spices that took those prosaic items to a whole new level. She basically inhaled an entire one before coming up for air. “Where did you find the spices?”

“Our host must’ve told his housekeeper to fully stock the kitchen. There was an entire unopened spice set.” He put the extra samosas to drain. “What do you want for dessert?”

Holly had her mouth full of most of a second samosa—she was well past trying to look in any way elegant—and had to wait to reply. After swallowing the samosa down with chai, she dug up a smidgen of shame. “Are you sure? You already made so much.” All things she loved.

And the aggravating viper expected her to keep her emotional distance?

“Seeing how much you can put away is currently my favorite entertainment show.”

“Ha ha.” Holly decided she’d kick him later. When he wasn’t cooking for her. “Do you know how to make cinnamon pinwheels?”

“No. Describe them to me.”

After she did—around bites of a third samosa—she met his eyes. “Are you—”

“The bottled blood I’ve already had should keep me going for a long period, but there are more bottles inside the fridge. None are flavored.”

Holly laughed. “You liked the flavors, admit it.”

“Do I look like a barbarian?” Seeing that she’d almost finished her chai, he refilled her mug with an easy motion.

Holly had never before felt so incredibly spoiled. It softened things inside her that she hadn’t even realized were still hard. Hopping off the stool, she walked around the counter and wrapped her arms around Venom from behind, pressing her cheek against the muscled warmth of his back.

He went motionless in a way that wasn’t human. “Holly.”

She didn’t let go despite the warning in his tone. “I’m stubborn,” she whispered. “Especially when it comes to people who matter.” And he mattered. “You don’t get to do the lone viper thing anymore.”

“How will you stop me?” A cold purr of sound.

“Do you really think I’d warn you?” A snort. “This is war.” Pressing a kiss to his back on a raw wave of affection that scared her with its strength, she drew back . . . but only after running her palms down either side of his chest.

The gauntlet? It was thrown.

• • •

Venom had fought countless battles, had faced down enemies and dangerous allies alike, but even after his earlier thoughts about how lethal she could be to him, he hadn’t been ready for this. For a Holly who hugged him and smiled at him and stood next to him asking him to teach her how to roll the pinwheels.

This woman was . . . soft. Vulnerable.

He knew that was only the here and the now, a time when she felt safe, that Holly was dangerous and tough and a fighter, but even this fragment of vulnerability, it terrified him. “We’re not dating, kitty,” he said harshly. “I’m not a boy who’s going to go steady with you.”

Holly’s eyes flicked up, the hurt in them an iron-handed blow to the gut. And he knew. It had taken enormous courage for her to lower her defenses and retract the prickles she used in self-protection, and he’d just taught her that it had been a mistake. One more nudge—or just silence—and he’d break her precarious confidence that he was worth her vulnerability.

That was the correct move, the smart move, the move that would make sure the damn switch inside him never turned on. Holly’s future was a dark unknown that could end in a single fucking day. If he allowed her in, what would be left after she was gone?

“Fuck.” Gripping her face in hands covered with flour, he pressed his forehead to hers. “I’m broken inside,” he said, his voice ragged. “I function so well that even my closest friends think I’m healthy and whole, but I’m not.”

Her hands came up to close over his wrists. “And I’m the poster child for mental health,” she said in a tone so dry, it was dust. “Stop trying to drive me away by snapping like a cobra.” Tilting back her head, she kissed him and it wasn’t hard, wasn’t demanding. It was a lush, feminine type of kiss. The type of woman Holly was below the anger and the rage and all that had been done to her.

She liked color and pretty beads and painting her boots with daisies.

“Even if you survive that monstrous thing in Michaela’s turret, you won’t survive immortality,” he ground out. “Not being so soft inside.”

“Maybe not,” Holly said with clear-eyed serenity, “but I’ll be myself until the day I die. That’s good enough for me.” A squeeze of his wrists. “The question is, do you like who I am when I’m not sniping at you?”

He bit her. Out of frustration at all that she was asking of him. Out of arousal at the scent of her. Out of a viciously powerful emotion that had been building inside him for years and had burst to the fore only when he saw that she was healing, becoming herself again. He’d never been tempted to take her while she was so badly psychically wounded. But this Holly?

She didn’t fight his fangs sinking into her throat, didn’t fight that he had a death grip on her hair, pulling her head back to arch her neck taut, didn’t fight the hand he shoved under her dress to grip at her hip. Her blood flowed into his mouth and went straight to his cock. He didn’t drink. He wouldn’t hurt her. He just needed to taste her.

Her blood pulsed with the rapid beat of her heart.

Venom moved without conscious volition. Shifting his hand around to the front of her body, he moved it down . . . to find she wasn’t wearing panties. Spearing his fingers through her delicate folds, he discovered she was wet, so wet. Wild, sensual creature. He found the nerve-rich little nub hidden within, pressed hard at the same time that he penetrated her with a finger.

“Venom!”

He removed his fangs long enough to say, “Tushar. Say it.” He thrust in and out of her in a demanding coda.

“Tushar.” Acid green eyes holding his, her pupils hugely dilated. “Tushar.”

He sank his fangs into her again, and then he drove her over. Once. Twice. Until her body quivered and her flesh was liquid for him.

And still she held him, this stubborn and deadly and complicated and soft woman who’d decided to claim him.

Caressing her down from the edge, he removed his fangs, licked the wound closed. But not totally. He was strong enough to have done that, but he didn’t. He left two bruises that made it obvious he’d bitten her. And though he’d just shown her he wasn’t human, could strike without warning, she smiled at him, her hazy eyes dancing. “Do I have flour on my face . . . and other places?”

“Yes.” Removing his hands from her naked flesh, he lifted her up and put her on an unused part of the counter. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”

Throwing her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips as if he hadn’t just warned her in his coldest voice, she said, “My mom is going to adore you.”

His heart kicked, memories from a lifetime ago crashing so hard into him that he wrenched away—or tried to. Because even with that old anger riding him, he couldn’t hurt her and so he didn’t pull as hard as he should have, and she held on.

“Who was she?” A deadly question.

The viper in his blood raised its head in interest at the reminder of the poisonous danger that lived beneath her feminine surface. “No one.”

A narrow-eyed look. “Spill it.” Poking at his abdomen with a finger, she added, “Don’t make me mad.”

He could take her at her worst, but he found himself opening a box of memory he’d sealed centuries ago. “I was pledged to be married before my Making.”

“And you went ahead and got Made?” Eyebrows drawing together in a dark vee. “That seems like asshole behavior.”

“It would’ve been—but she was to be Made, too. Our marriage was to take place five years after our Makings, on the condition that we were assessed as having achieved full control over our vampirism.”