Venom snapped out an arm toward her, so fast that she had to move or take a punch in the face. “Into beating up women now?” she snarled, careful to keep her voice low so Dmitri wouldn’t hear.
Eyes glittering, the slitted black center onyx against the brilliant green, Venom leaned in close. “I thought you had your masochistic tendencies under control?”
Holly flushed. “I don’t enjoy pain.”
“No?” Venom’s power slid over and around her, slow and sensuous and deadly. “Then why were you trying to snap a tendon by holding a pose that’s not meant to be held beyond the pain threshold—at least not until you’re an expert?”
Massaging her abused arm, Holly looked away. Venom was the last person to whom she’d admit that she’d rather feel pain than the viciously inhuman urges that had begun to rise up inside her more and more often. I’m not insane, she told herself even as fear gnawed at her insides. I’m not a monster.
“Some of us,” she said aloud through a forcefully relaxed jaw, “like to push ourselves.”
Venom didn’t reply, but she could feel him staring at her with those astonishing eyes that had fascinated her from the first. It didn’t matter. Venom had no right to her secrets. Mia alone suspected something was wrong beyond Holly’s continued fight to create a new life for herself, but Holly’s sister was a mortal who had no knowledge of immortal horrors. She’d never guess that it wasn’t just a terrible echo of trauma.
“Venom, mon ami!” Janvier called up at one point. “Come over tonight for dinner.”
“I’ll be there.”
“You, too, Holly,” Ashwini said before Holly could sidle away. “Let’s dress up.”
Caught, she nodded. It wasn’t that she didn’t love spending time with the couple—they’d become two of her favorite people—but being forced to make nice with Poison was not her idea of a good time. “Don’t you have to go rest?” she said to him. “It must’ve been a long trip from . . . Where were you again?”
“Nice try, kitty, but knowledge of certain places in this world is earned.” Rising to his feet with a muscular grace she grudgingly admired, he said, “I do need to check on a few matters. I’ll pick you up at six for the drive to Janvier and Ash’s.”
Holly didn’t say anything—but neither did she agree to meet him for the drive. Walking down the bleachers to the training area once the session was over, she shadowed Dmitri as he’d ordered. He went up to his and Honor’s apartment to grab a shower first, leaving her to work on her laptop in a spare office on the same floor as his own office.
Holly had stopped her studies for two and a half years after the attack. When she’d picked them back up, her former major of fashion studies had seemed like the daydream of a silly girl. A girl who’d been offered an exciting position at a fashion house and who’d planned to finish up her degree part time.
Holly missed that girl sometimes.
After her return to school, she’d wandered through the curriculum aimlessly for two months before she’d found herself sneaking into psychology lectures—and staying for hours. Not hard to figure out why she was drawn to the study of the mind. Jeez, she was a textbook case of “physician, heal thyself,” but that awareness of her own messed-up psyche hadn’t stopped her from switching majors and starting from scratch since cross-credits weren’t about to happen.
No one at the Tower monitored her schoolwork—that was her parents’ job.
Daphne and Allan Chang insisted on paying as they had before: “This is our responsibility!” they’d said when she’d talked about taking out a loan. “Do you think we saved for your education so you could get a loan?”
Of course, that meant the two kept an eagle eye on her grades. They were also pushing her to go all the way and get a doctorate. Apparently, one doctor in the family wasn’t enough. The old Holly would’ve been frustrated by their desire to be so involved in her life, but the Holly who’d died and lived again just smiled and sent her mom and dad copies of her exam results and graded essays.
Because her future . . . it was a total unknown. While the healers thought she’d have a vampiric life span, it was also possible she’d drop dead in ten years without warning—or go frothing-at-the-mouth mad and have to be put down.
Uram’s bloodborn taint was a gift that never stopped giving.
Was it any wonder she was half crazy?
5
Venom wasn’t the least surprised when Holly wasn’t waiting for him at the front of the Tower for the six P.M. pickup. Since he knew she wasn’t in any way stupid, he was very sure she hadn’t headed out to Ash and Janvier’s on her own. So he tracked her.
And found her at the very top of the Tower, her eyes on the glowing red golds of the Hudson under a startling sunset. Venom had called this land home for nearly two hundred years, but he still appreciated the magnificence of it. As he appreciated the wild nature and unbreakable spirit of the fine-boned woman who stood staring at the setting sun.
After what she’d undergone, Holly Chang should’ve been a candidate for what mortals had once called insane asylums. She’d teetered on that edge for a while, but she’d never fallen. Today, she stood dressed in a sleek black cheongsam that celebrated her femininity. Hitting her midcalf, it was printed with tiny flowers in indigo blue. She’d pulled that silky hair full of color up into a high and equally sleek ponytail.
In her hands, she held a clutch.
And on her feet were four-inch black stilettos that brought her closer to his height.
When he reached her position and she deigned to glance at him, he saw that her makeup was both subtle and masterful. She’d loved fashion once, he remembered. As he’d once loved working with the textures and flavors of food.
“I see you did grow up a little in my absence, kitty.” He’d witnessed her increased control over her abilities from a distance—but seeing her like this, so totally a woman who had now lived twenty-seven years on this earth, he realized she’d changed in deeper ways than he’d understood.
“Why do you think I care about your opinion?” she asked in a politely reasonable tone that held just the right amount of perplexed bemusement.
Venom laughed, delighted with her—though he’d never allow her to guess that. Holly had always challenged him in a way that ignited his instincts, and she did it with a cutting intelligence that spoke to his own. It appeared her increased control over her temper had only honed the razor edge of her wit. “Let’s go have dinner.”
She didn’t take his offered arm, instead giving his hand-tailored suit of darkest brown and crisp white shirt a slow and critical once-over. On his way up to the roof, he’d been subtly invited to bed sport by four vampires and two angels, one of whom had run her hand down the lapel of his impeccably fitted jacket and murmured that he looked “good enough to eat.”