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Holly frowned and sucked up even ar and fat and all those yulad she wasn’t a full-on va me is that over the past four months, I’ve developed the metabolism of an Olympic athlete”
Venoone heavy
Rolling his shoulders, he lay down on the part of the floor that was stone That see off the shake, she put the glass carefully aside, then lay back down in the same stony area herself And realized it was sumptuously warm “Do you have a heated floor?”
“Just this part”
Yawning, she curled onto her side “It’s nice”
A pillow softly hit her face just as she was about to drop off Squeezing it to her chest, she snuggled in
• • •
Venom woke first He’d known he would—Holly wasn’t used to what they’d done last night, would take time to recover She was curled up like the kitten he so often called her In sleep, she’d made her way closer to him, so that his heat blazed on her back, while the floor’s heat blazed into a large part of the rest of her body
She slept with her head half on the pilloas hugging the rest of the pillow to her front Her right leg was pulled up to lie partially on the pillow The torn sides of her dress fell on either side of her leg, revealing a sweep of creamy skin marked by a few small bruises and scratches from their tussle He’d been very careful not to badly hurt her, but some wounds were inevitable
She’d heal relatively quickly
His eyes skiain—“Rein it back,” he ordered hi her feet He wasn’t about to take a bite out of her
Finding a soft, silky blanket, he threw it over her She iled in for a longer sleep He felt his lips kick up When she wasn’t awake and snapping at hih he had to admit he liked the snappy, snarky side of her
A softer woman would’ve been crushed that first day of horror
Leaving her asleep, he went and stripped off his torn clothes before stepping into the shower He turned up the heat, let it sink into his bones He tried not to act too “snakey” as Holly would put it, but he couldn’t give up these burning hot showers And why deny himself this one pleasure when there was so much he could never have?
He didn’t step out of the shower until a long twentyoff, he hitched the towel around his hips and went to check on his houseguest
9
She wasa little but was still on the floor Her eyes half opened at sensing hioing motionless in a way that told him she’d fallen back into deepest sleep
He went and got dressed in a dark gray suit paired with a white shirt, then spent a couple of hours on the sofa in the living area going through security reports and other Tower data that D hiardless of any other calls on his time and attention, he was one of the Seven and he’d taken a blood vow to protect Raphael and his territory
That voas a thing of honor, not compulsion Venom could walk away at any tith to the reign of an archangel he respected with every fiber of his being As he respected Dmitri and the others in the Seven He’d already updated hie, but he wanted to ensure he’d absorbed every detail