Venom (Rosewood Realm #1) - Dee Garcia Page 0,1

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.

Red-hot, irrational jealousy rushes through my veins like acid at the sight of her wrapping her arms around his neck. Even more so when his filthy hands slither down to her ass and squeeze. With a dip of his head, he seals their mouths together, reeling her in impossibly closer.

Her appeased little moans—I can hear them from here. My lip curls in a disgusted sneer. I loathe every single last one, loathe how he’s the one eliciting such sweet sounds from her, how he’s the one who can make her feel this way when he shouldn’t be.

Not in this realm or any for that matter.

That should be me. The incessant thought crosses my mind once more. Indignation then meets its green-eyed brother, balling my fists at my sides. I shake it away before it can fester any further and spin on my heels as Tinksley pushes Peter back onto her dainty cloud of a bed.

I can’t watch this.

Can’t hear it or even be near.

Yes, I’m fully aware it’s beyond foolish I feel this way. I have no right to it, no claims over this girl, but I can’t fucking help it. I’ve always been drawn to Tinksley, as though there were some sort of invisible tether luring me toward her. During her adolescence, the pull was strictly intemerate. Watching her grow and blossom into the woman she is today filled me with nothing but pride. But the closer she grew to Pan, the more it began to evolve of its own accord.

Wasn’t until he got his hands on her that