Chapter 130

[ 1,365 words ]

Venus dragged both hands down his face. There was definitely something wrong with him.

Almost immediately, he resumed cleaning Brittney, this time with more force than he intended, as if he could scrub away the strange thoughts along with the evidence of what they’d done.

Except Brittney whimpered in her sleep and Venus stopped at once. He hadn’t meant to hurt her.

“Sorry,” he whispered, his expression softening as he leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss against her inner thigh. Her scent still lingered strongly around him, mixed with his own, and Venus swallowed hard when another wave of hunger stirred inside him.

He wanted her again.

For one reckless second, he was tempted to forget everything and crawl straight back between her legs. But Venus knew exactly where that would lead. He wouldn’t stop at one taste, and Brittney was human. Unlike him, her body needed time to recover from everything he’d already put it through. More importantly, he needed to exercise some fucking self-control.

That was all the motivation Venus needed to finish cleaning her.

Once he was done, he looked at the thoroughly ruined bedsheet beneath her and sighed. There had to be another set somewhere. Every student at Bestiaris had been provided with spare bedding in their wardrobe, which meant Brittney should have one as well.

Venus slipped one arm beneath Brittney and lifted her easily from the mattress, holding her sleeping body against his chest while his free hand stripped the soiled bedding from beneath her. She barely stirred, merely resting her cheek against him as though being carried naked through her bedroom by a serpent she’d met only hours ago was the most natural thing in the world.

The thought amused him more than it should have.

He gently lowered Brittney onto the bare mattress before crossing to the wardrobe. The overhead compartment was the most obvious place to check, and when Venus opened it, he found a neatly folded set of fresh bedding exactly where he’d expected.

He pulled it down and was about to close the compartment when the larger wardrobe door beneath it creaked open slightly.

Venus paused.

Don’t.

His gaze remained fixed on the narrow opening. It was absolutely none of his business.

He lasted perhaps three seconds.

“Fuck it p>

Venus pulled the wardrobe door open.

Brittney clearly hadn’t finished unpacking. The remaining luggage had simply been stacked inside the enormous wardrobe, probably because she intended to arrange everything properly once she had enough time.

However, one suitcase had been left partially open, and Venus’s curiosity immediately got the better of him.

He crouched and carefully pulled the zipper farther apart.

The first thing he discovered was hair. Lots of it.

Venus stared in surprise before pulling out one wig, then another. By the time he’d counted six of them in completely different colors, lengths, and styles, he couldn’t hold back the laughter anymore.

He should have known.

Brittney struck him as the kind of woman who could wake up with black hair, then decide she was bored by lunchtime, and become a redhead before dinner simply because she could. There was something endlessly playful about her, something loud and unapologetic that seemed to bleed into everything she owned.

Yet the more Venus discovered about her, the more he realized there was another side to Brittney Thorne he couldn’t quite understand. How had she learned to set traps like the one that had caught him?

His amusement faded slightly.

That knot she’d tied around him hadn’t been some amateur attempt either. If Venus hadn’t been able to shift, there was no way in hell he would have escaped those restraints so easily.

Perhaps it was nothing. After all, he had spent years developing a rather impressive talent for stealing from dragon hoards, and that certainly wasn’t written into serpent biology.

People had hobbies. Strange ones, sometimes. But was this merely Brittney’s hobby, or was there something else she was hiding?

His gaze caught a long black object tucked into the corner of the wardrobe.

Venus reached inside and pulled it free. It was a baseball bat.

He stared at it suspiciously. Considering the woman it belonged to, Venus wasn’t stupid enough to assume it was harmless. He turned it over in his hands, inspecting the handle and running his fingers carefully along its surface in case she’d somehow modified the damn thing to release another tranquilizer dart.

Thankfully, nothing happened. It appeared to be an ordinary bat.

Venus gave it an experimental swing and nodded appreciatively. Good weight and excellent quality too. In fact, everything he’d seen so far suggested Brittney came from money.

That shouldn’t have surprised him. It was common knowledge that several of the human women selected for the Concordia Program came from wealthy or influential families.

Some had supposedly entered their daughters into the program hoping they might form connections with powerful beasts and give their families a foothold in Bestial City. It was remarkably easy to forget that when the same girls arrived at Bestiaris Academy and were treated as nothing.

Venus glanced toward the sleeping human on the bed, and a wicked smile slowly appeared. He wondered which wealthy, respectable man he’d just thoroughly corrupted the daughter of.

Although, considering everything he’d learned about Brittney in just a short while, calling her innocent was an insult to both of their intelligence. Still, the thought entertained him.

Venus returned the bat exactly where he’d found it before his attention dropped to the remaining luggage. There were three large suitcases altogether. What the hell had she packed in all of them?

He wanted to find out.

Venus actually reached toward another suitcase before stopping himself. No.

He’d already snooped enough. Besides, Brittney had trusted him, however recklessly, and he had no desire to abuse what little trust existed between them.

More importantly, this was Brittney. For all he knew, opening the wrong suitcase would launch a tranquilizer dart directly into his forehead, and the humiliation of waking up on her floor for the second time today might actually kill him.

Venus closed the wardrobe.

He returned to the bed with the clean sheet and shifted Brittney carefully toward one side of the mattress. He fitted the fresh sheet over the exposed half first, smoothing it into place before lifting her again and settling her onto the newly covered section. Then he pulled the remaining half beneath her and finished making the bed around her without waking her.

Once everything was done, Venus pulled the blanket over Brittney’s naked body, covering her properly so the evening chill wouldn’t reach her. Brittney immediately burrowed deeper beneath it, releasing a small, contented sound in her sleep.

Venus smiled before he could stop himself. He sat on the edge of the mattress for a moment, simply watching her. A strand of dark hair had fallen across her face, and he reached out almost unconsciously, brushing it away before tucking it behind her ear.

If he didn’t have to leave, he could have shifted into his serpent form and coiled himself around her while she slept. He wouldn’t exactly keep her warm. Serpents were cold-blooded, after all, and if anything, he’d probably end up stealing some of her warmth for himself.

But that should count for something, shouldn’t it?

Venus’s smile slowly disappeared. What the hell was he doing? He couldn’t become attached to Brittney. No matter how much fun they’d had today, she was still human.

More importantly, he served Caelis. If tomorrow his prince decided Brittney Thorne was a threat and ordered him to kill her, where would that leave him?

His jaw tightened. He didn’t want to think about the answer, but he already knew it. At the end of the day, it would always be Caelis over her. He couldn’t betray his prince over a human he’d known for a single afternoon.

Whatever this had been between them, however unexpectedly good it had felt, needed to remain exactly that.

An afternoon. A reckless mistake. A memory he could enjoy without allowing himself to want anything more.

“Goodbye, Brittney,” Venus whispered. He leaned down and pressed one final kiss against her cheek.

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