the softest of feathers, a whisper of a touch. He didn’t stop her, just watched her with that unblinking gaze he got sometimes; it tended to frighten people who didn’t know him. Those people erroneously assumed it was a threat when it was simply another part of Venom’s nature.
Holly just felt . . . at peace.
She couldn’t hurt him if she lost control. She couldn’t terrify him. She couldn’t even shock him. She could annoy him, but they both enjoyed that—a dirty little secret neither one of them would ever speak aloud. “What did you cook?” she asked in that peaceful, lethargic, oddly content state.
“Fried rice with fresh crab and scallops.”
Holly jerked upright into a seated position. “Really? Give it to me!” She loved seafood fried rice so much that she’d learned to cook it; of course, hers was never as good as her mom’s. Daphne just threw in “this and that,” mostly leftover bits and pieces, and it always turned out fantastic. “You’re competing with my mom’s top-shelf cooking, just so you know.”
“I am warned.” Flowing upright in a way that made it seem as if he had no bones in his body, Venom walked barefoot across the huge living area and up three small steps to the kitchen area. The gray of his shirt sat flawlessly on his shoulders, the fabric of his pants hugging his butt. What? She couldn’t look? She was human and Venom was built like a racehorse, sleek and muscled and fast.
When he turned to lift a lightweight and aerated cover off the wok that sat on the counter, she noticed all over again that his shirt was open at the collar, revealing a strip of golden brown skin. “It’s still hot,” he told her with a faint smile. “Perhaps the scent lured you out of sleep.”
Holly sat cross-legged on the stone and watched as he dished out the rice onto a glass plate, her mouth watering and stomach rumbling. She was ready to chew the plate itself by the time he returned to put it into her hands, along with a fork.
“Now,” he said, “for the review from a connoisseur.”
Holly took a deep breath and scented ginger, garlic, shallots, a hint of chili. Her first bite was heavenly, the moan that rose up out of her throat pure, unadulterated pleasure. She’d never, not in a million years, tell her mom, but Venom was at least equal with her in the cooking stakes. Then she didn’t think, just ate, her starved body in ecstasy.
When Venom disappeared for a while to the kitchen and returned to place a glass beside her, she didn’t pay attention except to glance at it and make sure it wasn’t the dark red of blood. Ugh. She so didn’t need a mug of blood.
It was only halfway through the plate of food that she felt the need for liquid with which to wash it down. Taking a sip from the blood-free glass without looking, she felt her eyes widen. “Mango lassi?” It was a whisper.
Venom tilted his own glass at her from where he was once more leaning up against the sofa—but this time he was facing her, very much in the present. With her. Not in the distant past where she could never go.
She took a sip and felt her toes curl at the tangy sweetness. “How can a vampire be this good a cook?” she muttered before diving back into the fried rice with its succulent chunks of crab meat and equally juicy scallops.
The next time she came up for air, it was to find he’d brought the wok over.
Smiling at her imperious demand for more, he dished her another full plate.
She ate it. And she drank three glasses of the cold yogurt drink he’d made fresh. Stuffed, sated, she fell back on the stone with her arms out on either side of her in what her yoga teacher had called the corpse pose. Holly hadn’t lasted long in yoga. She’d felt as if she’d explode out of her skin at the slowness of it all.
“Is my belly sticking out?”
Venom chuckled. “No. Though I have to admit, I don’t know where it all went.”
“Me, either.” She just knew she’d needed fuel and the fuel he’d provided had been delicious. “You’re a vampire. You don’t eat.” Yes, he could have the odd small thing—like that glass of lassi, or a few bites of a food he particularly