Published in 2026, Tempting Venom is a dark M/M romance by Rina Kent, a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author known for her interconnected universe of romance novels. The novel is the third installment in the Vipers series and can be read as a standalone story. The plot centers on the intense rivalry between Preston Armstrong, the arrogant left wing for the Graystone University Vipers hockey team, and Marcus Osborn, the captain of the rival Stanton Wolves. What begins as on-ice antagonism spirals into a violent, obsessive, and sexually charged dynamic as the two anti-heroic protagonists become increasingly entangled in each other’s lives and confront traumatic experiences from their pasts.

The narrative uses the world of college hockey as a backdrop for the protagonists’ rivalry and developing relationship. The novel examines how the characters navigate societal expectations through Sports as a Performance of Masculinity and how their lives are shaped by Class Disparities and the Power of Wealth. At its core, the story is a deep exploration of Intimacy and Sex as a Space for Exploration and Healing. Preston and Marcus’s BDSM relationship involves consensual exchanges of pain and power that gradually create opportunities for emotional vulnerability, trust, and greater openness about their experiences of trauma and mental health.

This guide refers to the 2026 Bloom Books edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of child sexual abuse, mental illness, graphic violence, death by suicide, suicidal ideation and/or self-harm, substance use, physical abuse, sexual content, cursing, antigay bias, and illness or death.

Plot Summary

Fifteen years before the main narrative, seven-year-old Marcus Osborn visits the estate of his largely absent father, Andrew Osborn, with his mother, June. While his parents argue, Marcus wanders into the garden and meets seven-year-old Preston Armstrong, who has come to play with Andrew’s son Leo. The boys bond over their difficult relationships with their fathers and their desire to provide better lives for their mothers. Preston gives Marcus two mango candies for his birthday, and Marcus gives Preston a daisy in return. They promise to be friends, but their connection does not continue, and Preston later forgets the encounter while Marcus remembers him.

In the present, Preston Armstrong is a left wing for the Graystone University Vipers hockey team. He routinely researches opposing players’ vulnerabilities and provokes them into losing control and committing penalties, giving the Vipers an advantage. His closest friends and teammates are captain Kane Davenport and defenseman Jude Callahan. The three are heirs to founding families of Graystone Ridge and members of Vencor, a powerful secret society whose members use violence, coercion, and their families’ influence to maintain control in the region.

Their rivals include Marcus, now captain of the Stanton Wolves and the illegitimate son of Andrew Osborn. Marcus has recognized Preston as the boy he met 15 years earlier, although Preston does not remember him. During a game between their teams, Preston attempts to provoke a Wolves player, but Marcus intervenes. Unlike Preston’s usual opponents, Marcus resists his tactics and instead succeeds in unsettling Preston. One of Marcus’s taunts triggers nausea, sensory disturbances, and difficulty maintaining control in Preston. Preston repeatedly loses his composure and is penalized, while Marcus scores during one of his absences from the ice. The Vipers ultimately lose the game, leaving Preston increasingly preoccupied with Marcus and confused by his reaction to him.

Shaken by the defeat and his loss of control, Preston returns home, where he believes his father has ordered Lenin, an apparent family enforcer, to beat him as punishment for embarrassing the Armstrong family. Seeking revenge against Marcus, Preston later enters the Wolves’ empty arena while intoxicated and after taking painkillers and destroys Marcus’s hockey sticks. Marcus finds him there, and their confrontation becomes increasingly physical. Marcus grabs Preston and moves into his personal space, provoking an unexpected sexual response despite Preston’s distress with physical intimacy. When Marcus attempts to kiss him, Preston panics, punches him, and leaves. Preston retaliates again by stealing Marcus’s custom-built motorcycle, and the two continue provoking each other through text messages.

Their conflict escalates when Preston joins Jude and Kane in the Armstrong family’s private forest, where they hunt a man connected to the murder of Jude’s mother. Preston catches and kills the man. Marcus, who has secretly entered the forest, then attacks Preston while concealing his identity. During their fight, Marcus discovers that Preston becomes sexually aroused when Marcus physically hurts him, while Marcus is aroused by inflicting the pain. Jude and Kane interrupt the confrontation, and Marcus escapes before they can identify him.

Preston prevents Jude and Kane from pursuing Marcus, and Kane eventually knocks Preston unconscious as his agitation escalates. Two days later, Marcus challenges Preston to a private one-on-one hockey game. They agree that if Marcus wins, Preston must allow him to touch him. Marcus wins, but when he begins touching Preston, Preston experiences the panic, nausea, and sensory disturbances that physical intimacy can trigger for him. He asks Marcus to hurt him instead and discovers that pain makes sexual contact easier for him to tolerate. Their encounter establishes a pattern of secret sexual meetings involving consensual pain and power exchange, although Preston repeatedly withdraws when Marcus attempts greater emotional or affectionate intimacy.

As their encounters continue, Marcus becomes increasingly emotionally invested in Preston, while Preston struggles with his attraction to Marcus and the danger posed by Vencor’s prohibition against same-sex relationships. On the anniversary of his mother Valérie’s suicide, Preston becomes intoxicated and takes medication before driving to a cliff, where memories of his childhood sexual abuse and his mother’s death intensify his suicidal thoughts. Marcus calls Preston and, realizing during their conversation that he is in danger, asks where he is. Preston tells him that he is at the cliff overlooking Graystone Ridge, and Marcus drives there. Inside Preston’s car, a lighter ignites alcohol that has spilled onto the floor. As Preston begins driving toward the edge, Marcus arrives and pulls him from the burning vehicle shortly before it explodes. After the rescue, Preston initiates a kiss with Marcus.

In the aftermath, Preston and Marcus resume their relationship and agree to become exclusive. As Marcus witnesses more of Preston’s trauma responses and mental health difficulties, he abandons his original intention of using Preston to obtain information about the founding families. Preston nevertheless continues to withdraw when their relationship becomes emotionally overwhelming, and Marcus eventually ends contact after Preston again refuses to communicate with him.

As Preston’s mental state deteriorates, he continues speaking with Dr. Duret, a therapist whom he believes is real but who is later revealed to be one of his hallucinations. Their conversations increasingly center on Preston’s suppressed trauma and his refusal to discuss it with Marcus. Preston also continues to perceive Lenin, whom he believes is his father’s enforcer, without yet recognizing that Lenin is another hallucination. When Preston inadvertently mentions Dr. Duret and Lenin to Lawrence, his father becomes alarmed and insists that he urgently see his actual therapist, Dr. Fenwick. Preston mistakenly believes that Lawrence intends to have him institutionalized and, fearing that he will lose his freedom, writes Marcus a letter explaining the experiences he has been unable to discuss openly.

In the letter, Preston recounts being sexually abused as a child by his mother’s boyfriend, Claude Lavoie. His mother, Valérie, eventually discovered the abuse and intervened but died by suicide the following day, leaving Preston convinced that he was responsible for her death. He also describes being sexually assaulted again at boarding school and killing his attacker, as well as his mental health difficulties and experiences of distorted perception. Preston gives the letter to the family aide, Hayes, with instructions to deliver it to Marcus later that day.

Before his planned appointment with Dr. Fenwick, Preston joins Dahlia and Violet for a picnic, where he discovers that Violet is his grandfather’s illegitimate daughter and therefore his aunt. Their outing is interrupted by gunmen on motorcycles acting on Marguerite Armstrong’s orders to kill Violet. Preston pushes Violet out of the line of fire and is shot in the chest. As he loses blood, he initially stops fighting to survive, but regrets giving up when Marcus, who has been watching Preston from nearby, reaches him and begs him to stay alive.

At the hospital, Lawrence secretly arranges for Preston to be declared dead while he recovers from the shooting, leaving Marcus and most others to believe that he has died. After Preston’s funeral, Hayes delivers his letter to Marcus. The letter reveals the childhood abuse, guilt, mental health difficulties, and fear of abandonment that Preston had struggled to disclose to him. Marcus subsequently tracks down and kills several people involved in the attack, including Marguerite Armstrong, who ordered Violet’s assassination. Believing Preston dead, Marcus withdraws from those around him and begins seeing and speaking to hallucinations of Preston. He eventually contemplates suicide but stops himself after one of these hallucinations urges him to continue living.

After about two and a half weeks, Preston becomes fully conscious and learns that Lawrence had arranged the false announcement of his death to protect him. Lawrence explains that he had never intended to institutionalize Preston and had only wanted him to attend an urgent appointment with Dr. Fenwick. He also acknowledges his failures as a father and helps Preston reconsider the guilt; he has carried over his childhood abuse and his mother’s suicide. Preston begins attending therapy more consistently with Dr. Fenwick, who helps him better understand and manage his hallucinations and recognize when they are distorting his perception of reality. Lawrence learns about Preston’s relationship with Marcus and accepts it, promising to protect his son from Vencor if necessary.

Learning that Marcus believed him dead and killed several people involved in the attack, Preston goes to Marcus’s house. Because Marcus has been hallucinating Preston since his apparent death, he initially assumes that the real Preston is another hallucination. When he realizes that Preston is alive, the two reconcile and acknowledge that they love each other. Preston promises to continue his treatment and communicate with Marcus rather than withdrawing when his mental health deteriorates. Marcus reveals that they first met when they were seven and explains that the daisy tattoo on his thigh represents the flower he gave Preston during that childhood meeting.

As Preston recovers, he tells Jude and Kane about his relationship with Marcus. Kane accepts the relationship, while Jude assures Preston that he supports him regardless of his sexuality but remains distrustful of Marcus and agrees to tolerate him for Preston’s sake. One year later, Marcus and Preston live together in New York after Marcus has been drafted into the NHL. Preston continues therapy with Dr. Fenwick and has become better able to recognize and manage his episodes; he no longer hallucinates Dr. Duret or Lenin. Their relationship remains largely private because Vencor continues to prohibit same-sex relationships, while members of their families work to dismantle the organization’s existing leadership. On Marcus’s birthday, Preston tells Marcus that he intends to marry him. Marcus accepts, and the conversation becomes an informal proposal. The novel ends with Marcus and Preston engaged.