Page 32 of Lamb

“Yes,” I hissed a little more forcefully. “After we… afteryou…” I shook my head. “You told me to wait in my bedroom that night. Promised me you were coming back for me. But you never did, did you?”

“No,” he agreed, but it didn’t matter because I was already speaking again.

“And do you know what happened next?” I didn’t wait for him to answer me. “Papa found all that blood in the hallway, called his friend and told him Mama attacked me. That she ran off so he could send me to that placeto recover from the shock.” I was shaking, my chest heaving and my fists flexing at my sides. “No one even bothered to question where the blood came from or why I didn’t have any wounds on me. Then again, I’m sure they were paid not to ask.Youwere paid not to ask,” I spit the accusation in his face.

He didn’t blink. “No.”

“Yes!You were there. At the hospital. I remember those eyes. Your voice. You helped them bring me there, and then you didn’t come back.” I pounded on his shoulders as he dropped to his knees in front of me, tightening my grip on the exhausted tear that wanted to break free and channeling the rage instead. “Why didn’t you come back?”

“No,” he repeated, as he stared up at me, and then he was lifting up my skirt and tugging down my stockings before I could register what this man was doing on the bathroom floor.

46

MARISELA

My palms shot out and slapped against each side of the wall, as my head tipped back and my spine arched with the first swipe of Adrian’s tongue. The next few had me digging my hands in his hair, clawing at his scalp as I guided him left and then a little right, before that nimble appendage was twirling itself inside me and I was riding his face like it was a one-way ticket out of the hell that had become my reality.

Except it wasn’t. It was just a short reprieve. I wasn’t saved. I was just vacationing in the land of euphoria. Biding my time until the demons were ready to drag me back through those iron gates again.

I shook my head, trying to shake the negativity away too. Because I needed this. I needed to escape for a little bit. I needed my thighs trembling. I needed my brain turned to mush. I needed that tingly sensation rushing through myevery nerve ending and I needed the nothingness that followed it.

It didn’t come, though, and neither did I. Almost as if my body didn’t understand what it was supposed to do anymore. Like it’d forgotten how to reach that peak or how to jump over once it got there. Like some connection had been severed and was as limp as the old fucker who’d forgotten to take his little blue pills before dropping trou.

Thing was, I didn’t think there was a pill for this. For my problem. For men, yes. But the scientific world didn’t seem to care if us girls had an issue reaching climax. Instead, we were meant to lie back and wait until it was over. Pretend that it felt good.

And, right now, it did feel good. Itallfelt good.

Adrian’s grip on my thighs, the back-and-forth motion, that thing he did with the tip of his tongue, how he alternated between quick flicks and slow laps. How he buried himself up to his nose with no regard for his ability to breathe past my clit. The feel of his hot breath on my skin and the chilled breeze that followed each inhale. How he didn’t stop, no matter how much time had passed. The obnoxious sounds he made, a mix between a moan and whimper, and the way he drank me down like he couldn’t get enough. Like he’d never tasted anything better.

I could feel him watching me, flicking his eyes up to look at my face, which I was sure was contorted in some kind of way. My nostrils flared and my brows creased. My lip drawn between my teeth and sweat dotting my foreheadas I did my best to grind down each time he plunged upward, using his chin to add a little more friction.

I gave myself a few more minutes, a little more suction and a couple more licks before I was shoving at Adrian’s shoulders and landing him on his ass on the black-and-white tile.

“I can’t,” I huffed in a breath, my chest heaving for a different reason as I tugged my stockings and underwear back up my thighs and flattened my skirt in place. There was no fixing my hair now that it stuck to my cheeks, which were at least three shades darker. Something I didn’t need a mirror to tell me when I could feel the heat radiating off my skin.

The only thing worse than facing a room full of people looking like I’d had my soul sucked from my clit was the fact that I hadn’t. That I was painfully frustrated and unsatisfied.

Adrian canted his head to one side, not bothering to stand upright as he eyed me from the floor. His palms splayed out behind him and his legs spread out in front of him. “What do you meanyou can’t?”

“I mean,I can’t,” I repeated as I stepped over his arm on the way to the door.

He reached out a hand and wrapped it around my ankle, his voice low and bitter when he asked me, “Is it because you know who I am now?”

The question was vague. But it didn’t take me long to figure out what it was he meant. He thought it was becauseof his station in life. Because I was literally standing above him. Because he was a houseboy and I was an heiress.

And I laughed before I could stop myself. It wasn’t funny. It was pathetic. It was also so far from the truth it might as well be one of the promises Mr. Prescott made to my father in the back room when they didn’t think I was listening.

“No, it’s because I’m broken, Adrian. Theybrokeme. And there isn’t shit either of us can do about it now.” I didn’t wait for his reply as I tugged the powder room door open and slammed it shut behind me.

Fuck him. Fuck all of them.Because they didn’t just take my freedom away; they took the only escape I had as well, and I wasn’t sure there was any drug on this earth that could fix me. Or at the very least, help me forget.

47

ADRIAN

She wasn’t moving, her supine figure sprawled out in the middle of the king-sized canopy bed. Her toes pointed outward and her arms tucked neatly at her sides. But I knew she wasn’t sleeping either. She was just staring. Looking up at nothing, almost like her brain had forgotten what it was like to rest.

I could help her with that. Mix together something that would knock her out long enough for her body to start to relax and begin to repair itself. But I had a feeling that wouldn’t be the best way to go about getting her to trust me again. And I would get her to trust me.

---