Page 33 of Lamb

That’s all she needed to be able to let loose, to give in to all the dirty things she enjoyed me doing to her. Finding out who I was, was a shock to her system. She just needed another chance to forget. We both did.

My little lamb wasn’t broken—I refused to believe that—but she was… cracking. Coming apart in a different kind ofway, and I just had to figure out how to piece her back together.

I watched her for a few more moments. Tucked up behind the portrait of some old woman several generations down the Prescott line, my face covered by my favorite mask and my hands shoved into the pockets of my sweats. It was the only thing keeping me from reaching out and touching her. From trying to prove to her and myself that birth order didn’t mean shit when you had other… attributes.

Marisela had options and my brother wasn’t one of them. He might have had the last name and the inheritance that came with it but that was about all the fucker had. No drive, no brains, not even size to make up for it. Tate was just a placeholder, someone who could be swapped out for someone else with just as many zeros in their bank account and no one would know the difference. Whereas I had everything the fucker was lacking. Everything but the pedigree.

At least not part of it, and apparently that was the only part that mattered.

I took a deep breath, holding it for as long as I could to avoid breathing in the odor of stale air and rodent droppings before forcing it out through my nostrils as quietly as I could. Thanks to Trixie, I’d found my own uses for these tunnels the staff had done their best to keep secret over the years. I understood why, of course. I just didn’t like being placed in the same category as my brother and the old man.

Ironic, considering I wasn’t one of them but closeenough that their sins were mine too. It was like toeing an impossible line that meant you never belonged on either side. Like they couldn’t decide what box you fit in so they excluded you from both.

I waited until the clock started counting off the hour, using the loud chimes as cover as I slipped out from behind the hidden door and slowly made my way towards the bed. Either Marisela couldn’t hear me or she didn’t care enough to look as my fingers inched forward to brush the stray curl from her face. Staring in horror when it came away with my hand.

“That happens a lot.”

I glanced down at the chunk of hair still wrapped around my fingers before returning my focus to Marisela. She wasn’t looking at me, even as she spoke. Something I was used to and increasingly irritated by. I grabbed her chin, pinching her jaw until she had no choice but to turn her head.

“Do you feel better?” she asked, one eyebrow cocked and her tone as dry as the pussy I could just make out through the thin fabric of her nightgown.

“No. Do you?” I threw back at her.

She tugged her face out of my grip, and I let her. Now that I had her attention, whether or not she was looking at me didn’t matter. “What do you want, Adrian? Why are you here?”

I lifted a shoulder into a half shrug, my hands tucked back into my pockets, along with her lock of hair, as I rocked on my heels. “Just trying to get to know the futurelady of the house better,” I grunted.

“By creeping on her when she’s sleeping?”

“Maybe. Except she wasn’t sleeping.” Another shrug, this time accompanied by a grin as I took a step towards the bed. “Tell me, why aren’t you sleeping, little lamb?”

“Why aren’t you?” She tried deflecting again. It wouldn’t work.

“Because dreaming about that tight cunt of yours isn’t nearly as sweet as the real thing. Because tasting you again wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy either of us. And because I refuse to let Tate try his hand at something I didn’t get to finish first.”

Marisela pushed herself upright on the bed, so that I could now see the outline of her perfect breasts—thanks to the moonlight streaming in from her window. “If you’re here just to prove that you measure up to your boss, you can find one of his whores for that.”

“I don’t want one of his whores.” I placed a knee on the mattress before swinging my other leg over Marisela’s body to straddle her. Then I leaned forward while stretching her arms high over her head as I pressed my lips to her ear. “I wantmywhore.”

“I’m not your whore,” she hissed back.

“No, but you want to be, don’t you, princess? You enjoyed sneaking around, playing our little game of cat and mouse. You enjoyed fucking yourself on my mouth and the way my tongue was rammed so far up that cunt of yours, you couldn’t be certain you were a virgin anymore. You just need to relax and remember what that feels like again.Remember what it was like to be strangers who knew each other more intimately than friends.”

She threw her head back, her body shaking so forcefully it was shaking me too. She was laughing at my expense for the second time in a matter of hours. “It’s so sad it’s funny,” she wheezed in a breath. “You think you’re so different from the rest of 'em. So much smarter, more evolved. When the truth is… you are exactly the same. Maybe worse, because at least Tate embraces the fact he’s an egotistical maniac while you’re clearly still in denial that you’re one too.”

48

MARISELA

Iwatched Adrian tug the mask off his face and toss it aside. A single strand of dark hair breaking free and clinging to his forehead as he glared down at me with more than a hint of irritation knitting his brows and tightening his jaw. He was pissed, his self-esteem taking a back seat to whatever repressed insecurities he had underneath that composed surface of his. And I needed more of it.

I needed the angst, the push and the pull, the fight. Something, anything to make me feel…anything.I also didn’t care much for self-preservation anymore. I just wasn’t ready to admit that part aloud. I wasn’t ready to admit how good giving up sounded.

I wasn’t suicidal. I didn’t want to die. I just didn’t want to live like… this. I didn’t like the idea of someone owning me… even if in some way, they always had.

Adrian’s palm shot to my neck, squeezing just enoughas he pinched my mouth open with his free hand. And I sucked in a strangled breath at the same time his tongue darted inside. Tasting me from throat to teeth before ending the kiss on a groan.

And then, just like that, the tension was gone. His lips quirking into a half smirk and his expression softening as he dropped his grip on my cheeks and used that hand to caress the same skin he’d brutalized a few seconds ago.

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