Page 34 of Lamb

I’d provoked him, coaxed the rage to the surface, only to have something else tamp it down again. What? Couldn’t tell you. All I could say was that this man went from wanting to choke the life out of me to looking at me like if he squeezed too hard I might break. And that fact bothered him almost as much as his backing down bothered me.

“You still want me,” he hummed, like it was an observation he was making to some invisible spectator rather than a question he was directing at me.

“What I want is a goddamn orgasm,” I hissed in reply. It was the truth. It was also an impossible feat. Believe me, I’d tried. Over and over and even my own fingers had failed me. It wasn’t a fluke. I was legitimately broken, the lust I enjoyed ripped away so that I felt like I’d lost the same femininity they wanted me to embrace.

Being a woman didn’t mean being innocent, soft-spoken, obedient. At least it didn’t have to mean that. It was just easier to handle us that way. And right now, I didn’t want to be handled. I wanted to bemanhandled. Thrown up against a wall and fucked until my legs werejelly. Treated like a reinforced fuck toy instead of a china doll.

I was pretty sure that was what I wanted, even if I hadn’t experienced it before. Point was, I wantedthe chanceto experience it. The option to be more than arm candy to some spoiled little rich boy.

“How about several?” Adrian lifted a questioning brow as he slid down my body and pressed himself between my clenched thighs. Didn’t matter how much friction I tried to create there. I barely felt it or him. Or his mouth when he lifted up the hem of my nightgown as he started kissing me in a much more salacious way.

“I already told you I can’t…” I groaned as he probed his tongue so deep inside me I could hear his jaw crack. His nose pressed against my pubic bone and his nails digging into my thighs.

It was a slightly more sensual repeat of our little tryst in the powder room, except this time I was grabbing onto a headboard instead of a wall. His movements slow instead of frenzied. His posture relaxed instead of agitated.

And just like in the powder room, it felt good. Slightly less intense but good. Just not good enough. It was as hard to explain as it was to accept for someone who’d always been over-sensitized. Because it wasn’t a matter of skill or time or interest. And it wasn’t like I didn’t know what I was looking for. All those little signs and signals my body made right before it… Got. Me. There.

No, I wasn’t fumbling around in the dark, trying to find something I didn’t recognize, even though we were quiteliterallyfumbling around in the dark. Rather, I was searching for something that just didn’t want to be found. So that as soon as my fingers closed around it, it wiggled free and I was left empty-handed.

There was that building sensation I remembered like a long-lost friend. Slightly more distant, somewhat less defined. The instinctual tightening and loosening of muscles and the quickening of breaths. And then, just when the roller coaster should be making its quick descent, plummeting to the bottom while the wind blew through my hair, there was… nothing. The tracks evened out and the cart pulled to a stop. And before I knew what was happening, some guy in a polo shirt was pulling me out of my seat and asking me if I enjoyed the ride.

While I was left asking, “What ride?”

It was disappointing. Depressing. Frustrating in the worst possible way. I wanted to punch something and I wanted to cry. Didn’t matter if it was both at once or not.

I pushed up from the bed, and Adrian shoved me back down again. “I get it,” I huffed. “You feel less like a man if you can’t get me off. But this isn’t about you.”

He glanced up at me from between my thighs, moving his mouth away just long enough to reply. “You’re right. It’s aboutyou. Because if it was about me, I’d be fucking you into that mattress right now instead of giving myself lockjaw.”

“No one asked you to do that.”

“You never have to ask me, princess. I’d sooner sever the muscles than risk stopping now.”

49

ADRIAN

Icouldn’t fuck her. Not until I was sure we’d get there together. Otherwise, all the chemicals in her brain would associate sex with disappointment and frustration, making it that much harder for her to achieve climax the next time. And the next.

It was an amazing organ, the brain, shaped by external stimuli and emotion in a way no lump of tissue should be. It was also what made it so complex, so infuriatingly difficult to navigate. Because what worked like a well-tuned clock one moment could be suddenly out of sync. Like someone had hit reboot. Except instead of a factory reset, we were looking at an entirely different model.

It didn’t matter, though. Because the thing was, I loved all of them. I loved Marisela, every model, and in all forms. Loved.Not liked.And she loved me too. She just hadn’t figured that out yet.

I could tell my little lamb had enjoyed what I’d done toher in that bathroom, what I’d done to her again that night, what I was doing to her several more nights later after each time I crept into her room. She enjoyed the way my tongue swirled around her clit, gently so as not to overstimulate her. How I alternated between the heat of my mouth and the cool air of my breath. How I kept my glands salivating and her body hydrated and how I shaved extra close to ensure my face remained smooth against the softness of her thighs.

The repetitive ECT treatments just dulled that enjoyment over time, messed with her neurons.

Practice was key. Rewiring her brain so that it remembered what it liked or discovered it liked something else. Didn’t matter to me one way or the other as long as I got to see her face when she finally gave in. Those sounds she couldn’t stop herself from making…

I was addicted to it. And to her. Her taste. Her smell. All of it.

Which only added to my growing annoyance whenever I had to watch her with Tate. Not that the fucker seemed all that interested in the actual engagement. Just in making me squirm. Almost like he knew something he had no way of knowing.

Speaking of squirming…

Marisela began bucking her hips, moving them in time with my slow laps and urging me to pick up speed as her freshly-painted nails clawed themselves against my scalp. I waited until she was panting, climbing but not too high, before I removed the suction toy I’d broughtwith me from a pocket. Replacing my mouth and tugging her thighs higher on my shoulders. She wasn’t expecting it or the feel of my tongue flicking around and then carefully piercing the tight little ring of muscle around her asshole.

There were so many things my girl had yet to experience, so many nerve endings I’d yet to light up. I just had to be patient. We had to be patient. And there was nothing wrong with being patient. It didn’t make you weak; it made you determined.

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