Page 42 of Lamb

Almost everyone.

I chanced a glance behind me. Over to where Adrian had positioned himself on the other side of the room. Dressed head to toe in black. A black dinner jacket, black slacks, and a matching black button-down shirt. Open at the collar to reveal skin a shade darker than everyone around us. A guest in a space meant to be his home. Introduced as employee and never son.

I could only imagine what that was like. Then again, I knew exactly… Maybe I’d never been my father’s employee but I had never been his daughter either.

My shadow man hadn’t looked my way all night. And not because he wasn’t watching me. But because he was better at hiding it than I was. Better than Tate too. Which left me to wonder what my darling fiancéthoughthe knew. I was certain it was nowhere near as off-putting as the truth.

By the time I made it back over to where Tate had been standing, he was gone. And so was the redhead. While the remaining guests all appeared too drunk or too self-absorbed to notice.

I sculled back the glass of whiskey in my hand, allowing the liquid to warm me from inside out before something else warmed my waist. A palm pressed almost too low to be decent and a mouth hovering over the nape of my neck.

“Only an idiot would leave his woman alone in a room full of fucking predators.”

56

MARISELA

“Is that how you see yourself, Mister…?” I might have known who his father was but that didn’t mean I knew his last name. Though something told me it wasn’tPrescott. At least not on paper.

It wasn’t the way things were done when people wanted the skeletons kept in the giant walk-in closets those same piles of bones afforded them. And the man with a suit much richer than he was, was more than a skeleton. He was a black mark on the legacy that built this city. Which left you to wonder why he was even here. In this room. This house. On this earth. Still breathing. When it was a lot less risky to bury him.

“Just Adrian to you, little lamb.” He grinned against my ear, his glare on everyone else while his hands remained on me.

I spun around, putting a polite distance between us. In case Tate happened to be watching. I doubted it. Consideringhe much preferred to watch the ass cheeks jiggling in front of him as he pounded them from behind. Something I had the misfortune of seeing firsthand when I walked in on him with one of the maids.

I shook the image from my head, returning my focus to the pair of dark eyes staring back at me instead of the blue ones that would rather linger on whatever pussy was closest.

“Okay, then,Adrian. Is that how you see yourself? As a predator?” I lifted a challenging brow, repeating the question he seemed hesitant to answer.

Adrian’s gaze flicked behind me, then back down again as he canted his head to one side. “Oh, no. I am well aware I don’t belong here. But you do, don’t you, Marisela? You live for this shit.”

“If not a predator, then what are you?” I asked, ignoring the implication while issuing one of my own.

“I’m the prey. To all the leeches in this room, I’m nothing but something for them to latch on to and bleed dry.” Adrian shrugged. “I’m the same to you too, you know.”

“You are n?—”

He waved a dismissive hand. “I am. But that’s okay. Because for you, I’d do it willingly. I would give you every last drop in my vein just to watch the way you feed off it. To see your pupils dilate and your heart beat faster. I would get on my knees and let you consume me, if only to know it’ll make me some part of you.”

“That’s deep.” I snorted at his ridiculousness, quickly cupping my palms over my face to cover the sound.

Adrian chuckled and stepped forward. A few inches that might as well have been several feet. At least that was how it felt. Like the walls were closing in on me at the same time he did. “Take me to your bedroom and I’ll make it deeper,” he offered. His voice so low I might have imagined it.

“I have to take you there now? Pretty sure you know where it is,” I countered.

“That’s not ano, Marisela.”

“It’s not ayeseither, Adrian.” My back brushed the edge of a cocktail table, forcing my eyes to bounce around. Glossing over face after face. None of them turned this way. Somehow, we’d remained unseen in a room full of people. I was surprised. Adrian wasn’t. He was used to it. To being invisible. Whereas I was used to wishing I could be.

His palm landed on the table behind me, just one, so I had a way out if I wanted it. I wasn’t sure I did. And then he was leaning forward. Our lips almost touching but not quite, before he lifted a hand to rub the pad of his thumb over my bottom lip.

“This color looks good on you, but it looked so much better on my cock the other day.” He grinned, pushing himself back and shoving his hands into his pockets. His sleeves rolled up just enough to show me how much the muscles in his forearms were straining.

He was holding back, keeping himself from touching me. That was why he did it. Why he was always tucking his hands away.

It was the moment I realized I was wrong. Because this man wasn’t just eating out of my palms. He was practically gnawing his own off. Just to get at me. I should have seen it before. He told me as much himself. Showed me when he pressed that blade to my mother’s throat. Watching me as he did it. But this was different. This wasn’t cheapened by drugs and adrenaline. It was raw and uninhibited.

It was also a power dynamic I wasn’t used to. But I liked it. It was more than when he would hide in the trees and look up at me through my window. It was more than curiosity. It was dark and it was primal. It was hunger and it was desperation.

---