Page 43 of Lamb

And I could work with that. Coax it to the surface and play with it. As long as I didn’t let myself get lost in it. Because this thing between us was temporary. Especially when I’d given my word I wouldn’t fuck him—my fiancé probably should have been more specific. Clarified his definition of sex.I purposely didn’t. Tate would get the virgin he wanted on his wedding night. What he wouldn’t get was my innocence.

That was gone a long time ago.

“You’re right. It did.” I leveled Adrian with a glare. “Almost as good as your blood looked on my hands that time I gutted you.”

57

ADRIAN

My little lamb talked about stabbing me like it was an art form. My body and blood, her canvas and paint. Put us together and the result was as beautiful as it was dangerous. Disastrous.

I was too smart to throw it all away for a woman. Too talented to risk everything I had planned for myself on a few stolen moments in the shadows. Yet here I was. Sneaking off with my brother’s bride. At their own damn engagement party. Taking her by the hand and dragging her through the halls and into the first empty bedroom with a lock on the door.

It wasn’t by chance either. It was by design.

The handful of sedatives I’d tossed into Tate’s glass thirty minutes ago meant big brother was ass-up before his pants made it around his ankles. His face buried in his mattress and his cock buried in no one. Fucker deservedmore than a bad case of blue balls. But I didn’t want to think about him when I could be thinking abouther.

About the woman whose darkness matched my own. Who was as sanctimonious as she was sadistic. As smug as she was savage. Her arms crossed over her chest and her hip cocked like I was an inconvenience. Like she didn’t want me.

Marisela was good at pretending. I’d seen her do it all night. What she wasn’t good at was believing her own lies. Which meant her body betrayed her.

That’s what my game had been about downstairs. Why I’d risked us being seen together. To prove to her—and myself—that she wasn’t as unaffected as she tried to appear.

I pulled her little red pocket knife from the lining of my vest. Jerking it open and locking the blade. Watching Marisela’s eyes flick from my hand back to my face as I took a step forward and flipped the handle in her direction.

“Go on, take it.” I grinned.

“Why? What is it that you really want from me, Adrian?” she questioned, her fingers wrapping around the hilt and tugging it free without much resistance.

“Nothing, everything.” I shrugged, my hands finding their way back to my pockets. “Whatever you wanna give me.”

“What if all I want is for you to fuck off?” She didn’t mean it. She wasn’t angry at me. She was angry at the world. At how it’d wronged her. More than that, she wastesting the waters. Seeing if there really was anything I wouldn’t do for her.

“Mmm, can’t do that. What else you got?”

“Fine, what if I want your head on a spike? Would you give it to me?” She stalked forward, close enough to press the tip of her blade to my throat. And I leaned into it until she drew blood.

“No…” I told her before dropping to my knees. “But I’d let you take it. I would let you saw through flesh and bone, tendon and muscle, and I wouldn’t do shit to stop you.”

“Why?” Now that was a fair question. It was also one I didn’t have an answer to.

“I have no idea.”

“Well, at least you’re honest.” Marisela lowered the knife to the collar of my shirt, wiping it clean before snapping it closed again.

“With you, always.”

“Always?” She lifted a challenging brow and I couldn’t suppress another grin.

“Almost always,” I clarified.

She was studying my face, like she was trying to figure out what I wasn’t telling her. As if the possibilities were far more exciting to her than the reality. They probably were, but that didn’t mean I was ready to reveal all my secrets to her. Not yet. Not until every last piece was positioned just right.

And then she was pressing on my shoulders, shoving at my chest until I was sprawled out flat on my back while her hands tugged at the buttons of my fly. Her palm soft andwarm as it wrapped itself around my cock. Yanking almost too hard but not hard enough that I didn’t enjoy it. Or maybe so hard that I couldn’t help but enjoy it more.

I wanted to touch her. To flip her ass around so that she was riding my face at the same time she was gagging on my cock. But I also wanted her to maintain her control. Use and abuse me and my body until she found a rhythm that had her screaming my name again. Until she found a way to fix herself.

I would be whatever this woman wanted me to be—her test subject, her fuck toy, her oral fixation—as long as she kept doing that thing with her tongue. The thing that had me biting on a knuckle and lifting my hips to meet her lap for thrust. That had the muscles in my thighs vibrating and my balls contracting so tight against my body they were practically inside me again.

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