Page 78 of Lamb

The same way I’d transformed the figure staring back at me from across the room. I guess he really wasn’t staring. He’d need eyes to do that. More like facing in my direction. Then again, he didn’t have much of a face left…

But he still had ears so he could hear me, a nose so that he could smell it whenever he pissed himself from the tiny orifice I’d created at the bottom of his torso. And one arm with two fingers. He didn’t need more than two to grip on to a pen. He didn’t need legs either—those were sold off to a very gracious amputee for far more than they were worth. Some rich fucker who’d gotten drunk and skied himself into a tree.

Cash was cash after all. And my interests required lots of it.

I had to admit it was difficult staying anonymous. Reading article after article call me a monster. A butcher. When really I was just a businessman like anyone else. But it kept people scared; it also kept me operational. Sometimes bodies needed to be found to make a point.

Not this one though. No one would ever find this one in its entirety.

“She came back just like I told you she would.” I moved closer to the mattress, despite the odor permeating from the overflowing bedpan—the dark brown color telling me his kidneys were of no use to me anymore.

He replied with a gurgle. His tongue had been the second thing to go, his cock the first, so that I could listen to him plead as I sawed it off a few centimeters at a time each day. After that, it was just too much noise. Too much whimpering and whining from someone who had more testicles than teeth.

“How’d she look?” I pivoted on the heel of my shoe, creating that squeaking sound of leather against tile. “I’m glad you asked. Fuckable, as always, but not properly fucked—don’t you worry, she will be.”

I chuckled and he gurgled again. I could only assume that meant he was chuckling along with me.

“My associate treating you well?” I glanced over to the empty IV bag. “Dr. Michaels is preoccupied at the moment, and it appears our patient care here has been lacking. That’s on me. I apologize. I’ll be sure to rectify that… as soon as I’m done fucking your wife, big brother.”

No, the fucker wasn’t dead. He was just… barely alive.

I grinned before flicking off the light, which was more for my benefit anyway, and slammed the door closed. Clanking the lock extra loud so that Tate was sure to hear the ringing in his perfectly-preserved ears long after my footsteps disappeared down the hall.

91

MARISELA

“How’s that feel, little lamb?”

I could sense him hovering above me, the mattress shifting beneath my fingertips as he leaned forward. Closer and closer to that spot between my legs. His breath warm and his hands cold as he poked and prodded until goose bumps were breaking out along both sides of my inner thighs.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t there to get me off but to putsomethingon. A fresh bandage in place of the one I must have bled through at some point in the middle of the night.

I honestly didn’t remember much of what happened between then and now. That was my own fault. I’d been angry. Impulsive. I’d goaded him because I liked the way it felt a lot more than I liked the consequences. I was also self-destructive on some deeper level.

But we both knew that.

I tried to lift my head to glare at him, and he was already moving again, the tail of his lab coat brushing across my ankles as he stepped around the foot of the bed. A quiet buzzing sound seemed to follow him. At first, I thought it was some sort of machinery, a medical device or pump, but then I realized the cocky son of a bitch was humming to himself as he adjusted the tube currently pushing god knows what into my veins.

Not pain killers, though. The pain was still there and so was the throbbing in my temples.

I forced my eyes open, expecting to find bright lights and white walls. Surgical tools and metal trays. Instead, Dr. Adrian Lambert was smiling back at me from the confines of my own bedroom. I was home, at the estate, and not locked up in some padded room at Briarwood.

Guess he could still surprise me too.

I lifted my chin and gestured to the IV pole. “What’s in the bag, Adrian?”

He tracked my movement, his glare bouncing from my face to the pump and back again. “Just fluids, Marisela. I’m not drugging you.” He sighed. “You lost a lot of blood with that little stunt of yours.”

“I lost a lot of blood because ofyour pride. Notmy stunt,” I countered, and he balked.

“It wasn’tmy pridethat had you sitting in my office and impaling yourself with a pair of rusty scissors, Marisela. I’ve never been too proud to tell you exactly how I feel about you. But that was the point, wasn’t it? You were testing me. Seeing how far you could push me before Isnapped. Before I either fought you or fucked you. Just like you did fifteen years ago…”

I refused to answer him. Mostly because the sound of his voice was grating on my nerves and partly because he was right. I was trying to bait him into fucking me that night—even if I hadn’t realized it at the time. But not for the reason he was thinking. Not because I’d wanted to run away with him. But because I’d wanted to feel something. I’d hoped sex would somehow reset whatever was wrong with my body. And when it hadn’t, I was angry. At him and at myself for being so naïve to believe he was the answer.

“Despite what you’ve been conditioned to think—by Tate, by your father—that’s not the way love works. You can’t just stop doing it because it’s easier that way.”

I stifled a laugh. Tried to speak before stifling another one. “That your way of telling me I have daddy issues, Dr. Lambert?” I didn’t wait for him to respond. “I can’t believe the orphaned bastard of a serial womanizer is lecturing me on love right now. How the fuck do you even know what love is, Adrian? How could you possibly know something you’ve never been given from someone else?”

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