Page 22

ADRIAN

I positioned myself in the chair in the corner, the darkest thing to enter the sea of pastel that made up this room, and waited. I saw the irony in me being here. In seeking her out when the plan had been to turn things around. I just didn’t care to acknowledge it.

I didn’t need to.

It was much easier to accept your fate than to fight against it.

And my fate was linked to this girl. She was a speeding train that sent everything I thought I knew veering off course.

And this was me… adapting. Clearing out another path before we both went up in flames.

Which wasn’t out of the question just yet.

I knew who her father was. I’d looked him up after I’d found her name in the registrar’s office.

I also knew what sorts of things he had his hands in and why he was so protective of her.

Marisela was his safety net, a bargaining chip he dangled in front of his political backers.

Do this for me, and I’ll let you do whatever you want to her.

We shared that in common. She and I. Loose morals and shit fathers.

I felt closer to her somehow because of it. In an odd way, it took hiding myself to feel more seen than I ever had before. Because she shared my darkness. She was attracted to it, and I was attracted to the way she looked at me without ever having to see me.

And that was exactly why I was here. Sitting in the blackness of her bedroom. Risking one of her father’s men busting in and finding me.

It wasn’t long before I heard the familiar sound of her footsteps padding up the stairs. Turning down the hall and heading this way. I recognized the rhythm, how she walked and held herself. The creaking of the floorboards and the twisting of the knob.

This wasn’t the first time I was in this room. It was just the first time I was letting her catch me.

The door cracked open, and Marisela slipped inside without bothering to switch on the light.

Not that it mattered, because as soon as she went to turn around, I’d closed the distance.

Crept up behind her. One hand clamped over her mouth, the other locked around her waist, pulling her back against me.

I couldn’t help but breathe her in. That floral scent triggering the memory of her sprawled out beneath me less than a few hours ago.

I felt her spine stiffen, the huff of air against my skin as she sucked in on a gasp, and then the sharp sting of teeth sinking into the meat of my palm through thick leather at the same time a grin spread across my face.

My little wandering lamb forgot how much I liked a bit of broken flesh.

She also didn’t seem to realize how much more I liked it when she was the one doing the breaking.

I leaned forward, lowering the mouthpiece of my mask to just under her ear and whispered, “If I let you go, do you promise not to scream?”

She nodded once, but I could feel her smirking beneath my gloved hand. She wasn’t even trying to hide it.

I stepped back. Crossing my arms over my chest, as she spun around and quickly flicked on the light.

“Surprise—” I grunted the word, because before I’d finished speaking, Marisela had landed a shoed foot between my legs. A direct hit to my balls that left me stumbling as she shoved me back against that same chair I just vacated in the corner. It was still warm.

She was warmer as she leveled a palm on each of the armrests, lowered her head to mine, and hissed, “I fucking hate surprises.”

“Dually noted,” I sputtered out as I waited for the searing, white-hot pain spreading across my thighs and lower abdomen to dissipate.

Maybe she knew her anatomy better than I thought?

Marisela eyed me for a minute, indecision pursing her lips, before she pushed back and crossed the room again. She was all twisted up about something and it had to do with more than the masked stranger she found hiding out in her bedroom.

“What’s wrong?” I didn’t mind when she was angry. I liked it. I liked coaxing out all the negative emotions she wanted to keep bottled up. I liked her raw and uninhibited. What I didn’t like was the worry creasing her brow.

“What are you my therapist now?” she countered.

“You want to play doctor, Marisela?” I leaned back in the chair and steepled my hands. “Because I am more than qualified.”

She stared at me for another long moment. Studied me. “You mean that literally, don’t you?”

I shrugged, not bothering to answer. Because, for some reason, it did bother me to lie to her.

“Do I know you?” she tried again. “Who are you?”

“I’m whomever you want me to be,” I replied.

“Can you be me?” Her voice cracked in a way that had me cracking along with it. “Because I’d really like to not be me right now.”

I pushed up from the chair and took the two long strides that had us standing toe to toe again.

Cupping her jaw and forcing her to look up at me.

I recognized the desperation I saw there.

The brokenness that wouldn’t break. Swirling in the depths of her waterless eyes.

Even as she refused to cry. Because crying left you vulnerable.

“No, I can’t be you. No one can be you, little lamb. But I can make you forget who you are for a bit. So I can forget who I am too.”

“And who are you?” she repeated .

“Yours. I’m yours, Marisela. That’s all that matters,” I told her, right before I switched off the light again.

Pulling my mask off my head and tossing it aside.

Her knees buckled the first time I kissed her, and we toppled onto the bed as she tugged me forward.

Her hands clawing at my back just like I knew they would.

If she could feel the fresh gashes under my shirt, it didn’t seem to stop her, just entice her to leave some more of her own.