Page 49

MARISELA

I watched Adrian tug the mask off his face and toss it aside.

A single strand of dark hair breaking free and clinging to his forehead as he glared down at me with more than a hint of irritation knitting his brows and tightening his jaw.

He was pissed, his self-esteem taking a back seat to whatever repressed insecurities he had underneath that composed surface of his. And I needed more of it.

I needed the angst, the push and the pull, the fight. Something, anything to make me feel… anything. I also didn’t care much for self-preservation anymore. I just wasn’t ready to admit that part aloud. I wasn’t ready to admit how good giving up sounded.

I wasn’t suicidal. I didn’t want to die. I just didn’t want to live like… this. I didn’t like the idea of someone owning me… even if in some way, they always had.

Adrian’s palm shot to my neck, squeezing just enough as he pinched my mouth open with his free hand. And I sucked in a strangled breath at the same time his tongue darted inside. Tasting me from throat to teeth before ending the kiss on a groan.

And then, just like that, the tension was gone. His lips quirking into a half smirk and his expression softening as he dropped his grip on my cheeks and used that hand to caress the same skin he’d brutalized a few seconds ago.

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 be man handled. Thrown up against a wall and fucked until my legs were jelly.

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 wanted the chance to 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 quite literally fumbling 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 about you . 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.”