Page 57

MARISELA

“ I s 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’t Prescott . 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.

Considering he 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 a no , Marisela.”

“It’s not a yes either, 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.

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.”