Page 8

ADRIAN

S he was testing my restraint, and something about that both annoyed and infatuated me.

I lifted a brow without meaning to, the gesture causing a slight shift in my mask—it was the only reason I knew I was doing it in the first place.

Until my glare dropped to the red streak raising the skin on the left side of her face.

I reached out a hand, rubbing my thumb over the line of blood that had caked and dried on her cheek.

Fresh. Maybe thirty minutes old. A fact that then led me to question who the fuck else was with her in that room of hers.

Because that mark sure as fuck wasn’t there before she yanked her curtains closed.

“Who?” I barked out the word, unable to articulate more than that as the irritation seeping into my voice threatened to spill over. “Who’ve you been sneaking around with, princess?”

I watched the way her pupils dilated for a second. A mix of fear and arousal before she shut her emotions down and glared back at me with a fire that shot straight to my cock, which was already in no mood to be teased.

Her lips curled into a grin as she brushed a hand along the waistband of my pants. Baiting me. Little did she know my mouth was already firmly wrapped around that hook, my willpower dangling on a string, my better sense just waiting to be filleted wide open.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she hummed.

“I want a name, Marisela,” I grunted.

“And I’ll give you one. After you give me yours.”

I pushed off the wall, attempting to walk away before I did something she regretted and I felt a tad less apathetic about later.

I didn’t get more than a step when Marisela was tugging me back by a belt loop.

Truth was, I wasn’t trying all that hard to leave, and we both knew it.

My palms slammed down on the brick, inches above her head.

So I was forced to look down at her while she dared to stare up at me.

She craned her neck to one side, her hand inching dangerously close to the bottom of my mask.

Before she could make contact, I snatched her arm midair, closing my thumb and forefinger around her tiny wrist. A quick jerk to the left and I could break it.

But that shit wasn’t my thing. At least not in the bedroom.

The surgical table was a whole different story.

In the pursuit of science or whatever else you wanted to call it.

“Careful, little lamb.” I lowered my face to her ear, breathing in the scent of her floral perfume. Something exotic. Something I couldn’t quite place. Which was new. “Out here, no one can hear you scream.”

I could feel her grin, the minute shift of her zygomaticus major pulling tight when her lip curled, before I felt something else entirely. A sharp, searing pain in my lower abdomen, followed by a wave of adrenaline and a comforting warmth.

“I’m counting on it,” she whispered as my eyes dropped to the glint of her pocket knife, the clean edge now splashed red beneath the ominous glow of the streetlamp.