Page 44 of Lust

As good as I am at reading him, clearly he’s getting good at it too because as I look, he must see the pain in my expression as he denies me what feels as necessary to me as food or water.

My gaze shifts to him, and his tension relaxes. “Go ahead,” he says with a nod.

Thank fuck.

It’s like I black out, can’t remember the moments between him giving me permission and when my face is mashed against his skin, my tongue going wild as I lap him up like a dog.

“Take it all,” he says.

And I do, beyond grateful.

13

LUKE

That was vindictiveof me.

I’m just so fucking angry.

Not only because Brad didn’t tell me about my dad’s involvement, but because of this lack of control over my feelings. I should’ve been able to take a moment with the book and figure out what the hell I was looking at, but when I got back to my dorm room, I was so worked up that I could barely concentrate on the words on the page.

And it seemed the more I hated Brad for his betrayal, the more I needed to see him, to the point where I finally broke down, submitting to these sick impulses within me that have me lusting after a guy I can’t even stand.

Although, fucked up as this may be, after helping each other release all that tension, I’m relaxed once again. Now that Brad’s given me so much peace of mind, it’s easy to grant him some forgiveness.

I lie on his bed, breathing deeply, reveling in those moments of bliss, when Brad says, “Here.” He stands beside the bed and passes me a towel.

“I’m assuming this is to clean up your saliva because I think you took care of the rest.”

“Wasn’t gonna leave a damn drop,” Brad says, and a warm sensation stirs in my chest.

I pat myself down with the towel as he sits on the edge of the bed. “How are you feeling?” he asks, like he really gives a shit,which only makes me feel that much worse for how I treated him.

I remind myself that I have a right to be pissed. “You should have told me.”

“As I said before, I made an oath to the guys that we would keep these secrets between us. And I was the one who pushed them to tell you.”

It’s true, I know it. But it doesn’t make me feel any better.

“I’m not just angry with you,” I confess. “I’m so messed up since I saw Dad’s name in there. A part of it flared up missing him. And then another part of me wonders how he could have kept something like this a secret.”

“It’s okay. It’s confusing-ass shit. I can’t imagine how I’d react if I were you. And not an excuse, but one of the reasons I didn’t push the guys to mention it sooner was that from what you mentioned about your dad, I worried it would only add more stress. But I was wrong. That wasn’t fair to you.”

Damn you, Brad Henning, for being so fucking considerate.“Can’t you go back to being the douchebag you were when I first got here?” I joke, maybe to bring some levity to the conversation. Neither of us is laughing, though.

“I have plenty of time to be a douchebag later,” Brad says, leaning over to the nightstand and retrieving the book. “So how about, for now, we start going over the Sinners’ bible. I’m sure part of why you were so upset when you got here was because it’s not exactly user-friendly.”

I scoff. “Fucking understatement. Some made sense, like their meeting minutes. And I could tell some of the pages were spells or incantations or such, but a lot of that was gibberish.” That’s what really set me off. I thought I could get some answers, only to get stuck with what looked like garbled nonsense.

“The book was meant only for the original Sinners—Josh Dobbers and your dad. Dobbers recorded how he and your dadcame upon this stuff—this place, their powers—and what they learned about it. They wrote down the information Dobbers channeled from the Guides—like how to make amulets and use them with their powers. They didn’t want anyone to stumble upon the book and know what they were up to, which is why it’s encoded. Cody cracked it, hence his nickname Codes. That’s how we learned to experiment with our powers. Most of what we know about the Rift and our powers comes from this book.”

It’s nice to finally start getting some direct answers. “So why did they call themselves the Sinners and not like, the Saints?”

“They explain in the bible it was just something they came up with while dicking around. Both were raised to be good Catholic boys, here at a major Catholic institution, but wound up playing with magic.”

“And this Rift you guys keep talking about? What is it exactly?”

Brad flips to a page, displaying a sketch of darkness and eyes and teeth.

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