Page 55 of Lust

“Told him what?” I ask.

Brad sighs. “Nothing. He’s just being a dick.”

I glare at him. “I thought you guys were including me now.”

Brad bites his bottom lip, and I have the urge to lurch forward and kiss him, but I stop myself.

“We hoped because of all the power we’d seen from you already that you’d take to it faster than we did. But if you had done it already, that would have been ridiculously fast. It took Cody days, and that was hours and hours of trying. A few minutes is nothing. Here. Let’s go back to you doing it on yourhand. I’ll let you know when you’re moving it, and once you get better at that, we’ll come back to this, okay?”

He’s so patient with me. So attentive.

“And I think it would be better if Luke and I did this alone,” he adds. “It might help Luke relax a little bit.”

“Fine,” Seth says. “I have a group project to work on anyway.”

“Yeah, that works,” Cody says. “Do you mind if I take the Sinners’ bible back? You can totally hang on to it for longer if you want. I just prefer to keep it safe.”

“I would like to look at it some more,” I say. “And I’d like to see what you’ve translated too.”

Cody and Seth eye one another uneasily, and Cody says, “Luke, it’s not that we don’t understand why you’d want to see it.”

“But we can’t just hand over basically all our secrets to someone we barely know.”

I turn to Brad, wondering if he feels the same. “Maybe just not now. But once we’ve all become better acquainted, and everyone’s comfortable, except maybe Seth…”

“Ha…ha…” Seth drags out, sneering.

I can’t really blame them, considering they don’t know me or really understand my connection to the Slasher. But it sucks knowing there’s this connection to my dad I don’t have access to.

“I can pull out some pages that are just about the historical parts—Dobbers writing about your dad. I’ll give you those tomorrow, if that works.”

I feel tears stir—that’s very considerate of him. “That would be nice. Thank you, Cody.”

Cody and I swap information before he and Seth head out. As soon as the door at the top of the stairs closes, Brad sets his hand against my cheek, running his thumb across my bottom lip. My body relaxes as I tilt my head, taking his thumb into my mouth and biting gently.

“You know how hard it was to keep my hands off you that whole time?” he asks, sending a surge of energy coursing through me.

“Well, nothing’s stopping you now,” I say, and he moves quickly, pushing his lips against mine, our tongues colliding as he drags me to the floor so that I’m under him.

“Brad, you’re gonna fuck up the pentagram.”

“I’ll fix it later,” he says before kissing down to my chin, offering a quick bite, then trailing kisses down my neck. “How about we get off real fast before getting back to this?”

A wave of heat overtakes me. “Doesn’t have to be that fast.”

He laughs into my neck before nibbling again.

And if this is part of what these lessons involve, I’m all in.

16

BRAD

Over the courseof the next week, I continue working with Luke on overcoming this first, basic hurdle.

Just like when we tried to scare him off, he’s no quitter. It’s one of the qualities I admire about him.

Hell, the fact that he saw those images of the Slasher and immediately wanted to stop it rather than getting on a plane back home says a lot about him.

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