Page 8 of Lust

I hesitate. It’s difficult to get into this next part.

How fixated I was on him on the field. Studying him as he flicked his nearly black bangs off his forehead. The pink in his cheeks when he really got going.

Then…what it felt like being near him. What touching him did to me.

Luke brought out something in me, and in a moment, all I wanted to do was keep him safe from harm. In a way I’ve never experienced before.

“Yesterday was the limit with my power,” Seth says. “If you had gotten into a fight, I wouldn’t have been able to get you out of it. I had to push on himtwice. It didn’t take like it normally does. I wonder how I fucked it up.”

Which brings me to the shit that’s been on my mind. “I don’t think you did anything wrong. There’s something messed up about this guy.”

Cody studies me. “Something else happened, didn’t it?”

Heat surges to my cheeks. “Are you reading me right now?”

“When did I get this inexhaustible power all of a sudden? I’m still fucking zapped from last weekend.”

“Stop changing the subject,” Seth snaps at me. “What happened with Luke?”

“I—I—just know there’s something wrong.”

“Say it,” Cody presses. “You were fucking him, and something weird happened. It’s not like we need to guess what it could be with you.”

Seth grimaces. “When the hell did you have time to fuck him?”

I roll my eyes. I get why this is their assumption, and it’s related, but damn, I wish my power wasn’t seduction—though really, only right now. I definitely enjoy it most of the time.

“We didn’t fuck. I already felt something on the field with him. I think it’s what made me lose control. And after, when we were in the showers, I was giving him shit, he pushed me, and I felt this jolt move through me. It was intense. I had to use my amulet to keep myself from having a raging hard-on, but even that didn’t get me down all the way.”

“I did see that,” Seth says.

“And this morning, I bumped into him in the kitchen, and fuck, I was like a stone as soon as I saw him. I was playing it off fine, but it wasn’t just that. I wanted to fuck him like a goddamn animal—like wild, obsessive thoughts, the kind you get when you’re thirteen. And then he started to take his shirt off—”

“In the kitchen?” Cody asks.

“He got ketchup on it.”

Cody and Seth exchange a confused glance.

“This isn’t the part of the story that matters. Anyway, him taking his shirt off was too much for me, and out of desperation, I grabbed his wrist to stop him, and holy fucking hell—I haven’t done any hard drugs, but if that’s what it feels like, I don’t understand how anybody’s ever able to get clean. I thought I was about to cream right through my pants.”

Cody’s face twists up. “It was hot until you saidcream.”

“Cody, be serious,” Seth says. “Go on, Brad. Then what happened?”

“I got the hell out of there and had to bust one out in the restroom. Then I ran into you and called the meeting.”

Seth bites his bottom lip, his gaze wandering before he shakes his head. “Brad, you’re attracted to this guy? That’s what this is about?”

I sigh. “Thisis why I didn’t tell you this morning. I knew you’d blow it off. This isn’t like when I fuck around with other guys. Something else happened there. He did something to me.Isdoing something to me.”

“And he must’ve fucked with your powers too,” Cody tells Seth.

“Seems like it,” Seth says.

“What if he’s not just a victim?” Cody muses. “What if he’s part of the reason it enters our world?”

“Technically,we’rethe reason,” I say, guilt rising within me.

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