Page 77 of Lost Touch

Unless it could, because Arik’s spell could do all kinds of things.

Shit, I was so confused.

“Ash? You still there? I know that explanation kind of sucked. Sorry if I broke your brain with it. What are you asking for? Maybe you could try and tell me what’s up, huh?”

I hadn’t meant to spill my guts to Jared; then again, I hadn’t meant to call him in the first place.

Maybe my magic had been guiding me again, giving me impulses I’d have put down to an unusually well-developed instinct before.

But I found myself telling him everything. Haltingly, and skipping over a lot of what I’d already told the whole gang when they first sat me down and interrogated me, but everything.

I sounded like a whiny teenager calling some kind of late-night radio show.

But Jared didn’t laugh at me. He simply listened, making interested little hums in all the right places even though I rambled and backtracked and probably made him wish he’d thrown his phone out the window instead of answering it.

“He can’t make up his mind about mating me until he’s in his right mind, but he can’t be in his right mind unless his brain thinks he’s mated,” I finished. “So I don’t know what the hell to do. And it’s killing me.”

“Okay,” Jared said slowly. “So I’ve heard a lot about you being afraid Drew has fake feelings he caught from magic. But what about you? Why aren’t you worried that you wanting to be mated to him isn’t real? Because the spell’s working on you, too, in case you’d forgotten.”

That hit like a hand grenade. I slumped back in the desk chair I’d dropped into at some point during my long vent.

The spell was working on me. The scratch on the back of my neck had stung like hell while I stood under the hot water of the shower, and my ass still throbbed a little from how thoroughly Drew had fucked me the night before. I could taste and feel again.

So how did I know I hadn’t been pushed into wanting to mate with him by the spell?

Well, I did, that was all. I knew it. If I knew anything, I knew that, and those feelings hadn’t suddenly appeared, either.

“I just know,” I said lamely. “I mean, how do you know when you feel anything?”

“Exactly. And to make sure, I think I need to ask Arik,” Jared said with something that sounded a lot like glee. “He needs to start getting up earlier in the morning anyway. It’s good for him.”

This time I could hear Calder clearly in the background. “I’m not coming to rescue you if he turns you into a frog.”

“Ribbit,” Jared said cheerfully, and Calder laughed. There was some creaking and rustling—Jared getting out of bed, probably. “Hang on a sec.”

Footsteps, another creak, more footsteps, and then a heavy knocking.

“Wakey wakey!” Jared caroled. “I need Arik. Matt, kick his ass out of bed. Magical consultant time, chop chop.”

I’d never been so glad to be on the other end of a phone line from someone. Could Arik turn me into a frog from this distance? Probably not, right?

After a minute, another creak and a thump suggested a door had opened. Arik’s voice carried clearly. “This had better be a fucking emergency—”

“Ash has a problem,” Jared cut in. “He needs to know if that spell you put on Drew can make him want to mate Ash for real. Didn’t it make Matt love you when you had it on him?”

“I really wish you and Ian weren’t all close again,” Arik growled. “He needs to shut his big fat mouth once in a while. Fuck. And yes, it did make Matthew think he loved me, and no, I wasn’t incompetent enough to include that in this version of the spell. Any more questions?”

My heart leapt at that, but it wasn’t enough.

Grumpy-bordering-on-homicidal as Arik sounded, I did have more questions, and if he turned Jared into a frog—well, at least it wouldn’t be me. And Calder wouldn’t let him leave him that way, right?

“Wait!” I cried. “Yes! Jared, the problem is the magic Drew had on him from the beginning made him want to claim me! So if it’s not Arik’s spell, it could still be left over from—”

“For fuck’s sake, just give me the phone—”

“Hey, let go—”

“Ash?” Arik’s voice, now speaking directly into the phone. Shit, he sounded so much angrier without any distance.

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