Page 89 of Forbidden Magic
“You’ll kiss me regardless.”
That prince. Always playing games. It’s horrible that I’m turned on, bloodied and a mere foot from Trent’s unconscious body. Cole doesn’t seem to be asking permission, and his fingers fumble with the buttons of my shirt.
I palm his cheek and catch his gaze again. “I know what you want. You can get it, but not now. Now, you have to help me find Lydia.”
“Why shouldn’t I take it now?” He asks like we’re talking about an apple or a pen.
“It wouldn’t be the same, and you know it.” I breathe, praying that his fogged brain still understands the difference.
He stops, his fingers an inch shy of my breast. “Swear it. Formally.”
“By the Dark Gods, I swear it.”
He seals my promise with a kiss before peeling himself off me and offering me his hand.
I take it and crawl to my feet.
I push down the hysteria rising in my blood. What did I just do?
There’s no time for second-guesses, so I run toward the snakes’ bedroom. Cole breaks down the door with one powerful kick, and I march inside with fireballs ready to fly.
Lydia is alone in the back, tied up to the wall. Tears stream down her cheeks, but she looks in one piece.
“Jules!”
I start loosening the knots around her wrists. Cole steps behind me, his bare arms on either side of mine, and cuts the ropes with a shiny dagger.
Lydia’s panic dims in the face of her rescue, her heavy breaths slowing down a bit, and she slowly rubs her lower arms. “Blane and Bailey… They tied me up and started saying all those things. I know they’re jerks, but I swear they had a dreamy glint in their eyes… like they weren’t quite there.”
“Trent attacked me. Fangs blazing and with nothing but hunger on his mind. Something is making them act this way. They’ve gone… savage.”
Lydia’s gaze flicks over to Cole like she’s only now realizing that he’s three quarters unhinged. She inches backwards. “Is he…”
“Affected? Yeah, but as it turns out, his uninhibited self is not far from his real personality. Just hornier.”
With a devilish grin, Cole wraps his arm around my midriff, his heated palm flat against my throat.
Lydia’s eyes bulge.
I slap the prince’s hand away, but he just squeezes me against him, his fingers hard at my neck, his chest harder at my back. My train of thought is becoming blurrier by the second. “It must be a spell or something.”
Cole presses his nose to my pulse point and inhales like I’m a one-man pheromone party. “It was in the food.”
“Huh?”
“We all ate at the same time. Darkwood, the snake twins, and me. We’d just gotten out of detention.”
“Detention? Don’t you mean the immortal seminar for a more inclusive school?” I snap.
He growls. “Don’t push me, Fire Girl. I’m already tired of waiting…”
I comb my hair away from my face, trying to get my thoughts in order. “Okay. If it was in the food, it means it’s got to be a potion.”
“Or a poison,” Cole adds clinically.
“Given most immortals’ metabolisms, it should wear out by itself pretty quickly. Shouldn’t we just find a good place to hide?” Lydia offers.
I nod to the dark prince of lust who’s now kissing a fiery trail down my neck. “Waiting is out of the question. We should find another plan.”
