It wasn’t Dionysus himself—this guy had blond hair and a potbelly. Plus he played the flute using his right hand, which made him a Mundane. Still, it didn’t take a genius to put the asshole in the chaps together with the satyr/Dionysus connection and come up with a whole lot of adrenaline.
I jumped over the 69ers, pulling my salt flare from my belt as I ran. “Morales!” He was wrestling a blonde wielding a massive black dildo like an extremely flexible baseball bat. “With me!”
He ducked the weapon and shot the girl right in her perfect nose job with S&P. She fell to the ground behind him as he pivoted to join me. “What’s up?” he called.
I pointed. “We got ourselves a satyr at twelve o’clock.”
My partner’s face hardened as he zeroed in on the satyr in question. Together we closed in on our prey, who had his back to us as he skipped around a particularly large moaning tangle of people. Morales lunged. The flute music cut off, quickly followed by an oof. The satyr and my partner were airborne for a second before they crashed to the ground.
I stood over the grappling pair with my salt flare ready for action. “Freeze!”
Unfortunately our goat-horned buddy was too busy hitting Morales with his pan flute to comply with my order. I reached down to grab Morales’s shirt and wrench him out of the way. At the same moment, the goat-man launched a knee right at my partner’s crotch. Morales sucked air and then froze before howling in pain and falling to the side.
“Freeze, asshole!” I shouted again. I didn’t want to use the salt on him if I could avoid it. At close range, it was liable to take off his face. Normally I wouldn’t have minded so much, but if he was indeed one of Dionysus’s followers we needed him well enough to speak. Tough to do with no lips.
But men who dress as goats and gallivant through sex riots playing flutes tend not to be the most logical people. As if to prove this point, the guy launched himself off the ground and took me out at the knees. Now it was my turn to hit the dirt. I lifted the salt flare—because, seriously, fuck his face now—but before I could pull the trigger he covered one of the holes on his pan flute and blew hard into the mouthpiece. A plume of powder exploded from the end of the flute.
Directly into my face.
In shock, I sucked in, pulling the potion deep in my lungs. I choked on the odd sweetness. A moment of panic when I realized what had happened. Didn’t last long, though, because a nanosecond later a curious heat began to spread through my veins. Not painful. A rush. Yeah, a major rush of adrenaline shooting straight from my heart to strike like lightning in my groin.
From somewhere that sounded far away I heard a confrontation—two males shouting, a loud grunt. Didn’t care. I suddenly was very aware of a void in my center that longed to be filled. The need to swallow, to suck power from marrow. Take, take, take.
“Prospero?” came a deep voice close by. The delicious scent of sweat and heat and pheromones.
My eyes popped open and my vision filled with his face. A rock-hard jaw covered in scruff that I suddenly needed abrading my hot skin. Those full lips. The muscles. Good God, those muscles. I needed to feel them flexing under me.
Those chocolate eyes narrowed. A warm, calloused hand on my cheek. “Kate? Talk to me.”
The next part was pretty crazy, so my memory is blessedly fuzzy. But somehow, I ended up straddling that big body. Somehow I ended up shoving my tongue inside that hot mouth. Hands tried to push me away, but I circled my pelvis and kept at the mouth, stroking the tongue until his resistance melted. I moaned and went deeper. I needed to swallow him whole. To make him beg and plead before I conquered him completely.
He groaned and those arms went around my back, trying to take control. I reared back and slapped him across the face. The voice that emerged from my lips was mine and yet somehow not mine at all. “Take it, bitch.”
Everything shifted. The body beneath me wasn’t so pliable anymore. Those hard hands, those heavy muscles pushed me off. I slammed to the ground. But the need to conquer had me up again in an instant. “Kate, stop!” he commanded.
Some small part of my brain wanted to obey his demand, but my body was having none of it. It was like I wasn’t behind the steering wheel at all. Instead some sex-crazed succubus was in charge, and she was going to consume Drew Morales whole.
My body launched at my partner. He caught me around the neck and pulled me back toward his front with a vise-like headlock. My ass ground into his crotch and a hand snaked around to tweak his nipple. “Jesus Christ, Kate. What the fuck?” He pulled his hips back out of grinding range. “Little help over here!” he shouted above me.
In my head I was ordering my body to stop this shit. My breath panted in and out of my heaving lungs. Lust was a fire that consumed every urge to follow my conscience. But the rational part of my brain kept whispering, This shouldn’t be happening. I was an Adept. Getting hit with a potion shouldn’t affect me this strongly. Besides, I was a civilized woman. I didn’t use sex as a weapon.
I screamed like a frustrated banshee. The energy inside me yearned for sex. Being denied only urged the flames to rise higher until the lust threatened to consume me. I believed I’d die if I didn’t have an orgasm.
Frustrated with the captivity, my left hand reached toward his crotch. But my captor was way too fast. “Goddamn it.” He grabbed my hand. “Stop that!”
Another male voice from close by. My head perked up and Mez appeared. I licked my lips. Mez with his sexy dreadlocks and his large hands. I stared at his crotch and purred. “Bring that wand over here, wizard.”
While I struggled to get away from Morales so I could dive for Mez’s crotch, the two men were exchanging words I couldn’t hear. Someone shouted a command. A mechanical sound.
Mez said something like, “This is gonna be cold.”
“Do it,” Morales said, his tone grim.
One second fire licked under my skin like acid. The next, a whooshing sound. Cold wetness splattered my skin. I screamed from the icy-hot pain of it. From the effects of what felt like gallons of salt water invading my mouth and nose. I was drowning. Choking.
Through it all, strong arms supported my weight. Later, I’d remember his encouraging whispers, promising everything would be okay—that I was safe. But as the salt did its job and consciousness returned, gut-wrenching shame surged through my midsection, dousing every spark of lust.
My cheeks burned like twin coals, and my pride didn’t feel much cooler. I was in the back of an ambulance while the med wizes worked on me to make sure I wasn’t suffering any lingering or long-term effects from the potion. The back doors to the ambulance were open, which gave me a good view of the cluster of cop cars a short distance away. Morales leaned his arm against the roof of one of the black-and-whites while he listened intently to the guy who’d hexed me. The horns hung from a cord around his neck, and his waterlogged chaps dripped on the street.