Page 28 of The Entanglement of Rival Wizards (Magic and Romance #1)

Elethior’s car is waiting outside the club.

I don’t make any smartass comment about it, just give the driver my address and sit otherwise quietly in the back seat.

Elethior stares out the opposite window, hand over his mouth, body immobile.

It’s barely past ten when I check my phone. Another message from my dad, this one a text I ignore; I swipe to Orok’s thread and let him know I’m heading home. With a guest. I don’t tell him who, but if he’s the reason Elethior knew to show up at Prismatic, he’ll figure it out.

The car stops in front of my building and I’m out the door like a shot. Elethior follows me wordlessly, we’re both practically running. Up the stairs, two flights; I stumble to the door, digging my keys out of my pocket with quivering hands.

Elethior presses behind me. Like he did on the dance floor. Body molded to mine, our coats blocking most of the contact now, but I know what he feels like against me, and that knowledge is unendurable.

Get in the apartment. Get in there and lay ground rules and be responsible —

“Sebastian,” Elethior says into the back of my neck, my own name scalding my skin.

I get the key in the lock, twist, deactivate our security wards with a dismissive flourish, and shove inside.

The moment the door closes behind us and I pop on the lights, I take a trembling step back, putting the kitchen counter between us. “Just—wait. Stay there.”

He hesitates, paused in stripping off his coat.

One side of his lips lifts in amused confusion. “Am I rabid?”

“Maybe. I don’t know if you’ve had all your shots.”

A laugh falters out of him, and he finishes taking off his jacket, hanging it on an empty hook by the door.

Gods, that sheer shirt in bright light should be illegal.

He takes a step closer to me. “Sebastian—”

I move back, bumping into our dining table. “Wait. Stay. Stay—right there.”

There’s about four feet between us and I feel every bit of it broken down into inches, centimeters, millimeters, atoms.

Elethior wings up an eyebrow and holds his hands in surrender.

“We need to talk,” I say.

“I agree.”

“This—this could be messy.”

“Yes.”

I glare at him. “Really? This is how we come to nonconfrontational understanding in our lab partnership? Our first check-in with Davyeras and our advisors is this week. What are we gonna tell them? ‘Hey, turns out the secret to rectifying interdepartmental differences is horniness.’”

Elethior’s grin widens.

I scratch my hands through my hair in agitation, my coat still on, the heat of the apartment making me too warm, but fuck if I’m going to be standing here in a crop top with him yet.

“Is that what you wanted to talk about?” he asks. “Our check-in meeting?”

“Yes. No. Kind of? It’s a factor.” Gods, I can’t swallow, saliva filling my mouth. “We should, uh, come up with some ground rules. Addendums to our truce.”

Elethior sticks his thumbs in his pockets. “What ground rules?” He’s talking cautiously. Scientific, almost.

Makes this easier.

We’re lab partners, adding a new dynamic to what is, at its core, a professional arrangement.

“We don’t let it interfere with our projects,” I say. “They take precedence.”

“Agreed.”

“If either of us decides we want to stop, we stop, no questions, amicably. We’ll be mature about this.”

Elethior’s eyes light up, and I expect him to go, Can you be mature? About anything?

But he says, “Agreed. Can I add one?”

I grunt.

“Not in the lab. We both have full apartments off campus. We don’t need to screw around at school.”

I’m hit with the image of Elethior pressed up against me while I stand at the whiteboard.

It’s not a bad image.

At all.

“Agreed. Not at school. Nope.”

His smirk returns. Crawls back across his face like it never left.

He eats up some of the distance between us, stepping a foot closer.

I don’t snap at him to stay back.

“What else?” he asks.

“Um—” My mind goes to mist which is quite a feat in and of itself. It’s usually so loud in here. “What else what?”

He takes another step. “Limits?”

Limits. Limits for—

Another foot closer. I can smell him. Floral and greenery and—maybe that smell is on me now. His cologne. On my skin.

He stops. Close enough to touch.

“You told me to use your body,” he says. Without music to dampen it, I can hear every facet of his growl; ripples and rough edges, it serrates along my spine in a delicious shiver. “How do you want me to do that? Or, more importantly, what do you not want me to do?”

“Uh—pain,” I rasp out. “No hitting or spanking or anything.”

His fingers lift, and my lungs clench shut. He pinches the zipper of my coat, pulls it down, unlocking it tooth by tooth until he works the thing open and pushes the warm material off my arms.

I shiver again, not sure I’ll ever be able to stop.

“Same,” Elethior says. “Another of mine is that I don’t share. Even if this is only physical, I won’t be fooling around with anyone else. And I don’t want you to either. For safety reasons, and because I’m a possessive fucking bastard.”

His hands brace on either side of my hips where I’m still against the table, and Elethior leans in, caging me to his body again, but facing him is a whole other inferno. Our eyes connect and fire ignites, the coarse drag of a match followed by the flicker and sizzle of a flame’s first sparks.

I swallow fully, throat clicking. Oh look, that feature’s back online.

“Ah,” is my very educated response. “Yeah. Sure. I, uh, I haven’t been with anyone in—” I think back. “A few months.” Okay, few is an understatement. “Since before I got tested, and I was negative then, so.”

Elethior cocks his head. “What about the date you had?”

The what I what?

He studies my confusion. “The date?” he asks again. “Before the cocktail party?”

I snort. “That wasn’t real. I was fucking with you.”

He looks unconvinced. “And that bartender?”

“What bartender?”

“At the—” His face turns red. Those stripes right along his cheekbones. “At that same party. He was—he seemed—” His eyes roll shut. “But you did leave alone, so forget I—”

My smile is slow and wicked. “Gods damn. You are possessive.”

Even then.

Before we’d started anything remotely close to this .

It’s on the tip of my tongue to mock him. To ask, How long have you wanted me, Tourael?

But it crumbles in my mouth. The teasing, the humor.

How long has he wanted me?

Has our every argument been foreplay for him?

Has our every argument been foreplay for me ?

Elethior looks at me again. “But it’s the same for me. I haven’t been with anyone in months, and I’m negative.”

“So we’ll be—” I cut myself off, the word exclusive settling next to the half of me that told him to stay back.

My fingers rise to grip his shirt like they did at the club; it’s muscle memory already.

We’re laying boundaries for what could too quickly become a mess. But it feels like we’re tiptoeing close to it already being a mess, and I’m fighting hard not to shove him aside and go invisible again.

I must have my emotions smeared across my face. His eyes soften, and one hand cups my jaw, his thumb sweeping over my cheek. Paired with that look in his eyes, I can’t move, trapped in stone by Elethior Tourael looking at me like—

Like—

Like I’m something important.

“We can stop,” he says. “We don’t have to do this.”

He could so easily make it a challenge, another game of chicken, but he doesn’t. His tone is open and warm and muddles my thoughts.

My grip on his shirt firms up and I push back, locking my elbow so he’s away from me about a yard. “No. Not stopping. Give me a sec? Bathroom.”

I dart around him, race up the stairs, throw on the upstairs light, and dive into the bathroom.

I hang there in front of the sink and stare at myself in the mirror.

My eyeliner’s smudged, hair sticking up all over, skin sheened, and crop top twisted. I don’t move to fix anything, my mind racing back over the situation and forward over what’s to come.

It’s just physical.

Just sex.

With Elethior.

My heart’s reaching speeds previously unknown to mortal man. But this is good . We’re handling this like adults. I’m handling this like an adult.

I watch myself, waiting for the collapse, for the freak-out.

The only thing that comes is a breathless huff of laughter. I’m… okay?

I’m okay.

I’m going to have sex with Elethior Tourael, and I’m okay.

Why… why do I keep not freaking out with him?

And what am I doing up here if I’m all right?

I frantically wash my hands and splash water on my face, then shove out the door.

But as I cross the upstairs landing, my skin prickles, and I jerk to a halt unconsciously.

Magic’s being cast.

It shunts me into alertness so fast I stagger, scrambling for what vials I could fit in these jeans. I didn’t wear my component belt, but that doesn’t mean I went out defenseless.

Adding to my surprise is that my first thought isn’t Is this Elethior?

Before I can formulate a counterspell, my dad’s on the landing in front of me.

I got all my looks from my mom. Complexion, height. Dad contributed nothing, towering at well over six feet, broad and bulky with an eternally stern expression and once-brown white hair neatly trimmed in a military cut.

He’s slightly translucent, glowing, auras around him pulsating blue.

This isn’t him; it’s an astral projection.

A grimace seizes me.

I didn’t reactivate the security wards I keep around the apartment.

“What are you doing here?” I’m holding a vial of components to activate a fireball and I keep my voice down, praying to all the gods that Elethior doesn’t hear.

Dad folds his arms over his chest. “I’m done letting you ignore us. You won’t respond to any of my messages—”

“So you astral project to me? At ten o’clock at night ?”

Oh my gods. If he’d astral projected ten minutes later, once Elethior and I were—

Nausea burns in my stomach.

“What should I have done?” he barks. “Continued to let you drive this wedge between us? I knew you’d be home now.”

The stairs creak.

My ribs ache with the deep, panicked breath I shove into them. “Dad, quiet —”