Page 34 of The Entanglement of Rival Wizards (Magic and Romance #1)

“I won’t need anything to sweeten the deal with a rival company.

The mere fact of me being a Tourael will be enough.

Plus, I don’t think we’ll get very far in my project, in her project, not enough to patent anything.

Whatever we do end up presenting will be mostly your project, and something tells me you wouldn’t like me to hand your project over to a Tourael competitor, no matter how much it’d piss off my family. ”

His eyes sparkle, but the reality is sinking in slowly, what the enormity of his project means: it will be me sharing credit for my project with him at the end of the semester, unless we make massive leaps in his project. I hope we don’t; it’s way too dangerous.

But the measuring cup theory was his idea. At this point, my project is largely his project, too.

Which should, hopefully, appease Davyeras and our advisors.

I’ll still get to release it for free like I wanted. Nothing about my planned future is changing. And yet, possessiveness churns in my stomach, and I shift restlessly on his lap.

“Yeah. Let’s not give it to any big corporations,” I manage.

“It’s bad enough you have to share it with me at all.” He finishes the part I don’t say aloud.

My jaw bobbles open, but he pushes it shut with his knuckle.

“I get it,” he says. “I do. Hell, I’ve been dragging my feet telling you about my project because I don’t want to share it.

The fact that yours might come to something, and mine will probably be a dead end, but I’ll get credit for yours?

I’d be livid at me, too.” He inhales sharply, his eyelids pulsing.

“You have a lot of very valid reasons to hate me.”

I do. Even more now.

He’s only in this grant, in this program, because of his family, not because he wants any of it. Weeks ago, that would’ve been enough to have me screaming at him until my throat bled.

But now?

My lips press to Thio’s forehead.

I hold there, second-guessing this reaction.

He exhales. With the warm gush of his breath comes a susurrating whimper.

I kiss his temple. His eyelids, tissue-thin skin. His cheekbones, his jaw; getting hungrier, frantic.

His whimper blasts open in a greedy snarl.

He catches my mouth and our kiss is an attack, bodies rocking in the chair, hands in hair and a bomb goes off, emotional detonation.

We fucked after my dad brought up all my stuff and now we’re barreling toward another go-around because of Thio’s shit, and this was supposed to be mature and healthy, wasn’t it? We laid boundaries .

I peel back, panting, my hand on his neck this time so I can push him away. “Your rule,” I gasp out. “In the lab. Can’t.”

Draw a line. See it there? We can’t cross it.

I can be rational. I can be mature. I hate myself for it, but I can be, I have to be—

Why do I want him so much? This level of need shouldn’t be possible.

It’s eating up my insides in the same napalm-laced firestorm he always used to trigger in anger, and there’s nothing too different about the consumption of these flames, except I want them so badly now, and that wanting is fuel, too.

Thio’s breath shudders and his gaze is on my swollen lips. “Yeah. I—you’re right.”

“Be easier to believe if you’d stop looking at my mouth.”

His eyes zip up to mine and he smiles. “It’s a nice mouth.”

I’m still on his lap, his arms around me. It hits me, what this is. Why I keep shying away from moments like this.

Intimate.

It’s intimate.

Far more than getting off together. Even more than kissing.

This is so messy. This is such a fucking mess.

“Okay.” I talk fast. “I’ll do for your project what you did for mine, start going through evocation texts for anything that might apply.

We can also see if what works for my project works for yours, since they’re both dealing with energy limitation.

Send me what you have for your project, research and papers and shit, and I’ll get to work familiarizing myself with it. ”

“Sebastian,” he whispers.

I clamber off his lap and he lets me go. But I put my back to him, straightening my glasses, smoothing my hair, resetting .

We’re hooking up.

That’s it.

He told me about his mom because he needed to explain why this project means so much to him.

That’s it.

But he told me while holding me. Like he needed that connection. And that word is corporeal inside me now, intimate, a parasitic growth.

“We should start pulling together a preliminary report for Friday’s check-in,” I continue and face him, but I don’t look at him. “Detailing how we’re using both evocation and conjuration, and what progress we’ve made.”

He clears his throat. “I’ll keep moving on the best ways to test the theory for your project. We can reconvene after you’ve read through my materials and figure out if there’s some overlap—if not, I say we run one or two tests for your project while exploring options for mine.”

“Yeah. That sounds good.”

He pulls out his phone and types. “Just sent you my project materials.”

My phone vibrates behind me. Thio gives me a less forced smile and turns to pick up a book at his desk.

When his back is to me, his shoulders bow.

I open my laptop and pull up the materials he emailed.

We work in silence, doing what we came here to do, but it’s off-balance, and I can’t figure out if it’s because I let things go too far… or they didn’t go far enough.