Page 46 of The Entanglement of Rival Wizards (Magic and Romance #1)

Thio’s bedroom smells so strongly of him that I’m shunted into an aphrodisiacal cloud. It buffers the sharp edges of the transition, dinner to revelation to desire.

I take a beat to note the room—gray bedding, dark gray walls, a soft light Thio dims via a switch near the door.

This space would be as cold and impersonal as the rest of the apartment, if not for the plants bearding the edges of the room.

That’s why it smells like him here, not the burrowing in of his cologne, but the hearty abundance of plant life, potted trees and flowers.

Like his mom’s place at the care facility.

This room is more lived-in, clothes spilling across the floor, a stack of books on a dresser, the barest suggestion of the mess Thio scatters all over our lab.

He stops a few feet in front of me.

“What do you need?” he asks again, breathless, respectful.

Not this.

I cringe, and he catches it, his face pulsing in confusion before his eyes shut.

“Sebastian,” he whispers. “I’m not sure I can continue to be impersonal. That I can put the space you need with—”

“That’s not it.” I sit on his bed. “I—”

That’s a lie. That is it; my instinct is to throw up a boundary. Especially after something like what we just did, me being so voluntarily candid, with no flicker of deprecation.

If I make a mockery of things, if it’s light and unserious, then everything’s fine. It’s proof I’m not hurt because, look, I can joke around, see? I don’t need gentleness because only broken people need gentleness and I’m not hurting.

But this does hurt.

And when I think we’ve reached the bottom of the pain Thio and I will inspire, no, there’s more, sublevel after sublevel of vulnerability.

I’ve never gone down this deep. I won’t know my way back up.

I reach out, fingers quaking. “Thio.”

His eyes open. He takes my hand, and I pull him to stand between my spread legs. His fingers on my cheek catch tears I’d forgotten about, wipe them away with sure movements.

“Let me take care of you,” he implores. “Please.”

No, I don’t need that; no, I’m not broken; no, I’m fine.

My jaw clenches against all my self-preservation, and I nod.

He leans down, cradling my jaw in his palm, and offers me a kiss.

Slow, velvet swipes of his lips, each brush reverent.

It doesn’t build, doesn’t push faster, stays the same until I surrender to its constancy.

That constancy becomes its own evolution; my inhales get ragged, my hands find Thio’s shoulders and grip on.

More, part of me cries out.

This, another part says. This, forever.

He peels off my sweater and motions for me to move higher up the bed. I lie back on his pillows and he grabs the hem of his shirt, whips the whole thing off one-handed.

My eyes pop. “Oh.”

“What?”

“Oh. Just oh . An unremarkable exhalation of sound. Oh, it’s Friday. Oh, it rained a few days ago. Oh, a hot guy did the one-handed cross-body shirt-stripping move. No biggie.”

He prowls toward the bed. There’s no other way to describe it. It’s a prowl, his eyes darkening, shoulders tensing—this, I know what to do with.

So when he says, “Just a hot guy, huh?” in a teasing voice, he’s going along with my energy shift. Making it light, making it easy.

He crawls over top of me, holding himself up on hands and knees.

I lay my fingers on his hips; even that minimal contact is electric. “No.”

His brows pull together. “No?”

I dig my fingers against his skin, mouth dry, heart overtaxed already. “Not just a hot guy. My—”

Everything I told him in his dining room was terrifying.

This is… excruciating.

Thio takes one of my arms. Angry red scratches run up from my wrist; they’re almost always there. He presses his lips to those lines, peppering kisses over the physical proof of my anxiety.

Pressure, from both pain and comfort, squeezes my throat.

“Do you want me to say it?” he whispers. “What you are to me?”

I shake my head again. No more talking. I’ll ruin it, or it’ll open too wide and eat me whole.

Thio doesn’t agree, doesn’t do anything to say he understands.

But he tells me by the way he moves those kisses to my mouth, agonizingly sweet again, and taps whimpers out of me in no time.

He’s whimpering, too, and seems to lose control of the kiss; it stops being gentle, teeth crushing together, tongues and delving fingers and our bodies grinding.

I need to feel the expanse of him against me. I haven’t felt that yet. Suddenly everything we’ve done is the worst kind of not enough, morsels that have barely sustained me and underneath it all, I’m starving.

I work his belt and pants open and shove them down. He kicks his shoes off, loses his clothes, then we’re twisting in a lurch and I throw him onto his back. I rid myself of my remaining clothes and lay my body out over his.

Skin connects with skin from head to toe, warmth shuddering through me in cresting wave after cresting wave and I hold there on him, hips gyrating, the two of us breathing frantically.

“Want you,” he says into those breaths. “Want you so damn much.”

Still can’t speak. Don’t trust myself. Too many words want to come, words I can’t say; if I strip any more bare, I’ll turn inside out.

I slide down his body, tracing his tattoos with my tongue. I owe him something, after the Founder’s Day challenge; he got back to the wall with the components first. Even if we hadn’t made that bet, I’d be salivating for him.

I lick one nipple until the hollow of his throat throbs with a stifled moan.

I watch it beat, beat, hips canting to the drums. His fingers tangle in my hair and knock my glasses askew; I rip them off and toss them onto his nightstand.

I can see fine up close, but if I couldn’t, he so vibrantly dominates all my other senses that sight is a distant concern.

I continue down, mapping his body, rememorizing it from all our hasty blowjobs and fumbled, chaotic interactions.

Yes, sweet is frightening. It’s real and foundational.

But gods, it’s good .

So good, the noises he’s making in these gradual, syrupy touches. The way the muscles in his abs jump when I coast my lips down his defined V. His eyes lidding and bursting back open because he wants to watch but also can’t stay present in the onslaught.

By the time I take him into my mouth, he’s shaking all over and so am I.

“Sebastian,” he gasps, and I answer with a long, thorough suck that has him hissing. “Sebastian.” Just my name, some filthy prayer as I drag my tongue through his slit.

He slaps at his nightstand, wrenches the drawer open, and a container of lube plunks onto the mattress next to me, followed by a condom.

I pull off. Look at the condom, then up at him.

We talked about our test results the night we hooked up the first time, but if he wants to use protection, that’s fine. Probably for the best; hey, I get to keep one barrier in place today.

He’s panting, but he comes through the haze enough to say, “I wasn’t sure if you wanted to use it?”

I shake my head and pause, waiting to see if he wants to.

With absolutely no hesitation, he snatches the condom and frisbees it across the room.

A laugh sputters out of me.

“No magic either,” he says. “Just you. Just want you.”

Gods .

I crawl back up, kissing the hell out of him through my smile. He tastes like rich red wine and happiness.

“You gonna fuck me, Tourael?” I ask between kisses, and he groans, our dicks sliding together in increasingly frenzied pulls.

A click, a curse; his hands vanish from my body to figure out the lube before he’s guiding my mouth back to his and slippery fingers brush over my ass.

I groan now, and when he circles one finger around my opening, my lips pop off his with a muddled grunt that gets lost in the pillow next to his head.

“Good?” he whispers, one tip easing in, easing out.

“So good.” It’s been a while, but it’s him, and that’s all I’m aware of.

Thio easing a finger knuckle deep, pulling out.

Thio gliding two fingers in this time, working me open.

Thio pushing kisses to the sharp joint of my shoulder and smoothing his other hand down my back, whispering reassurances and promises and “You’re so tight, baby; you’ll feel so good wrapped around me. I’m gonna make you fly.”

I keep myself propped over him, but my body’s swerving and twitching, each drag of his fingers disconnecting wires and I’m short-circuiting.

“Thio,” I beg, already well past the point of caring. “Thio—enough, I’m ready.”

I grab for his dick, add more lube, and start to sit back on it when he locks his leg with mine and flips us again, him over top of me, grinning like a fool.

“No way.” He grabs my ankle and hooks it over his shoulder. “I’m taking care of you, remember? This is my ride. Buckle up.”

“Buckle—?” I laugh again.

He laughs, too, laughs as he’s fisting his cock to line up with my hole. Laughing as that laughter fights a losing battle with a keening sigh, then nothing is quite funny, but it’s still sweet somehow, sweet and intimate and so hot I’m incinerating from the base of my stomach, up and out.

He pushes through the first tight ring, slides all the way in with a rhythmic thrust. Everything whites out, awareness going static at the tidal wash of fullness, pressure; my breath is lodged in my throat along with a needy, slurring plea. He stays still, letting me adjust.

I grab at him, spearing my hand into his long hair, pulling him down into focus. “Move.”

“Yeah?”

“Fuck yes.”

He pecks my mouth. “You didn’t say please.” But he’s as winded as I am.

I laugh again; has it ever been this fun ? Gods, it’s breaking my heart and filling in the cracks all at once.

He moves, still seated deep, hips doing art as he rolls his pelvis and hits that spot inside me. My head throws back, mouth opening noiselessly.

Teeth in my neck, stabs of the best pain all the way up to my ear.

He stills again. “Say please.”

“Oh my gods, you bastard.”

“Yes. Say it.”