Page 57 of The Entanglement of Rival Wizards (Magic and Romance #1)
“I win,” he declares, eyes teary, and before I can get out more than an indignant huff, he’s kissing me again, bending me nearly backward, our bodies slamming together and his tongue invading my mouth.
A throat clears.
Slowly, we shift to face Martha, her hands clasped against her scrubs, her head tipped in amused reproach.
“This is hardly the place, is it, gentlemen?” she softly scolds.
I try to disentangle myself from Thio, but he holds on, keeping one arm around my waist.
“Sorry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all.
I elbow him, and he buries his face in my neck, inhaling, absorbing. His sigh of pleasure ripples out across my entire body, makes my neck arch, feline and supple.
Gods, this man.
Martha smiles. “I’m glad to see you’ve worked out your issues.
But lunch is being served in the main dining room, and I know your mother will want to get a zucchini fritter before they’re gone.
” She fiddles with a few settings on Dr. Holmes’s wheelchair and pivots her toward the door. “Will you be joining us?”
“Yeah,” I say, and Thio extricates himself from my neck to give me a look of such adoration my knees nearly collapse.
This is how it’s going to be, then? Not a damn thing buffering this connection between us now. Nothing left to shield us or the outside world from the full onslaught of everything blazing in Thio’s eyes.
Martha heads off with Thio’s mom, and we linger for a beat under the weeping willow, a breeze playing a melody through the branches and elongated leaves.
“We don’t have to stay,” he tells me.
I pick at a spot on his shirt, right over his pec. “Hey, I like zucchini fritters as much as the next guy.”
His arms lock around my waist and my eyes leap up to his. The smell of him surrounds me, greenery and flowers and spring, vibrancy and growth and life .
“I love you, too,” I say.
Thio groans, bumping his nose against mine. “We’ll eat fast.”
“But, Thio,” my voice goes up, intentionally bratty, “proper digestion calls for a patient, deliberate consumption of—”
“ Sebastian .”
I shiver at his tone.
“Yeah, okay,” I agree. “We’ll eat fast.”
I have Hordon take us to my apartment because I’m almost certain Arasne will be staked out at Thio’s. He checks his phone as we veer through the streets—at a much more sedate pace—and his screen is cluttered with missed calls from her, and texts, and voicemails.
Thio toys with his phone, his other hand looped around my thigh where I’ve got him pulled against me, my arm over his shoulders.
“I should call her,” he says against the hum of traffic.
“Why?” I put my hand over his phone and push it into his lap. “You’re still graduating. You can keep playing along like you have been—”
“No.” Thio sags into me, head against mine, eyes shut. “I’m done with them. That hasn’t changed. I can’t keep letting them think I’m okay with everything they are. Even if it means—” He shudders out an exhale. “I’ll have to move my mom. I’ll have to get a new place to live.”
Hordon had a barrier spell up before we’d gotten back in the car, which I mentally filed as unspoken permission; Thio’s energy was exhausted though, so I was more than content to have him in my arms.
But at the despondency in his words, I unfasten my seatbelt and straddle his lap, wanting to be the center of his focus and break through the dread swamping him. His eyes fly open and he grabs on to my hips, and there it is, a widening of his pupils, a repositioning of his awareness.
“This is what I meant, Thio,” I say, fingers sliding beneath the bun his hair’s in.
“You’re not alone. I’ll help you research other places for your mom, somewhere affordable.
Or—hell, I have a deep inner knowledge of how to make leftovers stretch multiple days, or how to navigate this city without a driver, or—” I shrug, cheeks hot. “I have a place to stay.”
His eyes shift over mine, memorizing me, and he doesn’t need to say anything. I can see it in him, feathered layers of adoration and relief.
“Only if you let me do something for you, too,” he whispers.
I squint. “I haven’t had a lot of successful relationships, but I’m pretty sure they don’t have to be perfectly even in terms of—”
“Call your father,” he says.
I lean back on his thighs, throat seizing.
He rises up, meeting my retreat, keeping our chests together.
“Move forward with the lawsuit,” Thio continues.
His lips brush across mine like saying the words so close softens their blow.
“I know it’ll be awful. It’ll drag out things that’ll destroy us both.
But I’ll be there for you, every second of it, every moment where you’re taking back the power my family stole from you. ”
I scratch my fingers across his scalp, arch his head up, and devour him.
It’s violent and eradicates the numb exhaustion Thio had been cloaked in, once and for all smashing through it.
We part on a shared, knifelike breath.
I nod.
My eyes shut.
I nod again, giving him as much of a promise as I can.
He surges back up, starving, tongue warring with mine and arms dragging me to grind against him. My hips roll and he lets out a hoarse grunt before he clicks his seatbelt, tilts his body to the side, and tackles me on the cushion.
The car rocks as Hordon turns and maybe we’re close to my place, maybe we still have hours in traffic, but Thio’s tugging aside clothes and leaving kisses and bites as he crawls down my body and time stands perfectly still.
He undoes my belt, works open my pants, and drags out my hard cock to the needy, grating whimpers I pour into the back of the car.
Thio looks up at me, his eyes thunderstorm black with their own hits of lightning, his lips distending as he sinks his mouth around me.
I brace my palms flat against the car door by my head and cry out, thrusting unconsciously.
Neither of us has the fortitude to make this last or stop to pull up a teasing spell, not after everything.
Thio answers my cry with all the ferocity that drives me wild, sucking hard and tunneling the base of my cock through his fist and dragging his lip rings on the underside of my head.
Saliva leaks from the corners of his mouth, his increasingly desperate moans groping toward my disjointed sounds until they intertwine.
Sensation rockets through me, abrupt and forceful, an onslaught; I come and he swallows hard, never one to back off quickly, and I love that I know that about him.
That I know he lingers in the afterglow like he can feel mine, too, licking and nuzzling; it’s reverential in a way I want to shy from, but at the same time, he makes me feel like I’m worthy of it.
The car lurches to a stop and shifts into park as Thio’s climbing back up me. He kisses me, wet and salty-sweet, and I reach down for the buckle on his pants when he grabs my wrist.
“We’re going to go to your room, and I’m going to put a levitation spell on you, then fuck you until you come again,” he informs me, and I can’t do anything but moan like the hopelessly love-drunk nitwit I am.
Thio grins on my mouth, lets me feel the slow pull of his lips upward. He knows what that does to me, when he lets me feel his smile.
I shake my head in wretched self-loathing. “I hate you,” I whine.
He brushes a lock of my hair from where it’d tangled with my glasses.
“No, you don’t,” he says with a teasing, arrogant smirk, and I got nothing for that.
Because he’s right.
CAMPUS-WIDE SECURITY ALERT: All cultists who attempted to hijack the graduation ceremony and turn it into a demonic summoning have been apprehended.
The ceremony is progressing as planned with extra adventure parties on hand and added measures in place to see that no ritualistic chanting or pentagram formations occur.
The official spokesperson for the Temple of Galaxrien Vossen has issued an apology, claiming the cultists did not “understand the full efforts one must go to in order to perform a successful demonic resurrection.”
We have been assured by several adventure parties as well as the Temple that no one in attendance at the graduation is in true danger of Galaxrien Vossen appearing, especially since “this is not the correct date for his prophesied return.”
Congratulations, graduates!