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

by Sara Raasch

Lock up your kids, Sebastian Walsh might come along and tempt them to fall upon the sacrificial altar of student debt.

What’s the point of magic if you don’t get to use it for silly shit anyway.

Elethior Tourael is all length and height—long black hair buzzed on one side; long, slender, half-elven ears; long limbs under a black T-shirt and black pants; thick boots like he rode here on a motorcycle, though I think the fuck not. It’s okay for a Tourael to play pretend at being some kind of badass, with the black tattoos up the side of his neck and along his arms contrasting against his pale skin, but for him to actually be a badass would require a level of slumming it that he’s not capable of.

Enacting pranks: a good way to burn off stress. Going to parties: a bad way to burn off stress. But actually burning things? The best way to burn off stress.

“Go fuck yourself, Walsh.” “I will, and I’ll think of you while I do it.”

To be an ass, I slide my tongue on the rim of the glass. Elethior’s eyes glue to my mouth. He looks dumbfounded. Struck silent and frozen. And maybe a little … hungry. Two things hit me at once: how I stripped off my shirt in front of him before the awards brunch. And now, whatever this is. Both those things gather in the base of my stomach and burn, but a smoldering burn, nothing painful, just intent.

My brows bend. “How much wine have you had?” What was a mottled snort is now a full-on chortle and he mumbles, “You made a sex gesture at my cousin,” before he cracks up all over again.

“Tomorrow’s the day: we’re officially going to have your therapist help us work through our codependency issues.”

He turns from his analysis spell to give me a quick once-over. Or what he clearly meant to be a quick once-over. But his eyes shoot to where I’m peeling off my hoodie. My T-shirt is caught on the hem and I can feel both rise up, a gust of cool air brushing across my bare stomach, making my abs tighten. Elethior stares at that line. That revealed skin. It itches. Prickles right where my stomach runs along the edge of my pants.

and saying it out loud has a nightmare-level realization cannonballing into my mind: Am I attracted to Elethior? Oh. Oh, fuck no.

I bump into him. That solid chest and the smell of green plants and flowers. Those stupid lip rings— They’re warm. They’re warm because they’re pressed to his mouth, and his mouth is warm; and I know that because I’m kissing him. I’m kissing him.

His hands plunge into my hair and I’m not kissing him now; he’s kissing me, eating at my mouth, and I let him. He tastes so good.

“Fuck,” Elethior growls against me. “Sebastian, yes.” We’re kissing. I’m kissing Elethior.

“I kissed Elethior,” I whisper. It barely comes out at all. A hiss of sound, and I sit there, frozen, reliving that moment. The softness of his mouth. The contrasting bite of his lip rings. The way he’d groaned. The clench of his fingers in my hair. How he’d seemed relieved I’d kissed him, like he’d … like he’d been wanting it.

“What if I want to talk about it,” he repeats, “because I can’t stop thinking about it?”

He’s holding my body to him with his hand on my neck and fuck it if I’m not a boneless, compliant mess.

Kissing Elethior Tourael should be as catastrophic as the worst thing I’ve done. And it is. But it’s not a bad catastrophe, and I never knew, never fucking knew that calamities could be wondrous, too.

“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.”

How long has he wanted me? Has our every argument been foreplay for him? Has our every argument been foreplay for me?

“I’ll help you forget, I promise. I’ll fuck you so good you won’t remember your own name beyond me calling you baby. But I can do that and still respect you, so look into my eyes and tell me you want my mouth on your cock.”

“Oh, I saw.” His eyes flip open and pin me in place with ardor. There, that’s what I want; destroy me with a look, take me apart piece by piece, leave nothing behind.

“Baby boy, you keep standing there, I’m going to pull you onto my lap.”

He showed me no mercy Sunday night, and I return the favor now.

He’s unfairly stunning, coming apart like this. All the sharp lines of his features, all his harsh edges become cliffs I want to bungee jump off, see how far down I can fall before the rebound snaps me back up. He’s the plummet and the catch and the rise again all in one, and kneeling at his feet, the world orients around him.

I’ve seen him smile so many times. So many different flavors of it, I could write a thesis on the dozens of ways Elethior Tourael’s lips move. But this smile? It puts all the others to shame. It’s joy and relief, it’s ecstasy and an unspoken, vibrant finally.

“I need to get this out of my system before you drive us anywhere,” I whisper against his skin. He shivers, hands going down to grab my ass. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve stopped believing there’s a way to get this out of my system at all. I’m pretty sure you are my system now.”

“Please,” I relent, tugging at his arms, his neck. “Please, Thio, fuck me. Fuck me, own me, ruin me—” He kisses me to silence. Eats the last few garbled words. “Oh, I’ll ruin you,” he tells me. “But you’re mine, so I’ll always put you back together again, too.”