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

by Sara Raasch

But Orok’s implication clicks and I tip my chin down, vaulting my eyebrows seductively. “Did you think I was trading sexual favors for a dead body?”

“This is the last time our codependency cockblocks me. You are whatever’s the opposite of a wingman.” “A thigh-woman,” I say without missing a beat.

Once you get into higher-level stuff, things break into rigid class structures—and evocation uses magical energy to create nonliving things, like magically generated fire. But conjuration uses magical energy to pull inanimate shit to the caster, regardless of where it came from; no creation, nothing new, just something fully formed that belonged to someone else, then poof.

“I didn’t accuse anyone of anything,” he says to me. “I know for a fact it couldn’t have been you to break into my lab. Do you want to know why I’m so certain? Why I didn’t throw your name to the security guard who called me?” “Because I’m the picture of motherfucking innocence?” I give him my best syrupy smile. His nostrils flare and he leans in. I hold my ground and let him get an inch from me, the heft of his cologne clotting the air, choking me with earthiness and roses. “Hardly,” he growls. “It’s because I know you’re not good enough to have broken my ward, like you’re not good enough to win that grant tomorrow. Are you, sweetheart?” The fucker pats my cheek.

The silence arching between us stretches. The difference between come at me, bruh, and something that takes the knot in my stomach and douses it with kerosene and scrapes a match against my nerve endings to light it.

Spells use certain amounts of components, like the experiments I used to do. But sometimes, a wizard only has a solid block of quartz when they need a sliver and they can’t chip off the right amount for whatever reason, so they have to focus on not draining more of the component than they need. Using too much of a component can make spells go haywire, or it can bleed a component dry entirely. That’s my research project: developing a way to cap the energy drawn from components in the spell, rather than having wizards cap the amount through their own focus. A safety net thrown over every spell so parameters are set

His hand climbs my stomach. All the air leaves my lungs in a punctured groan that he has to feel, the rumble of it; he moves his hand up under my shirt, sliding between my pecs until he’s gripping my neck and the lights go scarlet. The beat falls again, but we miss the jump. He’s holding my body to him with his hand on my neck and fuck it if I’m not a boneless, compliant mess. On the next swaying grind of my hips, he cants into me, letting me feel he’s as hard as I am, and the knowledge skitters across my sweat-slicked skin like a gust of wind. Goose bumps erupt everywhere; I shiver in their attack. My lips part, eyes pinched shut like I’m in pain. I am. It hurts, and it doesn’t, and that hurts, too. His fingers spasm on the pulse point in my neck. I turn my head and I know his face is right there. I can taste the heat on his mouth. Our lips touch, a scratchy brush. His thumb will leave a bruise under my jaw, and we hold there, panting into each other’s mouths, bodies pressed together, limbs tangled. We’re not dancing anymore. Just—just gasping, miring in each other.

“Shut up,” I say again, pitifully, and I’m kissing him. Three days. It’s only been three days since I kissed him—earlier tonight was barely a kiss, not like this—and the moment we connect, it’s oxygen after being submerged, it’s something I missed. How could I have missed it? I’ve kissed plenty of people and never craved it as it was happening, never felt it trigger some otherworldly hunger that possesses me in a rage. I release his shirt to clamp my fingers around his head and pull him down to me, our lips clashing, mine trying to devour tongue and teeth. He meets me in the furor and isn’t that dangerous? Shouldn’t one of us keep a handhold in reason? But he sucks my tongue into his mouth as he shoots his hands up under the back of my shirt, arching my body to his, and freefalling together is safer than anything else I want to do. Safer than anything else I would do, so I jump. I bite across his jaw, the skin smooth and tasting faintly of sweat and shaving cream, until I get to his neck, to those black ink swirls. His hair hangs down and I rake my hand through it, twisting the strands around my thumb and fingers and jerking so his neck bows. “Sebas—fuck,” he cuts off when my teeth graze the highest line of ink, a spiked vine that swirls up to his ear. I can feel the ridges of the tattoo under my tongue, slightly raised against his skin, and it’s another thing I add to this churning storm of need—I’ll need to do this again, and again, and— His hands fumble my belt, falteri...

“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.”

I try to get up on my elbows, really I do. I cannot be in this much of a jellylike state yet, it’s embarrassing. But all I manage is to lift my head and look down at him, and he’s got his eyes shut, his shoulders bowed forward. “What?” I pant. “What’s—” “You’re not wearing anything under your jeans.” I grin. “You thought I was? You saw how tight they were, right?” “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. I dump kerosene on that energy. “Maybe I’ll go bare under my pants every time we’re in the lab. Or maybe I’ll wear jockstraps. Or thongs—would you like that? Doesn’t matter though, does it? We won’t be fooling around in there, so you’ll never know what I’m—” He wrenches my jeans so they’re around my thighs and gulps me down in one vibrating snarl.

If I thought I’d made some embarrassing sounds before, they’ve got nothing on the way I mewl at his cock coming to full hardness against mine. We got off, we should be done; it was mind-melting, it should be enough—but we’re kissing like we’re starving still, open-mouthed and scraping, and he’s making noises, too, husky growls and symphonic cries. “Shit, Sebastian—need you to come again, need to see it.” Elethior takes us both in the hand that he came in and he uses his own cum to jack us.

His dick’s bigger than mine, longer and thicker, and while that pings the barest dredges of my competitive side, I channel it into relaxing my throat and taking all of him. That, coupled with the tingling, sparking sensation from the potion, has Thio’s head thunking back against the door. “Holy shit,” he whines, squirming, helplessly thrusting himself deeper into my mouth as his jaw gapes, fingers knotting in my hair, knocking my glasses askew.

Thio’s no help. I swear he stands too close on purpose. I catch him dragging his nose near the skin on my neck and I glare at him, but he grins like a little fucker. I bend down to grab the marker I dropped, and I catch him checking out my ass with his lower lip between his teeth, and he pops an eyebrow and pats his thigh like I’ll hop to and plant myself there in an obedient heap. Which I don’t.

He catches my mouth in a retreating kiss as he pulls out of me. I only have a moment to wince before he’s dragging me away from the edge of the mattress and shoving my knees up to my stomach. “Wha—” But no question comes, just pathetic gasping, and I look down to see him staring at my hole. I can feel his cum leaking out of me. That’s what he’s looking at. He’s been a predator before, but it was only a part of him, a flicker of could-be. The rabid look on his face leaves nothing hypothetical about what he is now. “So hot, baby,” he snarls and bends to lick a long stripe through the crease of my ass to my balls, dipping his tongue into my hole as he passes it.

CAMPUS-WIDE SECURITY ALERT: All cultists who attempted to hijack the graduation ceremony and turn it into a demonic summoning have been apprehended.