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.
Neither of us moves. Just pillowy lips and metal rings.
Then he—then hegasps,sucks all the air straight out of my body, and it sounds so excruciatingly ardent.
His hands plunge into my hair and I’m not kissing him now;he’skissingme,eating at my mouth, and I let him.
He tastesso good.
Like mint toothpaste and berries and coffee; breakfast. Like the overwhelming diaphanous cloud of his cologne, invading my senses with springtime as he licks into my mouth, all velvet tongue and those sharp piercings. The kiss whips through me in a furor that weakens my knees and excises a noise from me that I’ve never made before, a rapturous moan.
“Fuck,” Elethior growls against me. “Sebastian,yes.”
We’re kissing.
I’m kissing Elethior.
My lungs close up and I shove away from him, Ileapaway from him.
This isn’t—this didn’t happen. Oh my gods,this didn’t happen.
“No,” I say to his fiasco of a workstation,notlooking at him. “No,no.”
Then I do the only thing I can possibly do in a situation like this.
I snatch a vial off my component belt, turn myself invisible, and run from the room.
Chapter Eight
I’ve created a self-destruction infinity loop: What happens when the stupid thing I do is the catalyst that makes me want to do stupid things? Do I keep doing the same stupid thing over and over for eternity?
Not that I’m going to go back and kiss Elethior again.
Oh my gods, I kissed Elethior.
Then turned invisible.
And ran.
And left all my shit in the lab.
Which I can never go back to.
BecauseI kissed Elethior.
Of all the ways I feared losing this grant,kissing my lab partnerwas not one of them. But I have to drop out now, right? I have to drop out of the grant, probably the whole university, and move. Change my name. Join a druid commune.
What thefuckwas I thinking?
I know Orok’s at practice; they have their first spring season training game on Sunday. I veer across campus, and the moment my invisibility spell wears off, I check over my shoulder like I’m on the lam. But I don’t see Elethior coming after me.
I get to the rawball field and find a configuration I vaguely recognize as one Ivo was talking about at dinner a few weeks back. Stone towers, endless pits, a thin river of lava cutting down the side, all courtesy of the team’s artificers, usually students from the engineering school. Players are stationed on top of obstacles and on the ground, all shouting encouragement at someone I can’t see downfield, but blasts go up there, magic bursts of arcane blue.
The coach floats above the field, held aloft by a levitation spell, and she blows a series of whistles. “Dunst—you polymorphed too soon. Monroe, Rodayne”—oh hey, Orok and Crescentia—“nice hustle, but you came in too late. Everyone, run it again!”
